In a conversation with indie author Richard DeVall
Hey book lovers, today we have on board,the author of Old Letters and New Demons & Pablo's Apprentice. I read his recent poem Hepatitis C and I loved it. So without further ado, let's get started!
1. One fictional character that resembles me in a novel would be Switters in Tom Robbins – Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates2. What is your writing motivation? I’d say it’s a need to create and in that category to also teach the reader something. In Old Letters and New Demons it was the history of religion. Which is to say, that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, had a crises of self-loathing if they didn’t do what they believed, Ra or Zeus wanted them to do. Also it was to bring the 1920’s and 30’s to life and show what the artist of the day were really like, not all the stuff they teach you in school. With Pablo’s Apprentice it was to educate people about guns, not pro or con, just what a bullet cost and what it can do. As well as teach people the mental place a women goes to after rape and any kind of violence. This is through the relationship of a victim and her psychiatrist. I like to bring research to the table. .3. An all time favorite book. That would be Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre. It was the first time I read a book that the words attracted me more so than than the story. It was awakening of sorts.4. Few quickies.Money or fame? I’ll take the money.Commercial fiction or literary fiction? Literary.Blogging or vlogging? Blogging – I’m not photogenicInterviews or book reviews? Book Reviews –Audiobooks or ebooks? If I’m not driving ebooksPaperbacks or hardbacks? Hardbacks, but it’s been a long time since I read one.5. How long did it take to write the first draft? The first book about 12 months, lots of research.Did I pace it up or down? I paced it up. My third book will be out in early 2019 and it will have taken me about 6 months. The middle book, Pablo’s Apprentice was about 8 months.6. How was your experience? Was it different from your expectations? It was different on a lot of fronts. It was an entire learning curve, formatting a book for e publish which is different than paperback and all the marketing that is needed. I spent $21 in advertising on my first book and called it quits. I just got burned out. And this latest book I have a self-made marketing plan beginning on November 17th for Pablo’s Apprentice and I’ll see what happens. My expectations were that it would be easier to get reviews and readers.7. What is the most exciting thing about being and Indie writer? I’m excited to see what marketing will do for my sales. Facebook tells you how many likes you’ve received but that hasn’t turned into any kind of big sales. Amazon tells me how many clicks I’ve received and that hasn’t turned into any big sales. So I’ve now gone into the world of book clubs and giving the book away for reviews. Seeing if a particular avenue works over another and trying to develop a sales scheme is exciting to me. I mean, I’m someone who would like to have some financial success in writing. I’ve also found reviews to be exciting. It’s like writing a poem about your dog and people saying I loved your book about food and how it relates to inner peace. I mean people get all these stories out of my books that aren’t what I wrote about. It’s weird and as long as I get something close to 5 stars it’s I’m very cool with it but find it strange. 8. What do you think is the biggest challenge? That would be driving readers to the book. I have a video coming out soon, because that’s the latest thing to do. I ordered it when I was on a finished the book high and if it were today I would have saved the money. I don’t think a video will send a herd or book hounds to my Amazon page.9. What’s your biggest book marketing tool? That would be ordering reviews. It cost money to have large numbers of people read your book for free and write reviews. I ordered a large number in October, but they’re so backed up that they won’t pop until June. There are all these algorithms that Amazon says are important but the top one is reviews and the second is clicks onto your book. They can count how many pages are turned on a person’s kindle. They show you the charts. So I’m addressing the reviews. I believe likes for likes and all that are not going to sell your book.10. Could you kindly introduce use to your books? I have two books for sale at this time. One is Old Letters and New Demons. The genre is historic and paranormal with a splash of horror. It’s based on two real events and real people. In 1929 Harry Crosby was found dead with his girlfriend. They were both fully clothed and had their shoes off and their toe nails painted red. He and his wife had traveled to Egypt and there he picked up a strange belief system where to live you need to die. The other true story is of a family in Spotsylvania Virginia that had the 15 year old son shoot the parents and one of the children. Years later two of the grown children were charged with disinterment of a dead body when they dug up their father’s grave and removed his teeth. When they were arrested they had bread wrappers on their hands and feet to keep the demons away. The two stories were within ten miles of each other. So I tied them together with a talisman and had a guy move into a house where he found the talisman and it changed his life and not really for the better.The second book is Pablo’s Apprentice. It’s about a young girl that goes to prison and studies past crimes. She comes out a criminal mastermind