Brit Writers spoke to Mike Wells…

Who is Mike Wells?

Good question, I often wonder myself!   I would say that I’m a creative person, mainly a writer and storyteller, who has always been interested in the creative process.  I’m now a novelist and part-time university lecturer, but it was quite a journey getting here. 

What inspired you to write your first novel?

I actually began my fiction writing career as a screenwriter. But after moving to California and drafting my first two screenplays, I realized that the movie-making business was too collaborative,  required too much compromise on the part of writers.  So, I moved back East and started writing a novel.  I believed that this medium would give me much more control over the final product. Fortunately, I was right!  And I’ve been writing novels ever since.

Tell us more about Lust, Money and Murder?

Lust, Money & Murder was my tenth novel, which is actually a three part story that takes place in the shadowy world of international currency counterfeiting. I wanted to write a fast-paced thriller with a female hero who is a bit different than most thriller heroines, not just the sidekick of a male who’s really the hero, or some kind of larger than life “superwoman.”  I chose someone with a difficult past, with plenty of flaws, but a woman whom readers could also root for and admire. To this end, the character Elaine Brogan was born. She goes through hell in this book, first fighting her way into the Secret Service to avenge the death of her father, then getting caught up with the world’s most dangerous and accomplished currency counterfeiter. I also wanted to put lots of twists in the book to keep the reader constantly surprised and entertained.  It seems I accomplished these goals, as readers really seem to love the series. At the moment I’m working on a sequel, along with a couple of other projects.

What challenges did you face in your journey to publication?

Going back to the earlier question about why I started writing novels, I found that literary agents and large publishers also crimped my creative freedom.  Not as much as movie producers, but I still felt a lot of pressure to make story changes that I didn’t agree with.  I had a hard time working with them and didn’t have much success. For example, with one of my first young adult books, Wild Child, publishers wanted me to add 15,000 words to the manuscript because they were afraid the physical book would be too thin for the ‘price point’ at which they wanted to sell it.  This frustrated me to no end. I tried making the novel longer but it just didn’t want to be longer; it was perfect as it was. I ended up self-publishing it, but became discouraged by how difficult it was to market and threw all 3,000 copies in the rubbish bin. The next thing I knew I it was being sold by a dozen Amazon resellers and getting good reviews—someone had pulled the books from the trash and started selling them second-hand!  I eventually published the novel as an ebook and it went to #1 on the Amazon UK Bestseller list.  (See the story in Daily Mail)

This was what opened my eyes to self-publishing, and I have gone down that path and met with a lot of success.  Let’s put it this way—I can live on the money I make writing fiction.  Not fabulously, but I can eat and put a roof over my head, which seems like a miracle to me now.  Self-publishing is not right for everyone, but it works well for me, with my experience and personality.

What advice would you give to new and unpublished writers?

Of course the first advice would be:  persist, persist, persist.  Study and perfect your craft.  Read books and blogs on fiction writing, join groups like Brit Writers, learn how to craft good dialog, plots, description, learn about story structure, genres, heroes, and villains.  Then—once you feel you know what you’re doing—put your work out there and get reader feedback.  Not WRITER feedback, mind you, but feedback from ordinary readers.   This is the only way you will develop confidence in your writing.  Every day new writers approach me wanting me to read their work to give them feedback or some stamp of approval saying that their writing is good.  This is a waste of time.  At the end of the day, it’s only READERS who matter, ordinary readers who buy books and borrow them from libraries.  The sooner you start developing a reader following—even if you post your work for free at the beginning—the more confident you will feel about your writing. When people actually start parting with their hard-earned money to get their hands on your work, your confidence will soar and you will no longer worry about whether you’re good or not—you will KNOW it.  Of course, there are critics and other experts who some writers want to please, but I honestly don’t care about them, I only care about my readers, the people who love what I do.

How important are initiatives such as Brit Writers?

As I said earlier, it’s very important to join groups like Brit Writers to learn, exchange ideas, have access to lots of resources, get emotional support from other writers, and many other reasons.
In closing, I want to say I really appreciate being interviewed by Brit Writers, and I wish you all success with your writing dreams!

Blog & website: www.thegreenwater.com Twitter:  www.twitter.com/mikewellsauthor