Short, Sharp Interview: Mike Evers

PDB: Can you pitch The Chaosofier in 25 words or less? 

A humorous, fast-paced fantasy adventure involving Chaos Theory and the philosophical concept of bifurcation. It features small, magical creatures and a troublesome chaos lord.

PDB: Which books, films or television shows have floated your boat recently? 

I haven’t had as much free time since my baby son was born.  The Shawshank Redemption was repeated on the telly the other night and I was thinking – now this is good story telling. Book wise – Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle really got me hooked with its interesting twist on Beauty and the Beast.  I tend to read historical stuff a lot nowadays, especially stuff by Antony Beevor, Norman Stone or Stephen Ambrose.

PDB: Is it possible for a writer to be an objective reader? 

I’m sure it’s possible. It all depends how caught up you are with a story or piece of work. However, I must say I’m finding it increasingly difficult because nowadays I usually analyse (fiction, especially) for interesting ways of using words or structuring a text.

PDB: Do you have any interest in writing for films, theatre or television? 

Blimey! I think any writer would love to have their work adapted for such things, but I’m not sure how I’d manage with having to adjust to a screenplay or script format. That would be a whole new ball game. However, I reckon The Chaosifier is just crying out to be made into a musical – but that’s just me.

PDB: How much research goes into each book? 

The Chaosifier is a fantasy (or urban fantasy) story and so I guess the raw materials were predominantly my imagination and prior knowledge of some locations. Also, some of the ideas are based on research I did during a Masters’ paper about the epistemological problems of predicting events. However I did use things like Google Map (and Street View) to check out locations – what a resource! Wikipedia, and the Web generally, is also incredibly useful for doing research and I’ve been using it a lot lately. My new book features some historical accounts which I want to be fairly accurate.  

PDB: How useful or important are social media for you as a writer? 

I’m just discovering the importance of having an online presence as a writer, so I’m Tweeting (spamming?), Face-booking, and blogging like the best of them.  This is time which could actually be spent writing, of course.

PDB: What’s on the cards in 2012? 

I’m excited about my new novella, which is now well underway. It’s indirectly linked to The Chaosifier in that it’s set in the same fictional Yorkshire town of Hopfield. However, it involves completely different characters and a very famous person from English legend, who just happens to be buried down the road from where I live (apparently). I’m hoping that it’ll be published round about late spring early summer. Watch this space…

You can check out The Chaosifier on Super-e-books: http://super-e-books.com/2012/01/the-chaosifier-by-mike-evers/

A character from this book also happens to run this intriguing blog: http://mountain-lord.blogspot.com/