Author Interview
Good day lovelies. Here are a few quick-fire questions to get a sense of me and what I write. This list was compiled using guest interviews/blogs I’ve written over the years. I decided to present the most relevant ones. Enjoy!
How long do you write each day?
Unfortunately, I’m not able to write every day. I’m a part-time writer, with a full-time day job. My weekends, specifically Sunday, are what I can devote to my craft. On a good day, I average around 5k words. I keep a log now, just to assess my progress. It also acts as a good gage on the difficulty of the story, and my enthusiasm to continue. I’ve yet to reach 10k in a day but I’ve definitely reached 8k when everything just flows. I’m grateful that my day job allows me to take mental health days, and I either use them to write or to work on promo items or in-depth research. I also accumulate vacation days, and I hoard those until I have enough to take a week off. Those are my writing retreats where I become a hermit, and I warn everyone that I don’t exist for that week. Thankfully, all the important people in my life understand and are willing to let me be a hermit.
Do you reward yourself for writing, or punish yourself for failing to do so? How?
Always reward. Never punishment. Positive reinforcement is how I go through life. I don’t always have a set reward, mostly the satisfaction of finishing a project is reward enough. But sometimes it’s a TV show or movie I want to watch, and I hold off until I reach my quota of words or chapters or something. Often the incentive to simply write is enough to keep me on track. Even when it’s difficult, I love very second of it. Also, I try to give myself an extended break between each project to either veg in front of the TV or to do other creative things (draw, sew, Pinterest crafty things). Just to decompress and recharge before diving in again. I’m trying to average 3-4 books being written and published each year. I’ve managed it for the last couple of years, so here’s hoping the schedule becomes easier.
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
I average 3-4 months for the first draft. Then I let it simmer for a month or two before revising and editing as needed. It’s rare that I have to overhaul a first draft or start over, but it has happened. The distance from the first draft allows me to go over it with a more critical eye, and I often realize better ways to handle a scene or I know what to add or delete to clean-up the structure. This is definitely a process I’ve been working on since I first published in 2011. Over a decade later, I’m still developing my style and experimenting with a writing schedule that works best for me and can be sustained. I’ve experienced burnout before, and I want to avoid it at all cost!
Do you have a playlist as you write?
Sometimes I listen to instrumental music, mostly Two Steps From Hell or Lindsey Stirling. Though music often provides inspiration for scenes in my WIPs, especially if I hit a dry spell or a hard point, and I need to move from scene to scene. I use music to imagine certain types of scenes, specifically action or love scenes. I think this comes from me watching Disney’s Fantasia a lot. I still adore that movie. I’m able to put images to music in my mind, and that has helped me work out many plot problems over the years.
What makes your stories different from other authors out there?
I like thinking outside the box when it comes to characters. For example, I have a shape-shifter series, and I have everything from the classic wolf shifter to a falcon shifter, a rattlesnake, to a shark shifter! I also have a bull, and bear, and want to do a lion, jaguar... you get the idea. I want to play with all the animals! I love researching them, learning their mannerisms, and adjusting the characters to fit human characteristics as well as the animals they shift into. Each book is a challenge, and I have to ask myself, how much does their animal side influence their human side?
I have another series about a dark mage, and it's set in a fantastical world. Despite the fantasy setting, I deal with complex issues such as abuse, good vs. evil, what makes a villain or a hero? Those sorts of things. I tried to create an anti-hero (though a friend describes him as an edgelord... and I can’t argue), and I enjoyed making his stature less than intimidating. He's not very tall, kind of scrawny (at least at the beginning), and he describes his own face as "bird-like." But he's incredibly powerful and finds true love with a warrior archer, and together they are explosive (in a good way)!
Do you ever suffer from writer's block? If so, what do you do to get past it?
Not so far (knock on wood). I suffer from writer's overload—I have so many ideas and characters bouncing around in my head, sometimes it's hard to focus on only one. I can work on multiple stories at once and each are always at different stages of development. Should I have writer's block I would attribute it to exhaustion and would take a long break from writing, doing other creative projects, until my muse was ready to get back in the saddle.
