Good morning, all! My “Chatting with the Authors” interview today is with T.W. Dittmer, author of “The Valley Walker”, a mystical adventure…:)

Click on the cover to get the book at Amazon!

TR: Good morning, Tim…thanks for dropping by.

TW: Good morning, Thomas. Thanks so much for offering to interview me. I appreciate your blog and am happy to be part of it.

TR: So, let’s get this rolling. How old were you when you wrote your first piece?

TW: I was seventeen, a senior in high school that knew everything there was to know about nothing.

TR: What was it, and in what genre?

TW: Actually it was music, a folk-rock piece titled My Fortress.

TR: What made you write it?

TW: My family was very musical, and some of it must have rubbed off on me. I think I was inspired by songwriters of the time, and poets that I studied in school. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan impressed me so much that I imitated him.

TR: What have you written since then?

TW: I majored in music after I got out of the army, and wrote songs for years. The music career never panned out, and I quit writing altogether for decades. For some strange reason I started writing again, began working on a novel. It took about four years to finish, but The Valley Walker was published in April of this year.

TR: What was the inspiration for your current book?

TW: Life in general is an inspiration, I think. Places I’ve been and things I’ve seen, people I’ve met and worked with, books and movies and music. It all works together.

TR: Tell us a little about it, and where it’s available.

TW: Well, The Valley Walker is a mystical tale about a Vietnam veteran’s quest for redemption and justice. That story line is interlaced with the efforts of a special task force to stop the sale of heroin to American college students. It’s available right now as an EBook for the Kindle at Amazon.

TR: Is there a particular place or setting where you get your writing ideas?

TW: Not really. The raw kernel of an idea can come from just about anything. It just comes, and I jot it down. I dig into it, doing some research and chewing on it and thinking about how it could work in a story. Then comes the fun part, just running with it.

TR: What made you choose either traditional or independent publishing?

TW: I don’t know if anyone ever read the query letters I sent out, but nobody asked to read the book… or even part of it. I was pretty much dead in the water when a few people started doing well at self-publishing and it made the news. I heard about it, looked into how it was done, and decided to give it a try.

TR: If you had to choose the most important element in an author’s platform, what would it be?

TW: To me, it’s a good story and good writing that gains you readers, and the best place to showcase that is in a blog. But please don’t make any major decisions based on that statement. I’m such a noob at this that I’m still trying to figure out where the bathrooms are.

TR: What mistakes have you made in regards to publishing and marketing your work, and what will you do differently in the future?

TW: I don’t know that I would classify anything I’ve done as a mistake, or even a missed step. I’m still learning, bumping into things and knocking them over, but I’m meeting a lot of great people and having a pretty good time doing it. I do think that it’s a good idea for an author wanting to enter the literary world to learn as much as they can about the craft and the business before they jump in.

TR: Do you have an idea for your next book?

TW: I’ve just about completed the first draft on the next one, but have stepped back to learn as much as I can about the writing craft before I continue.

TR: Thank you, Tim. And there you have it folks. If you would like to follow Tim’s blog, you can find it here:

http://twdittmer.wordpress.com/

Drop by tomorrow, when I interview Patsy Collins with her new book, “Escape to the Country“!