Joseph Moore Interview and Giveaway

Joseph Moore Interview

Today, I’d like to introduce, Joseph Moore, author of Faith, Hope, and Reindeer, to my blog for an interview.  Please share this interview with everyone you know. I have this book for review and will hopefully be getting to that soon. He has also generously donated 2 E-book copies of Faith, Hope and Reindeer. To enter to win the e-book copy, please make sure your email address is on the Rafflecopter Form or in the comment field of the interview post and that you “Like” the Facebook page ~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Faith-Hope-Reindeer/119025778178632?sk=app_106878476015645

Interview with Joseph Moore

Did you always want to be a writer? If so, what medium did you choose to write? Poetry, Short Stories, Novellas, Novels??

Yes, and yes, I have always written since I became an adult, logos, advertisements, marketing position papers, interviews, advertising commercials, then graduated into early reader children’s stories (I have 17 written, just not illustrated) that rhyme, many love letters to my dearest love and best friend, Mary, and on and on.

What was the inspiration for your book, Faith, Hope & Reindeer?

Why Santa Claus, of course! Seriously, if you ever got to meet the real Santa as I have you would be inspired just being around him! He is lovely and has a heart as big as the North Pole itself, yet he is a very down-to-earth kind of guy. One look at the twinkle in his eye and the gentleness of his smile and you would want to move mountains, yourself.

Do you plan on writing more holiday themed stories in the future??

Absolutely! Santa and I are working on the prequel to Faith, Hope & Reindeer with a working title called the North Pole Chronicles, and we have a sequel planned that will truly rock everyone as Santa moves out of the North Pole!

What is your favorite genre to read and why?

Let’s see J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, C.S. Elliott, J.K. Rowlings, yep definitely historical non-fiction! I love to visit different lands and see landscapes and places unvisited by the vast majority with my own mind. The North Pole is no less real a place than Middle Earth, Narnia or Hogwarts, and all of them exist in our hearts and our heads. Plus I don’t need to go through airport security to get there!

Do you prefer to be indie published, self-published, or traditional published?? Why?

Being that I like to feel in control of my own destiny, even though this is false, God really controls it and teases us with the illusion we do, I have a hard time watching someone else make all the decisions I wish to make. Size of the book, fonts, artwork, and all else are an intimate part of MY book. Therefore why let someone else decide unless you do not care. For instance my cover illustration was done by a beloved and renowned illustrator named Brenda Harris Tustian. She also is a dear friend to Santa and has painted him lovingly many times over. How grand is it to know that she wanted to do the cover for this, instead of some nameless, faceless entity that banged this out for $X an hour?

That plus the task of promoting books these days falls on the author regardless if self or house published. Therefore if I need to do most of the work to get the story into the reader’s hands, why pay someone else to tell me I should be doing more?

Did you ever experience a major life changing event? If so, did that impact your writing at all?

My life has been made, wrecked, remade, floundered, wrecked again, rebuilt even stronger, and my spirit has been lost, found, lost again, and rediscovered and so on. You cannot live a complete life on very few emotions. If you do not experience failure, how can you judge success? If you have not cried in frustration, how can you cry with joy? I can say I have faced the full emotional scale many times, and as such I can draw those human emotions into words of profound meaning in my books.

If you could be a book genre, which one would you choose and why?

I am a book genre. If someone someday decides to write my autobiography it will begin and end that I lived in a fantasy world that paralleled a real one. Yes I had real problems and real solutions while living life, but I also held on to what some would say is a fantasy that everyday can be a miracle, and so that is what I sought, and found, during my life.

Name a song(s) that define(s) you as a writer.

My wife chuckled at this and said that would be a book in itself. There are far too many songs that I can use to express my life, and mostly depending on the mood I am in for that particular moment. I have songs dance through my head from the time I wake up until the time I fall asleep, and Mary tells me I even sing in my sleep sometimes.

But all that said, I have always cued Classical Gas in my mind as my “theme song” throughout my life.

If the world was on the edge of extinction, how would you survive??

You mean its not? I live my life without regrets. If you are suddenly worried that you haven’t completed your “bucket list”, then it is already too late to begin. Leave yourself open to new ideas and new experiences everyday. That doesn’t mean to live recklessly and end like Thelma & Louise, but you should know you are going to experience something special each day and leave yourself open to it.  Who knows, you may end up in the North Pole writing the memoirs of Santa Claus!

What advice would you give to other aspiring writers like me??

I think I just answered that, but I’ll put it another way. As all writers know, it is difficult to write on a subject you know nothing about. It took me decades before I could sit and write a novel because it took decades to live life enough to write it all down with feeling. Some younger writers can pen outstanding novels because they feel a grasp of life that most never will, and my hat is off to them. But to write about life, you have to live life regardless of genre. That’s what many of the greatest authors like Jack London and Kurt Vonnegut did.

What other projects do you have on the horizon??

Other than what I mentioned earlier, I really want to get my children’s books published and of course I have a few other stories rolling around in my head. My biggest problem is that I have trouble staying with any one project for a long period of time. I lose interest and move onto something else.

Tell us about 5 books that changed your life in some way??

The Bible and it is still changing my life. Lord of the Rings helped me take myself out of my world and put it elsewhere. Ludlum’s Bourne Series convinced me that nothing is worse than not knowing who or what you really are. Lightning by Koontz introduced me to parallel worlds, and anything by Edgar Allen Poe who writes as if he was the person he is writing about.

What is your favorite holiday memory??

Easy. For many of my tween and teen years, I would go to downtown Chicago and study the windows in the then- famous department stores for hours at a time. These were my first trips into a world of magic and fantasy that have stuck with me my whole life through.

If you could time travel, what time period would you go to and why??

I think I would hang around the recent past, say the late fifties and early sixties. It was a good time in America, we were optimistic, yet we were developing at a good pace. You could still trust your banker, your senator, your president and the majority of your friends. There was an innocence that will never be seen again.

And a fun one, what would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse?

I am a deeply suppressed pyromaniac. I would gather as many flame-throwers as I could muster and go on a world touring cookout. I would barbeque as many as I could before I was overtaken or ran out of gas.

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Faith, Hope & Reindeer

It was thought to be a fantasy, a nonexistent place and a children’s fable. But for the Grady’s and many other families reality takes a sudden turn. They find themselves not only in place that wasn’t supposed to truly exist, but face to face with the legend and persona of Santa and Mary Claus and all the elves in the North Pole.

And not without reason or purpose. These intrepid souls have done good all their lives and have always lived an exemplary life. And Santa knows exactly what each of them needs and what would bring true joy to them and all the people they touch.

This book is much more then a novel about Christmas and Santa Claus. It is about families who have battled through life are in need of a booster shot of Faith. It is about each of us who struggle, but never dare to give up Hope. And of course it is about the North Pole and the goings on, down to the elves and Reindeer.

Faith, Hope & Reindeer is a touching and surprising story that answers many of the mysteries about how Nicholas XI (descendant of the original St. Nicholas of Myra) performs many of the magical feats he is credited. From how Santa determines who is naughty and nice, to how reindeer fly and many more secrets are revealed in this delightful tale of wonder and magic.

This heartwarming story will have you believing in the true spirit of Christmas, and Santa Claus, once more. Return again to a time when you knew it was all true and you believed.

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