Alright ladies and gentlemen, I’m in charge of the post this week, so two things:
It’s late.
And I get to ask our guest a question here before the show even begins! I always want to ask our guests this, and John was kind enough to answer it for me before we get started.
**I’d like to note, John Monk is the nicest.
I’ll link to his extremely well-selling books in a moment (With “Kick”, for instance…it’s not often you see someone with 251 Amazon reviews and ZERO of them are 1-stars. Is that even possible?!). I first wanted to ask him why he started writing, and this is what he shared:
There were phases to me becoming “John L. Monk the self-published author”, each with its own set of challenges.
1) Childhood/teenager: I used to read a lot of books, always fantasy and sic-fi, and I remember being so incredibly amazed at how good they were. I remember looking around at people who weren’t reading and thinking “What’s wrong with these people? They’re totally missing out.” Like all writers, it was a natural step for me to try imitating the books I was reading. In my case, I plagiarized Terry Brooks and David Eddings and Ursula Le Guin. I stole all their character names and the best action scenes and rewrote the scenes, then turned them in for my English classes. And I don’t regret it a bit.
2) 20’s and 30’s: I tried writing novels and never finished them. My writing was horrid, but I like to think there was still “something” there that I’d eventually draw on — some kernel of quality. One of the books I started was about a virtual world where people’s bodies were warehoused together. The company that did this wired all their brains together and created a virtual world where they could have magical powers and do amazing things. Then the Wachowski Brothers created The Matrix and I gave up in disgust. For me, it was always easy to get started, but never easy to finish. These days, I can do both, but like all of us indies, it’s come down to a matter of speed and even money. Covers and editing cost a lot, and quality can’t be compromised.
One of our favorite listeners, Patrick Stemp, has been suggesting we have John on for ages, so I’m really excited to talk to him tonight! See you soon : )
Michelle
