Author Feature:
Fred Nolan
The author
Fred Nolan was born in Pennsylvania and has hazy recollections of Erie, Atlanta, Denver and a small, wooded development north of Houston. By age 15 he settled in Dallas, where he has worked with a commercial subcontractor for 24 years. Empty Oaks Magazine (RIP) published his first short story in 2015. Emery Press Books published his debut novel, Alexei and the Second Empress, in November 2018.
Where to Find Him:
Website
Other Links
Alexei and the Second Empress
These are the final days of the tsars and Alexei Shafirov, an infirm skeptic, is bedridden after a fall. Throughout the long recovery his loved ones speak to him of fables, uprisings and a royal family under house detention. At the heart of their stories is Alexei Romanov, the heir apparent. Like him, the Romanov boy is a hemophiliac, near the center of a decades-old political cabal. Both children are prone to mischief, self-indulgence and illness. But some insist their connection runs deeper than that.Alexei and the Second Empress is an account of the end of Imperial Russia, told in equal measures fairy tale and cruel realism. It is a story of opulence, folklore, addiction and secrets. And the most profound of those may not come to light without a price.Check it out here.
Some free stories from Fred Nolan can be found here.
The Interview
What’s next for you?
As I type it’s April 5, 2020. It is about a
month since the U.S. began its various COVID-19 responses. Tomorrow will start
my third week working from home, in near-absolute quarantine. My job is secure,
my family is healthy. I am working on a book and a play. I am certain both
could reach audiences in some form. I hesitate to use the word privilege, but I
am in an extremely fortunate position, there is no doubt.
So how, then, would I dare charge for either of
these forthcoming works when people are dying alone in hospitals, or struggling
for breath in their bedrooms? For all we know, this will be our annual September
routine: hospital personnel will be exposed to a horrible contagion without
proper equipment; they in turn become sick and then suffer or die alongside
their patients. North Texas shoppers will empty supermarket shelves faster than
grocers can keep them stocked, and their food bill will be two, three or ten
times what the checkout clerks could afford. They will defy shelter-in-place
laws and then, on social media, hail police officers as heroes.
In this climate, in which people are
contributing so much and receiving so little, it seems a betrayal to charge $16
for a book.
I’ve mentioned this on Twitter at least once,
but it bears repeating. I would love to create a Bandcamp-styled web platform
for distributing books with a name-your-price option. Bandcamp might already be
the best choice: it has an audiobook section and allows sellers to list various
merchandise types. But people know Bandcamp for the music, and audiobooks
aren’t exactly cheap. Studio time is about $1,000 per 100 pages; double that if
you aren’t narrating it yourself. Even if you read your own book in a home
studio, you’ll need expensive software and a professional-grade microphone.
So the short answer to your question is this:
What’s next is a lot of deliberation. In fifteen years of writing I’ve never
had a moment of writer’s block, but my gut-check on the subject of distribution
is every bit as crippling as writer’s block.
What a moving and truthful look at the future of our industry, including marketing which is vital for authors. What has worked best for you?
My pre-2020 answer was: Start locally. Let your
spouse, parents and loved ones do some of the heavy lifting. Appear on a
friend’s podcast. Submit your novel to local book groups. Do readings at a nearby
bookstore. A writer can’t live without Twitter, but you won’t sell many books
there. To sell more than a few hundred copies, you’ll have to turn the computer
off and go do things inherently mortifying to writers.
Today, what constitutes effective marketing is
anyone’s guess, and we should cast a jaundiced eye on any headline that
mentions a resurgence in reading. I suspect the best a writer can do now is to
engage with the reader. Ask them not just what they want from fiction, but what
they need from book publishing.
Yes, marketing is anyone's guess and we have to learn what works for our particular brand at a given time. Aside from marketing, what have you learned most through your
publishing experience?
Someone is going to intensely dislike your
work, and take it personally that you wrote it at all. It will insult them that
they read a single page. Never engage with them, there is no sense in both
sides of the argument taking things personally.
On the other hand, someone is going to love
your work, and for reasons you were not prepared for. They will totally miss
your creative intent yet still connect very deeply to the story.
Your favorite of your short stories might never
be published, yet the ones you aren’t sure about will almost certainly be
published, sometimes nominated for awards. Do your best to fall in love with
those works, if for no other reason than someone else has.
Thank you for your time. Please, check out Fred
Nolan's book and those free stories (links above).