and starts a crime spree. In doing so she encounters another woman that gets her lover killed. In Pablo Escobar style she tries to punish this woman. What begins as a crime in California ends in Bhutan on the Crocodile River on the border with India. The book looks in depth at the mental illness that comes from violence. It’s a look at revenge and it has travel, which I like and some romance. I’ve been told the characters; both the protagonist and antagonist are likeable. I did that on purpose as well as make it have a happy ending because women overcoming obstacles and having a happy ending are stressed by agents and publishers as the things that are hot right now. There was a time when it was vampires; we writers have to keep up.11. A lesson that the process of publishing your book babies taught you? I learned that editing and rewriting is an absolute. The biggest thing I learned is that if you want to make money as a self-publisher, don’t do what I did. I wrote what I like. By that I mean I’m an avid reader and so I like long books so I don’t have to buy or download another book for a while. Well if you self-publish a long book cost more to print and your profit is less. My first two books are approximately 450 pages long. My third is going to be under 250. It takes less time and the profit is greater.12. My advice to aspiring authors? I would say be patient when the book is done. Go over it and over it. Read it at least 4 times - If there are parts that drag, speed it up. The best way to do that is short sentences. Also create tension and that takes thought. You may need to go for a walk or read someone else’s book with yours in mind to help with that. Try and find an agent. They have like 7 seconds to review your query letter. Put in stuff that could beat a program that it might pass through. Things like published – awards – magazine – even if it’s only to say in a sentence you don’t have any of those things. It will help to get the letter to their desk. They’ll tell you they don’t do that, but they do. And if you self- publish it means your book is miles from being on the front page of any category Amazon or Kobo or Smashwords or whatever have. To move it up the ladder you need reviews. They take time to get. You may want to find a marketing agent or publicist. They want your book before you finish it to start pumping it up. That cost money. Richard DeVall is the author of Old Letters and New Demons & Pablo's ApprenticeAn excerpt from Old Letters and New Demons is in the December 2017 issue of RambleFish Magazine.He has a poem coming out in the December issue of Scarlet Leaf Review entitled Hepatitis CIn 2019 he has a Sci-fi book coming out entitled The Sacking of Triolux North -Old Letters and New Demonshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07... Apprentice linkshttp://www.amazon.com/B07JJ14GR7 E pubhttp://www.amazon.com/1728927234 Paperback
1. One fictional character that resembles me in a novel would be Switters in Tom Robbins – Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates2. What is your writing motivation? I’d say it’s a need to create and in that category to also teach the reader something. In Old Letters and New Demons it was the history of religion. Which is to say, that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, had a crises of self-loathing if they didn’t do what they believed, Ra or Zeus wanted them to do. Also it was to bring the 1920’s and 30’s to life and show what the artist of the day were really like, not all the stuff they teach you in school. With Pablo’s Apprentice it was to educate people about guns, not pro or con, just what a bullet cost and what it can do. As well as teach people the mental place a women goes to after rape and any kind of violence. This is through the relationship of a victim and her psychiatrist. I like to bring research to the table. .3. An all time favorite book. That would be Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre. It was the first time I read a book that the words attracted me more so than than the story. It was awakening of sorts.4. Few quickies.Money or fame? I’ll take the money.Commercial fiction or literary fiction? Literary.Blogging or vlogging? Blogging – I’m not photogenicInterviews or book reviews? Book Reviews –Audiobooks or ebooks? If I’m not driving ebooksPaperbacks or hardbacks? Hardbacks, but it’s been a long time since I read one.5. How long did it take to write the first draft? The first book about 12 months, lots of research.Did I pace it up or down? I paced it up. My third book will be out in early 2019 and it will have taken me about 6 months. The middle book, Pablo’s Apprentice was about 8 months.6. How was your experience? Was it different from your expectations? It was different on a lot of fronts. It was an entire learning curve, formatting a book for e publish which is different than paperback and all the marketing that is needed. I spent $21 in advertising on my first book and called it quits. I just got burned out. And this latest book I have a self-made marketing plan beginning on November 17th for Pablo’s Apprentice and I’ll see what happens. My expectations were that it would be easier to get reviews and readers.7. What is the most exciting thing about being and Indie writer? I’m excited to see what marketing will do for my sales. Facebook tells you how many likes you’ve received but that hasn’t turned into any kind of big sales. Amazon tells me how many clicks I’ve received and that hasn’t turned into any big sales. So I’ve now gone into the world of book clubs and giving the book away for reviews. Seeing if a particular avenue works over another and trying to develop a sales scheme is exciting to me. I mean, I’m someone who would like to have some financial success in writing. I’ve also found reviews to be exciting. It’s like writing a poem about your dog and people saying I loved your book about food and how it relates to inner peace. I mean people get all these stories out of my books that aren’t what I wrote about. It’s weird and as long as I get something close to 5 stars it’s I’m very cool with it but find it strange. 