Reader's Magnet approached me recently for them to conduct an interview for their Authors' Lounge section with regard to my latest novel, 'There Must Be Daffodils.' That interview is reproduced here.
‘There Must Be Daffodils,’ billed as a cosy, clean novel, was a departure from the norm for Stephenson Holt. After twenty-three novels and two books of poetry and short stories, his attempt at cosy and clean was a challenge for this author.
It’s a boy-meets-girl in her thirties novel and follows a will-they-won’t-they scenario, laced together with what one reviewer called “love at first sight intermingled with clandestine wealth, fishing, domestic counter-intelligence, terminal illness, and fugitive spies, with a happily-ever-after ending to boot.”
Authors’ Lounge asked Stephenson why he had diverted from his norm.
“I love writing about the unusual,” Stephenson told us. “For instance, my vampire trilogy is different from the norm in that any human only turns when made love to by three different vampires, so as you can tell, I like to veer off the path of the ordinary.”
We were intrigued. “Why suddenly a cosy, clean novel?”
“I enjoy stretching my imagination. All my previous novels, found at https://bit.ly/S-Holt were eighteen plus, but could I write cosy, clean? Can men write clean romance? Is it obvious to a reader if the author is male or female? Should that even matter?”
Okay, Authors’ Lounge accepted that, but wanted to know more. “Can you tell us how this particular novel developed?”
“It developed in the normal way for me,” Stephenson told us. “I do have a spreadsheet detailing five acts of six chapters each, but rarely use it right the way through writing a novel, and usually only use it if I get stuck midway through the journey. I sometimes have a clear idea which way the story will go but my characters usually take over in my head, sometimes changing the course of the world as I am driving down a motorway.”
Having learned about the bones of Stephenson’s writing methods, we were interested to learn about the specifics of ‘There Must Be Daffodils.’ “Can you apply what you told us there to this particular novel?” We asked.
“My two main characters, Ashley and Ryan, both needed a reason why they didn’t want a relationship, to keep up the tension between them in the first part of the story. Maybe, with hindsight, I was a bit lazy with Ashley and had her coming out of an abusive relationship and needing a break from male company. With Ryan, the story was far more complicated. Having been diagnosed myself with prostate cancer a year before publishing this novel, I wanted Ryan to be reticent about discussing his own diagnosis of the same disease, to be closed up about it in relationships, for those relationships to fail, and for him to be torn between wanting Ashley as a lover and knowing he couldn’t be a lover.”
We wondered if Stephenson could explain things here without giving away the plot with spoilers. “Are you comfortable with explaining further to Authors’ Lounge?” We asked.
“I gave Ryan my symptoms, my diagnosis, and my treatment, in a write-what-you-know sort of way. The only difference being that Ashley and Ryan are mid to late thirties and I am double that number in years. For that to happen I had to make Ryan have a father that died of undiagnosed prostate cancer at a young age, and to have Ryan refuse to accept that he should be tested every year as a consequence. That is not personal to me and is fiction. However, knowing that my own treatment for prostate cancer that had spread to my bones, involved hormone treatment, I knew what effect that would have on Ryan.”
“It would make him less of a man?” We speculated.
“Yes and No,” Stephenson told us. “Ryan teaches at both Judo and Karate and is solidly built and obviously has to be handsome and to be attractive to Ashley. The total lack of testosterone in his body however takes his undercarriage back to a time before puberty, before his body flooded with testosterone as a teenager. Not embarrassing for the author at my age but embarrassing for someone of Ryan’s age. I don’t want to give the impression though that this novel is all doom and gloom. There are humorous moments, I had to a have a small amount of espionage in the story, and I can guarantee a happy ending.”
“Who are your main readers up to this point?” We wondered.
“I cannot split my readers between male and female but do know that the weird vampire trilogy that I mentioned earlier is by far my biggest seller. My biggest market, although I am in the UK, is in the USA, and the biggest format purchased in the USA is the Audible version of my books with the eBook attached for Kindle, and that applies to all twenty-five books. Apparently (we cannot yet do this in the UK unless we order from the .com site,) the reader can start a book on their Kindle or phone app, jump into the car to listen on Audible as they drive, get to the train station and reverts back to the eBook, and switch back to Audible as they walk the final stretch to their work place. Everything being synced as if by magic.”
We wanted more. “Do you think your novel ‘There must be Daffodils’ is aimed at females rather than a male reader ship?”
“I know that female readers outnumber male readers and I know that the title ‘There Must Be daffodils’ is not one that most males would instantly be drawn to. My hope is that a female reader may be informed about prostate cancer, would nag a male partner to get tested, and nag him also to read the book, and maybe discuss it together afterwards.”
We thanked Stephenson for the interview, thanked him specifically for being so open and honest, and wished him well with his latest novel and any forthcoming novels.
There Must Be daffodils can be found on Amazon at https://amzn.to/44YMmW9 and on Audible at https://adbl.co/4jpP5LF
If you have found this blog article informative in any way, I would hugely appreciate you visiting Readers Magnet, Authors' Lounge to review the above blog post on their site as it needs reviews to keep it live. Thanks, Stephenson.