Author Q&A with Charlie King 

Author Q&A with Charlie King

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Charlie King is an Author from London who began writing from an early age, leading him to write his first book published in 2017 and he hasn’t looked back since then.

Charlie has always considered writing to be a hobby no matter the content. That is why he runs a blog on his author page to discuss everything from TV and Film to Book Reviews, observations of life as an author and even satirical articles.

www.charliekingauthor.com

1. Tell us about your published books

My most recent published book is Lizzie’s Dream Journal which was published back on 12^th December 2020. This was my first dive into the middle grade genre.

 It follows the story of Lizzie who receives a journal where the things written down come to life in the form of people’s dreams. I wanted to create a fantasy world but still keep it a story about real life which is where the awake world is real life and the dream world is fantasy. That’s why fantasy has landscapes of jungles, caves and volcanoes along with talking animals whereas the real world is simply the real world.

Despite going to middle grade, I haven’t changed my writing style too much. A book where a girl teams up with a rat and a teddy bear may sound childish but 8-12 year olds are smart enough to appreciate more complex issues that arise which is why not everything is black and white in the story. 

Before that, I wrote The Lyons Orphanage and its sequel The Lyons Legacy which doesn’t really seem to have a specific audience looking back on it. Despite this, I felt like the stories were written to a decent standard and built up my characters well. I hope the parts that needed improvement show in my latest work.

2. How do you approach starting a new book?

I usually have a few ideas floating about in my head at a time so I usually write them down. I look at each premise for a story and begin to list down ideas. I list everything from clichés of the genre and how it can be flipped around, how did the story get to this point already and what the endgame is (which doesn’t have to be specific but give a general idea). Whichever one I begin writing bullet points on and keep the flow of ideas going is usually the one I make a start on. 

I like to plan out the basics for each chapter before I start and try to create a list of the main characters involved beforehand. Not only do I plan the story for each chapter, I also try and anticipate how long the chapter needs to be in terms of page numbers……..this is a risky game. 

You may find chapters you thought you had so much to write about end abruptly whereas small chapters take on a life of their own. Similarly this happens a lot with main characters and side characters. It is not so much that main characters become less important but side characters who were sometimes only supposed to have a line or two or simply agree with the main character take on a bigger role.

3. Tell me about your main character

Lizzie is a ten year old girl who has to deal with the death of her father. She is strong on the surface despite the loss of her father and the loss of father’s hero status to her. Lizzie handles the loss of her father by escaping into her writing; writing which used to be centred all on her father as a fictional superhero.

The times where Lizzie does become emotional, it is a combination of the loss of her father, people at school treating her differently because of it and antagonising from bullies. People do not earn her trust automatically which (without saying too much) serves as a hammer blow when she feels the trust has been broken.

I know authors are guilty of doing it but Lizzie is sort of a female version of ten year old me in terms of hobbies rather than backstory (luckily I didn’t have to deal with bullies or loss of family members at that age).

Her main hobbies are writing and video games. Those were my hobbies at ten and they still are now. The fact that she and her friend go round to each other’s houses and play for hours at a time is reflective of what I did too. As for writing, I was always writing, usually in partnership with my brother as we tried to lay out the story and design of a video game.

 

4. Have you always wanted to write?

I have constantly said that I was destined to write something; whether it was any good or not is a different story. Writing as part of education or work has always been prevalent for me. I studied Journalism at the University of Portsmouth because the only thing I felt like I wanted to do with my life is simply to write not because I really wanted to be a journalist. So when I really really decided I didn’t want to be a journalist, I was back to square one looking for a job where my only description for what I wanted was ‘to write’ which is both very broad and very specific when looking for jobs.

 

5. How do you fit writing into your everyday life?

Following on from the previous answer, I didn’t end up in a writing job…..not yet at least. I am still unsure what writing job I would like other than earning enough money as an author to consider it a profession. 

My job is far removed from the creative side of things, doing administration and legal work in a law firm. I do find it quite suited to me though as it allows me to balance the more menial, matter of fact work with my creative side outside of work.

Before I had the idea of writing a book, I set up a blog to write about all things from serious points to television reviews. When I started to write a book, the blog fell away. It was only in the last couple of years that I found the balance to keep all of it up at the same time.

Once everything was on the go, I found it easier to work during the day, write blog posts during my lunchtime and then work on my book at night…..I would be lying if I said I followed this every day or every week without fail.

On top of my job and writing, I also do freelance writing work to write articles for website. The freelance articles usually get my full attention when they come in but they only come in batches at a time so the rest of the time, I’m free to use my writing time for creative purposes. 

 

6. What do you do when you have writer’s block?

As I have usually planned my chapter in advance, the writer’s block I suffer most commonly from is the kind where you know what you want to write about but you just can’t bring yourself to do it.

Whenever writer’s block hits, I never take any direct action to overcome it. I know some writers might Google ‘how do I overcome writer’s block?’ but I know with me it is simply a matter of my mood. I acknowledge that I can’t bring myself to write and so I forget all about it for a day, a few days, a week. I do almost anything else other than writing and come back to it with fresh eyes.

For Lizzie’s Dream Journal, I flew through the first half of the book but some things weren’t working. I didn’t want to have to rearrange a lot of my writing so my block was on how I could fix the issues. It is no lie to say that I didn’t come back to it for two to three months. Eventually when I came to look at it, I found small things I could change to make it work without having to completely overhaul the story I had written up to that point.

 

You can find Charlie on Twitter.