A Q&A with author Anthony R. Fanning

Today I have the pleasure of hosting author Anthony R. Fanning. He wrote a great adventure story called Natalie's Good Fortune, which I reviewed here. I'm giving away a copy of the book, and I'll give you an extra entry for commenting on this interview!

So, without further ado, let's talk to Anthony. Thanks for agreeing to this interview, by the way.

There's no bio on your website, so perhaps you could start out just telling us a little bit about yourself.

My family is originally from eastern Kentucky, but my father had to travel often in his early career so my younger sister and I were born in southern California. In the San Diego area, it is easy for young boys and girls to learn to love the beach and the ocean. We moved to Ohio in the mid-sixties, where my mother went to the local university for art and earned her BFA. My two sisters and I were always encouraged to be creative in whatever way we could. I took to drawing and storytelling like a fish takes to water and have not been able to stop regardless of failures and setbacks. “You can’t fail in art,” my mother would say, “only learn how not to do things.” I spent a few years in the USMC, a few more working for the USAF, and finally found my niche as a professional firefighter/paramedic. This job, the greatest job in the world, affords me the time and resources to be as creative as I want; drawing, designing T-shirts for the firecompanies, writing, sewing costumes for the local renaissance festival, setting up an educational booth at the local Celtic Festival about Scotch-Irish pirates … whatever I can imagine.

What inspired you to start writing this book?

I’ve always had a fascination with pirates; those swashbuckling rogues of the Golden Age of Piracy, with ideals borne early in life mostly through books and films like Blackbeard’s Ghost, Peter Pan, and The Sea Hawk. In 1999 I took my wife and kids to the Outer Banks Islands in North Carolina, to the Ocracoke area which is reputed to have been visited often by the pirate Blackbeard, and too, the place where the notorious pirate was killed. Walking the beaches and visiting sites like the British Cemetery and the Ocracoke Light, quite literally, the story came to me on the wind; images of pirate attacks and sea battles filled my head. As for the character of Natalie; I have always held an appreciation for the strength and courage of woman in history. With my father on the road trying to provide sustenance for the family, I grew up believing that it was the women … the mothers who tended to their children; nurturing and protecting them, teaching themhow to live and love. It was my older sister who taught me to fight, pretty much by beating up on me every couple of days until I learned to fight back. Also, the stories of what my grandmothers went through in the hills of Kentucky. These were extremely tough and wise women. Men really don’t give women enough credit for their courage and fortitude, and although I have long known of the exploits of those infamous pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, there are still people who believe there were no women pirates. In this book I’ve combined my fascination with the Golden Age of Piracy with my appreciation of the ‘fairer’ sex, and tried to add a dash of personality from every woman I have ever known into the characters of Natalie Brennan Satterfield and the women she encounters; mothers, wives, and daughters.

What was the hardest part of writing Natalie's Good Fortune?

Editing. Cutting out bits of story I love, but which don’t contribute to building the character or the story. I really enjoy exploring the personalities of the characters and fleshing them out so the reader and I can both get to know them better, but doing so tends to really slow the story. Of course, there is also the tremendous amount of research, not only into the history of the time, getting the chronology right, but also in simple words. I’d love to use the phrase “cheeky monkey” just because it’s fun to say, but cheeky was apparently not a word used in the early 18th century.

I often wonder this about authors of historical fiction- do you ever wished you had been born in another time?

I have a MySpace account with the username “Born300YearsTooLate,” but I truly don’t wish to have been born 300 years ago. Although things seemed much simpler, they were in fact much more difficult. Seriously, when I was a kid I used to help my grandmother wash and dry her clothes by cranking the handle on the wringer (anybody remember those?) It was hard work. My grandfather was missing his index finger because of an accident chopping wood and he lived up in the hills. Children and mothers died during childbirth on a very regular basis. Disease wiped out thousands of people at a time. London, the greatest city in the civilized world in the early 18th century, was a place of squalor, disease, and poverty. Certainly, books and movies romanticize those years and make people long for those times, but it was an ugly time in history. We live in amazing times now. I’ll give you an example; a week ago I went to the scene of a heroin overdose. The guy was breathing three, maybe four times a minute. His life was coming to a close, and if he had been found five minutes later he would be dead today. One of the guys on the engine crew used a plastic BVM to pump oxygen in the guy’s lungs while I stuck a needle with a plastic catheter into his arm. I injected 2 mg of Naloxone into his bloodstream and the guy is alive and well today. We live in amazing times. Truly. I do love the dresses of the 18th century though, and often wish women wore them today.

