Jon Spoelstra Interview

1: What is the most productive time of the day for you to write?

Mornings, from 7am to about noon.  In the evening, I’ll do some light editing for a couple of hours of what I wrote in the morning, and think about the next day’s writing sometimes jotting down some brief notes.

2: Do you start your projects writing with paper and pen or is it all on the computer?

All computer.

3: What do you draw inspiration from?

I’m really not sure where inspiration comes from.  I do know this: when I was writing non-fiction books, I would get this feeling every three years or so that it was time to write a book.  I wouldn’t question the feeling; I’d just plunge ahead.  The writing times would be a little spotty at first, then I would get some momentum and write every day.  My last non-fiction book, Marketing Outrageously, was written almost completely in airports, on planes and in hotel rooms.   It made the Wall Street Journal best-seller, so is that the perfect environment for writing?  For that book, it was.

4: Do you set goals for yourself when you sit down to write such as word count?

When I’m writing every day, I try to about 1,000 words, good or bad, but 1,000 words.

5: Are you a published or a self published author and how do you come up with your cover art?

Both published and self-published.  The publisher did the cover art with my non-fiction books, but with Marketing Outrageously, we collaborated on it.  That cover is highly unusual—a sumo dunking a basketball a la Michael Jordan.  With my self-published novel, Red Chaser, I just used Adobe InDesign for laying out the cover.

6: What drives you to choose the career of being a writer?

Both of my parents were great readers, and in my case, that’s where it starts.  The love of reading.  As a kid I devoured all the Hardy Boys books, and spent my entire weekly allowance on comic books.  Can writers come from non-readers?  I don’t think so. 

7: Do you own an ebook reading device? 

Kindle2, Kindle DX, and have put in my order of Kindle3.  I consider my Kindle purchases as the best purchases I’ve made in the last decade.

8: Who are some of your favorite authors and What are you reading now?

Not in any particular order, but as I think of them:

Philip Kerr: The Bernie Gunther series.

James Crumley: Am rereading The Last Good Kiss the last couple of days.  Marvelous.  Then I’ll reread The Wrong Case.

Max Allan Collins: The Nathan Heller series.

Walter Mosley: The Easy Rawlins series

The early James Ellroy: Like LA Confidential, The Blue Dahlia.

Robert Crais

Martin Cruz Smith

9: What do you think of book trailers and do you have any plans to have any?

I’m not sure.  Many of them are really well done.  Of those, I’ll often then look at Amazon Sales Rank, and it seems that the ranking should be higher because the trailer was so good.  So, I just don’t know how effective they are.

10: How did you come up with the title of your latest book?

I’m not sure.  It just seemed like the right title.

11: What are you working on now that you can talk about?

I’m working on marketing Red Chaser.  In fact, if any of your readers wants to read it, I’ll provide an Amazon gift card so that they can download it for free.

If you want to read it for free (and you get a buck*), just email me at findjon@msn.com and say, “Yes, I sure would like to read Red Chaser.”  I'll have Amazon email you the gift card for Red Chaser.

* Red Chaser is a Kindle book. I'll have Amazon email you a gift certificate. The smallest gift certificate at Amazon is $5, so after you download Red Chaser for $3.99, you'll have a buck and a penny in change. Spend it wisely!

Jon Spoelstra

findjon@msn.com

 http://www.boomerlit.com/