Christine Nolfi: a professional writer confident about her style

In my pursuit of the meaning and importance of writing style, this week I am turning to veteran Christine Nolfi, best-selling author of Second-Chance Grill, The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge and Treasure Me. Christine is also a founder of BestSelling Reads, a cooperative promotional group of writers of "new fiction."

Christine has definite views on the writer's style.

How would you describe your own writing style?

A combination of short, staccato sentences blended with longer, closer-to-literary passages. The combination is wholly intentional, a surefire way to evoke emotion in the reader.

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

I’m particularly fond of Ann Patchett’s style, but I don’t emulate her or other authors. I’ve been writing for many years. My literary voice is well established.

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

I dislike any prose that’s choppy, disjointed or poorly edited.

How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

After years of study, trial and error, critique groups, literary agents and much revision, I’m very happy with my writing style. Now when I sit down to begin a story, the entire process feels organic.

What are the important elements of your style? What are you trying to achieve?

An author receives the incalculable gift of the reader’s attention. Add in the modern world, with all the distractions and thrills of mass media, television, film — even the texting feature on your cell phone. Given all of that, I strive to create visual images on every page. Conflict rises, chapter by chapter. And I never forget to pack emotion into every sentence, and the novel’s essential structure.

Your style uses a lot of dialogue. What do you do to ensure your writing is authentic and believable?

I rehearse each scene out loud, becoming the different characters at different turns. This used to frighten my children. They’d arrive home from school to find Mom staring at the Mac and babbling dialogue. Now they’re grown and take my eccentricities in stride.

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favor? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

I suspect readers first recognize my characters as something arising from Nolfi novel. Then the dialogue, which can veer from comedic to poignant in the blink of an eye. Writing style? The combination of short sentences and long passages are a dead giveaway.

Do you think your genre imposes certain restrictions on writing style?

Not at all. I write contemporary fiction, which covers the gamut of human experience. No, you’ll never find horror or erotica in my books. But you will find elements from many other genres — romance, mystery and suspense especially.

Do you think your audience responds to your writing style, consciously or unconsciously?


If fan mail carries proof, I’m sure of it. No doubt the response is both conscious and subconscious.

Why did you add discussion questions to the end of Second Chance Grill? Is this something you do with other books?

Book clubs welcome ready-made questions and I’ll probably supply them in each new release. The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge also has a discussion section. I’ll tell you, devising the right mix of questions for each book was arduous. I worried about missing important issues, or placing too much emphasis on others.

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

I think readers in every genre have certain expectations. As an author, you must meet those expectations for any hope of success. In the case of contemporary fiction, readers demand a writing style rich in emotion, with striking visuals and deep symbolism. They don’t want a surface read. If they aren’t quickly immersed in the story and the conflict, they’ll move on to another novel.

Do you think your style will change in the future? Is there something different you would like to do in terms of style in a future book?

With each new book written, I sense my style veering closer to literary. Readers will decide if I’m making a wise decision. Someday I would like to try my hand at something different — a fantasy, perhaps, or science fiction. Or something gritty. Presently I’m editing my next two contemporary fiction releases, and will write the third installment of the Liberty Series over the summer. Perhaps I’ll find time in 2014 to try something new.

Christine Nolfi owned a small public relations firm in Cleveland, Ohio. She closed the firm after traveling to the Philippines to adopt a sibling group of four children. She has been writing novels full-time since 2004. Her debut Treasure Me is a 2012 Next Generation Indie Awards finalist. Her most recent book, Second Chance Grill was released in October 2012. Her works continue to earn high marks on GoodReads and Amazon.

You can find out more about Christine, her books and her blog at www.christinenolfi.com.

Follow Christine on Twitter @christinenolfi

Check out her GoodReads Author Page, her FaceBook Author page, and her Amazon Author page.

And don't forget to check out her books!

Second Chance Grill:
on Amazon.com 
on Amazon.ca
at Barnes & Noble
on GoodReads.

