@LMSteel1 on Being a Scientist and a Writer #AmWriting #AmReading #Crime

What is hardest – getting published, writing or marketing?

Marketing! To be honest most of the time I don’t have a clue what I’m doing! I can read a thousand advice columns and blogs and then sit here confused and frustrated wondering what on earth will work for me. Getting someone to take notice of you and hear what you have to offer is so hard because no-one really wants to listen, they have their own lives and business to be going on with. It’s a persistence game and it can really wear you down. It’s also a niche game, you need to find your niche market, which can be incredibly difficult. I do however believe it is worth it, even just when you get one tweet saying, ‘Oh wow, loved it, when is part two out?’ that really does make all the effort worth it.

Do you plan to publish more books?

Absolutely, Part two of Once Upon a Set of Wheels is currently in editing as we speak. After that I have a Romantic comedy that I’m just finishing and getting ready to send to alpha, then beta readers. I’ve already started work on a Crime Trilogy called Birds of Prey and I have a an LGBT Romance novella outlined to start as soon as I can get to it.

Is your family supportive? Do your friends support you?

Yes, they are all fantastic. I think some of my friends were quite surprised as I’ve never been one for shouting from the rooftops about my writing. I think they thought it was just a hobby, so when I said I had published a book they were all a bit surprised. They’ve all been really supportive and encouraging. My sister and my wife are my greatest publicists, they are the ones who shout from the rooftops for me, they are amazing.

What else do you do to make money, other than write? It is rare today for writers to be full time…

By day I’m a scientist. I’m a senior technologist for a large corporate company and spend my days in the labs mixing weird and wonderful things in beakers and working out how well they work. Then I spend my days writing reports on the weird and wonderful things. I much prefer the fun experimental side than the report side.

What other jobs have you had in your life?

Well believe it or not, even at the young age of 32 there is a long list.

I’ve been an Office junior in a lawyers office on a legal apprenticeship scheme but I hated it so I left at embarked on a variety of jobs. A shop assistant, a baker, a barmaid, I worked in an actual real chocolate factory. A car park attendant, a charity recruiter, a Junior school cleaner, and then after returning to University I worked as project scientist within a Whisky Specialist team for a year and now I work in laboratory analysis.

I think for my next career I’d like to be an astronaut!

If you could study any subject at university what would you pick?

I went to University and I studied Forensic and Analytical science which was incredibly hard but incredibly fascinating. I love science, every aspect of it and I’ve always been fascinated with crime and how it’s solved so it was the obvious choice. However if I could go back and study something else I think it’d probably be a physics related degree. I love space and learning the mechanics of time and space and how we all fit into. I think it would an amazing subject to study.

16. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?

Well I just got back from Hawaii and it was absolutely amazing, it truly was paradise. I could definitely see myself living in the sunshine with a beach not too far away, to hear the sound and smell to the scent of the ocean from my doorstep.

How do you write – lap top, pen, paper, in bed, at a desk?

A little bit of everything, except the bed, I never take work to bed. I read in bed but I won’t write.
When I’m writing a story I tend to write down the outline and jot down plot etc. on paper, but when it actually comes to writing the content I sit at my desk in our spare room, put on some back ground music like Pink Floyd and type away. When I write poetry I always do it the old fashioned way, pen and paper. I have loads of handwritten poems all folded nicely away in a box.

How much sleep do you need to be your best?

I can cope on average with about five to six hours a night, but after about two weeks I’ll crash and wont function and then I need a couple of days of a good eight hour a night sleeps and I’m a back to normal. I can’t write when I’m tired, I have no focus and I just stare at the screen with no idea what I’m doing.

Is there anyone you’d like to acknowledge and thank for their support?

Of course there are always so many people to acknowledge for their support, for their help, sometimes just for their patience. I think for me there are three main ones at the moment for once Upon A Set of Wheels:

Debbie McGowan my editor and publisher, she’s done an amazing job and I really couldn’t have to this point without her work.

My beautiful wife Alexandra for putting up with me hogging the computer all the time and being really antisocial at times.

My darling dad who I miss everyday and always encouraged me and had faith in my ability.

Every writer has their own idea of what a successful career in writing is, what does success in writing look like to you?

If you’d asked me this five years ago I probably would’ve said something like ‘JK Rowling’ however now I look at it all a little differently. A writer is a writer, success is completing the story that started of as a passing thought, a glimpse and then grew into a story. I think if one person reads that story and says they enjoyed it, it moved them or it stopped to make them think, then you’ve accomplished as a writer. Success is all relative to what it is you set out to do. I set out to write a novel and I have and I’m still going. Of course I want people to buy it, but more importantly I want people to read it and enjoy it.

On May 17th 1982, an infant girl is found in a stolen car abandoned on a bridge. The police call her ‘Lotus’ after the car she is discovered in, and ‘Ogden’ – the name of the dam over which the car rested. Abandoned for no one; for no one came to claim her as their child, no one came to say that they were responsible for this babe, no one came to love her. 

This was how it was to be; always. Following abuse at the hands of her adoptive father, foster families and others, Lotus finds unlikely allies in car thieves and drug dealers, but her life of crime extends so much further than any of them appreciate. So very young, she takes her first life and realises how easy it is, and how no one would ever suspect the poor, timid, shy little girl who nobody calls their own. “Villain? Anti-Hero? 

Whatever she is, Lotus Ogden is like a perfect storm of rage and pain, but she’s also disturbingly human.” “Feed the dogs and take the phone off the hook. Once you get into this book you’re not going to want to put it down.” “A fast read, a great story, full of twists and turns.”

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Genre – Crime, Thriller

Rating – PG-18

More details about the author

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