Joseph Evans, the DJ-cum-bestselling YA author describes his path to self-published success, without the help of agents, publishers or the like, and more on City of the Falling Sky. The first book in the Seckry Sequence, this is not your average dystopian teenage YA fiction…
When Seckry Sevenstars is forced out of his village by the greedy Endrin Corporation and relocated to the daunting metropolis of Skyfall City, he harbours resentment for the company and vows to get them back one day for taking away his home, his school and his friends.
Fortunately, the marvels of the city do a good job in distracting Seckry from his anger and homesickness, and it isn’t long before he’s competing at Friction (the city’s most popular multiplayer video game), slurping awe-inspiring multicoloured milkshakes, and getting butterflies on his first date.
Then, when a mysterious email asks Seckry to break into the headquarters of the Endrin Corporation and steal a container full of worms for a hefty sum of money, his anger resurfaces, and he can’t resist the revenge he promised himself.
Alone at night, Seckry creeps through the sewers whilst wondering what experiments Endrin might be doing on the worms, and emerges into the silent complex. But the worms aren’t the only thing that he finds. Staring at him through the darkness, with wide, innocent eyes, is something that makes Seckry’s heart almost stop.
A girl.
She’s shaking, petrified, and has no recollection of who she is or what she’s doing there.
Floodlights bleach the area and Seckry has no choice but to grab a hold of the girl and escape with her.
Suddenly the question of what Endrin were doing with a few worms becomes the last thing on Seckry’s mind. What were Endrin doing with a human?
Twitter: @JosephCEvans
Facebook: www.facebook.com/theseckrysequence
Website: www.theseckrysequence.com
YOUNG ADULT: What made you decide to start writing?
JOSEPH EVANS: Strangely enough, I hated reading as a child. But I read a series of books called Broken Sky by Chris Wooding when I was a teenager and they got me completely hooked. Since then I’ve been obsessed with books and during my time at university I got myself a part time job at my local bookstore. I’ve been there for over seven years now, and I’ve seen a lot of authors pass through doing signings and other events. One day, I came to the realisation that these are just regular people who had a dream and decided to give it a shot, and so they really inspired me to take the plunge.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about City of the Falling Sky?
JE: City of the Falling Sky is dystopian fiction, in that it is set in a slightly futuristic, alternate world, and has a corrupt government and large science research company at its core, but I would say that it is much more light-hearted than a lot of the teen dystopia out there today. As much as I love reading dystopia, I find it to be very depressing at times because the characters are always in turmoil and are forced to be serious by their circumstances. With my book, I wanted to retain the angst and excitement of those tense sequences, but also mix them up with fun, frivolity and humour at times, to break things up a bit and provide a more well rounded experience for the reader.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
JE: I hate early mornings so I usually sleep in until around 9 or 9:30, then I casually get up and do a weight training workout before having a shower and then a big breakfast. By the time all of this is done it’s about 11am to midday. I’ll then answer any emails that need to be replied to before cracking on with writing. I’ll usually write pretty solidly then until around midnight, so it means I’m writing for around 12 hours, stopping twice for meals. I can usually squeeze out around 2,500 words a day using this routine.
YA: Can you describe the path to getting this work published? What were the challenges? What was easy about it?
JE: When I was writing City of the Falling Sky, Kindles hadn’t even been announced yet, so I originally assumed I would need to find an agent, then a publisher, and go the traditional route. I attempted this for a long time and was met with rejection after rejection after rejection. When Kindles were starting to catch on and I began hearing stories about self publishing successes, and I did a bit of research and then decided to upload my manuscript. Within the first year, downloads of the book reached over 40,000 and it even climbed into the teen bestseller charts at number 4 in America at one point, which was mind-blowing. The advent of the Kindle really has been a godsend for me because if I hadn’t uploaded it, the manuscript would probably still be sitting unread in my bedroom because of agents not willing to take a chance.
YA: What were your specific influences for this book? Films, literature, other stories?
JE: I’m a big fan of video games and I always have been, and City of the Falling Sky is vastly influenced by some of the stories I found in games, most specifically Final Fantasty VII, which I still consider to be the greatest game ever made. The name Skyfall City was originally an homeage to Final Fantasy VII, when the president of Shinra drops the upper plate onto the lower plate of Midgar and to the residents, it literally would have seemed as though the sky was falling. Unfortunately, James Bond stole the name Skyfall recently and now it sounds very unoriginal. Another big influence for the series was Harry Potter. I loved how Quidditch was fun distraction from the seriousness of the main plot, and so I wanted to create something similar to this with Friction. I also loved how each book followed one year of Harry’s school life, and so each book of The Seckry Sequence will do the same.
YA: If you hadn’t become an author, what path would your career have perhaps taken?
JE: I studied motion graphics at university, so I would probably have gone down that path, but I didn’t find it that enjoyable to be honest. Mainly, I hated working for other people, and trying to realise other people’s creative visions, when what I truly wanted to be doing was realising my own visions. Other than that, I’ve always been big into trance and house music production and when I was in university I signed to a small label that got one of my tracks on a German compilation album. I still make tracks now and again and would love to get into a proper studio with a vocalist in the future if I ever have time.