Why the name Eldon Murphy?

I think there is an answer to this one on my forum http://z13.invisionfree.com/DeanWrites/index.php?showtopic=43. There is a lot of really good stuff on the forum—if you haven’t checked it out recently you’re missing out—it’s the best place to go get hints about what’s to come in the next few books J

Firefly or Dr. Who?

Definitely Firefly although I probably haven’t given Dr. Who a fair shake (I’ve only watched two episodes).

Why Jaguars for the other shape-shifters?

I’ve always been fascinated with big cats. I knew that I wanted to locate the other shape shifters in South and Central America, so jaguars were a natural choice given that they are indigenous to that area. When you add in some of the lore about jaguars from that area, it all felt like a good fit.

Favorite way to consume caffeine?

Diet Mountain Dew. At one point while I was working my last accounting job it wasn’t uncommon for me to drink 8-10 cans a day. I now only drink one or two cans per month–I’m a lot healthier now and getting more sleep 🙂

Is Dom getting her own book?

I wish I knew for sure. I would really like to do a book focused on Dom and her backstory, but I haven’t figured out quite how to do that. A couple of years ago I tried to write a short story about her journey up from South America, but it was super boring.

I think a better way to go will be a book focused on Dom in the present with some flash backs to bring us all up to speed on her past. I have a couple of ideas there, but will have to wait and see how a couple of other things develop.

Having both the Reflections and Dark Reflections series definitely gives me more options as far as working Dom’s backstory into a novel.

What was the last movie you saw in a theatre that was not a cartoon (I highly recommend Mr. Peabody and Sherman)?

 Wow, apparently I get out even less than I realize. I think the last non-carton movie I saw in the theater was Oblivion. Before that it was The Avengers.

What 5 books would you take if you were stranded on a deserted island (they can be your books.)?

Practically speaking, I’d probably be best off with some kind of survival book, something about boat construction and something about sailing (so I could eventually leave the island). At the risk of wandering off topic, I would also bring my scriptures.

From an entertainment perspective, I’d probably go with the Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books. There are only two of them out so far, but they have a great re-readability factor.

Beyond that, I’d probably bring Empire from the Ashes by David Webber (it’s an omnibus), The Black Company Omnibus my Glen Cook (dark but so good), and Atlas Shrugged.

What is your favorite color?

Blue or black depending on the day.

Favorite food/restaurant?  

I don’t eat out very much since I realized my body struggles with gluten. My favorite food though is pizza, although a good hamburger is a close second. Katie makes a gluten-free pizza dough that is incredible!

What would be your dream vacation?

If the book sales ever really take off, I’d like to hire a sailboat (and a captain) and spend three months sailing around a coast somewhere. Jury is still out as far as where. France, Italy or Greece all sound good, but so does the Caribbean.

What is it like knowing that people are reading and loving stories that you have created? What does it feel like to have fans?

It’s pretty mind-blowing to be honest. I’ve had a little time now to get used to the idea that there are other people out there who like my stories, but sometimes it still just catches me off guard.

There is a lot about being a writer that I didn’t anticipate starting out. I’ve got some fans that are just incredible. They’ve served as advanced readers, helped out with my forum, worn Reflections Series shirts to Planet Comicon, and started a fan page for me on Facebook. When you add in everyone that leaves positive, encouraging reviews, I’d have to say that I’ve been incredibly lucky with regards to the group of readers that have found me over the last couple of years.

What is the most challenging part of being a published author?

I think that self-published authors have some different challenges that traditionally-published authors don’t have, but I think something that’s common to both is dealing with negative feedback on our work.

On the challenging side of things, I was surprised at how hard it has been to deal with some of the negative reviews I’ve received. I’m to the point where I can pretty much shake off the reviews where someone says that they don’t like one of my books. I know that I can’t appeal to everyone, so I generally just figure that they weren’t my target audience and mentally wish them well as they continue to look for something else that they will enjoy more.

I’ve had a lot tougher time recently with some of the reviews left by my fans. I’ve gotten some one- and two-star reviews of non-Alec and Adri books where fans have said something to the effect of “I haven’t read this particular book, but I’m very unhappy that Dean is writing about Geoffrey/Dark Reflections.”

Those reviews are the ones that keep me up at nights. I really want my readers to be happy.

