Featured Author - S. A. Lusher!!!

Here's a new feature I'm adding to the blog...S.A. Lusher is our first Featured Author we're introducing our friends and followers to. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean recently and got some interesting observations from one of the more promising indie authors on 2014!

When did you know you wanted to be an author?
I know it sounds a bit cliched, but it's one of those "For as long as I can remember" type situations. I remember spending a lot of my school years, starting in second grade, writing and reading. Sometimes it feels like I was born with an imprint to write books.

What are some of the struggles you've had to overcome to get to where you are today?
Myself, mainly. I have a serious motivation problem, and only to compound that, I spent a lot of time being afraid of my work. I'd end up putting together a solid plan of action, then, within days, I'd immediately began worrying over all the things that could go wrong and within a week the whole thing would fall apart.

What do you do to deal with writer's block?
A couple of things, none of them entirely effective. If it's just day-to-day writer's block on a very simple level, I usually try to just push through it and keep writing anyway. I also break up the writing with reading books, playing games or cleaning up the apartment. If it's something serious, like just not being able to make the novel work, I've finally got to the point where I just turn to another project entirely if enough time passes.

Which authors would you say served as a large influence on your writing?
I started reading 'grown up' books the first day of eighth grade when I cracked open Bob Mayer's Area 51. I'd have to say that Bob Mayer and Simon R. Green, with his Deathstalker series, served largely as foundation for my current writing. Besides them...well, I tend to take away from everything I read that I don't hate, but there are three authors that stand out for certain: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and William Gibson.

If there was one famous author you could write a novel with, who would it be and why?
Probably Neil Gaiman. Besides being one of the best authors currently walking the Earth, he is probably one of the nicest people alive. I had a rare opportunity to speak with him last year and the man was pretty much kindness incarnate.

What do you think of the self-publishing revolution?
I think it is, by far, the best thing to happen to authors since the inception of the publishing industry. I could go on for ages about why self-publishing is far superior to the industry for everyone who isn't already Stephen King levels of fame, but I'd pretty much be rehashing everything J. A. Konrath has ever said.

How do you go about writing a novel?
I start by making sure I have a solid concept, and then discerning where the novel begins and where it ends. Then I layer on a skeletal frame of the overall plot by writing a sort of treatment describing everything I want to happen in the novel. Then I break it up and fill the story out by breaking down a chapter-by-chapter treatment. Then I just write.

Does any other form of media influence your writing? If so, what and how?
Anyone who has read my work will tell you that sometimes it seems more like I'm novelizing a video game than anything else. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember and as a result, I tend to structure stories in terms of how you might play a first person shooter or an RPG. Film also played a large role in influencing my writing. From Terminator to Fight Club to A Clockwork Orange, I watched them all during my formative years. Music also plays a huge, active role in my daily writing. If I'm writing, I'm listening to music. No music, no writing. It's that ingrained. I tend think of my works like movies and/or games, aka very visually, and as a result I always try to listen to the kind of music that would be playing during the scene. Over the past few years, Carbon Based Lifeforms has been a huge help in setting the mood for my works.

What are your plans for the future, writing wise?
Well, presently I'm writing Ceaseless, which is Book #5 in The Shadow Wars series. I've also very recently began working on a new bleak Sci-Fi/Action series called Darkest Night. For the foreseeable future, these two franchises will be consuming my attention. But I also plan on releasing Dead Ice and Endurance, a novella and novel set during the first three novels of the Shadow Wars series, the Necropolis Trilogy. I also plan on releasing a collection of Sci-Fi/Horror shorts and I hope to get a contemporary, experimental horror novel written with fellow co-founder of Dark Nexus Fiction M. Knepper sometime this year.

Here's some links where you can find out more about Sean:

S. A. Lusher Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorsalusher
S. A. Lusher Amazon Library: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00FFISYDC
Dark Nexus Fiction Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dark.nexus.fiction
DNF Official Blog: http://darknexusfiction.blogspot.com/