AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES L. RICKARD
James L. Rickard lives in West Virginia, which is in the US and writes Westerns and Science Fiction.
Are you happy about being an Author?
Oh, I’m ecstatic! Lol Seriously, I suppose I would be happier if it was a choice rather than a need. We’ll let it end there.
What's your motivation as an author and what have you learnt from writing books?
My motivation is nothing too heavy. I write fiction, so if you read my stuff and it’s an escape, I’ve done my job.
As an author , what do you think are the positive things about your writings?
It sort of goes back to the last question. I’ve written a few letters to the editor and things like that, but I try to keep things low-key.
Which book or E-books have you published and which are in pipeline?
I have five books, Grandpa Wore a Six-Gun, Treasure of the Ant People, Once Upon A Time With Grandpa, The Old West, The New West, The Weird West, and The Windmill Portal. Two short stories—Mission to Mexico and Left Handed Gringo.
From the titles, you can tell some of these are Westerns. Treasure and Windmill Portal are Science Fiction with just a taste of the West. Treasure is a quest for Pancho Villa’s Hidden treasure and Portal, the latest in my Charlie Hobbs series, deals with an investigation of an alleged 1897 UFO crash and its link to the MC’s honeymoon sighting.
Once Upon a Time, is another “sort of” Western. It’s 1927 but he and a partner are looking into the story of Butch Cassidy. They rub shoulders with the likes of John Wayne, and Wyatt Earp. All of these guys in the same story is kind of wild. There will be a fifth “Charlie” story, but right now I’m working on a story called, tentatively, “My Pet Zombie.” You can probably tell, it’s a zombie story but nothing too serious.
Serious zombie stories are too much the same—survivors of the apocalypse are going somewhere and some of them get eaten up along the way. Sure, those are zombie tropes in the story, but I want more and I think readers expect that of me. Without giving too much away, I want to deal with a lot of the questions zombie stories invite. For instance, why do some zombies run while others limp around?
Do you believe in a "Writer's Block"?
I believe in SOMETHING, but I’m not sure if it’s a BLOCK. Maybe it’s a lack of inspiration. If I go a day or two with no writing I start getting antsy.
What are the problems that you have faced in your Author journey?
What Genre of Books do you create and Why you chose it ?
I tell people I write Neo-Westerns and dabble in Science Fiction. There’s more to Westerns than horse crap and six-guns. Plus, I like that era between 1900 and 1930 and what it was like for guys who lived from around 1860 onward. How they deal with the advent of cars, planes, and telephones? As for weird stuff, I think I watched too much Twilight Zone as a kid.
If you could tell something to your younger writing self , what would it be ?
Don’t forget anything. You never know how it will fit into a story.
Where can people contact you ?
My email is jamesrickardwrites@gmail.com.
You can sign up for my email list, too. Just drop me a line and say you want to get notices. I won’t spam you and I don’t sell my mailing list. Also, I don’t do that thing where authors trade mailing lists!
I’m on Amazon, so you can find me there either with my name or a book title. Aside from email, I stay active on Social Media—Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Instagram. I should probably do more, but I don’t have time because I answer everything myself.
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want ?
It’s a fine line but I have to stay true to myself. If not, I get forgetful.
