What motivated you to become an indie author?
The urge to write is more of a clinical obsession than anything. I have pocketed far too many phantoms. They start to clog up my head, so every now and then it's necessary to exorcise a few to make room for different ones.
What motivated me to be mostly independent with my writing, however, is the crookedness and pandering of the book industry. They are afraid of everything, and I am afraid to write nothing. Publishing my books myself or through presses that I know value their books and authors keeps my work held back by fewer barriers.
What are you working on next?
Ah, this question is something of a paradox. A variable and yet also a constant.
I will say that as of this interview, I'm currently working on the S.M. Shuford Poetry Collection, an ongoing saga that compiles most of my poetry and is to some degree autobiographical, hence the blatant narcissism of the title. There is set to be thirteen to fifteen books in total in that series. After that, in 2020 I'll have another handful of large-scale poetry compilations, similar to 2018's Loverboy, a short story collection and slowly eke my way into writing novels on a regular basis.
Read more of this interview.