So I want to keep my fans happy, but I also want to see my books live up to their full potential from a story perspective and sometimes those two things feel like contradictory aims. I don’t want to ‘sell out’ and just write solely for the money, and my hardcore fans—the ones that have trusted me enough to take a chance on The Greater Darkness, Bound and Hunted—are consistently telling me that my Dark Reflections books are some of my best work yet.

That means I’m in this odd position of feeling like the books I want to write are incredible, but worrying that writing them will alienate my fan base—most of whom I’m positive would love my latest books if I could just find a way of convincing them to try them out.

It’s kind of surreal and it’s forced me to take a hard look at a number of things over the last few months. I’ve already made some changes to my production schedule in an effort to get back to more of a focus on Alec and Adri, but I’m not sure how many more changes I can make and still do the overall story justice.

I guess the too-long, don’t-read this is that having fans is great, but I spend a lot of time worrying about where I’m taking the storyline now because I don’t want to make them unhappy.

DC or Marvel?

Someone said I should answer this one by saying Dean likes Marvel and Eldon likes DC. That’s probably as good an answer as any. I don’t mind dark, gritty stories and characters, but I consciously try to not go too far down that kind of path with my writing.

The world can be a terrible place, but I don’t want to focus on that any more than I have to in order to give goodness it’s proper due.

I’ve heard authors, when speaking about their characters, say that they were sad one died.  Or they were surprised when their character did something they did or made a decision they made.  It’s as though the characters have a life of their own and the author is simply along for the ride, recording events as they occur, rather than inventing them themselves.  I’ve gotten a hint of this from you on the forum–being surprised that Oblivion showed up, for example.  So is this how things are when you write?  Is it like that only for certain characters?  Certain storylines?

You’re right, I’ve said some of those things over the last little while. I tend to write fairly character-driven stories, and one of the key things there is that I have to make sure that my characters stay true to themselves. I think that’s one of the things that will make readers the unhappiest the fastest.

So the process of writing is one where once I’m a little way into a series I no longer have universal freedom. The more I put down in writing actually the less room I have to move around when it comes to certain things.

As I get deeper and deeper into a series, sometimes things happen that I didn’t anticipate, but which just feel ‘right’ based on the personalities of the characters.

It can happen at any point in a story or series, because of a character’s personality/values, because of some kind of world mechanic (for instance werewolves drain energy of anyone around them), or even because of somewhere you’re planning on going with the story in the future.

Really when you get right down to it, for me writing is like getting a truckload of boards and tossing a bunch of them on the ground. Then I start threading a rope through the empty spaces between the boards, but as I go I throw more boards onto the pile which makes it harder and harder to keep threading the rope through the empty spaces in the pile. Sometimes while you’re doing that you end up taking the rope places you didn’t expect to go.

Hopefully that makes sense and helps explain why we writers sometimes sound a little schizophrenic. Some things you can change up without losing you readers, but some things you just can’t, not without ruining the story you’re hoping to tell.

Do you know yet how you plan for the whole thing to end?

Not entirely, but I have quite a bit of the end figured out. I do know that Ben, Alec, Dominic and Vanessa will be very important to the end.

What is DVORAK?  You mention it on your progress tracker page but I don’t understand what it is.

DVORAK is an alternate keyboard layout that is designed to reduce fatigue at the same time that increases typing speed. Here’s some information: http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/ Basically I toyed with the idea of switching to the DVORAK layout back when I was in college, but didn’t because it I thought it would get in the way of my gaming (it probably would have).

I put in a lot more time typing now though than I did back then and my wrists bother me pretty much every day. When I was able to finish up Dark Reflections #3 so quickly in November, I felt like I’d finally bought myself enough time to make the switch. I knew it was going to be tough, but I figured the reduced strain on my wrists and the possibility of increased typing speed were big enough benefits to go forward with it. (If I type ~9,500 words in a day, QWERTY requires my fingers to move ~.84 miles while DVORAK only requires me to move ~.62 miles.)

It was brutal—in fact that was part of why I struggled so much with Isaac’s book when I started writing it in Jan. Despite having spent something like 40 or 50 hours practicing the new layout, I still couldn’t type without thinking about it, which made the whole process a lot harder (I struggled thinking about the story at the same time that I was trying to remember where all of the letters were located).

