Author Interview: Martin Svolgart
Author Interview: Martin Svolgart
Vigilante justice? Check. Intense? Check. Deeply challenging and but also healing? Check! Today we talk with Martin Svolgart, a multi-genre and multi talented Danish author.
According to his bio, Martin Svolgart is a nature lover, amateur photographer, coffee lover, and a geek! He has a fascination for humans. What drives them, makes them, breaks them. What can bring out the worst in a person? What can bring out the best? His protagonists are never just good, and his antagonists are never just evil.
If you've ever met Martin you'd know how humble, yet passionate about his work he is.
1. Tell us a little about yourself!
I’m a Dane, forty-one, and a single dad to a big teenager. I’m a smith by trade, but I now work at a company spray-painting kitchen cabinets and stuff.
2. What are your favorite genres to read and write, and why?
To read? Just about everything. I even like textbooks. To write, I prefer action filled and character driven storylines with quirky personalities and humor and some psychological growth. The genres are secondary to that, but I enjoy both contemporary, paranormal, space opera, horror…everything. I try my hands at many genres because I think I can grow as a storyteller from it. I publish them under different pseudonyms, though, so that my readers knows what to expect from any given name.
3. You just published another book in your vigilante justice series (Brass Knuckles and Tattered Wings). Tell us about this series.
The one that just came out is the eighth book but the fourth in Season Two. There’ll be another season, which I’m pretty sure is the last season.
I always write long books and series, so I wanted to challenge myself to write something short and like a TV series. It took form as four novellas at 25,000 words each to make up a season, and the storylines fit like that, too. Each novella has its own little action filled plot, the season has its overall arch, and the entire season has its own plot, which is primarily the character’s development.
Heart, humor, and action. That sums it up. But also a broken man healing after the death of his wife and son.
4. What was your inspiration for writing this series?
The Equalizer and other vigilante justice movies, yet I wanted to keep the killing down. I wanted to write something hard-hitting but with humor, so there’ll be my characters going on a bender with a donkey at a bar. I wanted to have fun with it.
5. What is the most fulfilling or heartwarming fan mail you have gotten?
I like when my newsletter subscribers answer the newsletters. We sometimes have long email exchanges after that, and I get to learn about awesome people doing wonderful stuff. One took me by surprise. I’d written a story that seemed quite hard and brutal, yet the character’s struggles resonated with a reader who’d been traumatized similarly to the character. She thanked me for writing him because it helped her develop tools to move forward. To be able to impact a life like that is what I’ve always hoped my writing can do, so that email helps me through my dark times.
6. What do you do for fun?
Bonfires. I love sitting around a fire all night, sometimes playing a flute. Sometimes with friends, and we tell stories and enjoy nature and food made over the open fire.
7. Tell us about your other projects.
I’m working on a space opera series and a horror novel. I’m not far enough with any of it to even have a cover, though. I’m also playing around with the idea of writing a follow up to A Game Called Payback, which was crime thriller debut.
8. Where can we find your books?
Everywhere. Everything’s wide. I’ve collected all links on my website, so that’ll be the easiest way to find them. https://www.martinsvolgart.com/books