Image Credits:-
A huge thank you to Richard Hardie for supplying author, location, and book cover shots (and one of the author’s assistant – Oscar!). Other images created by Allison Symes in Book Brush using Pixabay photos or taken as screenshots by her or are directly from Pixabay. One shot of Richard at a previous speaking engagement was taken by Allison at The Hiltonbury Farmhouse.
It is with pleasure I share the news Richard Hardie, author of Leap of Faith and Trouble With Swords, will be releasing his third book in his Temporal Detective Agency series. The third book is called Remember, Remember for reasons that will become apparent when you read it! Richard is also planning to release his fourth book soon too. This will be a collection of short stories linked to his Temporal Detective Agency.
Definitely time for another CFT interview then!
1. Richard, below is the blurb for Remember, Remember, but when will it be out? Where can people obtain copies? What format(s) will the book be available in?
Blurb: Tertia, Unita, and their boyfriends’ holiday plans are ruined by the mysterious Mr North, from the Federal Bureau of Infinity, as they start on a time travelling adventure that takes them to 19th century America and 17th century London where they get mixed up in one of the most famous conspiracy plots.
I’m in the process of the final edit and hope to have the book available before Easter. I’m also compiling an encyclopaedia of facts and characters encountered by the Agency in their travels that’s proving promising.
2. Richard, can you remind people who Tertia, Unita, and the boys are?
Tertia and Unita are from the 5th century and become apprentices to the world’s greatest wizard, who is, of course, Merlin. The first twist is Merlin is a well disguised woman with ambition and a talent for making a king out of an unassuming lad called Arthur. Unfortunately, she falls in love with the guy and is persuaded by Tertia to tell him he is a woman. Arthur is thrilled, Merlin and Arthur go to the Isle of Avalon and to all intents disappear from the story after page three!
Tertia, Unita, and Merlin’s sister Marlene start the Temporal Detective Agency based in Merlin’s wizard cave. They use all the facilities, among which is an ultraviolet archway Time Portal. In their first adventure the girls meet Bryn, the son of an old friend from Camelot and David, the adopted son of their deadliest enemy. Both boys join the Agency. Bryn and Unita are an instant couple, whereas David and Tertia are jolly good friends … who may become a couple!
Tertia (aged 14) narrates all the Temporal Detective Agency books. Her character was based on a Scout in a Troop I helped run. She was feisty, a martial arts black belt, played county level hockey and was the best footballer I’ve seen. The perfect role model.
3. What are your plans for book launches for Remember, Remember?
Authors Reach Ltd books are launched initially with a Facebook event. Everyone is invited and the event lasts for three to four hours. All Authors Reach authors take part and contribute news, views, comments, quiz questions, and prizes.
The book launch will also be on Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin as well as on our website and on my site. People can order signed and dedicated paperback copies through both sites. If you’re in the UK we’ll cover postage too.
I love signing events and I’ll be doing as many as possible, locally, and across South Wales and Southern England, in bookshops, libraries and even garden centres.
And of course I’ll launch on CFT! Dates to be confirmed later.
As more independent bookshops close, Waterstones, Blackwells, and W.H.Smith have become even more important to a book launch. That also includes Amazon. Although there may not be a launch through Amazon, all my books and those of other Authors Reach authors are available on Amazon in the UK, the USA, and most other countries.
4. What are your three top tips for organising and running a book launch? Do you prefer “in person” or online launches? There are merits to both!
The one obvious piece of advice is to tell the maximum number of people your book is available and ask them to spread the word. Book signing events can only tell the local area you have a new book, so social media is most important in sending the message.
Podcasts are becoming more interesting and even TikTok is something we are keen to explore. The greatest way of launching a new book is to write more books in a series and get a fan base, then keep in contact using newsletters and Facebook groups preferably on a monthly, or even weekly basis.
Allison: Consistency is key here too. People get used to seeing regular posts etc so deliver on them! It will help build your audience.
5. Writing short stories is a new departure for you. Do you have a preference for the short or longer forms of writing? Are you hoping to write more short stories?
I used to write short stories when I was much younger and I loved the speed of the story, but when I started writing the Scouts and Guides Gang Shows I found the more involved plots were enjoyable to write.
Over the past five years, I’ve written a number of short stories for clubs, schools, and associations as a result of talks I’ve given on being an author and publisher. It wasn’t long before I began thinking bringing those short stories together under the banner of the Temporal Detective Agency might be a possibility. The end result should be out later this year.
6. Can you bring us up to date with news from Authors Reach?
Although Authors Reach Ltd is a fully registered publishing company with distributorship agreements, we operate as a cooperative. Our authors receive all the royalties from their books, with no deductions for the publisher. In return all authors support each other at all stages of their writing careers.
When I started the company it was with the intention of taking my books back from my existing publisher and publishing them myself properly. Other authors joined me within months and now, six years later, we have nine excellent authors, some of whom are very well known and others who have large back catalogues. I’m talking to a couple of authors at the moment about joining us, though at no stage have we gone out searching for new colleagues. That may change of course!
7. I remember Remember, Remember from the rhyme “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot”. Without giving away spoilers, was that an influence on your story line? How does history “work its way” into your YA novels? (For Leap of Faith, you needed to know a reasonable amount about smugglers).
As the series has progressed, time travel has become more important to plotlines in the Temporal Detective Agency.
The first book (Leap of Faith) started in the 5th century Saxon times when Camelot would have existed, then moved to the 21st century where the Agency chose to be based, and finally to South Wales in the 17th century where the Agency fights ship wreckers and smugglers.
The second book (Trouble With Swords) takes the Agency to Shakespeare’s London, then Caesar’s Rome, and Cleopatra’s Egypt.
