J.L. Doty is a successful indie author with a clean, crisp narrative style that catapults his characters right off the pages. Born in Seattle, he now makes his home in California.
From a very early age he made up stories in his head, but never considered writing for a living. So he got a Ph.D. in optical engineering, and went to work as a research scientist. But he was still making up stories in his head, so he wrote the first draft of A Choice of Treasons, and, according to Doty, “It was 250,000 words of pure, unmitigated crap. It was terrible: poorly written, poorly plotted, shallow characters that no reader could come to care about. It was the hardest decision I ever made, but I literally threw it away and turned to other projects.”
He spent more than a year writing the first draft of Child of the Sword. Then he went back to A Choice of Treasons and rewrote the entire novel from scratch over several years.
Science has always been a passion for Doty, but writing is an addiction. He’s published four books now, with four more in various stages of completion: The SteelMaster of Indwallin, book 2 in The Gods Within, should be out in December, and Still Not Dead Enough, book 2 in The Dead Among Us, should be out next March.
I was recently introduced to Doty through Steve Himes, a partner at Telemachus Press, our shared publisher. My feeling: not only is he a great writer but a genuinely good person. So without further adieu, it is my great pleasure to introduce my guest, the one and only J.L. Doty!
Blackwell: Let’s start with Child of The Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within. You mentioned the other day that this novel has suddenly started shooting up the Amazon sales charts. To what do you owe the sudden success of this novel and how has it impacted your other titles?
J.L. Doty: Well it certainly isn’t because of my savvy marketing skills. I’ve tried all the things indie authors are supposed to do to self-market, and scored a big, flat zero. I don’t think I’m very good at that. I do think something that played a big role in Child’s success is its strong YA element. I never thought of it as YA, but after-the-fact I guess it is, and that is apparently an enormous market.
Blackwell: In the wake of this sudden success, are you now looking to fine tune your social media engines? What, in particular, do you plan on doing?
J.L. Doty: “Fine tune” would be the wrong choice of words. I’ve done so poorly with social media I think I really need to start from scratch. I didn’t even know about Goodreads until a few weeks ago when one of my readers told me that’s where he heard about me. Boy, do I feel like a dufus. I’m just now filling out my Goodreads page.
Blackwell: That brings me to my next question. I’ve been having trouble defining your genre. It seems you cross a number of genres: epic fantasy, science fantasy, science fiction, paranormal and now with Child of the Sword you’ve made a mammoth leap into the YA genre. Was any of this intended and what genres do you believe are generic to your work?
J.L. Doty: Someone once said something like “…write what you read,” and I read a lot of science fiction, traditional fantasy, and contemporary urban fantasy. I would add to that advice “…write what you enjoy writing.” I would do a terrible job writing the next young-beautiful-vampires-who-give-the-best-sex novel. I think one thing that is generic to my work is what Joseph Campbell called the “hero myth.” My version is: put the hero, and preferably a heroine as well, through absolute hell and see how they handle it.
Blackwell: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about the writing process. How many words a day do you average when you’re writing a book? And, is there a particular time of day or night that you find you’re at your best?
J.L. Doty: I’m an early riser, so I’m best before noon. As to the process, I’ve never completely plotted a book out before I wrote it. I always take the thread of an idea, think about it for a while, usually work out what the end is going to be, play with a few scenes in my head, then sit down and start writing. At that point I can crank out 20,000 words in a week. Then I go into a tedious phase cleaning it up, thinking about where it’s going to go, and reviewing character development and plot elements in a very calculating way. It’s a tedious grind that can last for three or four weeks before I sit down to “write” again.
Blackwell: Is there anything in particular that you do while you write, like listen to music, to inspire you?
J.L. Doty: No, not really. But when I’m in that “writing” phase I’m totally immersed in the character, the scene and the world I’ve created. I think the most inspiring thing is when I’m cranking away, and one of the characters suddenly does something I didn’t know was going to happen, and it fits. Talk about schizophrenia! That’s when I know it’s working.
