I was lucky to get an interview with Jeff Chapman the author of the fantasy novel The Great Contagion.

Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
I was born and raised on the Great Plains of the U.S.—very little water and even fewer trees—and now live in the Great Lakes region—lots of water and lots of trees. Trained in history and computer science, I write software by day and explore the fantastic when I should be sleeping. My fiction ranges from fairy tales to fantasy to ghost stories. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m addicted to dark hot chocolate and I’m very fond of cats. Some of my fiction includes The Merliss Tales fantasy series, The Huckster Tales weird western series, and The Comic Cat Tales series. I live with my wife, children, and cats in a house with more books than bookshelf space.

Why should I buy your books?
Do you like fantasy? Do you like cats? The Merliss Tales centers on a young woman’s spirit that is trapped inside the body of a cat. The magic that cast her spirit into the cat has given her an incredibly long life. The Great Contagion chronicles Merliss’s troubles and triumphs when a plague strikes her home. When a mob turns its wrath on her and the community’s cats, disease becomes the least of her worries. Merliss is pressed to use her wits and magic to save herself and her friends. A dark and gritty story, The Great Contagion is something different, nothing like your run-of-the-mill fantasy.

What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
I remember some story writing assignments from grade school but those were derivative. I was probably sixteen when I started creating my own stories. These were Edgar Allan Poe-inspired stories of the weird and macabre. Fortunately, none of those early attempts have survived, but my initial interest in the macabre lingers in the darker elements of my fantasy tales. I suspect all the time I spent at the library during summer vacations drove my interest in creating my own stories and instilled the dream of writing my own books.

Why did you choose to write this kind of fantasy?
I believe the subgenre of stories from the perspective of a human spirit interacting with the world from an animal’s perspective is largely unexplored.

Which other author has had the biggest influence on your writing?
I’ve been influenced by a lot of authors. They all have strengths that you can study to improve your own skills and I’m talking skills with scene development and characters as well as broader methods of storytelling. Some of the writers I’ve learned from include Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, and Robert E. Howard.

What’s the best thing about being a writer?
You can sit around and make stuff up and call it work.

What’s the hardest thing about being a writer?
Trying to convince other people to read the stuff you make up.

Do you have any tips or an author app, tool, or resource that you can really recommend we try?
Give yWriter a try. It’s a free story/novel writing tool. Similar to Scrivener but without the price tag.

And now it's time to yank out your Palantir! Let’s talk about the future. What new projects are you working on?
I’m at work on a novel in my Merliss Tales fantasy series. The new novel is The Breath of the Sea. It’s set several centuries in the future from the first two novels. The story revolves around an injured mermaid found washed ashore by a fisherman and the fisherman’s daughter, who befriends the mermaid. The daughter is dying, and the fisherman seeks out a way to sell the mermaid to raise money to treat his daughter’s illness. Merliss is drawn into events to protect the mermaid.

Do you expect new technologies to come along soon that will have a huge impact on self-publishing? For instance, when will we see a decent novel written by an AI author?
AI is only as good as the information fed into it. Anything an AI produces will be derivative. There are plenty of people writing stories. We don’t have a shortage of content. I’m hoping for advances in searching and indexing that will allow readers to find the niche stories they might be looking for.

Do you have any dreams you’d like to share?
Attract a horde of readers who beg me for the next book in the series. Win an award for one of my books. Just about anything in the realm of writing/publishing success would be great.

However, in a small way, I’ve already achieved my dream. I have the time and resources to devote a significant amount of effort to writing stories. And for that, I am very thankful.

Anything else you would like to say before we close?
Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to ramble about my writing.

Thank you for doing the interview. I wish you the very best of luck, and I hope you find many new readers for all your books.