Ask the Author: Stephen Taylor
Answered Questions (8)
Stephen Taylor
I certainly don't feel motivated to take on Amazon. If the seller (via) Amazon has got hold of a second-hand book I can't see anything illegal in that. I understand that some sellers say that they can supply all books (that's why they quote £24,99) If they get an order, then they will approach my publisher or me. It's annoying but no different from Bookshops taking an order for a book they do not have in stock. There's a sale at the end of the end of the day, I suppose, even if it drives other customers away from my entry.
Why would you think your book has been pirated?
Why would you think your book has been pirated?
Stephen Taylor
I'm not sure what you mean by "illegal". I certainly find them being sold on Amazon for a £1 or alternatively for £24.99. I know Amazon is a multi-seller platform but I do wonder where they get their books from. Certainly not me or my publisher.
Stephen Taylor
My latest book -Gospels, was started the same way as all my books, I create a document called conceptualisation and I throw ideas at it. Many people had asked me about one of my previous characters, John Campbell-John, and enquired what became of him. He was Flashmanesque, a lovable rogue, and I set off to tell his subsequent story. By coincidence, I was also reading about bible hunters in Egypt in the 19th century, academic adventurers in search of the earliest copies of the bible. And so my story took an unexpected turn, taking me from London to Venice to Egypt - to the Nile, the Pyramids, to the deserts of Sinai - and a possible redemption of our mischievous anti-hero.
Stephen Taylor
I've been writing for over twenty years now. I try to walk away from it, but there is something in me that brings me back. I am a storyteller; that's what I do.
Stephen Taylor
A crossover novel, part historical fiction, part modern-day crime story, with a science fiction twist - time travel. A modern-day historian, studying an obscure medieval document written by a monk in 1150, discovers the story of a young girl who claimed to have travelled forward in time and is then hung as a witch. The monk goes to give her the last rites whereupon she tells him the full story, and he records it his chronicle. She claimed that she had a vision of the 21st century where she saw the murder of a white angel by a black angel. The historian thinks nothing more of it until he reads of an unsolved murder that took place at the spot near where the girl lived. Her story appears to be coming true.
Stephen Taylor
At book fairs, I am often told by customers that they have had an idea for a novel and they have been going to write for years. I always say to them the same thing. The hardest part of writing a book - is to start. Go on, commit to it. It may not come to anything, your idea may not be enough to sustain a full manuscript, but it just, maybe, well - be terrific.
Stephen Taylor
People say writing must be enjoyable. Well, sometimes it far from that, it's frustrating, it's annoying, it's infuriating. What it is most of all, however, is fulfilling. A wonderful sense of achievement. That's the best bit.
Stephen Taylor
For each novel, I have a document in Word called "Conceptualisation." It has all my original thoughts, possible storylines, etc. This forms the skeleton of the novel. The next step is research - this is a chore but it also opens up other storylines, and I add them to this document, even though they may not yet be relevant to the storyline I have reached. If I get stuck, this is where I go for new ideas. The knack is to keep the document ahead of the writing.
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