My name is Josh de Lioncourt, and I’m a blind indie author and writer of (mostly) fantasy fiction. I have several books available now in The Dragon’s Brood Cycle series, including my latest short novella, Treasures and Trinkets.
2. What are your favourite books?
I read a lot of everything. Stephen King and Anne Rice are my favorite authors of all time, but other favorites can vary depending on my mood and what I’ve read recently. Annette Marie, Barry Hutchison, and Rachel Aaron are among my favorite indie authors. If I had to pick just one favorite book series, it would probably be Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.
3. When did you know you wanted to be an author?
I’ve been writing stories of one sort or another as long as I can remember. Sometimes I wrote fiction stories; sometimes I told stories via songs; sometimes it was some other medium. I love exploring new ways to tell stories, and I’ve been doing it since I could hold a crayon, before I lost my vision. I suppose I’ll keep on telling stories forever.
4. What is your favourite part of the writing process? What is your least favourite and how do you get through it?
My favorite part of the writing process is polishing. I love going through what I’ve written and making small changes here and there until the rhythm of the words and the images they conjure are just right. The hardest part for me is the first draft, because I often know what I’m putting down isn’t quite right. All I can do is try to forget about that and lose myself in the story as much as I can.
5. What is your writing routine?
As much as I have one, it’s sitting with my iPad and hammering out the first few drafts. Once the story is pretty well polished, I switch to my Mac for formatting. Somewhere along the way, it ends up in the hands of my editor, Christie Stratos, who fixes all the bits that have gone wrong.
6. How do you balance writing (and everything else to do with it) with the rest of your life?
Like most of us indies, I’m still struggling with finding that balance. I sometimes go through long stretches when I struggle to get words down at all, and others when I can hammer out thousands of words a day for weeks or months. I keep trying to find a better balance between life and writing, but there is no magic formula that I’ve ever found. If any other writers out there know of one, please drop me a note!
7. What inspires you? How do you beat writers block?
Reading and listening to music are generally the activities that inspire me or help me work through a particularly difficult obstacle in a story. Sometimes, just reading another author’s work, even (or especially) if it is totally different from what I write, can make me think, “I want to write something that good.” And that helps get the words flowing again.
8. How do you keep consistent/write a lot?
In general, what I write tends to end up (more or less) etched into my mind. I “see” what I describe very clearly, and remember it well, so constancy has usually come naturally to me. Even when I’ve forgotten a particular detail, I can always remember where it was so I can look it up. As The Dragon’s Brood Cycle approaches half a million words, it gets harder, though.
9. Does anyone read or edit your work before publication? If so, how did you find them?
My editor is Christie Stratos from ProofPositivePro.com. She is absolutely brilliant, and we work incredibly well together. I honestly don’t remember how I found Christie’s site; I was looking for a new editor and she came across my radar. Finding and working with Christie was one of the luckiest breaks I’ve ever had since starting to write.
10. Can we have a sneaky look at your future plans?
I am currently writing volume 3 of The Dragon’s Brood Cycle, along with another unrelated book. I have a couple of other projects in the works as well that are books for very small children and completely different from what I usually write, and I hope at least one of those will see the light soon. I’m also exploring new and different ways to release new content.
11. Finally, what advice would you give to other writers (inspiring, those publishing and those published)?
The best advice I can give to other writers is always the same: trust your characters. Even if it feels like they are leading your story astray, you have to go where they take you; there will be time to get your story back on track later. If characters start to feel more like pawns than real people, you are likely to lose your reader and the very thing that makes storytelling so magical.
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