Welcome to my stop on the Reading Addiction, Last Wish of Summer tour! Ive got some great info as well as a sweet guest post and a giveaway for you! Read on!

Last Wish of Summer by Phillip Overton

I admit that I do things a little different. Not radically different mind you, but I am mindful of simply not offering more of the same. I get a little frustrated at times when I hear people asked the same questions, such as whose book does your latest novel compare to? It’s true that writing goes through trends in much the same way as fashion changes and evolves over the decades. When something is hot on the catwalks of Paris or New York, the same look will undoubtedly show up on the racks of a Target store the following season. Everyone is looking for the same thing, only different. So as a writer the challenge is to either give them something different, or come up with something totally different altogether.

I like to keep my writing upbeat. I like to write about lives turning out for the better through a set of unique and unusual circumstances, and my writing gets compared to Nicholas Sparks. Does that bother me? No. But it doesn’t mean that I run out and buy every Nicholas Sparks novel to study how he constructs and weaves his story. I leave that to my wife, she’s a huge fan of his work. I on the other hand have loved
the screen adaptions of his books. The Notebook and A Walk to Remember were brilliant, and Message in a Bottle is one of my all time favourites. When it comes to reading however, I tend to indulge in something completely different to what I write. I think it provides a healthy break from the feeling of comparing your work to someone else’s or worse still, slipping into editing mode and not being able to enjoy the book.
So I pick up a Matthew Reilly action thriller or a fiction novel that is a little more thought provoking on life, faith and the bigger picture stuff from someone like James L. Rubart. Or if I’m researching something for a future project, I’ll dive right into such riveting non-fiction gems such as Alaska/Yukon Railroads: An Illustrated History. It’s one way to keep your writing and your reading habits separate.

I think that each writer has a desire to be their own voice, but we live in a world that is tuned to only hear the same things. For me, the challenge is to tell something different in a way that is easily heard. I like to write with a strong dose of reality. I like to put a strong sense of gravity into my work. If the laws a physics don’t allow for something in the real world, chances are you won’t find it in my work either. That aside, I do like to fashion something incredibly amazing from a set of ordinary circumstances. And I do like to stretch people’s perceptions of what life around them is truly capable of if you like, (hence the comparisons to Nicholas Sparks). In order to keep my writing different, I look at life differently. Two of my novels for example have
been set largely around a cafe by the beach. To get the proper feel for a cafe setting you can sit around all day and drink coffee, or you can do as I did. I took a Barista course at a training college and got a job making espressos at a resort. You get a truly different appreciation of life from the other side of the counter.


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Thanks for stopping by today! Have a FABULOUS tuesday!