G.R. Thomas Interview Published on: 01, Feb 2021

Growing up in Melbourne Australia , my favourite childhood memory is riding my pony. I received a pony called Green Meadows King when I was 7. He was a pinto breed who was white in winter and developed golden patches in summer. He was beautiful. My weekends were spent learning to ride and once I was capable, I was pretty much let free to ride wild on a 30 acre property I loved it.

Entertaiment in the 1970’s was very self directed and more about how much imagination you had. I loved to play Netball and read endlessly. I adored Enid Blyton as a young reader. There was limited TV and of course no internet so my imagination was all I had to entertain myself. I think, in hindsight, it was a better way of being. There were no such thing as the stress of cyber-bullying and social media, and you could get away from people and issues by simply being at home. Much harder for people today to disengage and just relax.

I currently work as a recovery room nurse, waking people from anaesthesia, but formerly worked as a Critical Care Nurse for many years. This was, and is a job that requires continual professional development and ironically modern technology has made keeping up to date very easy. There is a wealth of medical resources on the web that are of great assistance. The most important thing we focus on continually, is advanced life support. This is a yearly certificate that is a requirement for higher level nursing.

I discovered the authors Ken Follet and Philippa Gregory who write brilliant historical fiction. These books are so wonderfully rich. I adore history and often think of how it could be different with a little twist of fantasy That’s what I included in The A’vean Chronicles.

I stopped nursing for 3 years, thinking I would never return after 17 years of working in Intensive Care. I was thoroughly burnt out being a critical care nurse. You see a lot of people die and a lot of distressing things, and I’d just had enough. After I wrote my second book , I felt an unexpected desire to return to nursing. I found myself in a different , much less stressful, but still challenging role, as a recovery room nurse. I really enjoy it because everyone is always happy to wake up after an operation . I ease their fears, fix their pain. Its very rewarding.

The first story I wrote down was a dark fairy tale about a spirit that lived in a tree. I didn’t finish it though because the story of Awaken was stronger in my thoughts. That old dark tale has now resurfaced and I’ve used the bones of it to complete a Novella.

Fantasy inspires me because its possibilities are endless. It frightens for the same reason....anything could appear, anything you can possibly imagine can happen.

I began writing The A’vean Chronicles one day after having a wonderful conversation with another Indie author. She inspired me immensely. I quite literally sat down and wrote a paragraph with a vague idea of what was going to happen. That paragraph turned into a chapter, and then the characters took over. What I always knew was how it would end, and it did finish exactly how I had planned.

I think the most interesting thing about Sophia Woodville’s life is that it is plain and ordinary to start with, despite the fact that she is descended from some incredible historical figures and she is destined to become an icon herself.

Redemption was titled because that is the essence of the culmination of the story. Whose Redemption it is, that’s up to the reader to discover at the end.

The hardest part of being an Indie author is marketing and converting interest in my books into sales and reviews. Readers can be cautious of indies because there are so many of varying quality. Marketing and producing a good quality book is really expensive. Recouping costs is very difficult.

Iam actually very good at baking a brilliant cake with no recipe. I just make them up and they turn out beautifully.

The Netflix show, The Gift is so brilliant. I adore Atiye. I love that Atiye doesn’t give up on trying to unravel the mystery of who she is. I really loved this show because the historical site, Gobekli Tepi that is the centre piece of this show, features in The A’vean Chronicles.

I have 3 books currently in work. Two are gothic horror and one is a dystopian story. I’ve completed one book and all I can say is that it’s based on the power of fear and the protagonist doesn’t speak a single word for the entire book. I have also subbed a speculative fiction short story for an anthology based on the star sign Sagittarius.

I joined allauthor 6 months ago as a pro member. I’ve really enjoyed the mock ups, automatic tweets and GIFs for marketing. I’m not very computer literate and it makes it easy for me to create professional images to use in marketing my books. I really enjoy allauthor. Its very easy to use.