Today I welcome Allan Hunter to the blog to answer a few questions
for Interview³.
Allan Hunter Author Interview³
1) Tell us 3 fun facts about your writing history
I sat down to write about my life in 2010 when I was 51; I'd never attempted a full autobiography before. In 2013 I caught up with the present era and by that time I had written 973,000 words, by far the longest thing I'd ever written. This tome was 1295 pages long, single-spaced! The current book was distilled from the first 375 pages' worth.
2) Describe your writing style in 3 words
Plain, wry, direct
3) Name 3 of your literary influences
Marilyn French, Robert Pirsig, Louise Fitzhugh
4) Share your 3 favourite books
The Forgotten Door, Alexander Key; Gödel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter; The Anatomy of Freedom, Robin Morgan
5) What are your 3 essential writing tools?
A plain text editor, long walks to clarify my thoughts, and a willing beta reader
6) Where are your 3 favourite places to write?
I write wherever my laptop is, but I prefer the familiarity (and lack of interruption) of my home office. I also write on the train during commutes (have missed my stop on occasion!) and in various waiting rooms and lobbies.
7) Name 3 items on your writing wish list
I always wanted to write for Seal Press (just because I like their authors); I want to write a suspense thriller about being kept in a locked-ward psychiatric setting by an unethical doctor; and I want to publish a full length work of social theory in the tradition of radical feminism.
8) What are your top 3 tips for aspiring writers?
Find your voice; write your book as naturally as you'd chat with your friends on Facebook, don’t try to mimic someone else; and write your scenes and chapters fast and worry about polishing and fixing grammar etc later.
9) Tell us 3 of your writing plans for the year ahead
Mainly focused on the current book: trying to find a new publisher, first and foremost!
10) Tell us about your latest release
Well, I don't have a "release", latest or otherwise. I'm a first-time author whose first book was under contract but the arrangement fell through. I can tell you about THAT book though.
The Story of Q: A GenderQueer Tale is a 97K word coming-out and coming-of age story. It doesn't fit neatly into any conventional genre but it's sort of a literary YA except that it's nonfiction. When I was a teenager and young adult myself, I desperately wanted to read something about someone like me, but there wasn't anything. There still isn't, really: the word "genderqueer" is out there and there's a wider acceptance and understanding of gender differences, but how often have you read the narrative of a person figuring out that they were gender atypical and what that was like? So I wrote the book that I would have wanted to read when I was that age.
About the Author
To find out more about Allan and his writing, visit his LiveJournal.
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