8. What do you think is the biggest challenge? That would be driving readers to the book. I have a video coming out soon, because that’s the latest thing to do. I ordered it when I was on a finished the book high and if it were today I would have saved the money. I don’t think a video will send a herd or book hounds to my Amazon page.9. What’s your biggest book marketing tool? That would be ordering reviews. It cost money to have large numbers of people read your book for free and write reviews. I ordered a large number in October, but they’re so backed up that they won’t pop until June. There are all these algorithms that Amazon says are important but the top one is reviews and the second is clicks onto your book. They can count how many pages are turned on a person’s kindle. They show you the charts. So I’m addressing the reviews. I believe likes for likes and all that are not going to sell your book.10. Could you kindly introduce use to your books? I have two books for sale at this time. One is Old Letters and New Demons. The genre is historic and paranormal with a splash of horror. It’s based on two real events and real people. In 1929 Harry Crosby was found dead with his girlfriend. They were both fully clothed and had their shoes off and their toe nails painted red. He and his wife had traveled to Egypt and there he picked up a strange belief system where to live you need to die. The other true story is of a family in Spotsylvania Virginia that had the 15 year old son shoot the parents and one of the children. Years later two of the grown children were charged with disinterment of a dead body when they dug up their father’s grave and removed his teeth. When they were arrested they had bread wrappers on their hands and feet to keep the demons away. The two stories were within ten miles of each other. So I tied them together with a talisman and had a guy move into a house where he found the talisman and it changed his life and not really for the better.The second book is Pablo’s Apprentice. It’s about a young girl that goes to prison and studies past crimes. She comes out a criminal mastermind and starts a crime spree. In doing so she encounters another woman that gets her lover killed. In Pablo Escobar style she tries to punish this woman. What begins as a crime in California ends in Bhutan on the Crocodile River on the border with India. The book looks in depth at the mental illness that comes from violence. It’s a look at revenge and it has travel, which I like and some romance. I’ve been told the characters; both the protagonist and antagonist are likeable. I did that on purpose as well as make it have a happy ending because women overcoming obstacles and having a happy ending are stressed by agents and publishers as the things that are hot right now. There was a time when it was vampires; we writers have to keep up.11. A lesson that the process of publishing your book babies taught you? I learned that editing and rewriting is an absolute. The biggest thing I learned is that if you want to make money as a self-publisher, don’t do what I did. I wrote what I like. By that I mean I’m an avid reader and so I like long books so I don’t have to buy or download another book for a while. Well if you self-publish a long book cost more to print and your profit is less. My first two books are approximately 450 pages long. My third is going to be under 250. It takes less time and the profit is greater.12. My advice to aspiring authors? I would say be patient when the book is done. Go over it and over it. Read it at least 4 times - If there are parts that drag, speed it up. The best way to do that is short sentences. Also create tension and that takes thought. You may need to go for a walk or read someone else’s book with yours in mind to help with that. Try and find an agent. They have like 7 seconds to review your query letter. Put in stuff that could beat a program that it might pass through. Things like published – awards – magazine – even if it’s only to say in a sentence you don’t have any of those things. It will help to get the letter to their desk. They’ll tell you they don’t do that, but they do. And if you self- publish it means your book is miles from being on the front page of any category Amazon or Kobo or Smashwords or whatever have. To move it up the ladder you need reviews. They take time to get. You may want to find a marketing agent or publicist. They want your book before you finish it to start pumping it up. That cost money. Richard DeVall is the author of Old Letters and New Demons & Pablo's ApprenticeAn excerpt from Old Letters and New Demons is in the December 2017 issue of RambleFish Magazine.He has a poem coming out in the December issue of Scarlet Leaf Review entitled Hepatitis CIn 2019 he has a Sci-fi book coming out entitled The Sacking of Triolux North -Old Letters and New Demonshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07... Apprentice linkshttp://www.amazon.com/B07JJ14GR7 E pubhttp://www.amazon.com/1728927234 Paperback
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