FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions! If you have a question that isn’t answered below, you can ask it over here.
About Me
Q. How old were you when you wrote your first book?
A. 12 when writing it, 13 at the time of publication.
Q. Are you rich, then?
A. No.
Q. Where’s your accent from?
A.I get this question a lot for some reason. I’ve lived in Inverness for most of my life – currently living in Nairn but that hasn’t really affected my accent. Some time in Stornoway’s left its mark, though, and I tend to switch between Scottish, old-fashioned British and American English phrases a lot. Let’s just call it a Scottish accent and leave it there.
Q. Will you do a signing at my school/library/bookshop/etc?
A. Please get the person in charge – a shop owner, librarian or teacher for example – to contact me and we can discuss costs.
Q. Can you appear at/talk at/sign at/donate items to my charity event?
A. Get in touch. Depending on how busy I am, I’ll do my best to help out – I don’t charge for anything other than traveling costs for charity events.
About Writing
Q. Where can I buy your books?
A. The best deals are available directorly from me, at my shop.
Q. Where do you get your ideas from?
A. Sometimes ideas come randomly, but occasionally I’ll see an idea in a TV show, book, song or movie that I like and I’ll expand on that idea and rework it to my own tastes until it becomes a plot idea forms out of it. It can be literally anything – a way a character speaks, a lyric, a line of dialogue, a way I would have liked a TV show to go but it didn’t. Most plots are formed from a big mash-up of these various little things I pick up.
Q. How do you go about getting published?
A. I explain the official process here. Personally, I just phoned up local publishers out of the phonebook and got lucky, but I wouldn’t recommend that approach.
Q. How do you avoid writer’s block?
A. Some tips and tricks are over here.
Q. Will you be writing more ‘Dragon Tamers’ books?
A. I’m taking a break from the series to concentrate on a different project – but I intend to go back to it and rewrite the first two books, then continue the series.
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