And since I don’t have much to say and it’s too hot for thinking, here’s another author of the fantasy bundle! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mario Milosevic!
Where do you live and write from?
In the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest.
Why do you write?
I want to be part of the long tradition of storytelling.
When did you start writing?
Submitted my first story (to Analog) when I was 14. (It didn’t get accepted.)
What genre(s) do you write?
Fantasy, mystery, science fiction, literary.
What is your goal as a writer and what are you doing to achieve it?
I want to sell enough to quit my day job. I write 1,000 words every weekday without fail, and I send stuff out all the time.
What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?
Get a job. Most people don’t make a living at writing. Also, having other income frees you up to be as creative as you want in your writing.
Outliner or improviser? Fast or slow writer?
Improviser. When I outline, it feels dead. When I improvise it feels fresh and alive. Fast writer. Speed brings out things I never knew I had in me.
Tell us more about your book in the bundle
I live in the Columbia River Gorge, which is a beautiful place, and mystical as well. Our county has a law on the books which protects Bigfoot! Now how cool is that? I thought the gorge would be a perfect setting for a fantasy novel, so I imagined two societies, one in the gorge, and one above it. They are linked in ways I won’t give away here. I threw in some natural disasters from real life: The Missoula floods and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens (which is in our county) and I came up with an exciting coming of age story mixed with an after-the-apocalypse tale.
Tell us about your latest book
My most recent book is a collection of stories. The title says it all: 15 Strange Tales of Crime and Mystery. It’s got humorous, gruesome, futuristic, and fantastic, but they all deal with crime in some way or other. http://amzn.to/2tAWjXC
Any other projects in the pipeline?
Lots. I’m juggling numerous short stories, got a few novels making the rounds, and embarking on a series of stories about Red Fish Bay, my invented town on the Oregon Coast in which strange and mysterious things happen due to the fact that the town was the site of a meteor impact a few million years ago.
I don’t do much on social media, but here’s my twitter feed: https://twitter.com/mariowrites