Indie Author Spotlight: Nancy Jane Moore of Flashes of Illumination

Flashes of Illumination by Nancy Jane Moore

Welcome to the weekly Indie Fantasy Author Spotlight. Today we feature Nancy Jane Moore, author of Flashes of Illumination. Thanks for stopping by, Nany! I enjoyed your interview!

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Beth: What got you into writing this book in the first place? Tell us a little about your book.

Nancy: Flashes of Illumination started as a project during the first year of Book View Café, the online writers’ co-op. I decided to post “flash fiction” – short-short story – every week. While I didn’t write a new one every time –- I had a nice backlog of reprints -– I did end up writing about 20 stories from scratch and adapting some others I’d written as oral storytelling projects. Most of the 52 stories in Flashes were published as part of that project, including the sample story currently available, “The Wrong Butterfly.”

Beth: I love that title! What was the most fun thing to do during the writing, producing or marketing of your book?

Nancy: Writing a story on a weekly deadline was a great challenge, both inspiring and terrifying! Finding the perfect picture for the cover was also great fun. I had no ideas and was randomly searching through my photo files when this picture jumped out at me. (Many thanks to Pati Nagle for turning it into a real cover.) The picture looks abstract on the cover, but it’s actually of the inside of the fort at Nassau in the Bahamas.

Beth: How we create our covers is always fascinating. What are readers saying about your book?

Nancy: The thing I’ve found most interesting in the reviews is that a several people really liked the short memoir pieces I included -– flash memoir as opposed to flash fiction.

One reviewer said of the memoir pieces, “It is in this section that Moore endears herself to readers by candidly recounting a conversation with her late mother, a horse she didn’t want but came to love, and her balanced fear of ghosts and tornadoes.”

Another comment I particularly liked was, “I have no idea how she is able to put an entire plot into less than 250 words, but she does it,” which tells me I did what I intended.

And then there was this one: “I was stunned, scared, pensive, and had more than a few ‘Aha!’ moments.”

That made my day.

Beth: Reader feedback, especially when it’s good always makes my day, too! Why did you decide to Indie publish?

Nancy: I’m part of Book View Café (BVC), which is a co-op of published authors doing ebook publishing. I’d published my novella Changeling as my first ebook from BVC. It was a reprint of the print version published by Aqueduct Press, and was looking for another appropriate book to release. There aren’t many publishers interested in flash fiction collections, particularly ones that include a lot of fantasy and science fiction stories, so it seemed a good choice to do it through BVC. One of the advantages of Book View Café is that we copy edit and do other publishing chores for each other. I owe a lot of thanks to Vonda N. McIntyre and Judith Tarr for this one.

Beth: I know! It takes a village to create a book! What advice do you have to authors just starting out?

Nancy: Develop a track record by publishing other places before you start publishing your fiction on your own. All the authors on Book View Café have significant professional publishing credentials. Some are using ebook publishing as a way to make out-of-print books available. Others are using it to publish books that don’t fit neatly into established publishing. It isn’t a group of new writers.

Once you develop a reputation, try everything: established publishers, small press, co-op publishing, indie publishing. There’s no right way to build a writing career right now.

Beth: I so agree with you that there isn’t a right way to build a writing career right now. I too suggest to beginning writers to just dive right in! Anything else you’d like to share?!

Nancy: I love writing flash fiction! There’s something very satisfying about the challenge of telling a story in the fewest possible worlds.

Beth: Fun! Thanks for stopping by Nancy!

Author, Nancy Jane Moore

About the Author
Nancy Jane Moore is the author of Changeling, originally published as part of the Conversation Pieces series from Aqueduct Press and now available as an ebook from Book View Café; Conscientious Inconsistencies, a collection from the UK press PS Publishing; and Flashes of Illumination, an ebook collection of short-short stories from Book View Café. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous print and ebook anthologies as well as in magazines ranging from The National Law Journal to Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

She is a founding member of Broad Universe and of the online writers’ co-op, Book View Café, as well as being a member of SFWA. Currently she’s revising a novel at the request of an editor and working on a story for the third volume of the Book View Café Shadow Conspiracy steampunk anthologies. She blogs each Thursday on the Book View Café blog (www.blog.bookviewcafe.com), and can be found on Facebook and Google+. Her author page at Book View Café is at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Nancy-Jane-Moore/.