Advice from IR Approved Author Ethan Warrener: "Define what success means to you, and for the sake of your own sanity and the sanity of your loved ones, set that bar low." | IndieReader (original) (raw)

For Home and Hearth received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.

Following find an interview with author Ethan Warrener.

What is the name of the book and when was it published?

The book’s title is For Home and Hearth, originally published in May of 2022.

What’s the book’s first line?

Sparse snowflakes drifted down from an ashen sky to meet their brethren lying heaped on tree boughs and in shallow drifts.

What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.

This is a small-town drama set in “misty taste of moonshine” West Virginia, but with a science fiction, post-apocalyptic wrinkle. It’s a dystopia with a frontier vibe.

What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?

This book, the first in a series, is something of a magpie’s hoard. The first glimmer of inspiration came to me maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, when I heard that scientists had created a viable chimeric embryo from human and pig DNA. While the experiment horrified me, I saw great story potential there. Beyond that, however, I wanted to challenge myself, as a self-identified thriller writer, to do something much more character focused, to try my hand at some romance, to get outside of my genre comfort zone. The experience has been richly rewarding, and I haven’t looked back.

What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?

An author’s intended effect doesn’t always reach the reader, but if a genie in a bottle could grant me a writing wish, I would like my readers to experience the same piercing emotion I’ve encountered from stories in my life. Atticus Finch calmly facing down a lynch mob. The quiet tragedy of George Saunders’ “Sticks.” The shared humanity of a working class butler and a gentleman in “The Inconsiderate Waiter.” Theoden leading his riders to rescue a nation not his own. Lady Macbeth driving herself mad trying to wash away her guilt. Sydney Carton finding absolution through sacrifice. I could go on, but I’d like my readers to walk away with something a little deeper, a little more permanent, than “well, that was fun.” It’s an ambitious target, but aim for the stars and all that.

What I feel more confident in discussing are the elements of For Home and Hearth I use to reach the reader. This is definitely a book for readers who like an ensemble cast of characters, a complex web of cause and effect, a little bit of action, and a little bit of intrigue.

What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?

Ella Holland is there to show that kindness is not weakness, peacefulness is not cowardice, and meekness can bend steel. Characters like her are often put into inspirational fiction, but in my opinion, that’s like putting Superman into a Hallmark movie. There’s no challenge, no conflict. Ella belongs in a dystopia, in a world where her character and values are tested and purified in the fire of adversity.

She’s inspired by a number of folks. One name that comes to mind is Corrie ten Boom, a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust; another is Helen Baker, a sort of spiritual ancestor to me. I never met her, but the fact that folks still describe her to me, generations later, as the gentlest person anyone knew, has to carry some significance.

Is this the first book you’ve written?

This is the first book worth publishing. I may have had a couple false starts.

What do you do for work when you’re not writing?

I teach 4th and 5th grade.

How much time do you generally spend on your writing?

Far too much and not nearly enough. One of the benefits of being a teacher is getting summers off, which I use to cram in as much productivity as I can. I’m generally not the hyper-disciplined, write-for-ten-hours-at-a-stretch sort of writer, which is probably why it took me fourteen years to write For Home and Hearth and its two sequels. Stephen King would be disappointed.

What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?

Well, you can spend 14 years writing a not-very-genre-specific book, decide along the way it needs to be split into a duology, and then split it further into a trilogy without worrying about a cigar-smoking, mustachioed executive screaming to me about deadlines from his corner office on the 115th floor of a New York publishing house. (That’s how it is for traditionally published authors, right?)

The worst part is obviously how much you are doing on your own, or on the cheap, or begging friends and family to do for you. But honestly, with the state of the publishing industry, given how few people read anything anymore, I’d likely have to do a fair amount of extra work even if I had an agent, publisher, and contract. So I can’t complain.

What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?

Define what success means to you, and for the sake of your own sanity and the sanity of your loved ones, set that bar low. At the time of this interview, I have yet to break even in my writing career, and I would be surprised if I do so in the future. I’ve done my doggonedest to put out the best book I can, and everything past that is gravy. Of course, this requires the inexhaustible patience of my wife and two children, who must endure the countless hours I spend writing. Take into account and manage your own close relationships as you make your cost-benefit analyses.

Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)

I have pure and impure motives. I would be lying to myself if I said fame didn’t sound cool. It’s fun to feel validated. My two small children like to show me pictures they’ve drawn, and I like to see their work. My fridge is littered with all sorts of scribblings and misspelled missives. This is essentially what I’m doing as a writer, just one level up. I’m showing the world what I made and hoping they’ll put it on their fridge for me, and if I lose that perspective, I’m in trouble.

The purer motive, or the one less likely to go rancid, is that I do genuinely want people to enjoy what they read, in the same way that it’s satisfying to know you brightened someone’s day or taught them something new or simply fed them a good meal.

Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?

If I take this to mean which author’s books I like the most, I don’t think I could answer this. Aside from the fact that I could rattle off a dozen names right now, I have an ever-changing collection of favorites which waxes and wanes with the years. Right now I have a soft spot for technothrillers.

If I take this to mean a writer whose life and writings, taken together, have the most profound impact on me, I’d probably say C.S. Lewis. He was the first person who ever forced me to think deeply, to question the apparent world handed to me and step through the wardrobe to see what lay behind.

Which book do you wish you could have written?

And Then There Were None. Though the story has become something of a meme and a cliche, the book, taken in isolation, is such a great, creepy, brooding puzzle-box of a mystery, and its influence stretches far beyond homicidal dinner parties.