The greatest archaeological discovery in history could mean the end of mankind.
A relic from Noah's Ark gives a religious fanatic and his followers a weapon that will let them recreate the effects of the biblical flood, and former combat engineer Tyler Locke has seven days to find the Ark and the secret hidden inside before it's used to wipe out civilization again.
Boyd Morrison is new to mass market but The Ark (The Noah's Ark Quest is the name the novel will be released under in the UK) is actually his third novel. He has had an amazing journey so far. He has worked with NASA at the Johnson Space Center, obtained a PhD in Industrial Engineering and somehow landed a job with Microsoft making games fun to play - just how do you manage to get paid to play games?
Having had his novels rejected originally by publishing houses Boyd decided to release them as eBooks. Taking the time to get them right and paying for professional covers Boyd managed to clock up over 7,500 copies in sales and forced the publishing houses to sit up and take notice. And they certainly did. Boyd now has two books coming out this year and two more next year. Boyd is one of those authors who manage to squeeze every experience they have ever had and use them to make his novels more credible and exciting. He has a penchant for huge disasters and believable characters and he managed to take time out while plotting the world's next major disaster to answer some questions and explain why he wants to destroy the world.
There seems to be a lot happening all at once for you, how does it feel?
It's wonderful to be so busy, with two books coming out this year and another two next year, but it's also a challenge in multi-tasking. Until I got published, I never realized how much there is to do after you sign the deal. There are a lot of balls to keep in the air (with tight deadlines, they can seem more like chainsaws). You've got to do rounds of manuscript revisions with your editor, review cover concepts, choose a title that everyone is happy with, write and edit publicity materials and book jacket copy, pore over copyediting notes, answer questions from your foreign translators and editors, work with your publicist on the marketing plan, and do everything you can to get the word out about your book. And that's all while writing your next book. I hope to perfect my juggling skills by 2030.
It's great to see an author succeed the way you have coming from E-Book into mass market. Did the fact that the books were already available help or hinder the process? Is this a route you would recommend for new authors?
I can say without a doubt that I would not be published today if I had not self-published ebook versions of my novels. The Ark had been turned down by 25 publishers, so my agent, Irene Goodman, and I decided there was nothing to lose by putting my ebooks on my web site and the Amazon Kindle store. If they didn't do well, nobody would ever have to know because ebooks don't have an ISBN. But if they did do well, I could show publishers that there was a market for my books, which was exactly what happened. Touchstone was impressed that I sold 7,500 of my books in three months on just the Kindle platform, and they were equally impressed that I sold that number with no marketing or advertising, just by word of mouth.
As far as we can tell, The Ark is the first novel to make the leap from self-published book on Kindle to a New York publisher, but I'm sure other authors will follow the same path soon. John Rector, Joe Konrath, and Karen McQuestion come to mind as other authors who've leveraged their great Kindle sales to get other deals. What I had going for me was a set of wonderful blurbs from NY TIMES bestselling authors, all of whom I'd met through ITW, nice covers that I paid a graphic designer to develop, and an agent who was able to resubmit to publishers as soon as my novels were selling well. But the best advice I could give anyone is to write the best book you can, and then write another one. The Ark was the third book I wrote, but the first to get published.
How do you write? Do you have a ritual, do you plan out every detail or do you see where the story leads?
I'm an outliner, probably because of my engineering background. I like to know where the story is going so I don't trap myself in plot holes that would take weeks to dig myself out of. But there is always a large degree of serendipity involved in writing, that "Aha!" moment when you suddenly come up with an even more elegant solution to a problem. I think those fantastic little discoveries are what keep me writing. For the actual writing, I try to deliver a chapter a day after I've planned out as much as I can.
Writing, extreme sports, acting, you certainly seem to keep busy. What's next on the agenda?