Treasure Me — 2012 Next Generation Indie Awards Finalist
on Amazon 
at Barnes & Noble

The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge
on Amazon.com
on Amazon UK
on Barnes & Noble

Steven Montano: shaking up the genres

An independent author interview

Most authors strive to stay within a genre, occasionally mixing horror with romance or science fiction with mystery and throwing in a love interest for good measure. I've never before come across an author who aggressively tosses as many different genres into the mix as Steven Montano, whose Blood Skies series mixes military science fiction, war, occult horror, modern vampires and witchcraft, and animates the mix with supernatural energy. I had to ask him about it.

Steve Montano has published five novels, two short stories and a novella, all set in his fantastic, futuristic and horrific future timeline called Blood Skies, or the World After the Black; he released his latest, Book Five in the series, The Witch’s Eye, just last week (launched on this blog, among others), and he’s hard at work on completing the projected seven-novel cycle.

It’s a demanding self-imposed challenge for a man who is also a full-time professional accountant, a husband and a father of two. On top of that, he blogs regularly and maintains a presence on all the social media.

I had to find out more about his creations and his creative process.

Blood Skies is set in a post-apocalyptic world, but the apocalypse is different from any other I have read: a change in the physical laws that lets magic work and makes once-imaginary creatures like vampires and warlocks real. What was the inspiration for this unique, dark vision?

The idea originally began as a steampunk vampire novel, but I quickly grew tired of trying to write steampunk and instead searched for a way to make it so I could write an “anything goes” world and have it seem believable. Since the single most dramatic change I could think of in regards to how the world worked involved the presence of magic, I started with the notion of a magical apocalypse, and just built on that. I’ve enjoyed developing the setting, as it basically allows me to include whatever “real world” elements I want and just make up the rest.

 

Is there any aspect of your world that you hope readers will recognize in the current one? In other words, are you sounding a warning about anything in particular, or is this just whimsy, total imagination?

I use real-world war events and military history as inspiration for some of the horrors depicted in Blood Skies, and the way that magic is simultaneously feared and relied upon could probably serve as a sort of metaphor for nuclear power, but for the most part I try to play things straight. Maintaining some semblance of realism is important — perhaps even more important when dealing with an entirely fantastical world — so even though my stories deal with vampires and magic and fictional civilizations, I try to keep the characters and the way they behave in their insane surroundings grounded in reality.

 

Your books feature a lot of characters, and are told from multiple points of view. Tell us more about your favourite characters.

That’s difficult, because I’m fond of all of my characters (even the secondary ones) in some form or another. Eric Cross has always been the primary protagonist in the series, but it seems that in every book I come up with a new character I’m partial to, which is usually why I end up extending the narrative and making it so I can tell some of the story from their POV. Danica Black, a former prison warden turned mercenary, has always been compelling to me because she’s more of an anti-hero than Eric, and she comes across as heartless even though she struggles with a dark and tragic past. Mike Kane, a prisoner turned soldier, is a relentless smart-ass who blends heroism with comic relief. Ronan, a swordsman and former assassin, is my “hitman with a heart of gold” character, whose incredibly warped sense of the world is put to the test in The Witch’s Eye when he inadvertently finds himself in the unlikely position of holding what’s left the team together once they’ve all scattered to the wind.

Do you base your characters on real people in your life? If so, are you one of them?

I don’t make my characters exact duplicates of anyone I know in real life, but of course I take aspects of different people’s personalities and blend them into these fictional people. It’s safer that way…if I tell someone I based a character on them, I have to listen to how I got them all wrong. ;D

There’s no question Eric is the most like me (poor guy), but even he and I have our differences. Many of Cross’s insecurities bear a striking resemblance to my own, and he’s the easiest for me to write in terms of knowing how he’ll behave in any given situation, because I feel like he and I are pretty much on the same wavelength. Cross makes his fair share of stupid moves every now and again; one of the reasons I like writing him is because I know I probably would have done the same thing, whereas with some other characters, I’d be tempted to change things up to make it more realistic.

 

How do you handle the challenge of writing from multiple points of view? What makes it hard, and what makes it possible, at all?

