I mainly read horror/thrillers, but strangely enough I'm just getting to the end of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L Frank Baum. Since discovering Smashwords, I've been reading a lot by self-publishers and I think it's fair to say there's a lot of talent out there that I would have never have heard of, if it wasn't for the rise and the popularity of the ebook.

In school mainly. When I was ten years old I wrote a lame 123 page 'novel' called The Caribbean Tragedy about a Hammerhead shark killing bathers at a holiday resort. It was a complete rip-off from Jaws (my favourite film) and was what would you expect from a ten-year-old.

I like to read off my phone, and I have an iBook and Kindle app. This helps with monotonous bus journeys and lunchtimes.

I have never purchased a full price paperback in years. In fact, the last paperback I had bought was 'The Green Mile' which only cost me 50p at a Church fete.

Freebies! Simple.

The problem with me is that my first dozen novels were standalone books in different genres (horror/thriller/supernatural). It's quite hard to get a decent following with standalone novels. A series is definitely the way to go, which is a road I'll go down from 2014 and onwards. My first six standalone novels will all be free by Christmas to boost my audience, before I start pricing my future work.

I think it even suggests in the Smashwords Marketing Guide book that a series is definitely the way to go, and that is proved with self-publishers. Even the greats, like Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas series), Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli and Isles), etc, seem to have more success with serial books, which is the way I'll be going from now on.

The latest offering is called 'Snatchers.'

It's a zombie book and will be the first book in a series. The first book is 117,000 words long and will be free. The second is already finished.

I'll also be starting a series on a police procedural book once I've released my last standalone novel, The Prison Diaries.'

To tell you the truth, I became an indie author because I had been rejected by the publishing companies.

I had written five novels from 2002 to 2007 and then gave up and wrote short stories for a few small publishing companies. Those five novels stayed in my attic for years. Then I discovered Smashwords, took out the dusty floppy disks from the attic and began putting out short stories to test the formatting on Smashwords as well as the meatgrinder, before putting out a full novel.

I think when you start and get emails from people who have read your work, and they've gone out of their way to write you a positive message, that certainly gives you a lift. When you're a writer based in Glasgow, Scotland and someone from Brisbane, Australia has read your books and have emailed you, that can put you on a high for the rest of the day.

I love Stephen King, Lynda La Plante and James Herbert.

I've started reading a lot of self-pub authors as well. The last three books I've read were:

DJ Molles-'The Remaining'
AR Wise-314 (1 and 2)
JD Nixon-Blood Ties

My alarm clock.

Seriously, I have two kids under the age of seven. Lie-ins just don't happen in my house.

Reading.

If I'm not writing, I'm reading. Or going to the gym.

I write whenever i can. Unfortunately, I only have a two hour window to write everyday.

When I was at work, the company were going through a dry patch with the whole credit crunch thing.

Now, when you work in an office and there's little to do and you have a PC, you can either play solitare or write. In that year, at my desk at work, I managed to write four books (Black Hour, Misty Falls and Snatchers 1 and 2).

.

It's wooden. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).