Terry Melia interview

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

When did your love of books begin?

As a child, reading the Marvel comics boosted my vocabulary and understanding of characterisation. I was lucky to live within half a mile of a public library where I discovered the magical writing of CS Lewis and the Narnia series of books.   

When did you start to have the wish to become an author?

As a teenager at secondary school, I found that English classes – Literature and Language were very easy for me and that story telling came naturally. I was reading at least two novels every week, ranging from ‘pulp’ fiction Sven Hassell, Alistair Maclean through to Milan Kundera and other ‘serious’ writers. 

I made the mistake of sending samples of writing to all the big publishing houses of the 1970’s and had brutal feedback along the lines of ‘Don’t ever contact us again…  Your  writing is awful… etc’

But I never gave up, reading more and more diverse genres of novels and carried on writing short stories and novellas that I kept to myself. I did become aware that I was sub-consciously picking up tics and styles of whatever writer I happened to be reading.  Looking back many years later, my early writing was pretty awful.

How have you found the process for becoming an author?

I attended an MA in Screenwriting back in 2000.  Writing screenplays helped develop and give me confidence in my own style. I based my first full length novel on a 90 minute screenplay that I wrote for my thesis.  A slice of working-class coming of age fiction – ‘Tommy Dwyer’.

 I worked through approx. 30 drafts of the novel.  I’ve got a whole bookshelf filled with drafts.  The more I wrote, the better the writing became.  Some forty years after I’d sent out my first disastrous submission to major publishers, I sent out samples of ‘Tommy Dwyer’.  This time, there were no rude wake up replies of ‘Don’t write to us again’.  There wasn’t any success, but there was a lot of ‘Sorry, enjoyed it but not for us just now..’  which was encouraging.

I paid for a year’s mentorship with Cinnamon press which involved having my 75K Tommy Dwyer novel professionally edited.  It was a runner up in the Cinnamon Press debut novel of the year in 2017 – though they did Pass on publishing.

And then I discovered Amazon’s print on demand – POD.  I sent it to Amazon and became a published author three days later.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

Don’t ever give up!

Tell us about your book/books:

One great reviewer described my Tales From The Greenhills – Tommy Dwyer novel as ‘Liverpool gets its Trainspotting...’

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

Writers from every walk in life, wherever they live, whatever age, creed, religion, culture etc all share a driving passion for storytelling.  There will always be someone out there to share in your triumph’s and to console in your lowest moments.

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

Thank you for trusting me with your valuable time .

Where can people connect with you?

On Twitter - @FromGreenhills and on YouTube chat channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn25ESKqquyKEIpg7avydJA

My novel is available in paperback, Kindle and Audio

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Greenhills-Terry-Melia-ebook/dp/B07KNDZGN2