A More In-Depth Author Page (Because This Is What the People Want?)

Becoming a successful author requires so much more than just the ability to tell a compelling story in our modern world. You have to consider marketing–not just of the cover of your novel, but the back blurb that’s supposed to grab the unsure audience member in. You have to look at advertising budgets, taxes, reviews, a social media presence, and…you need an About the Author novella, apparently.  

In the beginning, when fantasy was in its infancy, if you got a photo of the author, it was a rare sighting–almost as rare as a fantasy series that didn’t have elves and dwarves in it. The gold standard was (and in many cases still remains), “Leonard J. Chastain earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oregon and graduated on the Dean’s List. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his heartmate, dog, and cat.”

If you were lucky, you’d get a (very) brief mini-resume of the jobs he or she had before becoming an author, as well, but that was either used as a tool to demonstrate that the writer of this particular tale did in fact do something writer-y before going mainstream, or was still doing something writer-y while waiting for the money to start rolling in.

But things have changed considerably since the advent of reality television and social media. Now, if the research can be believed, people want to know about their authors. Thankfully, it’s not the creepy stalker kind of vibe, nor is it the sensationalistic celebrity/paparazzi intrusion that, granted, a small number of narcissists would probably thrive on. And that’s good, because that’s not me. Or my brand.

Most consumers of a good book are truly more interested in the book, which is as it should be. For the majority, the “About the Author” paragraph is still just window-dressing, but now it can also be a way for people to get a glimpse at the content creator–something that’s more important to generations raised on social media. And occasionally, learning more about an author is a way for a potential reader to make a decision. “Do I want to spend the next fifteen to thirty hours with this guy? Or is he a jerk? Just a total knee-biter?”

Finally (and these are my people), when you finish a really good book, you want to know who the author is who just got your emotions working. If an author really made me feel a good battle scene, I start wondering how she researched it. Has she taken martial arts? Served in the military? If our hero had to wander through a desert and I felt the heat so perfectly that I needed to get some water, I started to wonder–does the author live in Nevada or Arizona? Did he take a trip to the Sahara to really experience the heat? If the conversations were realistic and engaging, I want to know…can this author play a good game of Catan? Should I invite them over for game night?

Now some of you might already be noticing that this blog, which is supposed to be about the author, isn’t very much about the author. I’m filling up space by being all meta about the process instead of telling you how I got to be in a place where I’m writing a blog about being an author. 

That’s fair. I hear you.

Unsurprisingly, I’ll confess that I like to read. Like, a lot. When I was in middle school, my parents banned me from reading books at the dinner table. The argument made was that dinner was a time for the family to get together and be social. Three years later, that claim turned out to be a big fat fib as my brother and I were banned for talking about D&D at the table because my parents had no idea what we were talking about. So apparently, we can only be social if we’re talking about boring adult stuff? Hey, we’re not flashing gang signs, right? Wouldn’t you rather hear about how we’re being heroes and killing demons and stuff?

I’ve mentioned in my “official” About the Author page at the end of Prelude to the Storm how I wrote two books when I was in elementary school and how my teachers and the librarians got them bound for me. Suddenly, my fellow students could check them out of the school library like I was a real author! I was (self) published! 

Yeah, they were derivative versions of the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators titles from the ‘70s, but that’s what I was reading a lot of back then, and you remember the adage “write what you know”, right? When you’re in 3rd grade, you don’t know much.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I’ll get on with it.

Not much has changed since then. I still want to write, and I still want to move people with the words that I write. As it states on my “Author Bio” page, I like to go out and have adventures for inspiration. Living in the Pacific Northwest (The PN-Dubs, as some natives call it) gives you both ocean and mountain options for exploring. There’s even high desert country if you’re into that. So I trample through the snow to get the feel of Imar’s people in Baria, and I try to touch every tree and recognize every plant and bird to stay grounded with the Children. Playing in the SCA for more than a decade has gotten me very in touch with my inner Garith, as well.

To keep my imagination going, I play Pathfinder every Sunday as I run a game within Auren to play-test the whole freakin’ world and get an idea of how I want cultures and civilizations to interact with one another. I also read a lot (did I mention that?) so that I can live in other storytellers’ worlds, too. 

For fun with my friends (not counting Pathfinder), we have a game night on Fridays. We rotate through every semi-strategic board game we can find that allows 6 players and usually runs past most of our bedtimes. For someone, this is a prime opportunity to “lap hop” and help everyone make their best move. 

There’s more to your author than all this, of course, but unless I become super popular and get out into the world to sign books and the like, the best way to get to know me is to read my stories. I’m going to be trying to showcase heroism in all its many forms, as so many authors have shown me throughout the thousands of books that I’ve read over half a century. You’ll see me in Kitoor’s playfulness, Garith’s love of language and fair play, and Imar’s relentless will to do what needs to be done. 

In my novels I’ll try to show you new ways to look at the world–with wonder (like a kender from the world of Krynn), brutally honest self-discovery (akin to a certain assistant pig-keeper from Prydain), integrity (equal to a wizard from Chicago), wisdom (to match a practitioner of the Will and the Word), and a certain sly subversion which is all my own.

I hope you like who you find there.