Aside from the prologue of Blood Skies, I actually didn’t start writing from a second POV until Book Three, when Cross’s disappearance mandated a new character take over as the eyes and ears for the readers. For me the trick is to keep it simple: if you’re writing from multiple POVs, be sure to make them different enough individuals that the reader never gets confused, and try to use them in such a fashion that it makes sense to switch perspective — i.e. you’re still advancing the story by switching characters, not just re-telling every event from multiple viewpoints.

Blood Skies is the name of both the series and the first novel in it. Did you have such a good experience with the first novel that you decided to expand it into a series, or did you envision a long story arc and plan all the installments in it, first?

The former. The original draft of Blood Skies was actually quite different from how things wound up. As I mentioned before, the first version had strong elements of steampunk, and it was only about half as long as the finished novel. The original draft also had no survivors, so it definitely wasn’t intended to be an ongoing series. ;D

But as I revised and prepared Blood Skies for publication in early 2011, I got hit with a number of ideas for potential sequels, and decided I wanted to leave things more open-ended. Then, just a month before I released the book, I had an avalanche of ideas for Black Scars, so in the end I was very happy I’d decided to give myself the option for writing Book Two and beyond.

Can you describe the story arc? Where are you so far, and where will the next four books go?

Blood Skies (the series) at a glance is about the war between the humans of the Southern Claw and the vampires of the dreaded Ebon Cities, but before long the story turns to humankind’s struggle to protect their world from the dark powers behind The Black, a cataclysmic event that transformed the world into the wastelands it has become.

Blood Skies introduces Eric Cross, the protagonist of the series, and establishes many of the rules of the setting. Black Scars introduces Danica Black and Mike Kane and shows the formation of Cross’s team of mercenaries. Books four to seven (Soulrazor, Crown of Ash, The Witch’s Eye and Chain of Shadows Parts One and Two) chronicle the team’s struggles against the forces behind the creation of The Black. The final three books in the series (Vampire Down, The Ending Dream and Darker Sunset) will deal with the aftermath of the struggle, and show how the team’s victory was anything but complete.

All of your books seem to feature many of the same elements: witchcraft, horror, vampires and a damaged, changing world. Are they all based in the same alternate time-line, or are they different tales, entirely?

I’ve always tried to push the idea that the World After the Black is a conglomerate of multiple realities: the shattered remnants of different worlds, realities, times, or planes of existence having all crashed together with Earth as the focal point. The truth is, no one really knows where most of the elements came from originally — Earth and all of its disparate parts have been forcefully fused into a new paradigm. Part of the reason I did this, honestly, was to enhance the horror of the situation, for it means the world that humans are trapped in is all but impossible to break down and understand.

Do you ever find elements from your novels or from your life as a novelist have an impact on your other identity, as an accountant?

I do wish I had an arcane spirit with me at work, if that’s what you mean. ;D But seriously, the only real effect I find is that I wish I was doing more writing than accounting. With luck, I can continue to move toward that goal.

Do you have plans for any other types of stories outside of the Blood Skies world, or the genre?

This year I plan to publish City of Scars, which I wrote a few years back, the first novel in my epic fantasy Skullborn series. I’ll also eventually publish another stand-alone horror novel called Blood Angel Rising, about a pair of hit-men tracking down a fallen angel. On top of that I’ve written dozens of horror and dark fantasy short stories which I should probably allow to see the light of day at some point.

What is your favourite type of book to read?

I like dark epic fantasy, military sci-fi, and some horror. I enjoy some paranormal romance and urban fantasy, though it has to be taken in short doses. I’m also a sucker for a good murder mystery.

Who would you say are your major influences as a writer?

To this day my biggest influences remain J.V. Jones, China Mieville, Clive Barker, Tanith Lee, John Marco, John Meaney and C.S. Friedman. I’ll eat up pretty much anything those authors write. In the Indie field I’m a huge fan of Michael Hicks, Jon F. Merz, Jen Kirchner, Alan Edwards, Mike Berry, Candice Bundy and that Bruce Blake guy.

If there was one thing about your published work that you could change, what would it be?

