do I know? I have, though, very much enjoyed making the book trailers, the one for Odin’s Wolves being in fact an eleven minute short film. I was lucky to be working with a very talented film director, Philip Stevens, and crew who really shared my vision and understood intimately the scene we were trying to recreate. You can watch the film Odin’s Wolves: Prologue in HD here or find all the book trailers on YouTube by searching my name. GS: Will you be going back to the Raven series? GK: I would like to go back to the Raven saga and do hope I get the chance as there is still so much more to the story. I’d also like to do a prequel telling the tale of how Sigurd became a jarl and about his first raids with Balck Floki, Bram the Bear and Svein the Red. GS: What type of genre do you like to read and why? GK: I read historical fiction because it’s the best way I have of “experiencing” the past. Such novels are the closest thing we have to a time machine. But I’ll also read thrillers, some fantasy and things
I struggle to place in a genre, like Stephen King’s incredible sci-fi, fantasy, horror The Dark Tower series.
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per cent of the job and likely even more than that that. One day I’m going to write a contemporary novel just to see how long it takes me. GS: How has the launch for The Bleeding Land gone so far and what has the fan reaction been. GK: There’s no doubt that getting attention for a new hardback is tough. Historical fiction is rarely reviewed in the traditional media where as you’ll see pages given to literary books that don’t sell. But I think online is where we find the most important avenues by which we can introduce our books to potential readers. Good reviewers and bloggers now wield enormous influence and I think that’s great, probably because I have been extremely fortunate in that my books have enjoyed enormous online support. Knowing that The Bleeding Land is so very different from the Raven books, I wondered how my readers would react to it. It’s early days but the response has been wonderful with many readers telling me they think it’s my best yet. No pressure for the next one then!
GS: How long does it take you layout the whole book and the characters? GK: I’m a book per year writer and that’s probably vaguesounding, but the whole process from inception to publication is so involved that I’ve never really kept tabs on how long each part takes. Period research, plot outline, first draft, second draft, submission to editor, editor’s comments, third draft, submission to copy-editor, copy-editor’s comments, fourth draft, submission to proof-reader, proof-reader’s queries etc. Then amongst all this you have cover design conversations, cover copy discussions, editorial issues to sort out etc. This is one of the reasons why I’m so glad to be with a publisher and not self-publishing, despite all this chatter about us writers no longer needing publishers. GS: What is the biggest challenge when writing historical fiction? Predictably, the research is the greatest challenge. With historical fiction it is at least fifty
Christophe Montoya
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