Blackwell: Your writing style is very concise, yet evocative. Did it take you a long time to find your muse?
J.L. Doty: I didn’t have any trouble finding my muse, but developing a concise style was a whole ‘nother thing. I have a document that’s a three-page list of all the things I do wrong, and I do them all the time over and over and over again. For a novel length manuscript, it takes me two to three weeks to search out every possible occurrence of each of those items on that list. By the way, every time I finish a book the list grows.
Blackwell: When did you know you wanted to become a writer full-time? And what advantage do you think your scientific background has provided?
J.L. Doty: I’ve wanted to be a full-time writer for twenty years, but I couldn’t get an agent or traditional publishing house to give me the time of day. I’m doing it now because it’s an addiction, and I’ve saved up enough money to pay the bills while I indulge that addiction.
As to the scientific background, I think it helps only a little, even in hard science fiction. A scientist writing science fiction has to be careful not to get caught up in spewing techno-drivel, which is just down-right boring. I think of Gene Roddenbery of Star Trek fame. He came up with phasers and photon-torpedoes, and he never explained them, and that worked just fine for all of us.
Blackwell: Let’s talk about your next book. When will it be released and what’s it all about?
J.L. Doty: The next book is The SteelMaster of Indwallin, book 2 in The Gods Within trilogy. Without giving away any spoilers, it continues the story of Morgin and Rhianne and the clans, and Morgin gets to see firsthand the truth of the Great Clan Wars of the past, or rather the lies behind the legends they’ve all been taught. I finished it last Sunday and sent it on to my editor, and my publisher tells me we should be able to have a pre-Christmas release.
Blackwell: Do you have any goals in terms of how many novels you would like to crank out per year?
J.L Doty: I’d like to do one per year, but I’m not sure if I can. I can crank out 100,000 words in less than a year, but the process of cleaning it up and removing all the amateurish mistakes I make in a first draft, that takes a while. That said, the success of “Child” means I can afford to hire a professional editor, which should vastly speed up the process without messing up quality.
Blackwell: How would you summarize what you are trying to achieve in all your work?
JL Doty: I want to write a good story and entertain, and maybe scare someone a bit, or make them laugh and/or cry a bit, make them feel sad when a good guy dies, happy when a bad guy gets what he deserves. But I never want to be predictable. And it’s nice to provoke thought, but if you don’t entertain first, no one will read your stuff to get to the thought-provoking part.
Blackwell: Tell me a little quirk about your personality and interests that might surprise your audience?
J.L. Doty: According to my wife I walk around talking to myself like Mr. Magoo. But what’s really going on is that if I’m doing something that doesn’t require a lot of thinking, my mind is working through scenes in the book I’m working on. And that does involve a certain amount of muttering.
Blackwell: Tell me five things on the bucket list you want to do before you die?
J.L. Doty: Probably the biggest thing on my bucket list was to have people read and enjoy my writing, and you can’t believe how much joy I’m getting from that right now. Beyond that I’d like to write ten more novels. Visit Budapest and Prague. Keep writing into very old age.
Blackwell: What advice would you offer to other authors trying to break into the indie author game?
J.L. Doty: Remember that the majority of your time is really spent doing all that non-creative tedious stuff that ain’t no fun: proofing, editing, cleaning-up, filling holes in the plot and holes in the character development. Make that list of things you do wrong, then edit and cut, and be ruthless about it. And after you’ve done that, then edit and cut and edit and cut and edit and cut…
Blackwell: That’s it for this author spotlight. If you’re looking for an entertaining and talented writer, I encourage you to check out J.L. Doty’s work. Feel free to ask questions of J.L. Doty using the comments section below and, until next time, thanks for stopping by.
Connect with J.L Doty at his website: http://www.jldoty.com
Email: jld@jldoty.com
Twitter: @JL_Doty