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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Author Interview – Nadine Ducca

Do you intend to make writing a career? I would like to, but if I can’t make it happen it won’t be the end of the world. I already have a stable job that I’m quite happy with, so if writing ends up being nothing more than a side activity, I’ll be all right with that. The only thing I want to do is write. Full time or part time, I don’t mind.

What was the hardest part about writing this book? Being an independent author is all about overcoming challenges. When you think the worst has passed, something new pops up and turns your world into a mess of scattered books, jumbled sentences, and one very confused author—not to mention the families. Oh, the families!

One of the greatest challenges I faced while writing Serving Time was tying up all the scenes and loose ends. I wrote Serving Time in a very self-indulgent and erratic way: one day I was planning Chapter 3, and maybe the next day I was editing Chapter 18, only to jump back to flesh out Chapter 4 a little while later. I wrote what I felt like writing at each moment. The problem with this technique is that it’s easy to end up with Swiss cheese instead of a novel. Luckily for me, I knew perfectly well what had to go in all of the gaps (it was all in my head and notes).

When I had almost finished my novel, I encountered two distinct hurdles. The first one was the “what am I doing with my life?” phase. Where to start? How to publish? And the cover? There’s no way I’m designing that! Who’ll do it? Prices! What about this comma? Editor! I need an editor! And how do I format this? Ebook? Print? Both! KDP Select? Smashwords? Help!

The second hurdle is the one I’m currently in the process of jumping: “why aren’t the mobs of fans knocking on my door?” A great piece of humbling advice I received in one of the many “how-to” books I’ve read is: Nobody’s listening; nobody cares. It might sound cruel, but it’s the truth, straight up.

As an indie author, the number one biggest challenge is to make people care. My friends tell me not to worry. “You managed to write a whole book!” they say. “You can handle the marketing!” Then they pat me on the back and smile, and I shrug and smile back at them. What am I supposed to do?

Who designed the cover? The cover was designed by the incredible, the one and only Keith Draws. A few months before completing Serving Time, I began to search for a cover artist, since I knew for a fact I wouldn’t be able to pull off a good-looking cover myself. I found Keith Draws on Kindle Boards, and he was a pleasure to work with! In no time, he came up with a fabulous idea for my cover that reflected the story so well I was speechless! Once we agreed on the details, he got to work. Every few days, he sent me a new image so I could see his progress and decide if I needed any changes. It was so exciting to see the cover come together! Here’s a link to a very special post on my blog where you can see the step-by-step images of how Keith created the cover for Serving Time (he even used 3D models). There’s also contact information in case you would like to see other art by Keith.

What do you hope people will take away from your writing? How will your words make them feel? My main goal is simply to give readers a few hours of enjoyment. Serving Time is an action-packed adventure, and that is my novel’s main purpose: to tell an adventure story and give readers an escape route out of their day-to-day life. Even so, there are also deeper messages in the pages of the novel: messages of overcoming loss and disappointment, and of striving for a better future.

Tell us a bit about your family. My family’s from Argentina, but my parents moved to California when they were in their early twenties. I was born in southern California, and lived there until age 12, when my mother took me with her to live in Spain. The move represented my first giant dose of culture shock.

Fun / unbelievable family fact: my mother’s family lived on a farm. One night, my mother’s aunt and uncle woke up in the middle of the night and saw flashing beams of light hovering over their land. When they went to investigate the fields the next morning, they discovered charred symbols in the ground: crop circles! They drew the circles in a journal and wrote about the whole experience. Nothing grew on the charred land for about a decade.

Serving Time

Life and death have been industrialized. The Forge, the birthplace of every soul, is a rumbling factory owned by the goddess Time, managed by Lucifer, and powered by the labor of demons and imps. In this dystopian world, a renegade interplanetary pilot running from his past doesn’t stand a chance.

Handling Neptunian meth and dodging security cannons are all in a day’s work for Tristan Cross—not that he’s one to complain. Working for the smuggling company StarCorp is an improvement over what he used to do for a living.

However, when StarCorp gives Tristan a one-way ticket into the brainwashed—and disturbingly suicidal—Loyal League, he decides to run from the company and start a new life in the only safe haven he knows: Earth. With the help of his brother, Tristan embarks on the most hazardous journey of his life, one that will place him at Time’s mercy. Little does he know the demons running the universe are craving a feast, and his own soul is the next item on the menu.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Science Fiction/Fantasy

Rating – Adult

More details about the author

Connect with Nadine Ducca on Facebook

Website http://nadineonwriting.blogspot.com/

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