Ask the Author: Laura Enright
Answered Questions (6)
Laura Enright
I'm very lucky in that regard. I don't really get writer's block. Actually, my problem lately has been finding time to sit down and write out all that I have in mind. Again, I can be doing any sort of task and have ideas running through my head. Scenes, dialogue, concepts. I've been lucky in as far as I never really had to deal with writer's block.
Laura Enright
I think it's being able to make people think, whether it's fiction or nonfiction (I find the same satisfaction in both). Getting ideas out there. Seeing if you can fire up people's passions and inspire them to be as passionate about what you've written as you were writing it. Writing satisfies and urge to "shout out". Whether the material be uplifting or depressing, it allows the author to inspire. That's very gratifying.
Laura Enright
Be very sure of what you want from writing. If you want to do it just for fun or to fulfill a need to create, that's fine and you can find some wonderful platforms to publish on line as well as self publishing options for physical books. But if you're hoping to make a career of it, be very aware that you may have to really work at it. As I say, marketing is a full time job in itself. Some people become disillusioned by this and give up. Marketing can actually sometimes be fun (and yes, sometimes it can be a drag). But it's a necessary component to a career in writing. You may also need to, as I put it, step outside your comfort zone, by working with genres you may not have an interest in. Be really open to that cause that can actually turn out to be a lot of fun. My first book Chicago's Most Wanted...came about because I at last decided to try nonfiction, which a friend suggested might be easier to break into. I had no desire to write a nonfiction book, I was trying to get my fiction published, but I guess I realized at that point that you have to start somewhere. So I did and it was a great experience and actually opened up other doors for me in the field of public speaking. My first vampire novel was written not because I wanted to write a vampire novel, but because I was hoping to acquire an agent whose agency represented vampire novels. Long story on how that turned out but the bottom line was I fell in love with the novel and the story and ended up writing more in the series. So don't turn down something simply because you might not be interested in it, especially if you can make money off it an perhaps get your name out there. Consider it a challenge and see what you can do with it. You might end up liking it.
Laura Enright
Marketing. Always marketing. Seriously, when you're trying to make a name for yourself, marketing can be a full time job in itself. Ujaali was recently released so I've been working on getting the word out for that novel and To Touch the Sun, the first novel. I'd like to build a huge audience for the series. I have other books in the series in various states of draft. I am also working on a nonfiction book (and it's fun to get back to nonfiction every so often) with someone whose father was falsely accused of being a loan shark for the Outfit in 1960s Chicago. That's been fascinating but a lot of research is involved. It's a compelling story though and I'd like to get it out soon. I've also been working on incorporating more audio/visual into my marketing efforts. Book trailers. Chapter reads. Interviews and vlog pieces. Things like that. People can visit my YouTube channel to see what I'm working on. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzMW...
Laura Enright
I'm pretty lucky. I don't really need to force inspiration on me. I daydream a lot. I can be in line at a store, or doing some task, and images and thoughts scurry through my head. And if I'm interested enough in one, it sends me off on the story. The Chicago Vampire Series books have been fun because each one has inspired the next. The first novel was tough only because I had no idea what I wanted. No plot or character in mind. I was doing it as an experiment and it was a lot of effort to create the characters and the histories. But once I had it down, the other books sort of flowed like water. Plus, in each one there are asides or scenes that inspire a new story, whether it be to explore past events. Book 4 is a flashback of one of the characters or whether it's to carry on something that occurred in the previous book. For example, two characters that appear in book 3 inspired a spin-off novel for them cause I enjoyed the dynamic so much. So it's been a rich experience in this respect. And the inspiration for the novels in the series have come from the stories themselves. I didn't sit down with the first novel and say, "Okay, this is going to be a series that follows this path to this goal." I would just come up with an idea to use to further the plot, then think, oh, I'd like to delve into that a bit more in another novel. It's been surprise for me as much for the characters.
Laura Enright
My most recent book, Ujaali, is book 2 in my Chicago Vampire Series. Actually it was really as I was writing the epilogue for the first novel in the series, which I hadn't originally intended to be the first novel of a series. It was just something I was experimenting with. But I wrote an epilogue to give some closure to a thread that I'd briefly mentioned in the first novel and I just realized that there was more I could do with that thread. It became a "what if" question. What if this happened? How would Narain (the main protagonist) react. And it just flowed from there. Much of the first three books is about how Narain deals with vampirism currently and how he dealt with it decades before when he was first turned. One mistake made out of anger decades before brought the dilemma he faces in the second book. I kind of liked exploring that notion. I go into that a little deeper in a blog post for the series blog: http://enrightvampires.blogspot.com/2...
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