As an author, I love the freedom time travel gives me in putting my characters into situations normally impossible.
You’re right Remember, Remember is a hint towards the Gunpowder Plot, though rather than hint at any more of the plot I will say this time the Agency goes even further in time and things don’t turn out as history books tell us they do.
8. What would you say were your biggest influences when writing your stories?
I love the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett with their mixture of fantasy, adventure, and humour, as well as the historical novels of Bernard Cornwell. As authors they are my two biggest current influences, though in the past there have been many others that were my heroes.
I got to know Terry Pratchett in is later years and indeed we co-wrote one of the Gang shows in 2002. The basic plot became my first book, Leap of Faith … with Terry’s blessing!
9. What do you like and dislike most about writing?
Writing can be the loneliest job in the world, or it can be the most rewarding. When an author has a bank of well-developed characters they become great companions, as well as almost friends and in many cases write their own stories (with help, of course!). Writing then can become fun.
Writer’s block is often stated as being an author’s greatest fear, though Terry Pratchett once told me there’s no such thing as writer’s block … there’s boredom, or you’re writing the wrong book!
I find writing a joy, though it might take longer than I anticipate. Even editing and proofreading can be fulfilling, because it’s perfecting an offspring. Terry also told me if you’re editing a book and you have to keep on reading it, the book is only ready when you’re totally sick of it! I’ve never reached that point yet.
Now I’ve started Authors Reach and I’m both author and publisher, there’s nothing I dislike about my chosen career after retiring.
10. What would you say are the best ways for readers to support authors they like after they’ve bought the books (naturally!)?
Readers should tell other people about a book so they can buy it too. That could be through Amazon reviews, Facebook, Twitter, reading clubs, or just word of mouth, After that, buy the next book in the series!
If possible it’s great if readers tell authors how much they enjoyed a book, otherwise authors can only tell by looking at sales figures and that’s so unreliable.
11. Can you share three top tips for marketing? It’s something a lot of writers dread but you can be creative with it. Any thoughts here?
The first top tip is DON’T STOP! The moment you stop the memory of potential readers for your books disappears.
The second tip is to use a variety of marketing tools, not just the obvious ones. Websites, blogs, interviews and social media are excellent, but also use marketing tools such as BookBub and Book Gorilla. For a fee they will market your book for one day to tens, or even hundreds of thousands of potential readers. Again, you have to keep doing it.
The third tip is never to ignore Amazon and Amazon ads!
12. This is a question I put to Val Penny recently but it is a good one to share elsewhere! Name your favourite character produced by another author and name the runner-up. Now do the same with your own characters, Richard! Which of your “secondary” characters do you most value and why?
One of my favourite characters by another author is Sam Vimes, the captain of the Night Watch in Terry Pratchett’s books. Sam evolves in the series from being a hopeless alcoholic, to being an astute, if cynical, master of his trade. Few of Pratchett’s characters evolve in the same way, if at all.
My runner-up would be King Arthur in all his guises, from Mallory’s almost-medieval knight, to Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon warlord, and not forgetting my own version in the Temporal Detective Agency series.
Tertia has to be the favourite of my own characters. She narrates my books and, although only 14, she is a feisty, astute young lady.
As a background character from my books I’ve always like Galahad, the knight of the Round Table, who acts as the “front” for the Agency when he set up his Olé Grill restaurant. He is a celebrity chef and crops up in the most unlikely places and times in history, frequently helping the Agency.
13. Do you outline your novels before writing them up?
I know the overall plot, though I tend not to map the storyboard before I start writing. I let the book evolve as I write and let the characters talk and act as they would in real life. Having said that, I’m sometimes surprised when there’s a final twist even I wasn’t expecting!
14. How did you approach writing your short story collection? Did you plan out each story or the collection as a whole? I found with my flash collections that themes emerged as I wrote. That helped a lot with grouping the stories for submission to my publisher later.
The current batch of short stories evolved from talks I gave to schools and Scout groups around the South of England and Wales. I go through the key rules of writing (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) and how an author has to know the answers to these throughout the writing process.
I then get the kids (usually, but adults as well) to provide a list of characters (Who), a rough plot (What), a location (Where), current day or historical (When).
I then go away and develop a short story based on everything they give me, and sometimes that can be a challenge and the kids know it! I then have to use Why and How when writing the story, which essentially means asking myself if the plot is believable and hangs together and can the reader relate to it. I then usually go back about a month later with the complete short story and read it out to the group.
I now have eight stories, which all have some link (amazingly) to the Temporal Detective Agency and have the potential to become a book in their own right … not just as a collection of short stories, but as part of an after dinner game in the Agency offices.
Conclusion
Many thanks, Richard, for sharing your news. Good luck with the new books and welcome to short story writing too!
Thank you, Allison. It’s been a pleasure.
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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All the authors you interview, Allison, are different and interesting in their various ways, yet they all face up to similar problems when writing a book. Richard sounds like a very practical man, a problem solver.
One way of overcoming writer’s block (aka laziness) is to force yourself to write a true sentence on a blank sheet of paper, preferably a sentence that moves, i.e. ‘It is a foggy morning when the fog clears I will discover what all the noise was about at our neighbour’s house.’ Then you are going. The house has been replaced by a casino/ a park for Russian tanks/ a gothic castle/ a school for elves, etc.
Many thanks, Mike. I’ve always found author interviews fascinating whether I’m doing them myself or listening to/reading them by others. There are always things to learn in the writing world and interviews are a great way of picking up useful hints and tips.
Like the sound of your opening line here, Mike. Hope you do something with it!