AUTHOR MIKE JANSEN
Hello, Mike. You are a man of many achievements. Which do you hold closest to your heart and why?
That would be my debut novel, ‘The Failing God’. It marks the end of a difficult period in my life and the rekindling of my writing. I had stopped for almost ten years due to various circumstances, but the need to produce prose has returned with a vengeance.
What current projects are you working on?
Several, actually: I’m writing for various anthologies and magazines, both in the Netherlands and in the US and UK. I also manage some websites for my Dutch publisher, Verschijnsel, and I recently set up the web presence for JWK Fiction (jwkfiction-com.preview-domain.com) In addition I am also working on my third complete novel, which is part three of a pentalogy. I also help several beginning authors improve their work and get published. And of course I combine that with a family and a busy job as CTO for a high tech startup.
You recently joined the staff at JWK Publishing. Tell us about that.
It’s one of these things that happen when people get together and have ambition and drive to create something new, something better, something, perhaps, revolutionary. I had of course assisted in many technical aspects of ebook and print publishing so when the request came to formally join the firm, I accepted the position. The nice thing about being invited is that you can choose your own title. Mine is “Lead Gopher for knicks ‘n knacks and odds ‘n ends”, which seems fitting.
The English translation of your critically acclaimed novel The Falling God is nearing completion. Tell us about that.
First of all, it was a time consuming process to get the book translated. When I write in Dutch, my mother tongue, I can write 4-5k words -or more- a day. In English it’s about half and if I want my English to be good I have to think a lot more. That’s why I write my novels in Dutch, because of the speed I can achieve while using the language and the constructions that I want.
So far the book is selling pretty well in the Netherlands, which is of course a very, very, very small market. It is also receiving lots of positive reviews on various sites and it has brought me something completely new and heretofore unknown: fan mail … Another nice thing is that I’ve been compared to George R.R. Martin with a hint of Steven Erikson and Glen Cook intermixed. That’s good company, I would say.
My translator is a professional who unfortunately is very sought after, so she has to do my translation in between the well-paying assignments she does, but the end is now in sight. She told me she has only one problem with the book: once she starts translating she often forgets translating and begins to read ahead to find out what’s next. For me that’s the biggest compliment.
It seems a certain publisher named jwkfiction has expressed interest in publishing the book. What coincidence, eh?
You work as a mentor for developing writers. Tell us about your experiences mentoring
Yes, I work with a number of promising Dutch authors. They all have talent, but they need help expressing their talent in proper language and with proper construction of stories. That’s where I come in. We talk, critique and experiment with the goal of producing publishable stories for Dutch and English publications.
It’s very rewarding to see one of your author friends grow and evolve and it feels great whenever one of their stories, that we previously discussed, gets published.
One of my most successful author friends is Chantal Noordeloos, who –with a little prodding from me- started writing for English markets less than a year ago and has managed to win several publications and even an award in that short period of time.
There’s of course a reason for everything. When I was a lot younger, my mentor was Paul Harland, who at that time belonged to the top five of Dutch genre authors. He taught me many things about writing, but he also was looking for companionship in writing, another voice to stand beside him, a competitor even who could help him in turn reach even higher levels of craftsmanship. I guess in a way that rubbed off and I’m helping other writers reach higher levels, perhaps one day to teach me how to grow and evolve.
What writers influenced you the most?
When I was young I read fifteen to twenty books a week. Yes, that gets you through a library fast. So I think I’ve read a sizeable chunk of all the SciFi, Fantasy and Horror classics out there. There have been many writers who at some point caught my attention. When I was real young it was Tolkien, Frank Herbert and Stephen Donaldson. Later on I found Tais Teng (he’s Dutch!), Stephen King and James Herbert. Next came William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Neil Stephenson, followed by Orson Scott Card, Terry Pratchett, Dan Simmons and Robert Jordan. These days my favorite authors are Glen Cook, George R.R. Martin and Iain M. Banks and I have Steven Erikson on my ‘to read’ list. There are many others I enjoyed reading, but the list would get too exhaustive. I’m on Goodreads, my profile shows the books I’ve rated so far (or rather, the titles I remember.)
What is your favorite among the stories you’ve written? Why this one?
Each new story that I write is an attempt to exceed my craft, to get one step further on the writer’s path. That means each new story is special in some way.
Looking back at the past two years, my story ‘Assigned to Amlwch’ stands out, mostly due to the quite extensive research I did for it and the way in which history fit so well with fantasy.
I’ve done a little over thirty English publications in the past two years with many more now being considered by various magazines and anthologies.
What are your future plans?
I want to get my work to as large an audience as possible. I’m a writer, I want my work to be read by as many people as possible and hopefully I can touch them the way other authors have touched me with their work. To that end I will keep on writing short stories and try to get them published in the best magazines and anthologies. Meanwhile my dark fantasy series, The Cranborn Chronicles, will get published and I hope that will also reach a large audience.
Please use this space to write whatever you like:
To write is to evolve, to try out new things, new approaches, and new voices even. The past two years have seen that evolution speed up. There used to be a time when I would write two or three stories a year and getting to the next level took many years. It’s an odd sensation, knowing and feeling that the way you write has subtly changed and improved. This has happened three times in the last two years and the pace of evolution seems to be speeding up. It seems there’s no end in sight yet, so I’m curious to see what the coming years will bring. As always, the more you write, the better you get.
Thank you for your time Mike!
You’re most welcome, James!