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Do you have a question for Nick? Send it to nick@nickgifford.co.uk
and some of the answers will appear here.
Here are some of the questions so far...
Will there be a sequel to Piggies?
There certainly could be a sequel, but I'm
afraid it won't be soon. Publishers tend to only publish one
book a year from each of their authors. Piggies was
my book for 2003 and Flesh and Blood was my book for
2004 - despite the title, there are no vampires in it! My
publishers have a book from me for 2006, and I'm already working
on the next book after that, and neither of those are the
Piggies sequel either. One day!
Can you give your top three tips to becoming a successful
author?
1...Start writing. Lots of people who
claim they have a book in them never actually sit down and
write it.
2...Finish what you start. Most people don't realise
that writing can be hard work: if they do start to write,
they give up long before they finish. Writing can be great
fun and, yes, it can be easy at times, but professionals know
to keep writing even when it gets hard.
3...When you've finished, start something else. With
every piece you write you will become a better writer, and
most of us have to cope with a lot of rejections before we
write something good enough to be published.
Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from?
All over the place. From stories in the news,
from conversations with friends, from non-fiction books and
magazines, from throwaway ideas that don't quite fit in another
of my stories, from overheard snippets of conversation. Usually,
a finished story is very different from the original idea
that set me working on it.
When did you start writing?
About five minutes ago. Oh... I see what you
mean...
I've written stories for as long as I can remember
although, thankfully, most of my early attempts are long lost.
Outside school I didn't read or write much at all by my mid-teens,
but when I was seventeen I started reading trashy horror novels
to fill time on a wet holiday in Yorkshire. Almost immediately,
I started to make notes about how I'd have written them differently,
and before long I started writing my own short stories and
novels. Many of these were published under another name, before
I started writing as Nick Gifford in the late 1990s.
Do you have a question for Nick? Send it to nick@nickgifford.co.uk
and some of the answers will appear here.
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