Article 11

Scarberryfields: Can you tell us a little about your nationality?

Thomm:I am American.  My background is English, Irish, German, and Dutch, but I don’t have much of a connection with my roots (aside from my mother insisting to this day that I resemble my deceased German grandmother, whom she felt looked like wrinkled kewpie dolls, so I am not sure this is a compliment).

Scarberryfields: When you finish writing a story, do you miss the characters?

Thomm:Most of my stories take place within the same reality, so I don’t ever feel they are gone.  Even character I have killed off can reappear through flashbacks, so they aren’t far.

Scarberryfields: While writing, if you need help with punctuation, grammar, etcetera, where do you turn?

Thomm:Mostly to myself.  I worked as a proofreader for an educational publisher for the better part of a year, which was tedious but drilled grammar rules into me more thoroughly than all the schooling I had received before.  I tend to covert the document over into something I can read on my Kindle and do a final pass there, since it seems to hit a different part of my brain than what I rely upon while writing. 

I have a few beta readers and one, my girlfriend’s uncle, is even better than I am at catching these mistakes.  I am sure to incorporate Uncle Bruce into anything I am about to submit to my publisher.

Scarberryfields:With the number of hours spent writing, do family members support you or complain about the time spent away from them?

Thomm:My girlfriend is the only family member affected right now and she does not seem to mind too much.  She is also a creative type, an artist who runs a successful Etsy shop and who is involved in the local artistic community, so we have come up with our “work hour”.  I retire to a tiny closet with my notebook computer and she makes an absolute mess of our living room floor as she makes her crafts. 

It’s a good system, except for when guests drop by before we can clean up.

Scarberryfields: For research sake, do you travel to any of the places you mention in your books?

Thomm:Most of my books take place within an hour or so of where I live.  My last book, Artificial Gods, mostly takes place in Pine Bush, New York.  I went to several UFO support group meeting there while brainstorming and ironing out details, including sky watches where some members labeled airplanes as cloaked alien spaceships.  I have twice attended the annual Pine Bush UFO Festival that ended up featured in the novel.  I must admit, doing such in-depth (and somewhat undercover) research made for a far stranger book than I originally intended.

Scarberryfields: When you’re writing, do you shut-off all social networks?

Thomm:Actually, no.  I sometimes need these micro-distractions, so I will go on Omegle to have random chats about writing whenever I am slightly stuck.  It helps to remind me why I write – to tell my fans the sort of stories I would want to read – and publicizes my books, as well as helping to me untangle knots by explaining them to people who are otherwise ignorant of my work.

Scarberryfields: Did you use any family members as Beta readers for your stories?

Thomm:I have tried.  Most of them are curiously unwilling to drop everything they are doing to push through my work-in-progress in a week.  I send it to them anyway and hope for the best.

My most consistent beta readers right now are my girlfriend and her uncle.  Aside from that, I may occasionally hear from friends and family members months after I have made revisions.

Scarberryfields:Do you feel social networking is a good tool for marketing your books?

Thomm:I would like to believe that.  I see quite a number of people sharing their friends' self-published works, but they clam up when confronted with a book that isn't the literary underdog (though I feel any book that isn’t on the shelves at Barnes & Noble is fighting to be seen).  So, I believe it can be a good marketing tool, but it has yet to bear much fruit for me.

Scarberryfields: What is the last book called that you completed and published?

Thomm:Artificial Gods, which came out in late January from Double Dragon Publishing.