#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Jim Hepburn

I’d like to welcome Jim Hepburn to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday.

A few of your favorite summer traditions: Love going up north to the family cottage on the lake whatever chance we get. We bring the dog and swim and play in the water, get a frisbee out, and just spend the days outside on the dock. Best time ever.

Something summer-related that you’ll never do again: Used to love mountain biking but the only problem was that I’m an absolutely horrid biker in general. I’ve no sense for it. All the worst accidents in my life have somehow happened on simple two-wheel bicycles. They don’t like me, and I stay away from them whenever I can, haha.

Favorite summer beverage: Cold and crisp Dark and Stormy, made with Goslings Ginger Beer and Rum, in a copper mug with ice and a lime. Fantastic.

A drink that gives you a pickle face: Anything with Gin. Not my favorite.

Best thing you ever grilled in spring: Fresh Italian sausages, cooking them low and slow until they’re splitting. Sausages on the frying pan just don’t ever come close.

Your worst kitchen or grilling disaster: Love eating it more than anything, but I’ve had several disasters making my own pizza at home. That dough loves to stick to the stone.

Most favorite place to write/edit in the summer: In the early morning up at the cottage. Everybody is still asleep, dawn is coming up through the window; best time to dig deep and write deep.

The worst place to try to write in the summer because of all the distractions: I’ve heard people say that they love hanging out on the dock and writing but I’ve never been able to find any peace in that. Too many boats going by, and too many things happening that friends and family want to fill the daytime hours with.

The thing you like most about being a writer: Editing. You get to take your rough drafts and ideas and formulate them into something that approaches the final finished product, and that that feels so invigorating!

The thing you like least about being a writer: The screen headaches!

Things you will run to the store for in the middle of the night: Pizza. Any day, any time.

Things you never put on your shopping list: Fruit

The thing that you will most remember about your writing life: Waking up early in the morning at 4:30 to get writing done before I went to work. Some days went better than others but some days I was a complete zombie.

Something in your writing life that you wish you could do over: I’m very much near the beginning of the writing journey as I plan to do this for many years to come, but I do wish that I hadn’t used google docs (autosave feature) to then copy/paste into word to make the final PDF version of Hunted by Fire because of all the hours of format fixing I had to do! The two programs were not very friendly with each other and there was no end of things getting shrunken, enlarged, interspaced, etc.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Putting Hunted by Fire out into the world to be evaluated and judged. The first book very much feels like a piece of your soul, so that’s pretty tough!

Something you chickened out from doing: Doing anything with TikTok. Not a huge video guy, and I know there’s lots of folks out there who use it to spread the word about their book and find lots of success with it, but I just can’t bring myself to try to make goofy and hopefully entertaining videos of myself 3-4 times a day!

About Jim:

Like many young men in high school cursed with a dash of creativity, Jim found a love for writing, which everybody else thought was practically useless. Those folks urged him to get good at math and science instead, and so he worked at those, but he was never sure if he could hack them out at a university level. After he graduated said university with an arts degree (where he had to read an awful lot), he wondered what other young people had gone through the same thing. It's always been his dream to inspire young men and women to pursue STEM projects, as he thinks the world could use as many helping hands it can get and he thinks they are up to the challenge.

In other news, he grew up near Toronto, Canada and devoured any written adventure he could find, including many of the works written by Kenneth Oppel, D. J. MacHale, Christopher Paolini, and Rick Riordan. Later on, it was Jim Butcher, R.A. Salvator, Hajime Isayama, and Tsugumi Ohba who fueled him through his early adult years and to whom he associates much of his personal growth to.