Local Author Spotlight: Steven Farkas
I usually wake up around 7 am. First thing I do is make a pot of coffee. Being a caffeine addict, I make a second pot of coffee in the afternoon. If it is Summertime, then I drink coffee in the morning and ice coffee in the afternoon. Once I’ve had my first couple cups of coffee, it’s time to walk the dogs. Then I grab something for breakfast and climb the stairs to my office on the second floor of the house. I usually make it to the office and start writing at 10 am. Sometimes I start later if I have something else to do in the morning, like mowing the lawn or waiting on a repair man to arrive. On a good day with no distractions I will write from 10 in the morning until around 4 pm. There are times when I get on a run and continue on into the night in order to get all of my ideas down before they are lost forever. All of my fiction is short. They are either a flash fiction collection, or a short story collection, or a stand alone novella. I prefer short fiction. Often if it takes me more then a month to finish writing a collection or a stand alone piece, I tend to lose interest and throw it away. I figure if I can’t get it done in a month then it’s not good enough to finish. I like to read quick moving short books, so that’s more then likely why I write the way I do. My target audience is someone who is a fan a fan of B horror and science fiction, as I am also a fan. I think it is good to be a someone who likes the style and genre you write in. It makes it enjoyable to write for me if I am someone who loves the genre I write.
Writing is important, but so is promotion by going to Horror Conventions, Comic Conventions, Science Fiction Conventions, or a bookstore, to promote my work. When you are an independent writer or publisher, it is necessary to get out and promote you’re work as much as possible. It’s hard to gain traction for you’re writing and books when you don’t have a big publisher with a big public relations department. Without meeting people and talking to them at big and small events, no one will ever know you’re book or you as an author exists. I spend a great deal of time getting out to events in order to promote my work, it’s almost as important as the work itself. So, I’m always looking for new ways to promote myself and my writing.
Covid has impacted my writing in that since everyone in my house was forced to work and go to school at home, I lost my office many days making it difficult to get as much writing done as I wanted. It is often hard to write outside of being in my comfortable space. It has also altered my public appearance schedule when it comes to promoting my work at conventions and bookstores in some good and many bad ways. What I experienced as a positive was the ability to expand events I attended which I would not have thought of ever attending. I was able to do that for events who had become completely virtual. For instance in October 2020 I was a virtual vendor for the New York Diversity Comic Con at the NY Fashion Institute. I came across this convention while trying to find ways to promote my work in a pandemic. Had it not been for the pandemic I would not have known about that convention. So I now have new ways to promote my work. On the negative side, those conventions I count on attending to get the word out about my work like the Jersey Shore Comic Con and the Super Shock horror convention cancelled their events. Only one in person outdoor event, Monster Bash, was not cancelled. While being able to find virtual ways to promote my books, those events don’t lead to sales or income. No one clicks the link to buy the books the way they buy the books at in person events, where people can meet me and purchase an autographed copy of my books. I found it much harder to create sales without having the opportunities to meet fans in person.
