Author Interview with Bruce Deitrick Price

In my interview below with author, Bruce Deitrick Price, I came to learn that no matter how long a writer has been publishing books, it is still new and exciting and ever evolving for an author to publish a new book. Price has been publishing books since the 1980’s and is now transitioning to the self-publishing, eBook process with several ideas waiting in the wings to be turned into future books. He is involved in all aspects of the creative process from writer to cover designer to publisher.

New writers can learn a lot from experienced writers. If you have or are thinking of publishing a book, Price’s answers to my questions below may help you decide which direction to go in terms of what to write, how to write it, and how to publish it.

1. How many books have you written and where can you buy them?

I’ve published about eight books, from CreateSpace to Simon & Schuster. The age of the e-book is exciting for me. The first of my new wave is The Man Who Falls In Love With His Wife (on Kobo). It’s about a man who thinks his marriage is perfect until he looks more closely at it. I also have two crime novels on the internet (Kindle and Web-E-Books).

2. What famous books can you compare to your own?

My books are all over the place, so we can’t go too far with this. I want to write something original that I can be proud of, and most people could enjoy it. So there’s my aesthetic, creative but user-friendly. (Some of my work is frankly experimental, for example, American Dreams published by Permanent Press in 1984 and still in print.)

3. Why do you write for this particular age group?

No age group in mind. I would say everybody from high school to old age is what I’m thinking about.

4. How autobiographical are your books?

Not much. On the other hand, I often feel that every character is me—all ages, men, women, good and bad. This might be some sort of crazy Gemini thing. When I think up characters, I know how they talk, walk, and think. Another odd aspect is that if you offered me $1000 to write a joke, I couldn’t do it. But virtually all of my characters say funny things. In other words, they have a life of their own.

5. What’s the best compliment that you’ve ever received about your writing?

Too Easy, published by Simon & Schuster in1994, got this review from Kinky Friedman: “The unwed mother of all page turners… so well written it’s frightening.” (Too Easy will be reissued by Simon & Schuster as an e-book by November 2015.)

6. What has been your greatest moment as a writer so far?

Being published by Simon & Schuster, having Too Easy translated into French, German, and Dutch—that’s thrilling.

7. Where do you get your covers?

One of my jobs was always art director. I designed the cover for The Man Who Falls In Love With His Wife. I like it a lot; and that became a big motivator for going the e-book route. The story takes place in Manhattan; furthermore, it’s about emotional vertigo. The cover communicates all that.

8. What is a subject/character/setting you would like to tackle?

I've already made notes for the next three novels, one a thriller set in Virginia Beach, Virginia (where I live); the second a detective drama set in Manhattan in the field of education; and the third is a weird concept inspired by William Gibson. The hero has been transformed by language and he in turn is able to transform others; a fascinating challenge.

9. What is next for you?

For the past decade I've been one of the country’s most prolific writers on education; and that work continues. But now I’ve also activated the literary side. I’m finishing old projects and starting new ones. As I was learning to pitch and query this past year, the whole e-book thing went into high gear. So there was a nice convergence. I want to put all my novels out into world, as a traditional book or an e-book.

10. End with a quote from one of your books.

This is the wife in The Man Who Falls In Love With His Wife:

“Elizabeth Franklin looked like she could ski or play a good game of tennis, even though she was not particularly athletic. But she carried herself well and moved confidently. She was very conscious of herself physically, the flexing of the muscles, the way her clothes felt on her. Elizabeth was fifteen and suddenly became intensely aware of her body, and the feeling never left. A curse, a blessing, she still wasn't sure.”