I know. I know. Our Meet The Author Monday feature has been a little MIA. But I have a great author for you to meet today, Douglas L. Wilson. His first published novel, Affinity’s Window, is available on Amazon. Let’s dive in shall we? Per the usual, my questions/comments will be in BLUE and Douglas will be in GREEN.
Thank you for stopping by Douglas. I always like to start off by asking my interviewees: What turned you into a reader or non-reader?
I’ve been reading for entertainment since grade school, and I am never NOT reading a novel. My earliest recollections are Dickens, and possibly Charlotte’s Web, but from then on I devoured everything I could get my hands on, from Sidney Sheldon to Stephen King. I love a good story, in any genre, and I can’t imagine a world without fiction.
A good story in any genre. I think we are cut from the same cloth. There is probably a favorite or two though. Tell us about them.
Horror and suspense thrillers. I eat em like candy. I’m also into fantasy, like Weiss and Hickman, and some sci-fi, but I’ll always come home to King and McCammon.
King is definitely King for a reason. At some point you crossed that line from reader into writer. What crossed you over?
I can remember a time, as a teenager, thinking about stories I’d read, and enjoyed, and trying to redesign the plots in my head. I’d even started jotting down story ideas, but my life took a turn down a much different path. I didn’t come back to writing until I was fifty years old. I missed a lot in those years, and I wish I could turn back time, but I’m writing now, and I’ll never stop.
I am sure your life experiences have helped you with your writing. Knowing your reading proclivities, do you have a specific genre you consider yourself a writer of?
Yes. My first love has always been horror. I’ve dabbled with a few ideas in other genres, but I always turn back to my one true love.
So, how did this journey begin for you?
I wrote my first novel five years ago. It was 330,000 words. I had no idea how this industry worked. My queries were deleted out of hand. While the story was good, the length was ridiculous. Then I had an agent take pity on me. She liked the story, so she told me what I’d been doing wrong. I was flabbergasted, and distraught. Taking her advice, and this wasn’t easy for me, I wrote another novel called Affinity’s Window. The agent loved it and signed me right away. She’s still my agent today, and my hero. Thanks to her kindness, and her belief in me, I’m a published author, but boy did I have a lot to learn.
That’s amazing. The world needs more agents like yours. Perhaps I will have to look her up someday myself. Outside of writing, how do you like to spend your time?
When I’m not writing, I generally putter around the house. My wife and I live with our two cats, and together the four of us lead a quiet life. I’m retired now, so writing does consume most of my time, it’s what makes me happy.
Affinity’s Window is my third novel. I’ve since turned my original novel, that 330,000 word monstrosity, into two separate novels which will be sequels to Affinity’s Window. I’m currently finishing up my fourth novel, a story unrelated to the first three, and I’ve already started a fifth. Sometimes I flit around between stories, I can’t help myself sometimes, but eventually I land on something I can finish. It’s weird, but once I get going on an idea, if it’s a good one, the story just kind of takes over and directs me where to go. I feel like a conduit sometimes, but that’s okay. The story’s being told one way or the other.
It’s great to have that time to do what makes you happy and I wish you the best of luck with your works. Sometimes we just have to let the muses do their thing.
If anyone would like to check out Douglas’s novel, Affinity’s Window, you can do so on Amazon at the link below the picture. You can also connect with him on Facebook or Goodreads.
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