The following is an exclusive Whispers of the Muse interview conducted by Deborah Riley-Magnus with author Dan Holloway.

Muse: Dan, first of all, Whispers of the Muse welcomes you and Skin Book to the site. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Holloway: There’s not much to say. I appear on too many TV gameshows. I’ve been, variously and, sometimes, contemporaneously, an Under-25 bridge international, a ringer for an Opus Dei cricket team, a bodybuilder, World Intelligence Champion, and a representative of Oxford University Athletics Club as a discus and hammer thrower.

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Holloway: Ooh, a list or a discussion? OK, a list, or we’d be here all night – Murakami because almost every line he writes makes me cry with its beauty; Josephine Hart because she’s utterly brutal; early Brett Easton Ellis because he does blank and vacant amazingly; Dubravka Ugresic because she captures modern Europe’s ruins; Banana Yoshimoto for her simplicity; Elfriede Jelinek for her complexity; and I genuinely think many of my fellow Year Aero writers are up there with the greats – certainly my favourites – Daisy Anne Gree, who does blank better than Ellis; Penny Goring who’s reinvented the Beat; Marc Nash who can wring every drop of meaning from a word; Oli Johns who is as experimental as a mad scientist but manages somehow to write the most elegant prose you’ve ever read. And Sabina England – for managing rage and warmth simultaneously.

Muse: Why do you write?
Holloway: Because I’m tone deaf and can’t draw.

Muse: What is your writing regimen? How often do you work on a book? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Holloway: I know that if I’m going to make a go of it as a writer I have to finish and market a book a year. That’s enough deadline. I write every day. I don’t really have a regimen. If I’m writing a regular novel I try to keep a plan 5 chapters ahead but with Skin Book, because it’s so short – the whole thing’s 3000 words but it’s a complete 10 chapter novel – I had it all mapped out and just wrote.

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Holloway: It’s better to fail gloriously than never to try is a pretty good saying. I love trying things with writing that people say are impossible. The same with publishing – now I’m part of Year Zero I can’t imagine having an agent or a publisher. It would be utter hell. There’s an excitement about what we’re doing, like we’re part of a movement full of ideas and opportunity. Which is how I like to go about life – too much Sartre as a student I guess!

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Holloway: It’s impossible to say. Is anyone able to answer this one? I think it’s one thing and then think about it and realize it’s a hundred other things. I can tell you how stories start – they usually start with an action. With the picture of a character doing something. But how that picture gets there – wow. I end up thinking of a hundred films and books I’ve read; things I’ve overheard in the street; old ideas bubbled back to the surface. Music, certainly, art too – but maybe that comes later – Skin Book is going to be an illustrated chapbook and a musical collaboration as well as the novel. AND a video, but these all came after the story. Maybe art and music will affect my mood, and in that mood, I drift in various directions. I really couldn’t say. Stories come from everywhere – then again they come from nowhere. They’re made up. I don’t do autobiographical writing – I tried writing a character like me once and just felt hemmed in, so I gave up and started writing people who are nothing like me. So maybe that’s it – it’s all the imagination. And where does that come from? Well I did two philosophy degrees and it was a central question on both syllabuses but 5 years of study left me none the wiser.

Muse: Tell us about Skin Book. What was your inspiration?
Holloway: Skin Book is an odd creature, like that thing in Eraserhead. It came about largely as a result of a guest blog I was asked to do that involved writing a piece of flash fiction – something I’d never done before. It turned into this weird American Gothic piece about a guy who spends his whole life sitting in front of the TV, and one day makes the decision he’s going to get out and do something with his life – and as soon as he goes out the front door he’s knocked down by a bus. I rather liked writing something bleak, and then at Year Zero we started talking about how to write pain, how to peel back the layers of superficiality (I guess it was the “peeling” that did it :p), whether it’s even possible. Then I went to a Dead Weather gig and stood mesmerized by Jack White for an hour and a half, and Skin Book just arrived, fully formed.

Muse: What is your favorite scene from the book and why?
Holloway: Everyone always says “Ooh I couldn’t possibly choose a scene” don’t they? So I’d better think of one. Actually, the question really makes me think of that great bit in Notting Hill where Hugh Grant pretends to be a reporter with Horse & Hounds and asks an actor if he empathized with his character. It’s hard to have a favourite scene from a novel like Skin Book, because whatever I say would sound weird, so I guess I’ll say that chapter three is the one that I’m most pleased with. It took pretty much everything out of me to write it and I always cry when I read it out loud, because I really feel my protagonist’s defiant hope in the face of the most unspeakable horror. It’s the moment she says “this could kill me but it won’t”. I guess, thinking now, the scene harks back to the end of the remake of Cape Fear when Juliette Lewis says “I’d rather live” – which sounds awful and hackneyed now because of what’s gone on with her since, but at the time her performance in that film blew people away. We forget that. It’s that defiant hope that gets me – we kind of know it’s futile. Only it’s not. I gave the story a happy ending to prove hope is never futile. All that’s from chapter 3 – so yes, that’s my favourite scene.

Muse: Have you written other books?
Holloway: My last book, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, is a conventional novel. Before that I wrote a thriller and a travel book, both too dire to see daylight. I also wrote a Facebook novel this year, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes.

Muse: Tell us about your other books?
Holloway: Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is the story of a teenage girl growing up in post-communist Hungary. Her mother walked out the day the Berlin Wall fell down, and she’s felt her whole life pulling her to the West, whilst her father wants her to stay and take on the vineyard that’s been in the family for 300 years. It’s about how on earth we try and find our identity in the modern world, but most of all it’s about love, music, and art. It was a number one book on Youwriteon and Authonomy last year, and was one of the first three novels released through Year Zero Writers. It’s had some lovely reviews and has been surprisingly supported by the mainstream(ish) media, despite what people say about self-published writers finding it impossible to get reviewed. It’s free as a download from Smash Words.com.

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace?
Holloway: I’m hugely excited about the current state of affairs. Downturns are traditionally a time of opportunity for people with ideas, and writers should have more of those than most people. I think there’s a genuine opportunity for a really focused, dedicated collective like Year Zero to write fantastic, original fiction, find their readers directly, and bypass the mainstream altogether. It’s possible to outsource everything you need directly – from editing through graphic design to printing and web work. It’s not just the case that anyone can knock something up on Lulu – anyone with a great book can produce something of incredible quality if they have the get up and go to do it. And I think, for all the mainstream industry (of course) would have us believe otherwise, readers respect the get up and go of the indie spirit. You just need to speak to your readers, stick to your guns, and not care what anyone else thinks. Authenticity and integrity, basically.