Saturday 8 October 2016

Back Catalogue Books - Q&A with Chad Sanborn



Back Catalogue Books is my new regular Saturday feature, focusing on books that are not the latest releases. There is going to be a mix of Q&As and also reviews, depending on what I have the space for. 

If you are an author wanting to take part in Back Catalogue Books then please do email on gilbster at gmail dot com and I'll whizz the questions over to you. 

I hope everyone enjoys this weekly look back at some of the slightly older books that are about but still great, and that I eventually make a dent in my TBRs as a result of it!

Award-winning crime fiction author Chad Sanborn writes crime fiction because he has, he says, “a criminal’s mind but a coward’s stomach. Better to put the crime in a story than have my ass put in the cooler.”

Chad is the author of the The Billy Keene Stories. Filled with dark humor and redneck vengeance, this taut, fun and fast-moving crime series follows a young inexperienced sheriff as he grows into his job and comes to question both his place in the town where he grew up and the people he thought he knew.

Before his most recent book in the series, All Debts, Public And Private, Chad published Getaway, a crime novella prequel to the series.  Both ebooks are available on Amazon.

Here are the links to the ebooks:
Getaway: http://amzn.to/1BhQL0v
All Debts, Public and Private: http://amzn.to/1QvOUxE

You can find Chad on Twitter: @mrchadsanborn, Facebook: mrchadsanborn and li.st: @mrchadsanborn or his web site mrchadsanborn.com.


1) Please tell me about your first book, and what started you writing in the first place.  

I actually wrote All Debts, Public And Private before Getaway but published Getaway first for a few reasons. 

It serves as a prologue for two series, The Billy Keene Stories and The Felix Stories. The Keene Series is launched and running. I hope to launch The Felix series in 2017. 

Getaway was also my lab for exploring the mechanics of creating and distribution ebooks and experimenting with the ins and outs of marketing. Everything I learned with Getaway, I’ve been able to apply to the launch of ADPP.

2) How many books have you written and what are they? 

Prior to Getaway and ADPP, I wrote three unpublished novels. The first was about a lost weekend. It was a wonderful, necessary failure that will never see the light of day.

The other two -- Sweet Tooth, about a young man who goes looking for his stripper ex-girl friend but finds more than he can handle and The Left-Handed Family, about a high-tech bank heist -- I hope to eventually publish. But they both need some fixes before they’re ready. So many stories, so little time.

3) Which book are you most proud of writing? 

Sweet Tooth because that was the one where I got to the end and went, “Oh, I can actually do this.” And when people read it, not just my mom and friends but agents, publishers, people in the publishing world, their feedback was basically “Oh, you can do this so keep working at it.” It didn’t get picked up but the feedback helped me think maybe I wasn’t just kidding myself.

4) Which book was your favourite to write? 

All Debts, Public And Private. I’ve always been pretty good with dialogue and characters but with ADPP I think I got better at driving a story forward.

5) Who are your favourite characters from your books and why? 

Everyone says that’s like picking your favourite child and I agree: It totally depends on my mood and the situation! 

Sharla was a lot of fun to write and spend so much time with. She’s in both Getaway and ADPP and she’s crazy and funny and strong and mean.

6) If you could go back and change anything from any of your books, what would it be, and why? 

There are some story structure things I might like to tinker with -- and I may do that with a couple of the unpublished ones -- but I like how each book is a reflection of the writer I was at the time I wrote it. 

If I’m getting better as an author -- and I like to think I am -- then to me it makes the most sense to pour any newfound craftsmanship into a new work to document the writer I am now.

7) Which of your covers if your favourite and why? 

A friend of mine and a brilliant graphic artist, Max Kunakhovich, created the covers for both Getaway and ADPP. I love them both but there’s nothing to match that feeling I got the first time he showed me what was to become the cover for Getaway. It was like, “Yes, that’s it!” 

Somehow he was able to take what was in my head, add his brilliance to it then kick out something completely original and stunning that conveyed the tone of the story.

8) Have you ever thought about changing genres, if so what else would you like to write? 

No, not really. I love how crime fiction gives me an engine to drive the plot, which give me the freedom to explore a range of characters, relationships, motivations, actions, etc.

9) Looking forward can you let us know what you are working on next? 

Right now I’m working on the next book in The Billy Keene Stories.

10) I dare not ask for a favourite author, but is there any author’s back catalogue you admire and why? 

Elmore Leonard is one my favourites. His book are fun to read, clever characters, pitch perfect dialogue. He makes it look effortless.

11) Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your back catalogue of books?

I’m only starting to build a catalogue, which a very cool feeling. I’m always so focussed on what I’m working on at the moment, that it will be nice to look up one day and see several of them there waiting for new readers to discover, even if it’s years after I wrote them. 

Thank you so much Chad for agreeing to come on Rachel's Random Reads to talk about your back catalogue. 

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