This week we are chatting to Mark Hollands author of Amplify. 

Tell us something unexpected about yourself!

Father of two, happily married, living in Sydney. I just started riding a Kawasaki after 30 years gap of swearing I'd never get on a bike. Wife says it's a mid-life crisis. Maybe the book is, too! I am a long-time journalist, working in Australia, UK, S. Africa and Papua New Guinea. Among the many roles are foreign editor and editor, I've also spent time in the tech industry, was Asia-Pacific VP of a IT company called Gartner and then ran commercial for Dow Jones Asia-Pacific.

What kind of books do you write?

Thrillers. Mine are focused on a central character, Billy Lime, who is a music promoter and entrepreneur. The first and coming novels are anchored in the music industry, which is undergoing tremendous change and challenge because of digital disruption. It has all the double-crossing bastardry and scheming that you'd expect in the entertainment industry. The style is aimed at being shameless airport novel, page-turner. I don't think that that is how I write naturally. For these novels, I have adopted the style because I think it fits the market.

What inspired you to write?

Something in me, really. Like many journalists, you think you can write a book, even if you have never bothered to try. It's a fair bit harder than I had imaged! My father was a published author, and he always said I could wrote better than he could. Maybe. Even for a journalist such as myself, writing fiction is such a huge challenge, wide of my comfort zone. I've never been a huge book reader, much more magazines, short stories and rarely fiction. So, I am writing books that I'd probably not read. For that reason, I try to give them an edge.

What makes your writing stand out from the crowd?

There are a lot of good and great writers, and I don't pretend to be one. I don't think my writing stands out, and should I ever come to that conclusion I am sure I will have failed as a writer and I will ask my wife to shoot me. All I can say is that my writing is honest, based on the human spirit that I have witnessed – it's majesty and misery. My writing is focused on the world we live today, so everyone can judge its reality and at the same time become lost in the energy and excitement of the story.

What is the hardest part of writing – for you?

Sitting in the chair an doing it, especially because I have a full time job (I'm excusing myself already!). Another challenge is knowing you have an idea or plot worthy of the investment of time and energy. So, I suppose it's the psychology of writing that really challenges me, and the time management when you work and have a family that doesn't so much have a father as a taxi driver. But that's life for everyone…

Where do you like to write – what is your routine?

I'll drop anchor anywhere. I like cafes and pubs . . . coffee and beer. I like early mornings if I am writing at home. And if I am having a real tough time getting anything productive done, then I'll head out and find a good coffee, stick the iPad on the table and start bashing away. I like energy around me – the consequence of being brought up in a newsroom, I suppose. If I am writing at home alone, then I crank the music right up. The Stones, Foo Fighters . . . they're pretty productive for me.

What do you do when you are not writing – do you have a day job?

I am the chief executive of a media industry body that represents the leading newsmedia publishers in Australia, like News Corp, Fairfax Media etc. I sit on a couple of boards, too.

Do you work with an outline or just write?

Outline. But I know I will never keep to it. My writing always goes deeper than my outline, but I try to keep honest to its essence. If I stray too far, then I will stop, ask myself “what the hell is going on here” and then re-outline. I see an outline like this: I once travelled through Eastern Europe in a car on my own in the 90s just after the Wall had come down. I drove around Hungary Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland for two weeks. On the last day, I realised that I'd actually been using a map of rail lines, not roads. Which explained a few funky things that happened along the way. An outline is kind like a map of railways when you are driving on a road.

What advice would you have for other writers?

I'm not good enough to be handing off advice to anyone. Here's the advice I have taken: Read a lot, especially when writing. Pull the reader into the story, let their imagination do some work. It's more fun for them. Be disciplined. Words are precious. Don't waste them and, of course, the waste paper basket is your friend.

How important is marketing and social media for you?

Marketing is everything. Sad but true for the vast majority of us. Yeah, there are exceptions where there are break-out novels etc., but the reality for most of us is that marketing and social media are vital. Using them is like all selling – it's a slog. Hard, hard work. Many authors say they have to work just as hard on their marketing as they do their books. I never believed them. I do now! I need to get better at it, and to weave it into my existence as an author and writer, not make it an additional task. I haven't done that yet, and I reckon it's costing me sales.

What's your next step?

Write the next novel in the series, weave more marketing into my approach to be an author, carve out more time in my day for writing and try to conserve energy (mostly mental) for all this while maintaining a full-time job. Simply: be disciplined and focused on what I am passionate about.

Amplify: A Billy Lime Thriller by Mark Hollands is available here.

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