I hate that it took me so long to produce those books. ;D I also know my first novel wasn’t as crisply edited as some of my later work, a fact that I plan to remedy as soon as I have some spare time. I’ve toyed with the notion of releasing an Omnibus of the first three novels of the Blood Skies series, and I’ll doubtlessly re-edit the lot before I do that.

Thanks for having me, Scott!

Thank you for coming, Steven.

Steven Montano’s books are all available on Amazon. For a full list, visit his Amazon author page.

And don’t neglect visiting his website, bloodskies.com, his blog, and grab the Ebon Cities Gazette.

Follow Steven on Twitter @Daezarkian

Minimalism and action: Best-seller Seb Kirby on writing style

As soon as I started reading Seb Kirby’s Double Bind, I thought: “Yes! Here is a writer who knows how to waste no time, nor words in getting to the action.” Double Bind grabs you immediately and whips you along.

Seb's style seems to blend genres seamlessly. I wondered, "How does he do that so easily?" So naturally, I subjected the author to my interview on his writing style.

How would you describe your own writing style?

I like to write short chapters, short paragraphs, short sentences. I agree with Louise Brooks that “writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.” and with Alfred Hitchcock that “drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” I also like Blaise Pascal’s comment: “I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I spend a great deal of time editing (which Stephen King calls “polishing”) what I've written in order to try to live up to these views.

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

I discovered Ray Bradbury when a teenager. I appreciated his writing then for its strength in storytelling. I admire it now for its minimalism. This arises, I think, from the fact that Ray Bradbury wrote short stories. (Even novels like Dandelion Wine or The Martian Chronicles read like collections of short stories with a common narrative.) Then, the writing needs to be expressive but succinct. I try to write like that.

I also admire thriller writers Harlan Coben and Robert Harris. Both have a talent for creating a vivid sense of place without detracting from the plot flow that is so essential to a good thriller.

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

Well, I think that writing style is a very personal thing and that every author will have their own take on this. There's no right or wrong way. As W. Somerset Maugham said: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no-one knows what they are.” So, I end up liking Ray Bradbury's style but I wouldn't want to dislike any writing on the basis of a style different to that. The only recent read in which I found it difficult to stick to this long held view was Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which I found stylistically annoying. But then it went on to win a Pulitzer and get turned into a successful movie, so it's clear that one person's style hate is another person's literary classic in the making.

How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

I'd say my writing style is still evolving. I try to set myself a formal challenge in each new story. This can be a simple thing, like “Write the whole book without using any ‘said’ attributions in the reported speech.” Or it can be something more complex, as in my second thriller, Double Bind where I set myself the challenge of writing as much of it as possible in the first person present tense. Either way, I hope that this keeps my writing fresh.

Overall, I'm a keen follower of Stephen King’s approach as set out in his On Writing. In terms of writing style, there are two of his comments that I take seriously. The first: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” So, where at all possible I don't use them. The second: “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” I never use a dictionary or a thesaurus.

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favour? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

My writing style is, then, I think, readily recognised by readers. It is often commented on in their reviews. About ten percent deduce that this writing style is poor and not for them. But a majority seem to get what I'm aiming at and say that the pace and tension of the thriller is enhanced and that enough space is allowed for the reader to make up their own mind, for example about the appearance and mannerisms of the characters. That's what makes a minimalist approach like this worthwhile.

Do you think your genre imposes certain restrictions on writing style?

There are bound to be restrictions involved in writing thrillers. After all, the main aim is to entertain and, if you're lucky, thrill. But that's good discipline. It restricts the temptation for the author to intervene too much.

Do you think your audience responds to your writing style, consciously or unconsciously?

This is a very good question that I don't know the answer to. Maybe it's something that writers don't give enough attention. Certainly it's not something that there's much room for in the writing process where the story takes on a life of its own. For a thriller writer, the issue most often becomes: “Can I really do that and make it seem consistent and believable in the context of the whole story?”

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

Yes, it's important. To be clear, easily understandable and inspiring are worthy aims of any writer and the means with which you try to achieve this has a real influence on how successful you might be in achieving those aims. Most would say that there is a great deal of serendipity and hard work involved in whether this translates into commercial success or not. But without it, that success is much less likely.

