Spotlight #NewRelease Interview ~ THIRTY-THREE DAYS by Stephen B King
Please make welcome another fellow author from The Wild Rose Press, Stephen B King! We're celebrating his new release, Thirty-Three Days! The Tavern is serving ale and champagne, so grab a comfy chair and let's find out more about Stephen and his new time-travel romance.
MM: Welcome, Stephen! I'm delighted you could join us today. Congratulations on your new release! Describe a typical writing day. Are you a morning, afternoon, or night-owl writer?
SBK: I get up at 5.30 every morning to write. The house is quiet, the first coffee of the day tastes good, and it’s annoying when I have to stop to shower and get ready for work. Then at night with the TV on in the background and my wife watching of her home renovating shows……
MM: That's my favorite time of the day, Stephen. How did the premise of your story (new release) begin?
SBK: I woke up early one morning, having had the most unusual dream. Unusual in many ways, firstly I don’t often remember them and if I do, they are nonsense. But this dream was intricate, and wonderful in its detail. It was about a lonely old woman who has spent her life firstly studying, and then teaching her students about the environment. She is approached by a man who says he is from the future, and she has been chosen to be a ‘Leaper’, someone who takes a leap of faith, and takes a drug to wake up thirty three years younger, in their past. She has a mission which will save the entire population of the world from a devastating blight which is raging in the future. Once in the past, she meets the father of the man who will genetically modify a strain of wheat and falls in love for the first time in her life. But there are problems. First she has to convince him she is from the future and his son will kill everyone if he continues. Then she can only stay in the past for thirty-three days, and finally, fearful she will fail, there is another Leaper coming, but he is an assassin.
It was such an amazing dream, I had to write it, which is the only way I can explore an idea, and so Thirty Three Days, grew legs, then arms, and became 105000 words.
MM: Absolutely amazing! That's an epic novel! Can you tell us about your current work-in-progress?
SBK: It’s a trilogy, called Deadly Glimpses. It follows the relationship between four people: a cop and his wife, a glamorous criminal psychologist he is paired with to find a serial killer, and her husband. They are attracted to each other, and an affair looms ever closer. Book 1 is called Glimpse, Memoir of a Serial Killer and is contracted to TWRP, Book 2 : Glimpse, The beautiful Deaths is completed and having its final re-write now so I can begin book 3, the finale, where everything erupts in a vengeful climax, is Called Glimpse, The Tender Killer.
MM: Good to hear you're busy. What inspires you when you’re writing?
SBK: It might sound weird, but the ending does. I never pre-plan an ending, so often I want to know what’s going to happen as I get lost in my own story. I write chronologically and truthfully never know how a story will finish before I write it. I find that the book dictates the end, if that makes sense.
MM: How interesting. What’s your favorite item on your writing desk?
SBK: My Mac Bool laptop – oh and a coffee, or wine alongside it.
MM: Perfect! Do you have a favorite hobby?
SBK: Not anymore. I’ve been in rock bands as a guitarist, I’ve travelled, I’ve been a game fisherman, a father, husband and General Manager for a large car dealership. These days, all I want to do is write, and there are never enough hours in the day to do it.
MM: Sounds fascinating, Stephen. What are you currently reading?
SBK: I just finished an audiobook: Why 319? From a fellow TWRP author, Mark Love. I really enjoyed it. It is a gritty police procedural, very well written, that held me to the end.
MM: Audiobooks are a marvelous form of reading/listening. I actually grasp more of the story. Do you prefer print book or e-reader?
SBK: I like all three forms, but these days, I’m really getting into audio. But there’s nothing quite like holding a book in your hands when its 4am, and you want to read one more chapter, but you have to be up at 6 for work.
MM: And there's nothing like holding your own book in your hands, too. You’ve been given a golden ticket to time travel into the past. Whom would you meet and why?
SBK: Great question. Hmmm, Stieg Larsson is my all time favorite author, and I pay tribute to him in Thirty Three Days. He died before he could see the phenomenal success his trilogy: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, became. There is a story he planned ten books in the series, and I’d love to talk to him about his craft, and the unwritten stories. His characters are sensational.
MM: Enjoyed getting to know you more, Stephen! I'm wishing you all the best with Thirty-Three Days!
Thirty –Three Days Blurb:
Jenny is a lonely university lecturer who's consciousness has traveled back in time to her younger body to try to save the future of the world. A young microbiologist is going to release a genetically modified wheat that will mutate and ultimately destroy all plant life, leaving nothing but barren windswept dust bowls.
In the past, Jenny finds a love that has been missing from her life; the kind that comes just once in a lifetime. But Jenny can only stay in that time period for thirty-three days. Meanwhile, in the future, fearful Jenny will fail, plans are made to send another back in time--an assassin. How can she choose between saving the man she loves or saving the future?
Buy Link: AMAZON
About the Author ~
Life is about the journey, and not the destination, and what a journey my life has been. We are the sum total of our experiences, and not what we eat, in my humble opinion, and when I start talking about my life to people – just before their eyes glaze over – they often say: “You should write a book.” So I have, several in fact. I left school at fifteen in a totally different era to today. I got involved with the music business as a long haired rock guitarist, wrote poems and music and gave it all up for love. I've threatened to write a book for so many years my wife eventually pushed me into it by buying me a new laptop and said: "No more excuses, do it." And so began this amazing journey. Thrillers and crime genres have always fascinated me, and in particular, the dark world of serial killers, and while my beginnings were in the ‘Make love not war’ sentiment, I love a good, unputdownable, thriller. You know, the kind you just want to read one more chapter of at three in the morning before bed, but you have to be up at six to go to work. Have I succeeded in creating stories that can take people to that place? Boy I hope so.
My first book, Forever Night, was contracted and published by The Totally Entwined Group's now defunct Evidence Press, and it was followed by a trilogy of Domin8, The Vigilante Taxi and Burial Ground. Repo, my fifth, saw me return to two characters from Forever Night as new private investigators trying to save a man from jail for a murder he did not commit. The Wild Rose Press were gracious enough to offer to publish Thirty Three Days. They have also contracted another Trilogy called Deadly Glimpses, and book 1 is due for release soon, called, Glimpse, Memoir of a Serial Killer.
I hope I have many more books in me, I often say: I work for a living, but write for a passion.
Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephenbkingauthor Twitter: https://twitter.com/StephenBKing1 Website: www.stephen-b-king.com