Welcome Author Gina West!

Be completely honest: how much of your main character is really you?

A LOT of Twilah is me. Stubborn. Check. Determined. Check. Self-sufficient. Check. And she tries to pretend she’s a hard ass, but she’s really a big softy. Double check.

What do you tell yourself before you start writing?

Usually it’s something like “quit reading Facebook and get to work!” Once that shiznizzle is taken care of, I’ll spend some time planning the scene I want to write and then get down to business. I once read some advice suggesting that when you stop writing for the day, you should plan what you need to write the next day. That way, the blank space after that last period isn’t so intimidating. I use that guideline as much as possible.

Look to your left, what's there?

A lovely glass of red wine. And also the stuff that always seems to accumulate around my desk, like bills and mail that was probably important six months ago.

How long ago did you finish eating it?*

Fortunately, I’m still working on my wine. Yum.

Your main character is stuck on an island What three things do they bring?

Twilah is fairly practical, but I’ll assume a boat is off limits, so she would bring (1) some way to extract fresh water, like that doohickey they stab into trees in The Hunger Games; (2) an instruction manual on edible plants, living in the wild,etc.; (3) and last, but not least, a big bottle of wine or tequila. If the end is truly near, Twilah is likely to kick back, drink right out of the bottle, and die drunk and happy.

How long do they survive?

I think Twilah would last a good while, a year maybe? She’s a survivor. What might do her in is the loneliness.

What's the best part about being an indie author?

Control. Even with a small press, I got a lot of say-so with my edits and my cover. I don’t think you get that with larger, traditional publishers. I would hate to have to sell a book if I thought the cover was garbage or the editor had taken such liberties with the story that it wasn’t mine any longer.

What’s the worst part about being an indie author?

Responsibility. Along with all the control comes the responsibility for selling the book. I have zero marketing skills. I do the best I can, but I find it difficult to shout above all the other romance authors out there. For me, the marketing aspect and the business relationships sizable publishers formed aeons ago are a big benefit to going the traditional route. Going indie means starting from scratch.

Where do you see the publishing industry going in the future?

I think self-publishing will slowly and surely garner more respect. There’s a lot of junk out there, especially self-published junk, but I think something (The market? Reviewers? The audience?) will separate the wheat from the chaff so that readers can find the good writers, the ones who spring for editing and artistic cover work and slog through the marketing mine field, the ones truly committed to their craft. As self-publishing gains traction, you’ll see self-pubbed books in Barnes & Noble and libraries. Already, Ingram, who has monopolized the distribution market for decades, has established a self-publishing brand (IngramSpark) for distribution of self-pubbed books to physical bookstores. This is a huge boon for self-published authors.

The Big 5 need to pay attention to all this. The more they stick with their money-makers and snub new writers, the more their market share will dwindle.