What would you like to tell readers about yourself?
* It wasn’t for another decade that he would start work on a full-length novel that was publishable, the results of which was the action-packed Urban Fantasy, Crimes Against Magic.
* Steve McHugh lives in Southampton on the south coast of England with his wife and three young daughters. When not writing or spending time with his kids, he enjoys watching movies, reading books and comics, and playing video games.
Today Steve McHugh will be talking about how he became a writer and what inspired him in regard to the story he's promoting.
* Before I was about 13, I didn’t want to write, I probably wanted to be a ninja or astronaut or something else that was as exciting to a 10 year old boy. A ninja astronaut possibly, if such a thing exists, and if it doesn’t, it really should because that would be awesome.
* Anyway, I was probably 11 when I was given Treasure Island to read, along with a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories and some others I can barely remember. The Sherlock ones stuck out the most in my mind, they were the ones that made me go to the library in search of others to read. At some point in the local library, I moved from there into the realm of the choose your own adventure books.
* I devoured these like a ravenous beast, always hungry for more and never really satisfied that I’d read enough, right up until I was 13 and my English teacher told me to branch out, to read something more challenging, more diverse. I took him at his challenge and went to the library again (something I’d find myself doing more and more over the years), and picked up Terry Pratchett and David Gemmell. They were soon joined by Stephen King and countless others, and that was it. I wanted to be a writer.
* When it came to writing out my school report about what we wanted to do when leaving, I wrote author and was told by my teacher to write something more realistic, something more… well, boring to be honest. I choose accountant. I have never been an accountant.
* That’s not to say I went straight from age 16 and leaving school to become an author. It took me 9 years, until I was 25 and about to become a father for the first time, when I finally decided to get serious about it. It took another 8 years before I’d get published, the majority of that time just learning my craft and trying not to suck at something I’d fallen in love with.
* Since that day in April 2012, I’ve become a best selling author with five published books, the most recent of which is Lies Ripped Open. And frankly it’s been an incredible 3 ½ years.
* Lies Ripped Open is the accumulation of the previous four books worth of story and questions. It answers a lot of those questions, and asks several of it’s own, but it’s a story I knew I was looking forward to writing from the first word of book one, Crimes Against Magic.
* I can tell you wholeheartedly that writing is the greatest job I’ve ever had, or could ever imagine doing, the fact that I get to tell stories for people to read and enjoy is something I will never ever get tired of. And long may that continue.
