Michael Gardner, whom I interviewed for my December newsletter, is an indie author from New Zealand. I’d like to introduce him to you by reprinting the bio he’s posted on Goodreads.

1.Why do I write? I write because I have an obsession with writing which borders on a mental disorder. I’ve often wondered if I can get medicated for this condition, but it’s much cheaper and easier to spend time at a keyboard. 2. How long have I been at it? I’d love to tell you I had some magical writing awakening, but the truth is I’ve been writing since I could combine a noun and a verb to form a sentence. Not sure when that was or what I used. Probably the red crayon on the kitchen wall incident. It was a good story, but not well-received. 3. What is my inspiration? I’m inspired to write so I don’t have to find another pastime. I’ve tried stamp collecting, golf and other forms of self-harm, and writing seems to be the least destructive to my mental well-being and the environment. I also have an allergy to churning out books in a specific genre, which makes me a difficult author to follow. Sorry about that. 4. Do I have a pet, is it cute and what’s its name? I do have a pet. My wife thinks it’s cute. It’s actually the embodiment of evil with a soft coat. Amongst other names, I call it the Anti-Bob. If you’d like to know why, read The End and Other Stories. Will: As a fan, I was delighted when you gathered eight of your separately published stories into one volume, Outside Inside. Do you have some “back story” about that process and those stories in particular that you can share with us? What do you believe are the elements of a good short story? Michael: They all come from completely different places, which sounds contradictory considering they all came out of me. For example, Henry & Isa started as a dream. Goddammit, Larry! was inspired by a glitch in a video game I love to play. And Alexander Rollins Must Die came to me fully formed as I was going to the supermarket. Don’t ask me what grocery shopping has to do with a black comedy metafiction story. I guess the point is that inspiration strikes us in unusual and unexpected ways. We have to tune in to those moments and embrace them. Or find a really good therapist. Short stories are an interesting beast. For years, I had the ridiculous notion that a short story was what people wrote if they weren’t good enough to craft a novel. It’s absolute nonsense. In many ways short stories are easier than novels, but in many ways they’re much harder. With a novel, you have time to explore the story in depth, chase various ghosts, sidetrack down mysterious pathways. With a short story, you have to leap into the deep end of the pool and hope you can swim, or that the pool isn’t filled with hydrochloric acid. It demands finding the protagonist’s voice, conflict and goals as quickly as possible, then chasing them relentlessly to a conclusion in the most compressed form of storytelling you can muster. Will: Your novel Rescue One is a page-turning thrill ride. Please tell us about how you created that. Michael: I always wanted to be a writer. But for many years, I had a bee in my bonnet about it. Writers felt like mystical, elusive creatures, and I couldn’t quite see myself in that role. The early moral of the story is: follow your dreams, don’t listen to that voice. Anyway, cutting a long story short, I spent five of my best working years (before becoming a self-employed writer) at my local rescue helicopter service. I flew a desk, not the chopper. But the rescue crew were an inspiring group of men and women who have left a mark on me for life. One year, I was asked to run the strategy meeting. I never take a conventional approach to anything, so as a warm-up, I made everyone play a party game called ‘And the consequence was…’ You give each person a sheet of paper and a pen. Each person writes a line from a predetermined set of story ideas. You fold the paper over so each line is hidden and pass it to the next person in the circle. I changed the story ideas to imagining what the rescue helicopter service would be like one hundred years into the future. At the end of the session, you unravel the paper and read the story. Everyone was weeping with laughter. And so I decided to ignore that voice and start writing a book, which became Rescue One. Will: Your droll sense of humor is practically a trademark of your writing. Does that humor come easily for you? Does it have roots in your family? Michael: My family are a very sensible bunch of people. I’m the one with the droll sense of humour. I like to laugh and give other people a good laugh too. From a writing perspective, you can create very powerful moments if you write funny scenes and deliver them deadpan. It’s simple juxtaposition really, layering contrasting ideas into scenes to give the story different nuances. Will: You are a master at developing quirky characters to inhabit your stories. Are there some “tricks of the trade” you might share with us about how you do that? Michael: I’m a big fan of the antihero. All my protagonists are antiheroes, even the high-achieving ones. For me, flawed characters are more human, relatable and interesting to write. I think it’s important to love all your characters, including the villains. If you enjoy writing them, that enthusiasm comes through on the page for the reader. Will: Do you have any advice for other indie authors, things you’ve learned along your own creative journey? Michael: Write because you want to tell other people your story. Do it for no other reason than that. If you write with pure determination to produce a good book, with no expectation of getting anything in return, you’ll do your best work. And, as above, don’t listen to the voice. Will: Thank you, Michael. My readers and I appreciate your taking the time to speak with us. Catch up with Michael and all his books by clicking on his picture above.

