Can you give us a brief overview of your latest book?
Is it part of a series?
My latest book is actually
my debut novel. It’s called THE WOMEN IN WHITE, and it’s a YA Mystery novel featuring
a sixteen-year-old boy named Greg Chase as the lead. Greg is a wunderkind whose
heightened observative powers have earned him a role as the New York Police
Department's youngest ever civilian consultant. He’s had—and loved—that job for
about a year, but he’s forced out of it when his actions contribute to the inadvertent
killing of a suspect in one of his cases. Greg goes back to school, but he doesn’t
stay out of trouble for long. He quickly gets into a relationship with the new
girl, Mel Locket, only to learn that she’s actually the prime suspect in the
murder of her former friend and classmate from her last school. The police,
Mel's therapist, and even her own mother think she did it. Greg, however, comes
to believe that they’re off base and that Mel is actually innocent. And being naturally
unable to let the matter rest, he sets out to prove her innocence by any means
necessary.
THE WOMEN IN WHITE is part
of a series—the first in a series of YA Mystery novels called “Greg Chase
Mysteries.” Assuming positive reader response to this one, there will be many
more!
What factors influenced your decision to self-publish
your book(s)?
It was largely about wanting
to retain full control of the characters and the general world that I had
created. When you go down the traditional publishing route, you essentially
sell a substantial portion of your book rights to a publisher. And until you’ve
hit enough success that your voice carries sufficient weight with that
publisher, the publisher has a large degree of say regarding the direction that
you can take future stories in the series or even if you CAN CONTINUE the
series.
I just mentioned that I envision
WOMEN IN WHITE as the first of several Greg Chase Mysteries. I didn’t want to
lose the power to continue the story that I started in book one, and I saw VERY
many ways that that could happen if I took WOMEN IN WHITE down the traditional
path.
If the book didn’t sell well
traditionally, the publisher likely wouldn’t want to buy and publish yet more
stories in that universe—meanwhile, because the publisher would own a great
deal of the rights, I likely wouldn’t be able to just write a new Greg Chase
story on spec and publish elsewhere. Or the publisher might be willing to buy
future Greg Chase stories but might not want me to take them in the direction
that I desired.
What is your writing process? Do you listen to music
or do you like silence?
For me, it all starts with
an idea. If I like the idea, if I think it has good potential as a book, I’ll
get it down in outline format.
While I’m outlining, I do prefer
absolute silence. But once I’m done outlining, as I’m writing my first draft
from that outline, I’m okay if things are a bit louder. I still enjoy the
relative quiet even then, but I don’t absolutely require it.
Once I’ve gotten a good first
draft down, I tend to take a step back from that particular book and world for
a little while (usually one or a few months) before picking it back up again to
complete additional drafts (the third of which is usually done with the help of
a proofreader/editor). And during those additional drafts, I do again tend to
want absolute silence. Writing a first draft from an outline (particularly outlines
as detailed as I make them) is relatively easy. Outlining the whole story and completing
the editing process is hard and requires quite a bit of focus.
Do you outline your story or just go where your muse
takes you?
I outline. ALWAYS. I am very
much the type of person who needs to know where the story is going before I commit
to writing it. In my mind, it’s the only way to be certain that I’m writing a
book as opposed to, say, a short story or even maybe TWO books that need to be
split up.
That being said, there are exceptions.
I do see an outline more as a general road map than an undisputable bible. I
always get to the general storytelling ending that I’d planned, but sometimes
not in the way that I’d originally intended. Sometimes, as I’m writing from my
outline, the characters or the story will lead me in a different direction. Sometimes,
they or it will take a minor detour from what’s written in the outline but
ultimately get right back onto that preplanned path.
Did you hire an editor to review your manuscript
before publishing?
I was actually fortunate
enough that I didn’t have to! I happen to have a very good personal
relationship with a sterling editor who offered to do the job as a courtesy
(and in exchange for my giving him some technical advice regarding launching
his own debut novel). He went through my book chapter by chapter and edited for
such things as grammar, typos, sentence structure, etc. But he also gave me a
large amount of very good advice regarding the general nature and story structure
of WOMEN IN WHITE. I think that the overall work truly benefitted from it all—and
hopefully, my readers will too!
Besides Amazon, are there any other sites where your
books are for sale?
I have a limited-time
exclusivity deal with Amazon, so for the moment, THE WOMEN IN WHITE is exclusively
for sale there (in both Kindle and print form). However, those who visit my
website (fredtippett2.com) can easily access the book on Amazon via several
well-placed links.
What kinds of marketing [twitter, facebook, blog,
forums] are you involved with for promoting your book(s)?
My book is most extensively
marketed on my personal website (fredtippett2.com)—and anyone who wants the
fullest picture of my authorship or what WOMEN IN WHITE is about should check
it out! (I also offer some exclusive tie-in content there!) I heavily promote
via my Instagram and Twitter accounts (both @fred_flinstone8) as well. And I’m
currently going through a very arduous process of conducting interviews with
some book blogs and shopping copies of THE WOMEN IN WHITE to others for public
reviews.
Do you find it difficult to juggle your time between
marketing your current book and writing your next book?
Well, fortunately enough for
me, the manuscript for my next book has actually already been written for quite
a while now! I drafted it back in early 2018, and I’ve been furiously editing
and proofreading it since! I will say, though, that it has required a not
insubstantial amount of commitment to stick to my plans for editing that
manuscript while also handling the necessary duties associated with marketing WOMEN
IN WHITE. I spent plenty of time making sure that the launch for WOMEN IN WHITE
was just right. But now that it’s been released, it’s taking my spending even more
time to make sure that the book takes off in the way that I so desire.
What advice would you give a new author just entering
into the self-publishing arena?
Be sure that it’s what you
want. That’s about as succinctly as I can say it.
I think there’s a bad rumor
out there that self-publishing is basically the easy way out for authors who don’t
want to put in the time or the work to perfect their craft so that they can get
an agent and publish traditionally. But in reality, the exact opposite is the
truth. Granted, you do have some free riders who just want to pump out a book
fast and who don’t care about the quality of their work. But for those who
actually want a future and a fanbase as self-published authors, choosing that
route means choosing a MUCH harder path than traditional publishing. It means
finding your own GOOD editors and proofreaders, designing covers that will unequivocally
draw potential readers in (or paying someone to do it for you), and doing your
own marketing plus self-promotion.
There are perks—and once you
succeed, the rewards are comparable to (and debatably better than) those of the
traditional route. But until you do succeed, the work is likely going to be at
least twice as hard. And as you’re starting out, the fruits of your labor are
almost certainly going to be incremental, not exponential.
What’s next for you?
Well, as of right now, I’m
in the final stages of editing my next novel. It too will be a YA Mystery
novel, though this one will feature a strong female protagonist, as opposed to THE
WOMEN IN WHITE’s Greg Chase. I’m hoping to release this novel next year—either via
traditional publishing or independently through Trinity Power Productions LLC,
my own content creation company.
Author bio:
Fred Tippett, II, is the
author of the Young Adult Mystery novel THE WOMEN IN WHITE, which released on
Amazon in November 2020. Fred currently lives in Alabama, though he is a
Washington-DC-barred attorney. He holds a Juris Doctor Degree from the
University of Pennsylvania—and primarily uses his legal education to bolster
the credibility of police procedural elements for his novels.
You can find Fred at
@fred_flinstone8 on Twitter and Instagram.