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Interview with MR Sellars By PJ Nunn MR Sellars, author of Harm None and Never Burn a Witch, is the recipient of the Linda White Literary Excellence and Silver Quill Awards for the short stories upon which the Rowan Gant Investigations are based. PJ NUNN - Welcome, Murray. When did you first start writing?  MR SELLARS - I wrote a story for my mother using various colors of crayons to convey emotions at around three years of age - something to do with a dinosaur. I was probably somewhere in the late 4’s or early 5’s - really. My parents were both avid readers and would read to me constantly. This nurtured in me a fanatical love for the written word, so I was starting to read when I entered Kindergarten.As soon as I was able to figure out how, I began writing. Anything and everything. I had inordinately huge amounts of stuff running around in my head, so I had to find some place to put it since it kept me awake during nap time. Paper seemed like the logical place because I could fold it up and put it in my pocket. This method has worked so well for me that I have simply continued. What was your first published piece? My first published piece - that’s a hard one. As far as I can recall, that would've been a two page bit of free form poetry written when I was seventeen, filled with teenage angst (as was the prose), and not feeling too good about the world around me. When I woke up the next morrning, my mother was sitting at my desk sniffling. Seems I had left my work on top of the typewriter, and when she came in to wake me, she had read it. She asked if she could submit the poem to a magazine, and it ended up published in a local, short lived literary magazine. Since Harm None is billed as A Rowan Gant Investigation, I assume there will be more to follow. What's next? The Rowan Gant Investigations are most definitely intended to be a series. Whether or not there will be any more published depends on how well Harm None does. I will certainly be writing more. The second book in the series Never Burn a Witch is already written, although I decided to re-write the last few chapters recently and change the ending. Beyond that, I have already done the necessary research for the third book in the series. An outline has been drafted and some sample vignettes penned. My intention is to keep the Rowan Gant Investigations going as long as they remain fresh and entertaining. When I feel that the stories have lost their edge, I’ll move on to something else. The way you portray Wicca in the book is very balanced. How did you come to have such an intimate knowledge of the craft? We do call it The Craft. It's been called that for many years. Hollywood decided to sensationalize it and the phrase as well, so when many hear The Craft it conjures images of the movie. My personal knowledge of Wicca and WitchCraft come from two things: I have been a student of religious diversity for many years; and I am a practicing Witch. Notice I said Witch, not Warlock. Warlock is an old term which means Oath Breaker. It’s also what male witches are called on a sixties sitcom. In reality, we are just called Witches. Are you targeting the books toward a particular audience? Yes and no. While the theme is Wiccan and should hopefully appeal to other members of that particular group, I was aiming more for a Harry Kemmelman type of approach. The books should be entertaining to anyone who likes reading mystery/suspense thrillers, but they could at the same time educate non-pagan readers about the reality of WitchCraft and Wicca. Will Wicca figure so prominently in all of them? I would certainly look for Wicca to play a fairly major role in each of the Rowan Gant Investigations. With Rowan being a practicing Witch, and the police getting him involved in investigations when the clues are what they consider strange, bizarre or occult oriented, it’s almost inevitable. Whether or not a given murder or murders is going to be directly related to the occult as in Harm None is a different story. Rowan and Ben have a good relationship. Will this continue? It’s interesting that you should ask that. Ben and Rowan do have a very good relationship and I have every intention of keeping it that way, although there could be a storyline where they have a falling out for a brief period. Whether or not I’ll carry on with that idea remains to be seen. What writer has had the most influence on your work? That is a tough one to pin down. Some readers have compared me to Mercedes Lackey, Laurel K. Hamilton, Lawrence Sanders, Patricia Cornwell and John Sanford. Who most influenced my work? I’d have to say it’s a split between H. G. Wells and J. D. Salinger. What do you like to read for pleasure? Anything and everything. Even if I don’t like the book, I have an uncontrollable need to finish it. Robin Cook’s Chromosome Six is the only book I started but never finished. My reading tastes really do run the gamut. I love a good mystery, classic science fiction, selected historical accountings, and cooking magazines. I love cooking magazines. But with a six-month old daughter starting to crawl, my reading list is quickly changing. Who is MR Sellars? How prominently does he figure in your work? MR Sellars is my father as well. He just happens to have a Sr. after his name and I have a Jr. Who I am is a mystery to me as well as to everyone else. Who I am not is Rowan Gant. I would love to be him, but I’m not as patient or as optimistic as he is. Is there some of me in Rowan Gant? Maybe a little, but there’s probably more of me in Ben Storm. When it comes to Ben’s cynical attitude, that's me on a bad day. I adore cooking and have a splendid kitchen. If Rowan is standing in front of a stove, grill, or other device intended for the fine art of cooking in one of my books, then you are catching a glimpse of me. How active are your promotion efforts? Exhausting. Small presses have small budgets as we all know. Even large presses have small budgets when it comes to promotion. I am constantly sending out promotional letters and press kits to bookstores and niche organizations. I've had one in-store book signing event at this point and am working on scheduling more. I will be attending several Pagan functions and I constantly ask everyone I meet: "Do you like to read mysteries?" Do you write full time or do you have a day job? I would love to write full time. But I have a family to support and they come first. During the day I am a senior computer and electronics technician. That's what I do to pay the bills and I do my best to fit my writing time around it. Evenings during the week, if I am not doing promotion for Harm None or busy with my family, I am editing and outlining. Serious writing takes place on the weekends, when I tend to write two to three chapters in a total of twenty hours between Saturday and Sunday. I get started at about 5 AM or so, put on a pot of coffee, sit down in front of my computer with notes and tape recorder handy, put on some favorite music and headphones, and start typing wherever I left off. About noon I take a break for a sandwich, then go right back to the keyboard until around 4 or 5 pm, or until I have a coherent 100 to 120 thousand words with a beginning, middle and end. As an author, where do you see yourself in 5 years? Nothing ever goes as planned. If by chance something did actually go as planned, in five years I will be promoting the 5th or 6th book in the Rowan Gant Investigation Series, and I will have garnered an award or two. And I won’t be fixing computers for a living. What advice do you have for writers just starting out? If you want to write, then write and never give up. And you must love writing. If you don't absolutely love writing, don’t even consider doing it. Writing will tear you up inside and beat the hell out of you at every turn. You will pour your heart and soul on paper, and be dumbfounded when someone doesn’t love it as much as you do. But if you truly love it as you must, nothing else will matter, and you will be able to go on. |
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