Startacus Member Ross Harrison on his new book- Acts of Violence

by Startacus Admin

We’d previously featured Ross Harrison back in June last year, when we chatted to him about his journey into Self-Publishing.

Ross Harrison is a writer and self-publisher of science fantasy books and ebooks and since he’s now a fully fledged Startacus member, and he’s just launched his latest ebook Acts of Violence, we thought it only right to find out more about his latest offering and to give his launch a little Startacus airtime. (We’re good to Startacus members like that you know!) Anyhow...over to Ross to find out more:

Ross, Tell us about the new book - what's it about?

Acts of Violence is a thriller with noir tones and a mild sci-fi backdrop. It recounts twenty-four hours in the life of Jack Mason.

Jack returns home one morning to find a girl dead and mutilated in his apartment. Everyone wants him for it. The investigating detective will stop at nothing to put him in the execution chamber, as he failed to do so ten years earlier for the same crime. The murder makes the city’s crime lord think Jack stole something vital to his operations. And he knows his son’s death was at Jack’s hands.

Nowhere is safe for Jack, and he only has until morning to prove his innocence and point the cops at something bigger: people trafficking. But he has more questions than answers, and all he has to go on is a name given to him by a homeless girl who doesn’t trust him.

Where can we buy it, apart from in "All good book shops" that is?!

To begin with at least, Acts of Violence will only be available as an e-book. From Monday 20 January, it will be available on Amazon Kindle, and all other e-formats through Smashwords. Soon after this, Smashwords will distribute it to a range of online retailers such as Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Waterstones, Sony, etc.

The Smashwords page is here
My Amazon author page is here

What's your favourite part of writing a book?

Starting. And finishing. And reading it in full for the first time.

I tend not to plan my books all that much, other than the important, pivotal parts, so I very much enjoy watching how things develop on their own. All I have to do is press the right keys on the keyboard and try not to annoy the characters.

When naming your characters, do you work out the meaning behind the names, or is it just what rings true?

I should probably pretend to put a lot of thought into my characters’ names, but…I don’t. Most come to me fairly easily, or I’ll have a few to mull over and choose the one that sounds best.

In my other books, many names I have to come up with are for aliens. With some of these, I start with a letter and then experiment one letter at a time until I have something resembling a name. Others, I choose a normal name and then through the magic of Z’s, X’s and K’z, mostly, I make them alien. Like ‘Zak’ – a good, old-fashioned alien name.

For Acts of Violence, the sci-fi aspect is heavily toned down, almost to the point of irrelevance. There are no aliens in the city. No weird names. Jack Mason, Detective Lawrence, Cole Webster. All normal names, each of which came to me easily rang true to the character.

Jack Mason was actually the name of another book’s protagonist. I intended to modify that book and make it bloom from the unfinished draft, but it quickly transformed into something completely different. Into Acts of Violence. But I kept the name.

What's next for Ross Harrison and how can other Startacus members (apart from via your Startacus profile) get in touch? Twitter? Blog?

I’m about to start working on a super-mega-ultra-secret project. I actually wrote what that was before remembering that it was super-mega-ultra-secret, and deleting it. So there’s that. I’m also about halfway through the third book in my main series, NEXUS, so I’ll be continuing on with that. Now that I’ve written a thriller, I’ve got a taste for it, and have written down plenty of ideas for other ones, so there’s always a chance I won’t be able to resist the urge to start one of those.

My various links are:

Website/Blog: http://www.ross-harrison.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StarWraith

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AuthoRoss

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5828926.Ross_Harrison

Perhaps it would be nice if you dropped Ross a message to wish him well - or at best give his book sales a little nudge and buy the e-book - We will be for sure.

If you are interested in becoming a writer yourself, you might like our previous guide on Self Publishing - the basics and if you’d like a little airtime on Startacus, firstly make sure you are a Startacus member (it’s free to join you know!) and give us a shout at [email protected]

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Published on: 22nd January 2014