The good folks at BookLikes have run an amazing author interview in which I detail some of the secrets to becoming a non-successful fiction author in your spare time!
In all seriousness, it was an honor to appear on the site and I’m even running a paperback giveaway for Mytro right here. Sign up to grab a free book!
Read on for an excerpt from the interview.
All of my books are DRM free. I know that DRM is useless – I can break Amazon’s in a few clicks and almost every major DRM system has been shattered upon release – and I want people to read my books. That’s why I give them away when it makes sense (you can get Mytro free on the iBooks store now, for example) and try to offer my own download pages when possible. I’ll continue to do this.
I thought I’d share a talk by Cory Doctorow on this very topic and explain my position on books these days.
Continue reading
“I’m from Barcelona”, Agata said.
The very first instance of the city’s name being used in Mytro. While it is difficult to say what exactly was going on in that scene without revealing too much, it is a place that holds a certain magic for our young heroes and it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world. That’s why it’s so important in Mytro.
Continue reading
We New Yorkers know Central Park as a big space, full of greenery, tourists, dogs, bicycles, and sunlight — meanwhile, in the winter it retains the atmosphere reminiscent of a nuclear wasteland (probably only I think that). In Mytro, the name “Central Park” appears exactly 25 times, and each time, it makes an important reference to it, and even plays an important part in some of the scenes.
Continue reading
Lay Your Cards Out by POLIÇA is one of my favorite songs and I listened to it a lot while writing Mytro. I even named a chapter, near the end, after the song.
Continue reading
First seen in Chapter 27 of Mytro, the Charles Bridge is an iconic location briefly mentioned by Agata to Turtle as being close to Brehova — the next stop for the pair after Barcelona. When a reader comes to the realization that Turtle and Agata used the Mytro to travel from Barcelona to Prague in no time flat, Agata’s phone immediately began serving roaming messages; the Charles Bridge literally serves as a bridge to stabilize the reader in the first few pages of the chapter. Through some communication and the use of maps on a phone, the characters find themselves reaching one of their goals in the Brehova district.
Continue reading
Paella is a Spanish dish that is made of sausage, shrimp, and deliciously-cooked rice. If you go to Barcelona they make it in a special wok-like pan that makes special crispy rice on the bottom that the Spanish call socarrat. It is one of my favorite dishes – up until I became a vegetarian – and I wanted Agata and Turtle to eat some while they were visiting Spain.
Continue reading
A lot of people have been asking me where I got the idea for Mytro. I remember it vividly: we were in Madrid and I was under a statue of Lucifer falling from heaven when inspiration struck like a bolt from above.
Allow me to explain.
Continue reading