What better way to learn about writing than to chat with an author directly?! Enter: Australian indie fantasy author, Loren Tuxford.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Loren on my podcast, After Hours Authors, and the chat was so good we needed it in blog form as well. If you’re keen to listen to the chat have a listen below:

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Interview with Loren Tuxford

What book could you reread endlessly?

Ooh good one! But just one?! I’m more of a series reader than a single book reader. I really do love books to feel endless. I also have a terrible memory, so I can be surprised all over again heheh.

My top series that I truly do re-read:

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
• The Deverry Series by Katharine Kerr

Special mention to:

• Dan Simmons (The Hyperion Cantos)
• Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry)
• Charlaine Harris (The Sookie Stackhouse Series)
• Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles)

I do love standalones too, some that spring to mind (what a great saying):

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
• Contact by Carl Sagan
• The Forest by Edward Rutherford

How did you come to write and when/how did you decide that ‘yep, I’m going to write this’?

I’ve always had an active imagination. About two or three years ago, I started to write down the stories I’d tell myself when stuck in traffic for 1-1.5 hours each way to my workplace at the time. When I finally left that job and was in between my next one, I was like ‘Hm. This could be an opportunity…’

I had a heap of notes, inspirational music too, floating about. So I sat down, planned it all out. And lo and behold, I ended up with a lot of material to work with.

I ended up with two chunky books. Book 1 and 2 were meant to be one, but no one (except me perhaps) wants a phonebook sized fantasy book. Especially to print, here in Oz everything costs at least double to overseas. The rest of the material is being used for the next 8 manuscripts lol, about 4 of those in progress because, why not?!

What are your top tips, or your ‘do’s’ for other authors?

• Be aware that only you can write your book, only you can tell the story in your style.
• Be prepared to wear a lot of different hats! (write, editor, designer, social media, website master, legal checker etc).
• Know your legal obligations (a bit of research is required, published works being deposited into libraries, copyright, and even how to have your books on sale on multiple platforms).
• Do research into your genre (characters, the shape of the plot, cover design)
• Take some free courses or check out online forums (Facebook groups, Amazon Community, YouTube videos). (NOTE: I am not affiliated with Dave Chesson, but he has a great online resource for self published / indie authors that gives a lot of ground level and up info: https://kindlepreneur.com/blog/).
• Allocate even a little time to sit at your computer or journal. You can’t edit a blank page, so jot something down. If it’s not part of a chapter and you get stuck, have a little thought experiment. Make some character bios, physical appearance, their childhood, their likes and dislikes, their motivation. That info might never be used, but it can help you with fleshing out your characters with realistic personalities.
• Finding your tribe (Facebook groups: readers or writers, actual writing groups: online or at a library etc) can help with inspiration or mutual creative sessions. Writing is a solo endeavor so a bit of support can help. I spoke about this on a panel at Book Fair Australia this year, with fellow panelist Maddy from Sydney Write Club for those in Sydney. I have started to do the occasional session with two fellow staff members from Book Fair Australia, and it’s been interesting!
• Having said all of that, some advice from others like myself won’t be relevant to your journey, and that’s okay, every author comes to their stories on a different path. 

What are your ‘don’ts’ for other authors?

• Don’t edit as you write. This can stop your creative flow. Get the words out, a good ole word splurge. Then go back and tidy it up.
• Don’t just delete chunks of text you aren’t happy with – create a ‘parking space’ file and park your chunks for long-term storage in there. You never know.
• Don’t worry about author envy. What I mean is that it’s natural to go ‘oh that other new or up and coming writer has X amount of books, social media follows or XYZ’. It’s natural to want that for yourself. But if you can celebrate other people’s success, I believe that energy adds to your own.
• Don’t rush! Even with editing and spellcheck, grammar software, I had some typos slip through so if you’ve got my ebooks, please update my copies by going to ‘managing your content’ in your Amazon account haha. Tears were shed.

And now for a community question from Wesley (sci-fi author)!

Loving the podcast! I’ve listened to 5 episodes now. I would love to hear an episode on foreshadowing and breadcrumbing and how to make it not so damn blunt and obvious. ☺️

To be honest, I’d not heard of that term until recently but I’d love to share how that fits into my writing process, to the best of my knowledge. Like a quote you mentioned in a previous podcast Jess, JK Rowling maybe? A lot of the ‘how’ is mysterious, and I don’t ever want to discover what makes it so!

‘Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works.’ – J.K. Rowling

After giving it some thought, this is what makes the most sense to me. When I’m writing, I enter a kind of flow state which is really blissful. For me to achieve that, I need direction.

Which means I’m a Planner with:

• A long list of dedicated plot events
• A long cast of characters
• A long list of books in progress so I can plan chapter, book and series plot events

So as a whole, I look at the shape of my story. Where I plan some of the big plot beats allows me to lead you up the garden path to those beats.

Focus on showing not telling, reactions instead of dialogue will help too. E.g. ‘a muscle in Cas’ jaw twitched’, instead of ‘Cas was mad’.

Not every character in my books knows what is going on as well. Even when they think they do, or are the architect of certain events, I like to lead them along as well.

Because making characters cry is fun!

Tell us about your books!

My first two books, Nightfall in the Forest of Betrayal and Nightfall in the Forest of Broken Dreams are the first in an ongoing series. Book three, Nightfall in the Forest of Destiny will be out early next year with about ten planned in total (I love a long-winded title haha). 

Someone recently described it as The Princess Bride meets something a little darker. I was chuffed about that of course, but I see The Nightfall Series as more Days of Our Lives meets a slightly less violent A Game of Thrones.

We’ve got the elves and humans living under false pretences, each unaware of major events that have dictated the past couple of decades or so. Separating the races is a massive expanse of colossal trees. I also see the Forest as metaphorical too. There are a lot of lies to hike through, hidden truths, for my characters to achieve what they think is best.

I have a varied cast of characters, humans and elves, plus some not-so-obvious dragons. There’s magic, a bit of mystery, and a lot of brooding. We also have some spice as well, between the races, genders and species. But, in my opinion, love is love, and who am I to judge my characters. Sometimes they just write themselves haha.

There are multiple points of view, but not in the first person. I feel this allows the characters to play with the reader, you don’t always know what they’re thinking, or what their intentions are. I like to dangle some mystery, to entice, but to reveal at appropriate occasions too.

The series explores the past and present, and how each main character has to overcome something, hopefully for good… but not always… we love grey morals don’t we? I certainly do, heheh.

You can find out more at www.lorentuxford.com – where to buy, newsletter and social links, release updates, event and appearance news etc.

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LINKS:

• Visit Loren’s website
• Find Loren’s books on Amazon
• Follow Loren on Instagram
• Find Loren on Goodreads
• Book Fair Australia
• Book Fair Australia blogs, including one dedicated to legal obligations for authors; and one showing Loren’s process
• Loren also particupated in this author book camp and loved it
• See Loren at the Anti Valentines Markets

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