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Felinity Interview – Will Macmillan Jones

 

Hi and welcome to Team Grimbold! Felinity is set to be the first publication under the Kristell Inkling imprint, and we’re thrilled to have you on board. Tell us about yourself. (Please include links to blogs/sites/Twitter/published works etc)

2014-01-15 08.50.08I have an official bio.  Here it is:

Will Macmillan Jones lives in Wales, a lovely green, verdant land with a rich cultural heritage.  He does his best to support this heritage by drinking the local beer and shouting loud encouragement whenever International Rugby is on the TV.  A fifty something lover of blues, rock and jazz he has just fulfilled a lifetime ambition by filling an entire wall of his home office with (full) bookcases.

His major comic fantasy series about a dwarf rhythm and blues band, released by Safkhet Publishing, can be found at:

www.thebannedunderground.com.  Five stand alone instalments are now out, with a sixth ready for release soon.

Shortly to be re released by Safkhet Publishing Ltd will be The Showing, a rather frightening paranormal work which is actually derived straight out of my personal/family history.  How much exactly is true?  That would be telling, but it is based on my personal memories.  In fact Memories was the original title.

http://www.willmacmillanjones.com

And in addition, I have a bedtime book for children, aimed at the 6 – 10 year old group who are just starting to be confident in reading for themselves ( and at those parents who, like me, are addicted to the joy of reading aloud to children at night).

Snort and Wobbles can be found via my website, or on Amazon, KOBO and Smashwords.  Although you can’t yet get the line drawings by my talented friend Sophie E Tallis (who is also in this collection) on Smashwords.

Oh, and there’s a blog.  Isn’t there always a blog?

www.willmacmillanjones.wordpress.com

Or Twitter: @macmillanjones

 

 

What inspired your story for Felinity?

-Cheese.  I’d snacked rather late at night on some cheese and crackers, and that night I had a dream. Yes, I know.  Fateful, isn’t it?  I grabbed the notepad and pen that are permanently on or beside my bed and started scribbling.  By 4 am I had the story down, and just needed to shrink the word count to match the requirements.

 

How do you feel about having an illustration accompany your story?

– I love it!  Snort and Wobbles, the bok I have on release for 6 – 10 year olds has loads of illustrations, and I think they help bring the stories alive.  I recall as a child reading Enid Blyton books and loving the line drawings, and extra dimension they brought to the reading.

 

What writing projects are you working on at the moment?

– As I mentioned above, I have a fantasy series running with a publisher.  I’m under contract to write up to twelve instalments of books about The Banned Underground and their friends and enemies, and I have  books seven and eight in that collection under way at the moment.  A second book about Snort and Wobbles aimed at children will be released in the late summer, and hopefully I’ll have finished the next of my paranormal works this year too.

 

The most important question – Cats or dogs?

– Both!  I’m a bloke and it is well known that we do not make decisions, right?  For many years I bred Golden Retrievers, and absolutely love those dogs.  I’m still in touch now with several people who bought puppies from me, and I think it is safe to say that they all love those fabulous animals.  Perfect family pets in every way.  However, I’ve just been adopted by a stray kitten who turned up on my yard one day, and decided that I seemed to make an adequate pillow and provider of food, milk and shelter.  Well, she hasn’t left after around ten days, so I must be an acceptable human in her eyes.

 

 

Inkling Interrogation

  1. It’s the zombie apocalypse, how do you survive?  –  I live in Wales.  We will set a dragon on the Zombies, and stop them at the border with England until they can pay the toll on the M4 bridge.
  2. Who would you like to say sorry to?  – My English teacher at school.  I should have listened harder to his excellent advice, and not had to relearn it from scratch later on.
  3. If you could sit down with your 15-year old self, what would you tell him or her? – Buckle up.  It’s going to be a wild ride.
  4. What is your worst character trait? – I’m congenitally bone idle.  I have a tendancy to over compensate  for this by over working instead of getting out on the hills and hunting for dragons.
  5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?  – The Lake District.  I just love that area, and return whenever I can.  My fantasy series is based there, so it’s a good excuse to go travelling.
  6. What do you think of garden gnomes? – I am suspicious of them.  They always seem to be smirking, as if they live a secretive (and possibly obscene) life when no one is watching.
  7. Do you believe in magic? – Isn’t it a more pertinent question to ask if magic believes in you?
  8. What’s your biggest regret? – I left the first redraft of my first published book, with all the characters, the plot, and a lot of the early jokes, under my bed for fourteen years, untouched.  I should have got on with it.  (See item four.  Congenitally bone idle.)  Maybe I’d have been published a lot earlier.