Ever wondered what authors talk about behind closed doors? What about themselves and their work makes them cringe? What secret sins they whisper of in the dark? Well wonder no more!

Asking Authors Awkward Questions is a new series where I ask some of my author friends the sorts of questions you don’t get asked in your average interview. Questions designed to make them squirm, make them blush, and to maybe, just maybe, get to the heart of what it means to be a writer.

First up on the chopping block is Tiffany Christina Lewis. Tiffany is the author of six books and has been published more than a dozen times in anthologies and magazines. She is also a publisher at Rebellion LIT, where she very kindly published an interview with yours truly a little while back.

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What was the first novel you ever sat down to write? How old were you at the time?

The first full length novel I ever wrote was completed around 2009 and I was a fresh, young 24 years old. It was a Romantic Crime Fiction, very Urban and it wasn’t for me. It had kind of a Coldest Winter Ever by Sistah Souljah feel. Basically, a girl falls in love with a drug dealer. I now know that was not really my style, lol.

How old were you when you finally got published? How many novels had you written by then? Which one got published first?

My first book, Inside Out, was published in 2014 with Steamy Trails Publishing and I was 29. I think by then I’d written 2-3 other novels. The other novels weren’t even an option for publishing, in my opinion, so I didn’t share them with my publisher, lol. Back then I was heavy into short stories because I was in a group that used prompts and writing challenges. A few of those shorts were published between 2009 and 2014.

What are your crutch words? Which words do you most overuse?

Aww man, you name it, lol. Recently my editor had to trim down “towards” but I definitely make people “smile” a lot. I have a list of words to trim from my writing but they are more like “was”, “that”, “just” and “like” lol. They are all words that are considered filler or words that “tell” rather than “show”. I’m not obsessed with eliminating “telling” but whenever I can, I like to remove words that don’t improve the story.

Which character of yours is your favourite, and why? (And why is it never the main character?)

I’m lucky to have a ton of characters to pick from more recently. My new release has 8 stories with many different characters. Overall though, my favorite characters are always those who I would love to hang out with. Positive role models who represent my culture best and have fun hobbies. For instance, in my new book Helpless: A Short Story Collection, my favorite character is Gia. She’s an African-American career minded woman like myself. More specifically though, my favorite character is Azlynn Matthews from my Michael Taylor series. She’s caring, smart, funny, but also tough. She’s the kind of person I would want to be my friend.

I think our favorites are never our mains because as humans we crave support. Our support characters are made to cradle and care for our main characters and we would love to have someone rock solid like that by our sides too, if we don’t already.

How’s your grammar, spelling, and punctuation? What mistakes do you make most often?

Commas are my enemy and my friend. They are definitely the ones I screw up most of all. I try very hard to spell correctly, but dictionaries are always at my right hand. Grammar is not even real. I just try to write good English whenever I can, lol.

How disciplined are you as an author? Do you have set goals? How often do you fail to meet those goals?

I am as disciplined as a human who is very determined to be a full time author. Humans can be very undisciplined sometimes and I have that in me. I think my lack of discipline can occasionally come from overworking because again, I want to be a full time author. I also don’t want to work for anyone else so this forces me into pushing myself hard. This creates those “undisciplined” days where I watch four movies in one day and never touch my laptop.

I don’t do “goals” because they upset my anxiety. It’s not realistic to think I have no goals, but I keep my goals and dreams a little more lofty, this gives me the opportunity to instead set easy to manage tasks which will automatically help me achieve those goals. For instance, if I have a sales goal, I’ll set it for the year. This gives me 12 months to achieve it. I then make tiny tasks that are more tailored to getting my book in reader’s hands as opposed to torturing myself with how much money I made each week.

With this method, I don’t feel like I fail often. My bigger goals may fall short, but I’m constantly moving towards those goals because my tasks are being met and I’m really trying my best every single day. It makes me feel good, despite my long-term goal not being met.

What’s something you hate in other people’s writing that you try to avoid doing in your own but often end up doing anyway because words are hard?

Repetition. I detest repetition. I think it’s the kind of thing that bothers readers (not every reader) and I don’t wanna see it ever! Yet, I still find repetition in my work. For instance, I don’t want to see the same word in close proximity to another (outside of and, the, but, etc.). For instance, if two characters smile at one another after dialogue, I do not want to see the word smile in each of their dialogue tags. I want the author to vary their word usage.

While I was in editing for my May release, I was finishing the eBook in March and sure enough, I had people smiling and smiling and smiling, all in the same paragraph. It’s annoying to me because it distracts from the story and I don’t want that for my readers.

If you could go back and change any of your already published work, would you? What would you change, and why?

So far, the only thing I would change would be the format of my third book. I made the book 6×9 but all my other titles are 5×8. It looks kinda cool on the shelf right now, but in the future, all my books will be 5×8, so eventually I have to change it.

As for storylines, I’m very proud of them all and I wouldn’t change anything.

Which part of the writing/publishing process do you like the least?

I hate formatting so much. Editing, I actually love because it helps me grow as an author and brings me closer to my major plan of writing full time, even though I think it’s the part of writing most hated by other authors. Lol.

Formatting my upcoming release has been a sh*t sandwich. Can I curse on your blog? Lol. Seriously, it was very challenging. I ended up buying Vellum which changed everything. I hope on my next book I’ll have a better method for working through formatting.

If you could write anything you wanted and guarantee it would get published, no questions asked, what would it be? What’s stopping you from writing it right now?

I don’t think I have anything like that… I don’t seek traditional publishing, at all, so for me I can publish anything I want and it would get published, lol. I don’t have any controversial views that I want to share (as far as I know) so no one can stop me publishing from that angle either.

Finish this sentence: Reviews are…?

Reviews are a reflection of a readers feelings related to a book and are not a personal attack against an author. Usually, lol.

There are cases where a reader adamantly disagrees with an author and will take personal attacks against them, but in most cases, reviewers are writing to let other readers know how they felt about the book and that is all they really want to do.

Written communication can be misunderstood, so I always try not to take reviews personally.

Which of your books should a new reader start on? Pitch it to us.

My 2^nd book, Stitches, is the best place for a reader to start in my Crime Fiction series. This book has many story lines, including multiple murder investigations, a personal life story with my main character, Michael, and it is the book that introduces all my major characters for the continuation of the series including his new partner, a love interest and a major antagonist to the series. Book one is great, and it should be read but I’ve made a lot of permanent introductions in book two that will carry readers through the series.

But! I think if readers want to be introduced to me and my writing style, my new book does that very well. In Helpless, there are stories in five different genres. It is the best writing of my career for sure, because its recent, lol. But also, the stories are deeply personal to me because they all have female main characters.

These eight stories of women kicking ass are my opposition to the tropes of true crime. As much as I love true crime, women are often just represented as victims. The strong, smart, caring, and even wicked women in my book exemplify what women are and can be. I’m proud of it for that, but additionally, as I said it’s some of my best writing and gives a taste of what I can do in multiple genres.

Aside from book sales and big piles of cash, what does literary success look like to you?

Being known for my skills as an author. I work very hard to know and use writing rules to my advantage. I work hard to craft stories that my readers will devour without being distracted by my ineptitude, and more so than money, the best feeling is when a reader tells you how much they loved your work and why. When that happens, I know I’ve done my job.

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My thanks to Tiffany for being the first to answer my Awkward Questions. Her latest novel, Helpless: A Short Story Collection, is available to buy now!

If you want to find out more about Tiffany and her work you can do so via her website, via Goodreads, or on Twitter, where she can be found lending her support to the writing community on a daily basis.