I'm just wrapping a five-week run in Rumors by Neil Simon. It's a stage farce in which I play a politician who can't stop jamming his foot in his mouth. As soon as that's over, I leave on my book tour to LA, Denver, Houston, and Phoenix. I'll also be attending Thrillerfest, Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, and Bouchercon. If I'm lucky, I'll get in a little scuba diving this summer in some warm tropical paradise, preferably one that's out of the path of any hurricanes, volcanoes, or tsunamis.
With Rogue Wave coming in December you certainly seem intent in wiping out a good percentage of the world. Why do you think we are fascinated with our own destruction?
While The Ark is about preventing a worldwide catastrophe, Rogue Wave is more a tale of survival. Each features a threat on a cataclysmic scale, so the stakes are monumental. Noah's Ark and the Flood was the original tale of global destruction, and it has endured for thousands of years, which made it a great basis for The Ark. I think the reason these kinds of stories connect with many people is that we either want to read about a stalwart hero who will protect us from our own mortality, both individually and as a species, or we want to read about someone like us who can actually figure out a way to survive such a calamity. In each case, we can imagine ourselves being part of the story, and there's nothing like the threat of our own destruction to get the heart pumping.
If you were given one paragraph to convince people to buy your novel what would it say?
Here's the pitch that convinced my agent to read The Ark: A relic from Noah's Ark gives a religious fanatic and his followers a weapon that will let them recreate the effects of the biblical flood, and former combat engineer Tyler Locke has seven days to find the Ark and the secret hidden inside before it's used to wipe out civilization again.
The book has been impressively praised by some of the industries' leading authors. You must be thrilled. Will you write full-time now or is it still a matter of writing when you have free time?
I personally know all of the authors who gave me blurbs, so it was an honor that they felt The Ark was worthy of their endorsements.
I write full-time now, which is a real privilege. I'm lucky enough to have a wife who made it possible for me to pursue my writing dream full-time. I wrote my first book while going to grad school and writing my dissertation, so it's a joy to make writing my day job. I'm awestruck by the writers who can get up at 5AM and write until it's time to go to work at their other job.
When you're not writing do you read much and who do you enjoy most?
I read a lot in both fiction and nonfiction. For fiction, I primarily read thrillers; I'm a big believer in writing what you love to read. I won't list individual authors because there are too many, but I also read outside the thriller genre, and some of my favorites lately have been Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. For nonfiction, I read many books to research my novels, so I can't talk about what I'm reading now, but some of my recent nonfiction favorites include Wired for War, Outliers, and Predictably Irrational.
Your wife and yourself had a very unique arrangement, but I have done the math - does she still owe you five years? And what will you use the time for?
Unfortunately, I wasn't lazy enough to take advantage of the full nine years (and that's amazing given how lazy I am). So I'm banking those extra five years to be used at some later time if I need them. They're my insurance policy if this writing thing hits a speedbump.
Boyd's book The Ark is due out on May 11th with foreign language editions coming swiftly after that. Details of The Ark and more about Boyd's extraordinary journey can be read on his web site, www.boydmorrison.com
Boyd is hard at work on his next novel but don't worry, the wait won't be too long. He has two other books all ready for publication before that. Rogue Wave will be published in December of this year and The Adamas Blueprint is due out in December 2011. Now all we need to know is how to survive his next dastardly plan at destroying the world. One thing is for certain, it will be a thrilling ride whatever he comes up with.
Derek Gunn lives in Dublin, Ireland with his wife and three children and is the author of four novels. His post-apocalyptic thriller series, Vampire Apocalypse, has been widely praised on both sides of the Atlantic in the genre media and it is published by Black Death Books. The three books in the series are; "A World Torn Asunder" (2006), "Descent into Chaos" (2008) and "Fallout" (2009). Derek also released "The Estuary", published by Permuted Press in 2009 which is available in Borders and Waldenbooks stores throughout the USA as well as from online booksellers.
Derek's first book is under option for film and an adaptation is currently in active development as a major movie. Also, the Graphic novel rights to Derek's VAMPIRE APOCALYPSE series have been picked up by a US indie publisher - the first graphic novel is due out in 2011. Visit his website at www.derekgunn.com
