Author Interview: MG Spear Author of A Whiskered Perspective #interview

M.G. Spear is a teacher who writes for stress relief, and currently has published multiple books with more in the works. She teaches Biology to both college and high school students, and mostly her days are filled with logic. But M.G’s creative side comes out in her writing.

M.G. has been writing for as long as she can remember and hones her craft by reading books and constantly writing. She is very eclectic in her writing passions, from general fiction to horror books, to motivational and humorous posts on her blog. Her major influences are Edgar Allen Poe, Gillian Flynn, Chuck Palahniuk, and Frank Peretti. She published her first short story collection, Jumping on the Trampoline, in 2006, but then life got in the way. Now she is back in the game, ready to bring more stories to life.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mgspearwriting/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mgspear_
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sparsur/
 

 

Her house was a small three-bedroom house. She lived alone, a teacher educating other people’s children but coming home to no one. I was the answer to her loneliness. She talked to me every day about the goings-on in her life. She kept a diary, which I read from time to time. We were grateful for each other.

This is the story of my friend and me.

 

--From A WHISKERED PERSPECTIVE

 

Welcome to The Writer's Life!  Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process.  Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning?  When did you come up with the idea to write your book?

I’ve had my own ups and downs in relationships; when I started to take dating seriously I read any relationship/dating book I could get my hands on for tips and pointers. Trouble is they didn’t delve into the darker stuff, at least the ones I read. So I did my own research over the years, experienced life events, and ended up with an idea to tell a darker relationship story through a cat’s perspective.

I didn’t have a working title at the beginning, so when I told my husband I was working on an abusive relationship book with a cat in it, he looked at me funny. He was skeptical about this book until I read him the final draft, then he was all 100% in Pumpkin the cat’s corner! He wants me to write more books about Pumpkin now, lol. Later on I came up with the name A Whiskered Perspective.

Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?

I self-published. Years ago in 2006 I published my first book with a traditional publishing company, who I thought was a good company. Nothing came from the book, and eventually I stopped getting royalty checks—I figured my book bombed. Fast forward to this year I found out the publisher was getting sued for scamming authors. I took that to mean perhaps my book might have done well, so now I self-publish my books and handle as much of the process as possible. Fortunately I love to learn, and it’s been an awesome journey putting it all together. Seems I learn more everyday and come up with a different strategy.

Do you believe a book cover plays an important role in the selling process?

Definitely! It’s the first impression a reader gets. A book cover should grab the reader’s attention with an image related to the story but not defined by the story. Sometimes authors get the notion their cover has to detail something that happened in the book. How is the reader supposed to know that? All they see is the cover, and that cover needs to speak to the reader to want to look further in the book.

One thing I love about self-publishing is I am able change my book covers anytime I need to. There have been times where I didn’t select the best book cover and have had to change it. For my companion piece to A Whiskered Perspective, Green & Red Flags to Look For In a Relationship, I chose a red cover design to promote red and green flags. Later on I realized I needed a more relationship-oriented cover, so I changed it up to meet that need.

Another time I had a duller cover for God is a Mob Boss—it wasn’t getting a lot of attention. So I changed up the cover and more people look at it now.

Creating a great cover is an art I think.

How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?

For me, I like to start off with a skeleton outline. Then when I have time, I come back to it and start filling in the details as I write. I generally write from the beginning to the end this way. For my short stories I am a definite pantser—writing what I see in my mind’s eye and going with the flow.

When I get bogged down with longer stories, I break down my outline into events, and think about writing those events as short stories that are connected together. That way I don’t think about the whole book I have to write, but rather the event or scene in front of me.

What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

I am currently working on my Dark Twists Trilogy. The first book, Dark Twists and Surreal Turns, is available now, and I’m planning on releasing the second book, House, Haunted, around October. Once I get done with that, I plan on writing a sequel to A Whiskered Perspective. I also have copious short horror stories I am in the process of editing to release Black Cat Scribbles Vol. 2 (Vol. 1 is available now).

What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

That this could happen to anyone. I’ve read and heard stories of this type of relationship happening over and over. A possible partner comes off as the nicest person in the world, definitely in your corner. Then when you get closer and more under their control a flip gets switched and you start to question yourself.

Nobody thinks it could happen to them, but the harsh reality is bad relationships happen to a lot of people. Don’t every take your good relationships for granted.