Ask the Author: Paul Michael Peters
Answered Questions (12)
Paul Michael Peters
March 14, 2023, the Kindle version and the print version will be released.
Paul Michael Peters
The print and digital copies will be released on March 14, 2023.
Paul Michael Peters
Would you like more stories about Mr. Memory (James Hollins)? Or more Other Stories of Wonder? The Complete Collection of Short Stories: 2012 - 2018 has all of the decent short stories from that time.
Mr. Memory has several more Cold War adventures to share as he makes his way through the world of entertainment in the late 60's to 70's. If there is enough interest, I would be happy to share those tales with the world.
The Illusionist's Daughter had interest from readers as a full novel. Initially, there was a much larger story about Trinity growing up in a world that lacked magic after her father died. Questions about his death were never fully answered and she was driven to find out more. After many revisions, nothing felt right at the time, so I released it as a short story.
I would love to hear more about what you would like to read. Let me know here or on my website.
Mr. Memory has several more Cold War adventures to share as he makes his way through the world of entertainment in the late 60's to 70's. If there is enough interest, I would be happy to share those tales with the world.
The Illusionist's Daughter had interest from readers as a full novel. Initially, there was a much larger story about Trinity growing up in a world that lacked magic after her father died. Questions about his death were never fully answered and she was driven to find out more. After many revisions, nothing felt right at the time, so I released it as a short story.
I would love to hear more about what you would like to read. Let me know here or on my website.
Paul Michael Peters
"Pure evil, as if it were the fruit of the Devil."
Thank you for reading. Pleasant dreams.
Thank you for reading. Pleasant dreams.
Paul Michael Peters
There’s a process called beta readership. If you were to become a beta reader for an author, and there are many authors out there looking for good beta readers, you get to read early versions of their work. On the plus side, you get to read free versions of the early work. On the downside, you get to read early versions of an author’s work. Believe me you don’t want to see the first three drafts of anything I write.
This is where the idiom comes from in writing; writing is rewriting.
I have a very talented person in Atlanta Georgia who has been my editor for the last three books. Her name is Brooke Payne. Brooke is very patient. Brooke is very detail oriented. Brooke breaks it to me gently when things go horribly wrong. She says things like, “have you ever considered trying it this way?” “What if it ends like this?” “How is your day job?” Brooke is very professional and I appreciate more and more the day I met her.
There are other people who have volunteer in the past to read early versions of my work. The process usually breaks down like this; draft two is full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. No one gets to see draft one but me. In draft two, the beta reader tells me things they like and they don’t like. These are line items or general comments. I go back and fix. Drafts two through four are often structural or character development. Draft number five is often detailed in corrections and steps to make everything amazing (from Brooke).
She may see drafts 2, 4, 5. While others see drafts 3 and 5.
The most number of people who’ve read any one of my particular books was The Symmetry of Snowflakes, where I had five readers, two of whom were paid ‘Book Doctors’.
A book doctor is just what it sounds like. A paid professional to read your work and provide a diagnosis or treatment. I find this is money well spent. I don’t mind paying people to be honest and detailed about what I’ve written. I don’t like it if I pay someone for that work and they spend all the time on the first quarter of the book, with a few jotted notes during the other ¾ of the work. So it is difficult to find people who will be honest, who read a lot, and are willing to help you shape hundreds of pages into something better.
Could I do this all on my own? Maybe. But I am better for surrounding myself with people who will push and challenge me to do better. On my own, I might not try as hard. But writing for Brooke, I know that she won’t respect me if I don’t produce a certain quality of work. Actually, I am not sure if she respects me. I only hope that she will respect me for a certain level of work.
Finding that group of people to work with and getting into a process took the most amount of time. If you can A) Find your voice and write, B) Find a process that works for you, and C) Repeat the process going forward for success (how you define success)… Then you are way ahead of me. Those three steps took the better part of 2-3 years.
I can recommend some people and steps to help you get there faster if interested.
This is where the idiom comes from in writing; writing is rewriting.
I have a very talented person in Atlanta Georgia who has been my editor for the last three books. Her name is Brooke Payne. Brooke is very patient. Brooke is very detail oriented. Brooke breaks it to me gently when things go horribly wrong. She says things like, “have you ever considered trying it this way?” “What if it ends like this?” “How is your day job?” Brooke is very professional and I appreciate more and more the day I met her.
There are other people who have volunteer in the past to read early versions of my work. The process usually breaks down like this; draft two is full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. No one gets to see draft one but me. In draft two, the beta reader tells me things they like and they don’t like. These are line items or general comments. I go back and fix. Drafts two through four are often structural or character development. Draft number five is often detailed in corrections and steps to make everything amazing (from Brooke).
