Meet the Author: Faith Mortimer

Faith Helen Mortimer is an English author. She was born in Manchester and educated in Singapore, Malaysia and England.

She had always wanted to be a writer, and says she spent many hours playing around with words which danced around the edges of her mind when she really should have been concentrating on other studies.

After obtaining a University degree in Sciences while working full time in her own business, she discovered she’d grown up and now had the necessary determination, dedication and stamina to tackle her first novel. Though her first went through  a London publisher she went indie with her second book, The Assassins’ Village in April 2011. This book was nominated and became the number one best book on Harper Collins Authonomy. Since then she’s not looked back and has had a wonderful and exciting new career, selling thousands of copies of her paperbacks and eBooks all over the world.

Faith says each part of the writing process as each has its own merits, but loves the exhilaration of hitting the afterburner when the writing takes off. “I suppose the most exciting part is when you have a whole day in which you’re brimming over with ideas and words and are just dying to have the house to yourself and get on with that writing. When the words flow, like a sports car racing along a major highway with no traffic jams – that is when life is just wonderful and I can go on and on and on!”

She knows readers really “get” her writing when she hears from them about how a particular passage touched or moved them. “Sometimes it can be a certain chapter, paragraph or even a simple line that stands out for them.”

Her Diana Rivers novels are mystery/suspense/psychological thrillers. She says she doesn’t write scenes with heavy and explicit gore. “Instead of going for the heavy bloodletting, flesh ripping, limb tearing etc. etc. I prefer to drip-feed my brutal scenes to my readers – keep it with just enough carnage without turning them off.”

In reading the works of other authors, Faith says she finds the over-use of American slang annoying. “It’s probably because I just don’t understand some Americanisms. How words are made up and become ‘common-speak’, almost by running two or even three words together. I know the spoken word is an evolving thing, but so often beautiful words and their true meaning are lost, which for me is a shame. So my pet peeve is to read a book which is full of slang. So full that I’m completely turned off and I throw it up in despair and decide not to carry on.”

As for the future of the publishing world, Faith says, “The publishing houses though really have to do some more homework if they want to remain in the picture in say, ten years’ time. I would think we are going to see less of the ‘traditional’ agents acting as intermediaries for publishing houses and perhaps see more of these people moving into areas where they actively market writers – especially those writers who are successful and yet do not want/have the knowledge to market themselves.”

Faith says her author platform was built by trial and error. “When I had my first book published by a traditional publisher I hadn’t realised that they would not do any marketing. I had to do everything myself. Within months I was unhappy and looked around for another solution. I put off making my second book into an eBook for nearly a year – I was confused, ignorant and a bit embarrassed by ‘self-publishing’ because over the years almost everyone said how ‘bad’ it was and only useless books were self-published. How wrong was that?! However, once I took the plunge, joined some groups on Facebook, learnt about Twitter and set up a website I was well on my way. I now have 6 books published with another two to hit Amazon this year. I think making lots of good close friends and helping them when they get stuck has helped enormously. Friends are your best allies and if they like your product they’ll tell all their friends about you. Keep your fan-base sweet and happy!”

Learn more about author Faith Mortimer more about me at her website and her Amazon author page. Her books are available from Amazon US and Amazon UK. You can also find her on Facebook.

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