We recently connected with Brian Kindall and have shared our conversation below.

Brian , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I write novels about what it means to be human in the world. For all of my other aims with writing – entertainment, making a living, etc. – this is essentially what I’m all about. Sometimes this rubs readers the wrong way. After all, being human can be a messy business. When I take a character down a morally ambiguous path, the results can be unsettling. But as an artist, it’s important to take that risk. If art has a noble purpose, it’s to help people understand their existence. It’s my job to venture – via my characters – into all corners of that existence, even the dark ones. I try to do so with empathy and humor. The challenge in making a living this way is that you can alienate a large portion of your readership. This doesn’t mean that taking risks is a bad idea, it just means that you need to do your best to get your work in front of the people who will appreciate its challenges, epiphanies, and rewards.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am half of the team of Diving Boy Books. My wife Kristin is the other half. I am the author of the books on our list, while Kristin manages all of the business matters. From the quality of the actual writing, to the quality of its final presentation, our goal is to offer extraordinary novels that are original and entertaining. To this end we hire professionals in every step of the production process – editors, cover artists, as well as voice actors for our audiobooks. Quality is our guiding principle. We do our best to bring each book to its highest standard. It’s a competitive world out there, and we understand that readers have a lot of options. When a reader chooses one of our books, they can be assured of getting a reading experience that was thoughtfully considered in every step of its creation, from its initial concept to its final form. Because of this, our books tend to have a generally profound impact on the reader.

Our list includes an absurdist historical fiction series – The Epic of Didier Rain, with the titles Sideshow, Delivering Virtue and Fortuna and the Scapegrace, that chronicles the mishaps of ne’er-do-well wanna-be poet, Didier Rain – set in the 1850s. This series is full of adventure, humor, and large doses of magical realism. We also have a stand-alone novel that’s a post-modern homage to the men’s adventure pulp fiction of the 1960s; Escape From Oblivia. Last, but not least, we offer our award winning middle-grade novels written in a style that harkens back to classical storytelling for kids: Sparrow, Blue Sky, and Pearl.

My own education is in literature and film, whereas Kristin brings her aesthetic into the mix through her art education and practice as a fine artist. We’ve developed our company over years of enthusiastic effort. In spite of all the hard work and uncertainty in the journey, our passion for the process just gets stronger with our growing success. It’s just extremely rewarding to combine our talents for the greater enterprise of Diving Boy Books.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest revelation I ever had was on the day I realized I was creating a product for a consumer. That seems obvious on the surface. I hear you saying, no kidding. But when you’re a writer sitting alone at your desk, it’s easy to forget about the abstract concept of an audience. It’s easy to justify self-indulgent writing. You can get away with that if you’re an academic with an academic audience of like-minded writers, or if you have some other way of making a living and don’t need to sell a lot of books. But if you want to interest readers in your work/product, you need to make it attractive to them. You need to make it worth their while. That comes down to the craft of telling a good story, one that takes the reader on an incredible ride that he or she will never forget. A thinly guised tome about your recent heartbreak, or some other insipid aspect of your life, isn’t going to cut it with a savvy, reading public. You owe them more than that. Honestly, as a writer, you owe it to yourself as well. You don’t have to sacrifice your artistic vision if you lean into craft. You can still be as original and thoughtful as you ever were, but you need to give the consumer what they want – a great product. Once I learned to put the audience first, I started selling books.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Compared to plumbers and carpenters, the need for artists is not immediately apparent to the average person walking down the street. For most people, food is more important than paintings or books. It can be hard to convince non-creative people that what you do has worth. But food only feeds the body, whereas art feeds the soul. If we were just animals with nothing to do but eat and procreate, art would be meaningless. But humans are immensely complex. And confusing. A good novel can help a person sort out their own humanity. When a person is lost in life, a book can be a lifeline. That’s what I’ve been busy doing all these years – trying to create those books that both entertain and save lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.briankindall.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briankindallauthor/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/briankindallauthor/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-kindall-author/
• Youtube: @briankindall-author