Guest Blogger James Gault

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nDo you favor a particular genre? If so, what attracts you to that genre?
nMy three published novels and the one I’m currently working on are in some sense detective mysteries, but it would be misleading for me to classify them as just that. I always try to introduce a bit of humour, and there are philosophical and political themes in there too. In Teaching Tania and in Ogg, I am exploring the need to question and contest accepted ideas, while in The Redmeption of Anna Petrovna, my main aim is to expose and address the problem of political morality and corruption. All this sounds rather heavy, but I hope my writing is more in the nature of political satire with a hint of slapstick comedy.     
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nWhat book–not necessarily your own–would you recommend to a stranger? Why?
nI never recommend books to strangers, because how can I know what their tastes are? Reading a novel is a contract between the author and the reader, and the readers only sign on the dotted line if they are getting what they want, and we don’t all want the same things. I do write book reviews, which are, in a way, recommendations to strangers. But unlike many professional critics, I don’t assume my tastes are theirs, or even worse, what theirs should be. I say what I wanted from the book and whether I got it. Readers can then make up their own minds. 
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nWhat do you like most about writing?
nAny kind of praise is very welcome, but if you let others read what you’ve written you’re going to get criticism at some point.  So really I write for myself. I enjoy creating the characters and putting them into situations to see how they react. If I think of something witty as I write, then I have at least brought a smile to my own lips. If others find it funny, that’s a bonus. That’s probably not a very commercial attitude to take, but I believe that success comes from finding readers who like what you like. 
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nWhat lessons have you learned as a writer?
nUp to very recently, my image of a novelist was someone locked in solitude in a badly lit room with a quill pen in hand. Or at least the up-to-date equivalent, with a bit more illumination and the feather scribing instrument replaced by a laptop. That’s how I used to work up to about a year ago: scribbling away on my own and sending stuff out for the odd success, multiple rejections or publishing myself. What I’ve now learned is how much writing is a collaborative exercise. So now I have editors, Beta-readers, publicists other writers working with me. We share ideas and help each other. It’s a nice balance between the loneliness of the initial creative exercise and the social fun of the discussions that follow.  
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nWhat else would you like to share with readers?
nI think what I’d most like to ask readers to do is to give new writers and independent writers more of chance. The established publishing business is a closed shop, with major publishers refusing new submissions and dealing exclusively through agents. Of course publishers need to make money and they want to minimise risk so the favour the established best-selling authors, or the growing celebrity fiction fad where they know people will buy the books.  They also have the bookshop market tied up, so smaller publishers cannot get shelf space. But with Amazon, Smashwords and other on-line outlets, and the growth of e-books and print-on-demand,   new writers can by-pass this and get their works out there. So if you’re a reader reading thirty or so books a year, why not make at least one or two of them books from small publishers or independents?  Search for new writers in the genres you love. It’s not a big gamble, you can read the first page of the sample chapters and if the author hasn’t grabbed your interest by then, well, he doesn’t deserve you anyway. ​​​n

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