1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm a former Lonely Planet writer who has worked as a journalist and editor in Asia for 25 years, variously in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and, currently, Cambodia.
2. Describe your book Harvest Season: A Novel in 30 words or less.
Harvest Season is set in a village in the mountains of Southwest China that had become a drug haven. The villagers and visitors clash with murderous results.
3. What was the hardest part of writing your book?
Setting the tone, and getting the ending right. It took me six weeks to write the first draft, a year to fix it.
4. What books have had the greatest influence on you?
"The Heart of the Matter" by Graham Greene, "Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger, "Nineteen Eighty Four" by Orwell, "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway, "Henderson the Rain King" by Bellow ... The list is too long, I could do this for pages.
5. Briefly share with us what you do to market your book?
I do very little to market my book now, but I did use Facebook extensively when it was first released, and the Facebook page (
https://www.facebook.com/harvestseasonbook) has more than 6,500 likes, which unfortunately is not reflected in sales. I also blogged on my website
www.christaylorwriter.com. I spoke at literary festivals in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, Beijing, Bangkok and Melbourne. The festivals and reviews in many publications in Asia (notably the Asian Wall Street Journal) and the US were most effective in generating interest.
6. How do you spend your time when you are not writing?
I write and edit for a living, but I like to cycle and read – I generally have time for both on any given day, providing I'm not on deadline.
7. What are you working on next?
A comic novel about the newspaper industry set in an imagined country in Asia.