Connie worked for many years as a radio reporter and news anchor, with a couple of brief forays into TV news along the way. Her experience as a journalist shows up in some of her novels. She also dabbled in acting in college and community theater. She uses those experiences in some of her books as well.

Her novels are fast-paced stories featuring young women facing serious challenges set against the backdrop of some thorny issues. She writes time travel, magical realism, historical fiction and climate fiction – all with a dollop of romance.​

Bill: Connie, how and why did you become a writer, and can you tell us about your creative process?

Connie: When I was in 5^th grade, I read The Little House series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I decided I should be a writer too. I started with my biography. After filling a page and a half, I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Ha!  I transitioned into writing angsty, teenaged poetry, then switched to short stories at 15, tried writing children’s books, YA novels, and eventually settled on writing adult novels. My creative process involves channeling my concerns about a variety of issues, including social injustice, personal failures and climate change. To shine a light on a topic, I use it as a backdrop for my story. Racial injustice is featured in several of my books—A Daffodil for Angie (Young Adult) The Time Capsule,and The Going Back Portal. Then I work on building a main character to inhabit that world. I get to know her first, then outline a story arc for her. That changes sometimes as she interacts with other characters. But I always know how the story will end before I begin writing. My first draft always stinks. It’s messy, inconsistent and redundant. I go through many, many re-writes. The revision process always generates better ideas for scenes, and in my forthcoming novel, created a different ending. That’s the first time that’s happened.

Bill: Time travel figures in several of your novels, but not in a science fiction kind of way. Talk about that.

Connie: I’ve always liked time travel stories. Ideas pop into my mind. The Time Telephone grew out of this exact thought: what if you could call someone in the past on a time telephone? The novel also grew out of a situation within my extended family where a parent abandoned their child. So I combined the two—writing about a teenage girl grieving her mother’s death, lamenting the fact that even when her mother was alive, they never had a real mother-daughter relationship. There’s that element of fantasy, but it also deals with the very real-world issue of child abandonment. In The Going Back Portal, a young woman’s grandmother appears to be descending into Alzheimer’s disease, talking about a Cherokee Indian woman living in the woods behind her country cottage. But it turns out there’s actually a time gate that leads the protagonist to 1840 where a Cherokee woman is struggling to survive the brute who’s taken control of her land and her life. The novel delves into the wrongs perpetrated against Native Americans. That’s what appeals to me – not the sci-fi type of time travel story.

Bill: Would you describe several other of your books?

Connie: My concern about climate change prompted me to write a trilogy set a hundred years in the future against a backdrop of runaway global warming. I wanted the story to be romantic and exciting. So I mixed all of that together to produce The Shade Ring Trilogy—The Shade Ring, Albedo Effect, and Aerosol Sky. My novel, VisionSight,        is about a young woman who can see the future, including the unexpected challenges that “gift” brings. The novel I’m publishing this fall is another time travel story. This one is set in the 1850s and features a suffragette living with an abolitionist family in the Philadelphia area.

Bill: You just finished producing your own audiobook version of The Time Capsule. What was that like for you?

Connie: In a word: EXHAUSTING! I worked in radio news for many years. With all my experience in front of the mic and my experience editing, I foolishly thought “How hard can it be?” I was humbled by how hard it can be. Delivering the news is nothing like narrating a novel. There are character voices to do. Even if you don’t want to get too carried away, you still have to differentiate between characters. Of course, the sheer length of the novel is a big factor. The audiobook version of The Time Capsule is 9 hours and 21 minutes! Agh! Then there’s mouth noise to deal with. Multiple takes of every paragraph to hopefully get a usable take, often editing a sentence from one take into another paragraph take. The editing was a fulltime job. And don’t forget the technical issues, including hiss and extraneous noises (airplanes flying overhead,

barking dogs, etc.) I had to get up at 4:00 a.m., go down to the basement to my makeshift recording booth so I could record for a couple of hours before all the noise started. Will I ever do another audiobook? I’m still pondering that question.

Bill: What advice would you give to other indie authors?

Connie: There are lots of blog posts and newsletters out there with specific advice on publishing, plotting, character development, pacing, etc. I don’t want to get into all of that. I think a good piece of advice is to read a lot. Read the kinds of books you want to write. Notice what the good authors do—how they transition, how they handle dialog, how they develop character. Think about those things when you notice them and imagine how you might adapt those techniques in your own writing. It can also be educational to read poorly written books, although not as enjoyable. In that case, you might notice things you, yourself, never want to do—like using a character’s name

over and over and over and over when he/she, him/her would be better.

Thanks for having me, Bill. BTW—here’s my website.

A note to my readers: My interview with Connie first appeared in my October Newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed yet, here’s the link. I promise it’s spam-free, and I will not clutter your inbox!