Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My name is Daniel Kemp. I’m an ex-London police officer, mini-cab business owner, pub tenant and a licensed London taxi driver. A varied life you might say, but at no stage did I plan to become a writer. That change of occupation came about by accident.
I was involved in a road traffic accident that left me out of paid work for almost four years. That period of time was partially due to the physical injuries caused by an incompetent driver, driving recklessly fast for the road conditions. His vehicle slammed into the side of mine whilst I was stationary at a set of traffic lights. The impact overturned my vehicle and sent me crashing into the side of a building with me upside down, hanging half in and half out of it. The front of his van was directly under my head, with his dead eyes looking at me!
Yes, you would find it hard to write about it if you tried. I was detained in the hospital for a lengthy time, but it was the visions of death I had that left me with anxiety, depression and PTSD that stopped me from driving again. Seventeen years have passed since that happened, and I’m still unable to drive a car.
After three or four years, I could not move my legs much so I wrote a story and sent a synopsis off to roughly two hundred or more agents. I sat back and waited for them all to come knocking on my door, or at least, calling on my mobile phone.
Alas, that never happened. In fact, for months nothing happened. Until one night the phone rang. An agent was interested! I’d made it. No, I was wrong again. No one wanted it. The agent had sent my unedited manuscript off to the top sixteen publishing houses in the world, who, unsurprisingly, turned it down. He told me to write another story, so I did and nine months or so later The Desolate Garden was the outcome.
Back in those days, I had never heard the term—vanity press, but that’s where I was—self-publishing a novel my agent had promised was edited and the publisher confirmed that it was so. The book had been edited—but by the publishers’ unqualified teenage child who had corrected some of mine but had made more mistakes of their own.
You could say that to some extent it didn’t matter because, within three months of being published, it was read by a film producer. The outcome was The Desolate Garden was under a six-year paid option to become a $30 million film, so I figured I must be doing something right.
After those six years, during which I did a countrywide tour signing my book for Waterstone’s Bookshops, distribution became a hurdle the London Production team could not overcome in the budget for the film, and the option was dropped.
I carried on writing. After I self-published two other books, having found a reliable proofreader, I was approached by a company then called Creativia Publishing, who offered to re-proofread, re-edit, re-design and re-market my books under the changed name from—Danny Kemp to Daniel Kemp.
The publishers are now called Next Chapter and Daniel Kemp has more than ten published works, with at least eight of those ten converted into Audiobooks and some of those novels translated into another language other than English. The translations and the audiobook narrations were all paid for by Next Chapter.
I’ve come a long way since finding out what the name Vanity-Publishing meant, and the value of a good proofreader and a good editor could be.
As I write this interview, I have now another book at the publishers awaiting editing and I’m not sure of the date, maybe it was 2019 or maybe 2020, I became a bestseller as one of my books became a number one bestselling novel on four separate Amazon sites: in America, Canada, Australia and in the UK.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
What Comes Before. It is the third book following The Desolate Garden and Percy Crow, in the Heirs and Descendant Series, with the fourth and final novel of that series; My Truth Your Lies, awaiting editing at the publishers.
I started to write these last two books in I think late 2019, but early in 2020, just after COVID hit the news channels, I was hospitalised yet again. I had two operations on a kidney that was previously only damaged in the accident I told you about. Then following on as a direct result of having a catheter changed I contacted Sepsis quite severely, resulting in more time flat out on a hospital bed. Two more operations followed on from these two, but unrelated I’m only too pleased to say.
However, I suffer from a disintegrating spine which makes me almost chairbound finding walking extremely difficult and painful. Besides that, I have a pacemaker with three sents around my heart which help with not only my heartbeat but also breathing which is restricted by emphysema necessitating the use of a nebuliser sometimes.
Whilst COVID was rife and I had to avoid contact with any of the many people who, for various reasons, entered my solitary life, I managed to restart writing again properly in 2022 and the third instalment to the Heirs and Descendants Series would not stop! I could not find an end.
I have never started telling a story knowing how it will end–Never! And this was no exception. Finally, I found the end after some 650,000 odd words. Not unsurprisingly, the publisher wanted the manuscript I sent him to be split in two, so that’s what I did. I wrote two synopses after finding an end and a new beginning, not easy, and then devised two titles–What Comes Before and My Truth Your Lies.
I hope it works.
If I leave a lasting memory in the heart of only one person who reads what I write then, for me, it’s enough.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
ALWAYS—Have a proofreader and an Editor. Good ones cost money but they are worth every penny.
Never allow your work to be published without the two above.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I don’t know. I think I will rewrite a short story I wrote years ago and self-published. Maybe, if the rewrite turns out okay I’ll submit it to my publisher and if he has earned enough money from my other work he might see fit to publish it.
What is your favorite book of all time?
The first book I wrote– The Desolate Garden.
Author Websites and Profiles
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Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.