She may see drafts 2, 4, 5. While others see drafts 3 and 5.
The most number of people who’ve read any one of my particular books was The Symmetry of Snowflakes, where I had five readers, two of whom were paid ‘Book Doctors’.
A book doctor is just what it sounds like. A paid professional to read your work and provide a diagnosis or treatment. I find this is money well spent. I don’t mind paying people to be honest and detailed about what I’ve written. I don’t like it if I pay someone for that work and they spend all the time on the first quarter of the book, with a few jotted notes during the other ¾ of the work. So it is difficult to find people who will be honest, who read a lot, and are willing to help you shape hundreds of pages into something better.
Could I do this all on my own? Maybe. But I am better for surrounding myself with people who will push and challenge me to do better. On my own, I might not try as hard. But writing for Brooke, I know that she won’t respect me if I don’t produce a certain quality of work. Actually, I am not sure if she respects me. I only hope that she will respect me for a certain level of work.
Finding that group of people to work with and getting into a process took the most amount of time. If you can A) Find your voice and write, B) Find a process that works for you, and C) Repeat the process going forward for success (how you define success)… Then you are way ahead of me. Those three steps took the better part of 2-3 years.
I can recommend some people and steps to help you get there faster if interested.
Paul Michael Peters
Every Saturday and Sunday morning I wake up bright and early and go to the world’s greatest coffee shop. Please keep in mind that in my day job I travel the world extensively and have tasted thousands of different types of coffee, and when I say this is truly the best coffee in the world, I mean it.
So, I snuggled into my little table with my cup of hot coffee and a bottle of soda water and I will sit there for 6 to 8 hours every Saturday and Sunday. People frequently ask where do I find time to write? You don’t find time. You make it. If writing wasn’t so important to me I would be married, have children, exercise, and all those other fun things people do. I don’t do those. I write. I drink coffee. When my hands get sore, when I start losing my train of thought, I stop and start taking notes for the next day. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing, I’m thinking about plot and character and motivation. Many call it day dreaming. I wish I were interested in sports. Life would be easier if I were interested in sports. There would be so many more to people to talk about sports with.
I live with two cats. My cats love that I write. They love to distract me when I am at home by sitting on my hands on my keyboard. When a new box of books come in they know that the books are subsequent to the box they get to sit in. The paper wrapping that comes with the box is perfect for bedding and they steal it from the box, drag it away, and make a little nest of it. When I mail out copies of my book to avid fans they love the printer labels, they love the postal envelopes that I use. They play with all of it.
Coffee. Books. Cats. Outside of my day job, that’s it.
So, I snuggled into my little table with my cup of hot coffee and a bottle of soda water and I will sit there for 6 to 8 hours every Saturday and Sunday. People frequently ask where do I find time to write? You don’t find time. You make it. If writing wasn’t so important to me I would be married, have children, exercise, and all those other fun things people do. I don’t do those. I write. I drink coffee. When my hands get sore, when I start losing my train of thought, I stop and start taking notes for the next day. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing, I’m thinking about plot and character and motivation. Many call it day dreaming. I wish I were interested in sports. Life would be easier if I were interested in sports. There would be so many more to people to talk about sports with.
I live with two cats. My cats love that I write. They love to distract me when I am at home by sitting on my hands on my keyboard. When a new box of books come in they know that the books are subsequent to the box they get to sit in. The paper wrapping that comes with the box is perfect for bedding and they steal it from the box, drag it away, and make a little nest of it. When I mail out copies of my book to avid fans they love the printer labels, they love the postal envelopes that I use. They play with all of it.
Coffee. Books. Cats. Outside of my day job, that’s it.
Paul Michael Peters
Art. I like to look at art.
Listening to conversations. I like to listen and hear stories others tell and reassemble them into stories.
Old time radio is hit and miss, but the good writing is really good. I find that there are stories in old time radio that inspire me as well.
Listening to conversations. I like to listen and hear stories others tell and reassemble them into stories.
Old time radio is hit and miss, but the good writing is really good. I find that there are stories in old time radio that inspire me as well.
Paul Michael Peters
I am rather fond of Earth. To my great fortune, I have had the chance to see a good deal of Earth and am pretty impressed with her. So when I read fiction or scifi that includes the attack or destruction of Earth, I tend to cheer for the Earthers.
That said - one of my favorite scifi books is the Hitchhikers Guide series, where we discover early on the destruction of our home and that we are all just programs in the greater super computer designed by mice... But I wouldn't want to live in that fictional world either.
