Kia ora,
Throw your hands together to welcome today’s guest. We know each other in real life, occasionally we are ladies who lunch. we do have lively discussions about writing and writing software, and especially outlining.
It took a bit of convincing to get this guest here, settle in, and enjoy.

Who are you?
D.A. Howe is my author pseudonym. I’m a private person, so having my real name or any details about my real life out in the wild seems way too horrifying.

Favourite genre/s to read or write?
No favourite genre – I’m just looking for an awesome read. When I’m in an IT contract I’m usually working mad hours, so I might not be able to read anything for months (and months). My brain is too fried after work to do much except take care of the basics and mindlessly watch something on a streamer. My short cut is to read the Booker and Pulitzer Prize winners for the year. Then I’m assured of a great read no matter what the genre.   
The same goes for my writing. I’m not welded to a genre. If an idea interests me and there seems to be enough for a story, I’ll run with it.

Please tell us about your latest work: 
Zac Bingley: Galactic Bureaucrat is a few years old now. But if you’re in the market for an SciFi comedy, you might want to give it a whirl.
(This story had me laughing out loud!)

Do you like chocolate fish? 
Yes. It’s best kept in the fridge.

What’s your main character like? 
My characters are unique to each story, and they have their good side and bad side, like most humans.
Zac Bingley just wants to survive his awful job. Eden (a character from another book), wants to save her daughter. My characters in my short stories also have a primary goal – including getting rid of the ghost of their dead, but ultimately awful husband.

• Would you go to the pub with them?
  No. My characters have other things to do besides drinking (like surviving) and I don’t drink.
• Would you have them over for dinner?
  I am a so-so cook. I don’t want to torture them.
• What music do they listen to?
  They don’t…  Although I listen to a constant rotation of music with a particular mood when I’m writing or doing something creative.
• What type of car do they drive?
  My characters are either all SF based (no cars in the future) or too busy fighting off some supernatural problem, so there is no type of car for any of them. 
• Are they a series character?
  Nope.

What piece of advice would you give a new writer?
There are two types of writers: those who are prepared for the hard work and those that like to tell me that they’ve got a great idea for a novel/script and that all I need to do is write the entire thing and we can split the gazillion dollars of profit 50/50.
Unfortunately, AI now makes the second type of writer (I have an idea, but don’t want to do the work) much more prevalent. Just plug your idea into ChatGPT and you have a novel. Amazon is currently flooded with AI generated books and can’t keep on top of the deluge. It asks people to confirm that they’re not using AI to write books when the MS file is uploaded but… The truly bad actors just confirm it’s free of AI content and upload it anyway. Please don’t do this. 

What part of writing do you find the hardest? 
I like writing, and I like formatting the manuscript. I just hate everything after publishing it. Social media. Blogs. Whyyyyyy?

Have you ever had lolly cake?
Yes.

Pantser or outliner? And why?
Outliner. I started with scriptwriting. Scriptwriting requires some organisation – you do not have endless pages to play with. It cannot be whatever number of pages you feel like. Outlining saves a lot of stress in keeping the story as tight as possible.

Do you write in silence?
I write using music. I have a bunch of playlists on Spotify that I put together. 
Depending on a scene I’m writing, I’ll listen to a soundtrack that skews towards the mood of a scene. The Cold Mountain soundtrack compilation got hammered when I was writing Eden, along with the Spotify playlist Southern Gothic.

Do you like to listen to audio books?
I don’t do it often. I used to have a subscription to Audible, which was great when I was commuting to the office. I would listen to a book on the train. Spotify has been offering a free listen to an audiobook every month but I’ve yet to get into it.

Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, or some other type of pet?
Not at the moment…

Where do you write? 
I use my second bedroom as my home office. 

You can learn more about DA Howe’s work via this website link: Website
(Just really quickly … if you love dystopian books, give Eden a read. I very much enjoyed it but keep forgetting to get DA Howe to sign my copy!)