Inside the Mind - Neil Davies

I honestly think it's just something I've always done. When I was 8 or 9 I would write stories to take into school and the teacher would ask me to read them out to the class. They were usually attempts at humour which made the class laugh, so that reaction certainly helped me to keep on writing. I've always felt I had stories to tell, not so much deep and meaningful as (hopefully) entertaining.

My most recent publication is the revised and extended version of Eyes Of The Raven. It's a detective story which develops into a story of witchcraft and horror. It's set in Cheshire, England, as are several of my stories, and follows the investigation into a number of serial killings with possible connections to witchcraft.

They often have elements of several real people I've encountered, but are never direct copies of one. They have characteristics that serve the story (the highly capable detective in A World Of Assassins, for example, or the irritatingly self-serving cynical narrator in Hard Winter). There is also a certain amount of myself in many of the characters, it's hard to avoid at times. I worry less about their physical appearance and more about their character, thoughts and feelings. The physical appearance can be filled in over time with occasional comments or, often, allowing the reader to fill in the gaps. What drives the character internally is more important than what they look like.

It has to be seeing your work in print. For years, growing up, I desperately wanted to get my writing published, but I lacked confidence and, on the couple of occasions where I did send work off and it was rejected, I let that knock my confidence even more. It wasn't until I met my wife and she started pushing me to keep trying that I started to get work accepted into magazines and anthologies,. Getting a novel accepted, especially as I mostly wrote Science Fiction and Horror (not the most commercial of genres back then), was harder. The ability to create your own books online was a major thing for me. I could see my longer works in print form, even though the stigma at the time of self published author was always there. Thankfully things have got better and also easier and I've been lucky enough to have books published by several small publishers as well as publishing my own. It's always rewarding to have someone else like your work enough to publish it through their own company, but there is still a great satisfaction in producing your own, where you have complete control over layout, cover etc. Both are rewarding in different ways and I hope to be able to continue to utilise both routes to publishing in the future.

Procrastination. I am terrible at putting off the start of writing. There's always just that one other thing that needs doing or thinking about. Once I actually start writing it's fine, but I am one of the worst people I know at procrastination.

For some years now I've been using Scrivener. When I started writing I used my dad's typewriter (my parents eventually bought me one of my own) and then completely fell in love with word processing - so easy to edit and correct. I was never too enamoured of the hardware word processors, which often had screens that only showed a few lines at a time, but once I got into computers and using Word Perfect (I think that was the first one I used) and eventually Word there was no going back. I've never been good at writing by hand (my handwriting is terrible and my hand cramps quite quickly) so it was always going to be things like typewriters and word processing. Scrivener, designed especially for writers, really seems to help my work process, and so I think I'll be sticking there for the time being.

Keep writing. I know it's a little cliché, but it's still true. The more you write, the better you get. Also, don't let rejection stop you. It doesn't mean your story or writing is bad but simply that it didn't fit what that particular editor was looking for at that time. Took me a long time to accept that one. Finally, remember that you are telling a story. Your writing should convey that story to the reader, not try and impress them with the fancy words you know. Tell the story and write the characters as real people. But most of all, keep writing.

I'm currently about two-thirds of the way through the first draft of a new Science Fiction novel, and recently wrote the opening of a new horror story... to early to know how that will turn out and whether it will be a short story or longer. To be honest, at this point, I don't even know exactly what the story will be. I just had the idea for the opening and needed to get it down. But most of my writing effort is being put into the sci fi novel at present. Have to get that first draft done, then I can start refining the writing and the story etc.. I'm also busy reformatting my self published paperbacks into a new format, with covers created by my son, Jonathan. That's ongoing. So, plenty coming up in the future. I hope to see you there.