In the end though, I’m glad that I made the switch. My wrists still hurt, but my typing speed is up a couple of hundred words per hour which makes a big difference over the course of a full day typing.

Where do you write (office, desk, kitchen table?) –can we see a photo of your work space?

We’ve turned our third bedroom into an office. It’s cramped, but it does mean that I can shut the door and focus just on writing.

Here’s a couple of pictures, try not to judge me too harshly—I haven’t straightened up my desk since I moved it into the spare bedroom almost two years ago. Someday I hope to have some more room and be able to move some of the clutter into drawers where it won’t be so obvious. I’d say that I’d be organized if I had more space, but in all honesty my desk at work was pretty bad too so I think I’m probably not going to change much even if I had more room.

When you write, do you like it quiet, or do you have background noise?

I nearly always turn on music while writing. Preferably something that I can set on repeat. I go back and forth between vocal dubstep and more pop type stuff like Bastille’s Oblivion, and A Great Big World’s Say Something.

Do you create an outline for a book before you start and then fill in the gaps or do you just start typing and let the story evolve on its own?

A little bit of both. I usually have a rough idea of where I’m starting a given story and the ending scene, but I don’t always know how I’m going to get from the start to the end. Once I at least have that much, then I just start writing and fill in the pieces as I go. It’s not uncommon for me to only have only a couple of chapters outlined beyond the one I happen to be working on. The day when the outline finally runs all the way to the end of the book is usually a good day and the writing pace tends to pick up a little at that point.

Have you ever been surprised where a story arc ended up?

Yes, but the more surprising thing is often the bits and pieces that fall into place as I go. Most recently, I had very little planned out for the next Alec and Adri Reflections book, but as I was writing Hunted everything started to click into place.

When do you bounce ideas off Katie (yay, Team Katie!)? – in the middle of  writing or in between books?

I don’t talk about my books while I’m writing them. I find that when I do that it makes it harder to press forward with my original vision. Often the idea I start a book out with is pretty underwhelming, so I’ve found it’s best to keep everyone else out of my office so to speak until everything is down on paper.

I talk about the books some with Katie after she reads one of them, but it’s less about bouncing ideas off of each other and more seeing what parts of the book she liked or didn’t like.

You mentioned you use a baby-naming websites for naming characters.  Where do you come up with last names?

As of late I typically pick a background (Tasha’s dad was Russian, Ulrich and Shawn have some German ancestry) and then google common last names from that country and pick one that I like.

How do you come up with the made up words (ha’bits, Coun’hij)?

Sorry, I don’t have a good answer for this one. I just make them up.

Do you have any pets?  – can we see a photo?

Sorry, I don’t have any pets.

When you first started writing Broken, did you have an idea of where the gang was headed or does that evolve with each book?

With regards to the Reflections books, The Greater Darkness was actually the first book that I wrote and I definitely didn’t know where the gang was headed at that point.

Even later on when I wrote Broken and Torn I still didn’t know for sure where things were headed. I now have a pretty good idea where everything is headed, but there is still some question about how I’m going to get them all there. By the time that I’d finished Splintered I had a decent idea of most of the stuff that was going on behind the scenes that I’ll continue to expand upon over the next few books.

Do you think the Reflections and Dark Reflections will always be separate?

That depends a little on how you define separate. The two stories will always be interrelated to some extent, but I don’t plan on ever having people from the two different timelines meet or anything like that.

A part of me would like to see if I can set things up so that the last book contains the final installment for both timelines. Being able to alternate back and forth between Reflections and Dark Reflections on a chapter by chapter basis would be very helpful with something that I’m hoping to accomplish with the ending of the book.

What made you want to write the Dark Reflections series?

There is one character in Alec and Adri’s world that is incredibly important. I don’t remember when I first conceptualized this key individual, but I think it was somewhere around the time that I wrote Splintered. Interestingly enough, he was already present in the world at that point, I just hadn’t realized who he really was.

The idea of Dark Reflections started out as a way of showing the readers just how important this individual is. In Reflections he exists, in Dark Reflections he doesn’t, and all of the differences between the two series come down to his presence or lack thereof.

Dark Reflections has grown a lot since that original concept, and it’s got a whole host of secondary purposes that would make the series worthwhile all by themselves, but at its most basic level, Dark Reflections exists to highlight the importance of one individual from Alec and Adri’s world.