Does your family know what you write. If so, how did they react when you first told them what and how explicit your writing would be?
My mom always knew. She's my best friend and was my first beta. She wasn't too thrilled that I decided to write M/M romance, but she got over it. My biggest anxiety was telling my dad. But, to my surprise, he didn't care what I wrote but clung to the fact that I was now published! He was so proud and that was very nice. Extended family learned later because my parents weren't very good with keeping secrets. But most of their reactions have been positive, and I describe my books as "alternative romance" because most of them aren't readers, anyway. Also, I have a pen name, which enables some distance.
If you could sit down with one other writer, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you ask them?
J.R.R. Tolkien. Absolutely, positively. And I wouldn’t ask him a thing. I’d just let him talk to be about languages, fairytales, Norse mythology, and whatever else he wanted to tell me. Whatever it was, I’d listen in rapt attention. His world had such depth. He created his own mythology from the ground up, from his own "Big Bang." How can you not be impressed by that? He was a literary and mythology nerd and proud of it! Plus, he served in WWI and survived... and made a (by most accounts) happy life as a professor with a wife and kids. Yeah, he made an impression on me. I seriously went from reading Harry Potter in middle school to reading Lord of the Rings in high school. Big jump and worth it!
When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
Second grade. No joke. We had a silly writing assignment where we had to use certain words in a short story, and it had to be about a page long. I loved it. As I grew older, and after a few more writing assignments, I realized I might want to be an author. I’ve always had an overactive imagination, and it usually came out when I played with my sister. We had dolls and horses, and all sorts of other toys. We created storylines, and character profiles... and yes, we were both still in grade school. And when we were done playing we’d often say “to be continued” or we’d end the play and start a new “game” the next time we played. I have to say my sister helped me a lot to understand the importance of storylines, characters, and drama. We never just played “dress-up.” Our play had to have a point.
I think being “good” at being an author is relative. I like to think I’m good at it. But how do we judge what is “good” and what isn’t? Is it the way with words, the storyline, or the characters? Okay, I’ll stop being philosophical about it. I think when I started to have a few fans, a few positive reviews on published works, I realized I could be good at this “writing thing.” Having the support of my parents was great, and my mom tried to read a few of my stories. But it took me a while to develop my style—and I’m still working on it—so the first stories were rough and needed a great deal of smoothing out.
What’s your writing process?
One word: outline. Outline. Outline. I am not a pantser. While there are times my characters do their own thing, and I have to change my outline, the main plot points stay the same. I do give my characters breathing room, allowing them to adjust things here and there if they need to. I tend to think about scenes as if they’re a movie in my head. When I listen to music those moments become easier to visualize. I just let my characters do and say what they need to, and then I write it down on a notepad to put in my computer later. That process has created some of my best scenes, whether it be dialogue or action—in fact, the best way for me to write fight scenes (or sex scenes) is to let it unfold in my head first.
What action would your name be if it were a verb?
I think both my real first name and my pseudonym would mean “geeking out over obscure mythical or magical facts and figures.” That would definitely fit my pseudonym since “M.D.” stands for Medea Draco. Medea not only means “dragon queen” but is the name of the sorceress who helped Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. But her story wasn’t happy: she was the lover of Jason, and they had two sons, but Jason married a princess to gain prestige. In a rage, Medea drowned their children to punish Jason and ran off. Yeah, fun times. Yeesh, those Greeks. “Draco” means dragon in Latin. As for Grimm, well... there were two brothers named Grimm who recorded some rather dark fairy tales....
If you had the opportunity to live one year of your life over again, which year would you choose?
While I don’t believe in looking back in your life and regretting or wishing you could have done something different since that’s impossible (since time-travel is just a theory right now), I’d have to choose the year when I visited Ireland for a month. I did a Study Abroad program in college to Ireland, and I would love to do it over again and pack it full of more travel, and to create deeper bonds with the people I traveled with. But I plan to go again sometime in the future, so I know I’ll get to go to the places I missed the first time around.
Until next time, stay safe, stay sane, and may dragons guard your dreams,
M.D. Grimm
