The first book in NZ-based author John Wiltshire's contemporary gay thriller series has been published, and readers love it. We find out more about the ex-Army officer, who cut his teeth on fan fiction – and was delighted he didn’t have to live up to promise to do a nude run when he was published! Tell us a bit about yourself? My name is John Wiltshire. I’m originally from England, and I’ve been living in New Zealand now for six years—I came to surf in the Pacific and then discovered the temperature of the water here in Dunedin. I’m ex-army, and soldiers and military situations feature heavily in my books. How delighted are you to have your book published? I once told some friends that if I got published I’d run down the street naked, shouting, “I’m published, I’m published.” Fortunately, when I heard the news in August last year, I was living here in the Southern Hemisphere where it was winter, and no one held me to that promise. How many in the series have you written? I have two series being published. The first More Heat Than the Sun is a contemporary thriller series with six books currently written—this is with MLR Press. Love is a Stranger, the first book is out now (available from Amazon and MLR Press), and the second, Conscious Decisions of the Heart, comes out next month. The second series is a historical series being published by Dreamspinner Press with two books (so far): A Royal Affair and Aleksey’s Kingdom. I’ve also got a novella coming out with MLR called Catch Me When I Fall.How long have you been writing for? About fifteen years. Like many authors, I began with fan fiction (under an assumed name), which is a superb market to cut your teeth on. Fan fiction gets a bad press sometimes, but it’s a unique medium where the best writers can capture a mood, a character, an ambience, and turn these into something more rewarding than the original. However, the downside of fan fiction (other than you don’t get paid for it) is that it gives a false sense of security to the author. I was translated into many languages, had fans all over the globe, but there was always this nagging little voice telling me that I wasn’t brave enough to swim with the big boys. Eventually you have to kill the voices in your head. Was it a tough road to getting published, or an easy one? What did you have to overcome along the way? Surprisingly, I was accepted with my first submission. I did my homework, researched where I thought the best market was for my novel, wrote the synopsis and sent it off. I’m still “experiencing” the editing process. My editor at MLR Press is brilliant and I’m really enjoying working with her. But you have to let go to some extent, and that’s the downside compared to fan fiction which is very freeing—basically there are no restraints in fan fiction. Writing for publication is far more disciplined. Increasingly we’re entering an age when people allow themselves to be “triggered” (and I’ve probably triggered some people putting it in those terms). “Offence” is the buzzword of the day. I’ve had to take a few things out of my books, which my editors have said might trigger readers. That’s hard. And they’ve only seen the early novels. As the series goes on, I tackle some very contentious issues—I’ll put up a good fight to keep them in. If you want vanilla, go read Mills Jacqui Stanford - 13th June 2014