Roxanne Rhoads: Interview and Giveaway with Shane Filer

Do you have a specific writing style?

I think the minute I started writing EXIT I was writing in a style that was identifiable as me, rather than a combination of my influences. It’s the first work in where my own voice began to flourish. When I started writing a second novel I was happy to see it was the same – instantly recognizable as the same author.

Do you write in different genres?

I love genre fiction. I understand why most authors stick to one particular genre, although that shouldn’t have to be so. Film directors like Stanley Kubrick moved effortlessly between genres, carefully crafting the best sci-fi film, the best period filmed, the best horror film, all of which were unmistakably his own. I write some war genre comics for a UK publisher, and I’d love to write some sci-fi too. I think any genre can be good if the writer makers it so. Erotic romance fiction, sure. Anthropomorphic furry animal fiction, absolutely.

How did you come up with the title for your latest book?

It just came to me. I saw it above a door in a cinema.

Is the book, characters, or any scenes based on a true life experience, someone you know, or events in your own life?

Writers are magpies, taking shiny things from the world around them. I often write down things people say to me, or events that occur in notebooks in order to re-use them at some point. Nothing is too private or too painful to be cannibalized for the sake of a story. EXIT certainly echoes aspects of my experience; although it’s not autobiographical, it’s allegorical. The new novel I’m writing though has a character very much inspired by a young girl I knew who killed herself a few years ago. Nothing is too painful. Nothing is too shiny.

What books are in your to read pile?

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (recommended by several people whose opinions I respect).

Autobiography by Morrissey (I have some trepidation about this, as he was a huge influence on my younger years, though that influence faded with his creativity in the time after).

Berlin: The Seven Dwarfs by Marvano (A French graphic novel I picked up more or less because it’s named after my favorite city).

What is your current “work in progress” or upcoming projects?

Like most writers I have a few works in progress. Among them there’s a Hollywood romantic comedy screenplay which I began as an experiment to see if I could write it to the three-act formula, and it not be dreadful. It’s not. I will likely complete this and prop it to some agents. It’s quite different to EXIT. Think Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston. It will be awesome.

Do you have a song or playlist (book soundtrack) that you think represents EXIT?

If you listened to the tea and cardigan sorrow of the Sunday’s album Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, you wouldn’t be too far wrong.

Exit

Shane Filer

Genre: YA, General Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher: Biblio Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-62249-142-1

Number of pages: 222

Word Count: 58,000

Cover Artist: Ekaterina Zagustina

Book Description:

"Did you know I spent the whole of my fifteenth year in my room?"

Briar’s impromptu, mid-afternoon confession stirs up distant memories of the lonely time she spent trapped in her home; suffering agoraphobia — fear of open spaces.

Now it’s six years later.

She’s free, but the year's isolation has left serious personality disorders; disorders which will resurface as she relates her own story, and that of those in her orbit; Melodie, a pretty valley girl who Briar desires to be, Justine, her oldest friend, who has her own dark secret, and Dermot, a man who thinks he's the reincarnation of Robin Hood — stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Slowly Dermot begins to draw Briar into his ever-so-exciting world, but who is leading whom on their slow descent into crime? Duel periods of Briar’s life intertwine like a rope around her neck as her lost year begins to overtake the present. It leads her to the answer to one very simple question:

“Is it what I always feared — am I losing my mind?”

Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wedQg_Y7dHE

Author Interview Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpANm1NRvkU

About the Author:

Shane grew up in provincial New Zealand, a small place where options are small, were people wear PJs to the mall, a small place where dreams of being a writer or artist are not only actively discouraged, they are actively quashed. Nevertheless he fell in love with books, comics and writing at a young age and his early influences include Oscar Wilde, Alan Moore and Dr Seuss.

After many years of trying to get books, documentaries and films accepted in his own country, Shane gave up and settled for working in the fairly creative world of video-making and advertising.

A trip to Europe and the USA rekindled his love of writing, and he wrote the American-based novel ‘Exit,’ submitted it this time to American publishers and immediately, received several offers for the work. He chose one and ‘Exit’ will be released December 2nd 2013 in the USA as his first novel from Biblio Publishing.

It is the story of Briar Averill who spent a year trapped in her room, suffering from agophobia. Six years on, she’s free, yet ripples from the year's isolation still lap at the edges of her life, and that of her friends: Melodie, a pretty valley girl who she wishes she could be… Justine, her oldest friend, who has her own dark secret and Dermot who thinks he's the reincarnation of Robin Hood — stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Ripples echo down through the years, leading her to the answer to one very simple question: Is it what she always feared — is she losing her mind?

Shane has since had comic book scripts accepted in the UK by DC Thompson, publisher of the long-running ‘Commando’ comic, fulfilling yet another dream for his child-self.

He lives with a very old and very vocal Tonkinese cat, and they both dream of eloping together to the USA or Europe.

He likes oranges, orange juice, and orange furniture — in fact even the color orange. Why? Well, because it's the best color, of course. While he believes that being a grown up is not all it's cracked up to be, he still enjoys ruining his appetite before dinner, and staying up past his bed time.

www.shanefiler.com

www.facebook.com/shanecfiler

www.twitter.com/shane_filer

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7365723.Shane_Filer

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