Yours is one of the first self-published novels I've reviewed. Can you tell us a bit about the self-publishing process?

Self-publishing is surprisingly easy, and an author can even create their own cover art. After editing, choosing a size for the book, the type of binding, and the cover design (even one create designed completely by the author,) the basic process is formatting your document into the proper size and look, then converting to PDF. Upload to one of the many self-publishing websites, and you’re ready to print. Simple. Of course, you have to be careful about how anxious you are, otherwise you might order 25 copies of your book only to note too late that you’ve misspelled your main character’s name on the cover. It is best to order a copy for review prior to a final release. An author can always make revisions after you’ve uploaded your work. The hard part is selling the book; getting people to take note and lay down their hard-earned money, which is typically above the normal bookstore price, for a book written by an unknown author. There are otherdetails to consider too, like ISBNs, which some publishing packages provide, and copyrights registered with the Library of Congress; services for which an author/publisher has to pay. Your book can be made available on sites such as Amazon.com, but there again is an increase in price. So, although the process of self publishing is actually very simple, the details involved in marketing your work are very involved, and the prospective self-publisher should research every aspect prior to committing to the work.

A few blog readers have asked about the availability of Natalie's Good Fortune for purchase. Where is your book available?

The book is printed and available for purchase through Lulu.com, and I keep a small quantity on hand for sale also. (I’ve also been known to walk into a bookstore and plant a copy on a shelf, but the odds of finding one of those would be akin to winning the lottery.) Anybody wishing to purchase a copy can visit my website at www.nataliebrennan.com to see which option they prefer. There are links to lead the way. I have considered having hardcover editions made available, just so there will be copies available for my grandchildren to read however, being quite busy writing the third book of the series, I don’t have any immediate plans create the hardcover version. When I do, there will likely be illustrations involved, so there shall be extra work before that is done.

What are your plans for the future, in terms of your writing? Are you working on anything right now?

I have hopes of acquiring an agent and moving on to a major publisher, which would make the books available to a broad market and much more affordable. The Natalie Brennan tale keeps pouring forth and the second book will be available in just a matter of days, with the third in the works. I should like to continue writing tales of the spunky Miss Brennan, as she seems to be an endless source of adventure, and the story continues to unravel.

What are some of your favorite books, and what are you reading now?

I’m currently reading “Master and Commander” by Patrick O’Brian, but took a short break today to read ‘Sphere’, the Ohio University undergraduate magazine (poetry and short stories.) I read a lot of history books for reference, and find them fascinating, but I can’t say any of them are a favorite. Some of my past faves have been “Jaws” and “The Island” by Peter Benchley. I’ve enjoyed many tales by Stephen King, and the “Bloody Jack” series by L.A. Meyer. A couple of the select few books I’ve read more than once include “The Big Pick-Up” and “Flight of the Phoenix” by Elliston Trevor. I couldn’t put down “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, and “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess really spoke to me. In 1984, I read “1984” by George Orwell, and found it truly thought provoking. “Rags of Glory” was a tremendous story by Stuart Cloete, and … well, I could go on nearly forever with some reallyfantastic reads. Basically, I like stories in which, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the protagonist will persevere and triumph in the end.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I would like to share an anecdote about spelling; When a young boy, I discovered a room in our home packed full of dime-store paperback novels, literally thousands of them. I took a particular interest in the World War II stories written by English authors. Two of my favorites are mentioned above. With many words, the English have a different manner of spelling than we Yanks, and when I attended school we did not learn by phonics, we learned by rote. I learned spelling and grammar through reading. In class, whenever I would write a paper with words such as colour or favour, the teachers would mark them as incorrect spellings, provoking vehement argument from me over the matter, arguments which I would always lose. (I remember a left-handed girl in class whom the teachers forced into learning to write right-handed. I felt her pain.) Finally, after years of such maddening duality, I am writing a tale of an English girl and find writing in the way Ioriginally learned to be liberating. I really feel the visual aspect of the English spelling adds flavour to the tale.

Thanks for speaking with us today, Anthony- it's been a pleasure! And thanks to all of you reading. Please leave a comment and go on over to the book review to enter to win a copy of this great book!