My Interview

1. When did you first start writing?

I started writing around the year 2004, that is when I started taking it seriously but I have always been a writer and a storyteller from a young age. I still remember the first thing I wrote, I was like eight years old.

2. What made you start writing?

I have always been a creative kid, inventing games, creating worlds in my mind and telling stories. I was very confident. At the age of four or so I developed a horrible stutter. I could not go past a syllable.I lost all my confidence and the ability to express myself the way I wanted verbally. People always finished sentences for me, grew impatient or did not listen to me at all. I felt so alone. I started speaking in phrases and words and instead of complete sentences. I was robbed of the freedom to express myself properly. Then I was taught how to write and I discovered with writing I could say what I want and how I wanted. I discovered magic, and it saved me. From then on I knew my ideas and stories don’t have to die in my silence.

3. What’s the story behind your latest book?

Before the Cult is inspired by some dark times in my life. It reeks of my struggle with chronic depression, anxiety and inattentive ADHD. During the four years it was written I went in and out of hospital. I was also physically sick. A couple of suicide attempts and then spent an entire three months at a psychiatric hospital. And I was also in therapy for three years in that time. I also had a near death experience. So death and suicide where concepts that occupied my mind. Writing the book was both difficult and cathartic. It is a book I had to write, I couldn’t have not written it even if I wanted to.

4. What are you working on next?

I am working on the Second book of the Scarleton series which remains untitled for now. It is an interesting look at Scarleton the town, and on the character Sandy as well. It feels bigger and bolder than Before the Cult. It is the story of Rolemn Charles a student who faces a gloomy future : a dead end job at some cubicle in some office and owing over half-million in student loans. After he returns from the “country side” Corklin, another student, befriends him and he begins to believe he has a chance to fix it all. But at what cost?

5. How do you discover the ebooks you read?

I look for most recent and highly rated.

6. What are your five favorite books, and why?

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult, it is the first book to make me cry that hard.
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, the best fantasy series I have read with a non-conventional ending. I like that.
Inkheart – Cornelia Funke, it is the first novel I read, I always read books but not novels. It opened up a deep hunger in me to read more novels.
The Writer’s Craft, it changed my life and improved my writing.
Parzival and the Stone from Heaven by Lindsay Clarke, because I love knights and it was the first one I read about knights.