Matthew Hughes On The 5 Things You Need to Know to Become a Great Author

A lot of what happens is luck. I sold my first novel — Fools Errant, mentioned above — the one the agent couldn’t sell, to an established Canadian press. But the week it came out, the publisher was acquired by a bigger outfit and my novel did not fit their publishing program. It went to the warehouse and died there.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matthew Hughes. Matthew Hughes writes science fiction and fantasy. His most recent novel is Barbarians of the Beyond, an authorized sequel to Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series.

His short fiction has appeared in major digest magazines and in award-winning anthologies. He is in the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

I’ve been a professional writer for more than fifty years, first as a journalist, then as a speechwriter, and now as an author of genre fiction.