Seb Kirby's debut novel, Take No More, has been widely acclaimed as a first-rate mystery thriller. Drawing from his love of classic books from H G Wells to Charles Dickens, he has mastered the art of storytelling. His second novel, Double Bind, is a psychological sci-fi thriller filled with twists and turns, a hallmark of Kirby's gripping imagination. A sequel to Take No More will be available in early 2013.

Find Take No More on Amazon.
Find Double Bind on Amazon.

Telling Tale Tales — lots of them

Kathy Lynn Hall on Style interviews

Writing style can vary widely over time and around the world. Like many readers, I can almost hear a particular “voice” when I read a British author as compared to an American writer. And who could argue that Dickens and other 19th-century authors had a style distinct from today’s prevailing style?

It seems to me that commercial fiction publishers are imposing a style. Can you distinguish Dan Brown’s style from Tom Clancy’s? EL James from J. Sterling’s?

It’s so refreshing to read an author like Kathy Lynn Hall, whose writing style is fearlessly her own. You probably already know her for Red Mojo Mama and its sequel, Red is an Attitude!, as well as The Great Twitter Adventure and other books, as well.

Kathy, how would you describe your own writing style?

Folksy — it took me a long time to find my “voice” and once I did I realized that it’s very earthy and one-on-one. I think I would have been one of those people sitting around the pickle barrel, telling tall tales in the old days.

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

I absolutely love Agatha Christie and Jodi Picoult, but can’t begin to write like either one of them. The only thing I think I can imitate is the way a story is woven. I often think of this as a pinball machine — anyone remember those? — when the ball starts down the chute and you’re madly trying to use the flippers to keep it pinging off all the little thingies. You keep trying to go back to the high pointers, sometimes failing, but sometimes you hit it big and everything lights up. That’s what a writer lives for.

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

No particular authors, but if a story is bereft of heart, I’m really not interested and quickly lose interest. If it’s all action and no character-building or interactions, I just stop reading it.


How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

I have grown to really like my style. I’ll never be the Great American Novelist and that’s okay with me. If I can make a reader love my characters and care about them, then I’m happy. The one thing I have to watch out for is my tendency to be too concise and leave out description. I started out as a screenwriter and that’s ALL dialog, so I have to curb those tendencies.

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favour? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

It’s definitely the characters and what they say and do to each other. I could have written Castaway — the film — because my character would have invented Wilson, too.

Do you think your genre imposes certain restrictions on writing style?

Absolutely — I think any genre does that. My “Red” novels are romantic suspense, which demands that there be enough romance, but not so much that it becomes a romance novel, and enough action to keep you hopping. The current novel I’m working on is a political thriller and I’m stepping outside my comfort zone a bit to insert enough action.

Do you think your audience responds to your writing style, consciously or unconsciously?

With any author, I think the reader responds unconsciously at first, but eventually how you are writing rises to the surface and they begin to recognize what they like about the way you write. Or maybe what they don’t like.

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

It’s everything. Almost, anyway. Style can overcome a lot. Sure, you must have a great story and characters, but if your style is clumsy or tough to read, you’ve lost the reader before they even get that far.

Thanks for the opportunity to do this interview, Scott. I enjoyed it.

And thank you, Kathy, for your insight.


Kathy Lynn Hall is author of the novels Red Mojo Mama, Red is an Attitude and The Great Twitter Adventure, the short-story collection Her Heart, the autobiographical collection of musings entitled Tell Them You’re Fabulous and the social media guidebook Blog & Tweet — How to Make a Splash Online.

She’s also a prolific blogger, maintaining seven (!) blogs simultaneously, while participating in others’ blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more. And somehow, she manages to do a whack of charity work and respond to pesky interviewers.

Check out her blogs:

• Fabulous For Less
• Live Young Die Old
• Red Mojo Mama Musings
• In the Writing Groove
• Sacramentoandbey...
• Kat's Dream World
• Life Lessons Volume One

What do you think about Kathy's comments about writing style? Leave a comment.