Do you have a favorite character? – why?

I really don’t. It’s more that I love different characters for different reasons. Dom, Alec, Adri, Isaac, Donovan, Jess, Carson, there aren’t very many characters that I don’t love from the series. I know that isn’t a great answer, so I feel like I need to leave you with something else.

One of the characters that I love that most of the fans probably don’t is Agony. In a lot of ways Agony and Alec’s dad are opposite sides of the same coin. They both had the same tough choice and in each timeline they made opposite choices.

Do you have a favorite book so far? – why?

A little while ago I probably would have told you that I couldn’t pick out a favorite, but now I’d have to say that my favorite book is Isaac’s book. Isaac’s book has been the most challenging one that I’ve written so far. There were a lot of reasons for that. Partly it was because I had the least idea of where I wanted to go when I started the book and part of that was because some of the things revealed in Driven meant that I had certain things that I needed to do during the course of the book. (Also I was learning DVORAK at the time.)

I had an incredibly tough time starting Isaac’s book, and at one point I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to write it. It got bad enough that I even wondered if I was going to have to go back to working an accounting job.

In the end I was able to push through and make it all work and I’m incredibly proud of how it all came together.

Do you know the demographics of your readers?  – I am really curious about this!  I just don’t see young adults READING these days.  There is so much electronic clutter in their worlds.

I don’t have anything like comprehensive information about who is reading my books, it’s all anecdotal. So far I’ve received emails from people ranging from ten-year-olds who indicate that they rarely read, to thirty- or forty-somethings who read quite a bit.

I LOVE the idea of the book titles being one word.  How did you come up with that idea?  How many potential book names [got] tossed out before you ended up with Bound, Hunted, and Driven?

Like a lot of other things in my writing career, it just kind of happened. When I finished Broken that title just seemed right because it perfectly captured Adri’s situation. Torn was the same way, I finished it and felt like Alec was really torn between two worlds. By the time I wrote Splintered, I had two books with one-word titles, so I kept going with it.

I usually come up with five or six possible titles and then Katie helps me narrow it down.

(Edited to add that Katie is pretty sure that she came up with the title for Broken…)

How many books do you write (or plan to write) per year?

I currently write 6 books per year and have been doing so since Jan of 2013. It took a little while for my production pipeline to fill back up, so my first release of 2013 didn’t happen until July, but for now the plan is to release a book every 2-3 months. Barring me getting hit by a truck, there isn’t any reason I shouldn’t be able to release 6 books a year.

I’m considering trying to fit a seventh book into the schedule this year, but I’m just not sure it’s going to be possible. Maybe if I was to the point where my books were successful enough to justify hiring an assistant I’d be able to offload a few of the non-writing tasks and swing a seventh book, but barring that I’ll have to just hope that my writing speed picks up 🙂

Why not just write Alec and Adri books all the time?

This is a tricky question for me to answer because it seems to be a big issue with some of my fans. I grew up reading a lot of epic fantasy, so I grew up reading books that had an element of romance in them, but which usually had a pretty complex plot with a lot of characters.

I don’t think that it’s any coincidence that those are the same kinds of books that I like to write. I want to write a love story, but the story I have in mind is also the story of two people who have a profound influence on their world.

I guess you could say that I’m trying to tell a love story that is so epic it won’t fit in a traditional series structure. You can’t really appreciate what Alec and Adri have in Reflections without seeing what could have happened to them and that’s the story that I’m telling over the course of the Dark Reflections books.

By the same reason Jasmin and Isaac are both getting their own books because Alec and Adri wouldn’t have any chance of surviving what’s coming without their friends.

I’ve spent some time trying to come up with a tagline for the Reflections and Dark Reflections that would capture what I’m trying to accomplish with the series. The closest I’ve come to one that works is:

Some love stories are too big for one universe.

It’s terrible, but I’ll keep working on it and maybe I’ll eventually boil it down into something that works.  I’m open to suggestions if anyone has better ideas 🙂

What do you want potential readers to know about the Dark Reflection series?

So I covered a lot of this in the question above this one, but I guess I’d just like to add that the Dark Reflections books aren’t filler. I’m not trying to milk the series, I’m not just flailing around writing the Dark Reflections books because I don’t know where to take Alec and Adri’s story.

