How has growing up in Dublin been? What’s your favorite place in the city?
Dublin has been great, although f I’m honest, I’ve never really considered it. But I can certainly see what I’d have missed if I had grown up anywhere else. There’s an interesting mix of everything, we have the sea-side and the mountains, a big city that goes between disgustingly busy and beautifully quiet. I’ve thought about moving away more than once, but nowhere else really had enough to draw me away. As for favourite places, it sort of plays into your next question: Trinity College, where I went to college, a huge campus in the very centre of the city, full of gorgeous buildings and trees and memory.
What did you study in college? Why did you choose this course?
I studied English in Trinity, a fairly fitting qualification for a guy who wants to write books, right?
Around how many books do you own? Which is your all-time favorite?
I genuinely have no idea, but “too many” is a close answer. One of my goals in life is to have my own library room (my mother in law has one already and I’m definitely jealous.) But I just don’t have the room either, so can think of two different occasions where I’ve gone through all my books and had to donate them to somewhere else.
And all of that is from a world before the Kindle.
What was your favorite subject in school? What about it did you enjoy the most?
A weird mix. English (for the obvious reasons, I hope) and Maths; there’s something weirdly amazing about the processes of a maths problems (I know some other countries call it math and that confuses me!)
How much do you enjoy your job in advertising? Does it contribute to your writing in any way?
I actually moved from advertising and joined the civil service in January 2018, but advertising still shows on some of my older promotional profiles ets.
Who all are a part of your family? How supportive are they of your writing?
Most of my family are really supportive, especially my mother and my husband. They don’t’ always read my work, but they’ll say the right things.
Which is your dream travel destination? Why?
I’m quite lucky in the sense that I had the options and opportunities to travel. In terms of places I’ve yet to visit, still want to see Las Vegas, Egypt and, probably the biggest of the lot, Japan.
What inspired the story of ‘Godhead’ so many years ago?
I’ve actually had the superheroic ideas in my head since I was a teenager, and have also always been fascinated by the drama and the dramatics of the Greek pantheon. It was only a random thought one day of bringing all these worlds together that made me consider bringing the two together, and Godhead was borh.
Do you plan to write more books in continuation with ‘Godhead’? How many?
Well the sequel, The Hades Contract, is available now and I’m currently working on the third book, Kaos Theory. How it goes from there remains to be seen.
You write stories about things you are passionate about and hence explore various genres of writing from action and adventure to fantasy and horror, and general nonfiction. A lot of writers refer to stick to only one genre of writing. Which of the two do you think is better? Why?
That’s far too tough a question to answer and would probably require a couple thousand pages. I think that all the stories are connected though because they’re about people, people reacting to different situations and how they deal with them, whether they are scary or more romantic or comedia.
‘Trust Issues’ is your latest release and is a collection of stories. What do you find more challenging to write- a full novel or short stories? Why?
A lengthy novel is far more challenging with more opportunities to go wrong. The book market is also turning weird as people are genuinely looking for different types of storytelling, so there are definite challenges to keep your work interesting: it’s not just one story any more, there are much bigger stories to tell as well.
The covers of your books are rather interesting. Who works on them? How important do you think they are?
Covers are really important, and having worked in the advertising industry, I know that those visual images are really important and attracting a new audience. The covers of Godhead, The Hades Contract and The Little Book Of The End Of The World were all developed by designers, with my own input and changes; everything else is work I’ve done myself.
With the arrival of the internet and e-books, choices offered to readers in terms of the books they can read has increased manifold. In this context, how important is it to market your book well for it to reach the right audience?
It’s really important, but it’s also really tricky: books are a weird market because people enjoy and are interested in different things, and they respond very differently to different works depending on their interests. As marketing in the world changes, it’s becoming a lot easier to market things, but people are also used to seeing these things. There are a lot more books out in the world, a lot more people marketing those books, a lot more people buying and reading those books and yet there are also a lot more distractions, and still only 24 hours in a day. Your work has to be important and interesting to new readers, and other authors are trying out the exact same thing.
Which is the next book that will release and when? What is it about?
I’m working on Kaos Theory at the moment, the third book in The Last Olympiad. I’m hoping to have it out by the end of 2018, but there are a lot of distractions in the way.
