May 29, 2024
Mark interviews author Todd Fahnestock about his latest book for writers: Falling to Fly: The Book To Read Before Giving Up On Your Writing Dreams.
This episode is sponsored by the Patrons and Coffee Buddies of the Stark Reflections Podcast.
In the interview Mark and Todd talk about:
- Who Todd is and the edge of the seat epic fantasy he writes
- A little bit about Todd's memoir of hiking the Colorado Trail with his 15-year-old son
- The pitch for Summer of the Fetch, one of his one-off books
- Todd's latest book FALLING TO FLY: The Book to Read Before Giving Up on Your Writing Dreams
- How the book includes several completely frank episodes where Todd fell flat on his face and failed, and yet picked himself up one more time
- The idea of failure being the classroom and success being the diploma
- Being bored with a story where there's no challenge, or struggle, or flaws in the main character
- How fantasy books saved Todd's life when he was young and the fact he wanted to do the same thing for someone else
- The "writer dream" interviews that Todd is doing on social media
- The chapter called "The Little Rebel" and what that particular voice does for Todd
- The nightmare that inspired the idea for the title FALLING TO FLY
- And more . . .
After the interview Mark reflects on how great a storyteller Todd is, how much he enjoyed Todd's latest book, and the value when someone paints an authentic picture of the actual stark realities of the writing life.
Links of Interest:
- Todd Fahnestock's Website
- EP 340 - Personality, Passion, Presentation, and Persistence with Todd Fahnestock
- ScribeCount (Mark's Affiliate Link)
- DropCap Marketplace
- Use coupon STARK20 to get 20% off
- Cruising Writers
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
Todd Fahnestock is an award-winning, #1 bestselling author of fantasy for all ages and winner of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age Award. Threadweavers and The Whisper Prince Trilogy are two of his bestselling epic fantasy series. He is a founder of Eldros Legacy—a multi-author, shared-world mega-epic fantasy series—three-time winner of the Colorado Authors League Award for Writing Excellence, and two-time finalist for the Colorado Book Award for Tower of the Four: The Champions Academy (2021) and Khyven the Unkillable (2022).
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0