I don’t always know how I’m going to get from point A to point B, but I do have an overarching plan and the story I’m trying to tell is like nothing else I’ve ever seen done before.

If you’re reading this you are probably one of the readers who stuck with me despite the way that Splintered ended. I took a big chance with the way that I ended Splintered, but I’ve had hundreds of readers indicate that doing what I did there made the series better than it would have been otherwise.

Dark Reflections is Splintered all over again. I’m taking a risk, but it’s one that will make Alec and Adri’s story so much better for those readers that trust me enough to take a chance to try out the Dark Reflections books.

I had a much more impassioned response ready to go that would have covered the last two questions, but it was probably a little too impassioned. Maybe I’ll post it to the forum after I’ve had a chance to edit it (if enough of you come by the forum and ask for it).

Do you consider your books/series as romance, paranormal, fantasy, urban-paranormal?

I’d say that the Reflections and Dark Reflections go back and forth between paranormal romance and urban fantasy. It depends on the book, but by and large I would call them Epic Paranormal Romance because I think they are more ambitious in scope than what you usually see in regular paranormal romance books.

Favorite android/iPhone apps?

Probably the vanilla android mail app because it lets me stay in contact even if I’m on the go. I’m still looking for a good android word processor—if I ever find one that will probably be my favorite app.  I’ve tried Polaris Office (does funny things with the formatting of Word documents and when I open the files up later Word thinks that they’ve been corrupted), Quick Office (crashes at random, very inconvenient times causing me to lose hours of work) and Kingsoft Office (crashes when the files get too big and takes forever to load). I’d love to hear if someone else has a better recommendation.

We know Adri has meal replacement drinks; what does Dean Murray have for breakfast? 🙂

Now that I’m married and off of gluten I have Honey Nut Chex pretty much every morning (not a lot of good gluten free cereals out there). Back before I got married I usually had rice and beans for breakfast (and most other meals).

In college I tried meal replacement drinks for a while because I would be gone from home for fifteen or sixteen hours straight on a pretty regular basis. That is when I discovered that the wrappers on the slim fast cans peel off so easily.

We never see Ash transform because his wolf is considered weak. Is that detrimental to ones beast? Will it abandon them/ become dormant if they almost never shift? And would it be the same painful experience of an initial transformation if they finally do choose to shift?

That is an interesting question because I haven’t really explored that idea before now. As a result, I don’t really have a hard and fast rule, but I would say that a shape shifter wouldn’t have their beast abandon them, even if they shift very infrequently.

The pain from shifting is something that goes away as someone shifts forms more and more, but it doesn’t come back if they don’t shift for a long time.

Do you speak any foreign languages?

I served a two-year proselytizing and service mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York City where I spoke Spanish, but I’m incredibly rusty now.

What made you finally decide to sit down and start writing your first book?

I found some really good fan fiction on the web when I was working on my accounting degree and at the end of each of his novels the author challenged his readers to give writing a book a shot.

I took him up on the invitation and finished a couple of short novels while I was still in school.

How long before you wrote it did you have aspirations of writing it?

I’ve loved reading stories ever since the second grade. I tried starting a book when I was in junior high [an epic fantasy] and it was terrible, but I never completely shelved the idea of writing. I toyed with the idea some more after I graduated from high school, but didn’t do anything with it until my last year or two of college.

What hobbies and/or talents do you have outside of writing?

I’ve tried out a lot of different hobbies over the years. I’ve done some whitewater kayaking and rafting, some cycling, running, big band dancing and rock climbing.

The only two hobbies that have really stuck around is reading and playing computer games and even the two of them tend to fall by the wayside when things get especially busy for long blocks of time.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

I grew up loving the old Star Wars, but I think the recent Star Trek is better than the recent Star Wars, so I’d have to go with a combination of old Star Wars and new Star Trek.

Okay, folks, that’s the last question and it brings us up to nearly 5,000 words, which is a significant chunk of writing. I hope you’ve enjoyed the Q&A—there were plenty of good questions and I’d like to thank everyone that contributed. It was tough to pick between all of the questions, but my favorite of them all was Janelle’s question about how characters and events can take me by surprise even though I’m the author.

Great job, Janelle I’ll be in touch soon regarding your autographed copy of Broken!

For everyone else, please stay tuned I’ve got several posts that I should be getting to over the next few days.