Interview 29 | Cristelle-Comby.com

15 August 2018

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Hostile Takeover?

The main character, Bellamy Vale used to be in the US Marine Corps. Now he’s a private investigator in Cold City. A couple of years ago, desperate and at an all-time low, he made a deal with Death. In exchange for a favor he agreed to work for Her. Now he solves vanilla crimes to pay the bills and he goes up against monsters and Gods with nefarious plans to please his boss of a dubious nature. And the only reason he’s employee of the month is that no-one else was foolish enough to take the job. The other ones, you’ll have to discover in the book.

Can you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?

I’m currently editing the second book in the series and working on the outline for the third one. You can expect the next Vale Investigation book to hit the shelves in 2019.

How long would you say it takes you to write a book?

About a year. Outlining and doing the research takes me about a third of the time, then another third is spent writing, and the last third is for stuff like editing, proofreading, cover art and promotion. Normally, I’m always working on two books in parallel. One that I’m outlining or writing and another that is at the editing stage.

What is your favorite childhood book?

Nothing stands out, but I remember reading a lot of the Famous Five by Enid Blyton. And also the French Fantômette series by Georges Chaulet. I was into mysteries already back then.

If you could spend the day with one of the characters from Hostile Takeover who would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you would go and what you would do.

Funny question. I don’t really fancy getting shot at or stabbed or getting myself thrown out of a window… so, I’ll stay away from Bellamy Vale.
I guess the safer choice is Zian, the computer hacker. He owns a club, the Indigo, in the fictitious town of Cold City, USA. He could give me the VIP treatment and then teach me a thing or two about hacking.

What was the hardest scene from Hostile Takeover to write?

The first ones. It took a couple of re-writes to get the tone right.

What made you want to become a writer?

As far back as I can think of, I’ve always loved writing. It took a while for me to get any good at it though.