10Qs with Jordan Riley Swan

How do you start your day?

Get up early. Breakfast. Write a little in the morning. Go somewhere outdoorsy and walk around to clear and think on stuff. Lunch Return home for some more writing. Dinner. End day watching some mindless programs online. And in-between all of that listen to an audiobook.

What made you want to become an author, and do you feel it was the right decision?

I want to create stories and art and share it with people. I’ve always enjoyed telling a good tale. There is something about that look you get from people as you carry them through a narrative. I eat it up. Writing full-length novels seemed like a good extension of that.

Pen or typewriter or computer?

Computer. But Lord knows I tried on a typewriter (and used to use an electric one way back when I first started as a word processor would have cost a thousand bucks and wouldn’t have even had a printer).

For fun I once took home one of my old manual typewriters from my shop (a massive metal Underwood from the 1910’s if I remember right) bought a replacement ribbon and typed out a few pages of a kids novel I was going to write. Though it was fun, I missed cut and paste and autocorrect of Microsoft Word WAY too much…

Do you write one book at a time or do you have several going at a time?

I like to concentrate on one book at a time but recently I’ve been collaborating with another author and it has forced me to learn how to juggle multiple projects as I wait for her to finish stuff (and I’m sure she’s having to wait a lot too…).

I can say for certain that when it comes to first drafting, I can only work at one at a time. I can revise multiples though. I guess it engages a different part of my brain.

Do you prefer to write in silence or with noise? Why?

I have tinnitus and if I don’t have some kind of background noise it becomes to much to ignore. So I listen to some wordless music on YouTube while I write (channels like Blume and MusicLab). I even have to have a fan noise running when I sleep the tinnitus can be so distracting. Now, if I try to write without something to distract my ears I end up shutting down the document to soon and not really getting anything done.

What is your favorite genre to read?

I tend to read fantasy and family saga. Murmur of Bees was my favorite book of this year, but my heart always goes back to the trilogy I read as a kid, The Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn. I float back and forth between the two genres.

What do you think about the current publishing market?

I love the fact that even the author with a subject matter that isn’t mainstream can now reach out to readers through self-publishing. But I also love the idea of being trad published someday. My dream is to be hybrid.

Do you see writing as a career?

I hope I can make it into one. But I do feel like I may end up going back to running an antique store when the Covid thing gets under control. I miss the excitement of auctions and the hunt to find rare things.

What kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?

None. I like to just jump in and research along the way. It sometimes breaks the plot to find out later something doesn’t actually work the way I assumed but part of the fun for me is figuring workarounds to those plot derailments. If I researched before I started writing I would fall down the rabbit hole of research and never stop. I’d know a whole lot about something new though so that’s nice, I guess.

How long have you been writing?

Off and on for all my life. But usually only for one book’s length at a time. I’d reread whatever it was I just wrote and realize it sucked and then never read it again. Low and behold I was in my early forties before someone imparted the wisdom “a book becomes a publishable novel in the revisions” what a life-changing moment that was.

About

Jordan Riley Swan is a wild word hunter living in the far and dangerous reaches of rural Ohio. He spends his nights tracking down big-game stories, capturing them in paper cages, and training them to be better tales.

The Heart’s Bidding was the first novel he’d dared to use the keys of his typewriter to release back into the wild.

About the Book

The Heart’s Bidding by Jordan Riley Swan
Genre: Clean Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Kaylee Heart would rather run through a roaring fire than endure even a minute of public speaking. Put in an eighty-hour work week? No problem. Shut down her grandfather’s gold-digging girlfriend? Easy peasy. Stand in front of an auction crowd and call for bids? Show her the exit.

So she has no idea how Gerald, the golden-voiced auctioneer she’s been crushing on at the local auction house, can find the courage to stand on stage every week, with all those eyes on him. But as cruel fate would have it, she is about to find out.
Her family antique shop, the Vintage at Heart, has tripped over one financial hurdle too many and Kay is propelled, full speed, into her biggest phobia—the spotlight.

With terror chasing her, she’ll have to fight to keep the family business from closing forever. Even if the battle takes place in front of a live crowd.

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