Ring World has too many moving sidewalks for me, and the Bobiverse is rather sad... I'll stay where I am and create other worlds.
That said - one of my favorite scifi books is the Hitchhikers Guide series, where we discover early on the destruction of our home and that we are all just programs in the greater super computer designed by mice... But I wouldn't want to live in that fictional world either.
Ring World has too many moving sidewalks for me, and the Bobiverse is rather sad... I'll stay where I am and create other worlds.
Paul Michael Peters
“Insensible Loss” came to me in an instant. The outline of the plot, how to tell the story, and where it would take the reader. In a 24 hour period of time I had listened to the podcast of A Way With Words http://www.waywordradio.org/insensibl... when one of the hosts Martha Barnette describes a wilderness training course. I read a writing prompt offered as part of a writer’s suggestion on Reddit that posed the idea for a quest about the fountain of youth. Finally, I watched a documentary about the future. They described that hospitals in the future would look more like airports do today than what we have considered a traditional hospital.
I can’t tell you which order these things happened. I can tell you that when Martha Barnette described the “the things that seep out of your life that you once depended on” was a thought that stuck in my head.
Unlike the first two stories I published, “Peter in Flight” and “The Symmetry of Snowflakes”, which were more personal and drawn on ideas that had bubbled in me for decades, “Insensible Loss” just came to me in a flash. It was very similar to several of the stories in “Mr. Memory”, quick and fast. Unlike the short stories, “Insensible Loss” had a clear arc of story line, the characters that needed to be in it to advance the plot, and a good sense of the complexity the story would need to be told.
Because of this instant sense of the story, I dropped the current work I was half way through, “American Appetite” and quickly cranked out a first draft for “Insensible Loss”. This was reviewed by my first round editor Steven Bauer http://www.hollowtreeliterary.com/ who had great feedback on the shape and direction. After a third Draft I sent this to JERA Publishing and worked with the lovely and talented Brooke Payne http://www.self-pub.net/ for three rounds of reviews and crafting.
I am very pleased with the story. If you consider the work from “Peter in Flight” to “Insensible Loss”, and all the story writing that has gone unpublished, I can see the progress in how I am growing. This is very satisfying for me as an author. Yes, I hope people will read this work, and enjoy it. Still, I remain selfish in the the satisfaction of completing a work, I can only share the end results to the reader, not the daily efforts endured.
I can’t tell you which order these things happened. I can tell you that when Martha Barnette described the “the things that seep out of your life that you once depended on” was a thought that stuck in my head.
Unlike the first two stories I published, “Peter in Flight” and “The Symmetry of Snowflakes”, which were more personal and drawn on ideas that had bubbled in me for decades, “Insensible Loss” just came to me in a flash. It was very similar to several of the stories in “Mr. Memory”, quick and fast. Unlike the short stories, “Insensible Loss” had a clear arc of story line, the characters that needed to be in it to advance the plot, and a good sense of the complexity the story would need to be told.
Because of this instant sense of the story, I dropped the current work I was half way through, “American Appetite” and quickly cranked out a first draft for “Insensible Loss”. This was reviewed by my first round editor Steven Bauer http://www.hollowtreeliterary.com/ who had great feedback on the shape and direction. After a third Draft I sent this to JERA Publishing and worked with the lovely and talented Brooke Payne http://www.self-pub.net/ for three rounds of reviews and crafting.
I am very pleased with the story. If you consider the work from “Peter in Flight” to “Insensible Loss”, and all the story writing that has gone unpublished, I can see the progress in how I am growing. This is very satisfying for me as an author. Yes, I hope people will read this work, and enjoy it. Still, I remain selfish in the the satisfaction of completing a work, I can only share the end results to the reader, not the daily efforts endured.
Paul Michael Peters
Writers block is different for everyone. For me, it's not a lack of ideas, or an inability to write. Instead its a challenge that needs time to figure out the resolution to. I won't stop writing. I will continue to write short stories, outlines, or go read for a while. Allowing yourself the time to work through the challenge helps much more than building anxiety. John August, screenwriter, has a great podcast on the topic.
Paul Michael Peters
For all the hours of research I've gone through about writing, I can summarize the advice to boil down to this: find your voice, find a process that fits your level of productivity, and write because you love it.
Paul Michael Peters
Readers should be seeing a new full-length novel in early 2016 called “Insensible Loss”. It's about love, adventure, and immortality.
Right now I am in a first draft of something I am calling "The Joy of Lying" that follows a relationship after a breakup when one find the other living on the streets of Austin.
Right now I am in a first draft of something I am calling "The Joy of Lying" that follows a relationship after a breakup when one find the other living on the streets of Austin.
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