The first author I'll be interviewing is the talented Mitchel Grace, author of the Wrong Place series. I picked up his debut novel, "Wrong Place" the other day and was absolutely captivated by page one. If you love a good drama with deep, engrossing characters, then check out his books! But first, here's a few words with the book's author, Mitchel Grace.
Anton:
So Mitchel, what made
you decide to become an author?
Mitchel:
I always loved writing when I was a teenager, but I lacked the confidence to
show what I wrote to anyone. When I got to college, almost every class seemed
boring to me, but there was one thing that I liked about school, and that was
writing papers. I excelled in writing about almost anything at school, and that
made me think. I thought that maybe I could write a book, but I still wasn’t
very confident. Last January, I found myself jobless and purposeless, and
honestly, I didn’t really feel like I had anything to lose, so I wrote the
prologue to Wrong Place. At first, I didn’t know about what I had written, so I
walked away from it. My mind kept wandering back to it, however. The next day,
I wrote chapters one and two, and after that, I was just hooked. Writing was no
longer something that I could do, it was something that I had to do. To put it
simply, I decide to become an author because writing is what I love to do.
Anton:
Do you have any rituals or
routines that you go through before hitting the keyboard? Describe your writing
process.
Mitchel:
The first thing I do before writing is find some music that goes with the
scene I’m trying to write. After that, it usually all flows from there. I try
to write around three thousand words every time I sit down, and I never limit
myself while writing. If I have an idea, I just throw it in there because I can
always edit it out later if I don’t like it. To me, that’s probably the most
important thing about the writing process. You should never let there be any
limitation on how you express yourself or your story.
Anton:
What advice would you give to any
aspiring writers out there?
Mitchel:
I would advise them to write what they love. If you’re writing about
something that matters to you, it never feels like work. After that, I would
say that they should always try to block out any negativity in their lives. Let
writing be your escape and never let what you do become a job. If you can do
those two things, you’ve succeeded no matter how much money you do or don’t
make.
Anton:
What
inspired you to create Nathan, the main character in the Wrong Series?
Mitchel:
Nathan and Sam are the only two
characters I’ve ever created that I feel like are literally a part of me. I was
inspired to create Nathan because we always see male characters in books that
have life completely figured out and who have to save whoever the leading lady
is. Nathan doesn’t have things figured out, and he isn’t the muscular man that
we see on every romance novel in America. He’s just a regular guy who is
extremely adaptable and smart but limited in other ways. In a way, I wanted to
show that a male character doesn’t always have to be the strong and brainless
character that we’ve become accustomed to in action novels.
Anton:
What can we expect from Mitchel
Grace in the future?
Mitchel:
You can expect to see me release the
final Strange Visions book, Strange Visions: The Storm sometime very soon, and
after that, I’ll be working on getting the sixth and seventh Wrong books out
there. At that point, my two series will be finished up, so I guess I’ll have
to come up with some entirely new imaginary friends to share with everyone.
Anton:
Mitchell, I would like to thank you for offering to take this interview. I wish you all the best, and I look forward to reading the rest of your novels!
For more on Mitchel Grace and his Wrong Series, feel free to click the links to his websites below.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
