Embark on a literary journey with self-published thriller author Damian Vargas. As he shares his tale from a creative spark on a flight to Berlin, to becoming a seasoned author, Vargas provides insight into his story generation process and the rewarding connections he’s made with readers. With a reservoir of over two hundred story concepts, Vargas dives into the power of storytelling and the inspiration drawn from historical conflicts that shape his gripping narratives.
Can you tell us about your personal journey to becoming a self-published author?
Although I have always written for personal pleasure, I can pinpoint the exact moment when that activity transitioned to the start of my self-publishing journey. It was November 2016, on a flight from Malaga to Berlin. I live in Spain and had started a new job which involved splitting my time between my employer’s main offices in Gibraltar and our little game studio in Berlin. I had been up since stupid o’clock to catch the flight so was quite dozy, and was staring out of the window when this random, interesting scene and characters popped into my head. I had my iPad with me and decided to record the salient points but then found myself developing it further. I had, I guess, around three thousand words done by the time we touched down in Germany. Two weeks later, I made the return trip and found myself writing another scene. At first, they appeared unrelated, but then it occurred to me that there was a thread that connected them. Somehow, the idea for a much larger story crystallised in my head along with the crazy notion of turning it into a novel. I had a lot of free time on my hands when i was in Berlin, so with each monthly trip, I added more and more – perched at my laptop in various hotels and AirBnB’s – while at the same time devouring as much information about writing craft and book publishing as I could locate. The self-publishing industry was already taking off by then, with people like Hugh Howey, Andy Weir, Amanda Hocking and Mark Dawson finding a lot of success as indie authors. I caught the bug and spent thousands of hours consuming a myriad of podcasts and YouTube videos, and all the articles, courses and ‘how to’ books I could get my hands on. It took me eighteen months before I eventually got to press the publish button on the Amazon site for that first book, ‘Six Hard Days in Andalusia’, as well as plenty of anguish, soul searching and self-doubt. But I got there eventually, and three more books have followed. I still feel that I am at the beginning of my journey as an author, if I am honest. Only now, I feel I have a clear idea of what I want to achieve, and a half-decent idea of how to do it.
How do you find inspiration for your stories and characters?
While I do take constant cues from personal experiences, from events I read or hear about in papers, or from talking to people, I’ve never found it at all challenging to come up with ideas. I have always been a story creator, ever since I was a small child. It was my way of getting myself to sleep or to tackle boredom. I’d zone out of reality, let my imagination run amok, and dive into a world full of crazy characters and drama that I’d invent purely for my own amusement. In a way, it’s my secret special power; while most people might react to a delayed flight or traffic jam with frustration, I tend to lapse into story-making mode and to be quite chilled about it. I can recall several story premises that I’ve mentally worked up into longer stories with dozens, or possibly even hundreds of variations as a small child, a teenager and as an adult. It’s been my way of tackling tedium and passing the time. There’s been many a teacher who has interrupted these tales in my head with a snap of their finger or a raised voice across a classroom. I still do it, only now I get to call it being an author and I commit these ideas to a notepad, sometimes develop them further and, if they seem to have legs, work them up into a fully plotted book. I now have – at a guess – more than two hundred such concepts, most of which will never end up as a finished novels of course …unless, I somehow manage to construct my own personal time machine. That notion being, ironically, the premise of several of my story concepts.
Can you share one of the most rewarding experiences you’ve had as a self-published author?
If I’d answered this question not long after publishing my first book, I would probably have answered, “Seeing my book displayed on Amazon and on the shelf of my local book store.” That was – and continues to be – a source of pride, however it is the hundreds of interactions with readers that ultimately provide the biggest rewards.
It always amazes me that people take the time to contact me, whether if that is by email, on social media or, sometimes, in the flesh. It makes you realise what an honour and, indeed, a responsibility it is to share your stories with others. They’re committing hard-earned cash and between eight to twelve hours of their time before they turn the final page of your book, so you had better have done your level best to make that time entertaining and, at times, thought-provoking. One such interaction sticks out, however. It was in an email exchange I had with an elderly woman who was replying to one of my newsletters in which I had talked about how one particular scene in my historical thriller, ‘The Dark Place‘, had been inspired by my own grandfather, Len Wright. When I was in my teens, he had told me about his time in Germany during the Second World War. Len had been at the Bergen Belson concentration camp on the second day after it had been discovered and witnessed some horrific scenes. The lady who contacted me, an American woman, told me about her father who had been the second Allied soldier to enter the gates of the camp. She told me that he had returned a changed man, and that he had struggled with his experiences for the rest of his life. My grandad had told me about his experiences in a somewhat cursory manner, but I wish now that I had had the opportunity to talk to him about it as a grown adult, and with the awareness I now have about those terrible events. I suspect that they had a far deeper effect on him than I realised at the time. Sadly, he passed away many years ago.
We often view our novels simply as creative endeavours, constructed merely to amuse and to entertain, but it is moments like these that remind an author how powerful stories can be, and, therefore, how important it is to make sure they are worth sharing and worth the reader’s time.
Can you tell us about any upcoming projects you’re excited about?
I have two main projects on the go right now. One is a regional crime thriller series I have started writing which is set here, on the Costa del Sol. It’s about a former British policeman and soldier, recently widowed in tragic circumstances, who relocates from the UK to Spain with his teenage children to restart their lives, but who quickly finds himself embroiled in some testing situations in what is known as, ‘The Costa del Crime.’
The second project involves two online services I have been building – Booksounder.com and another stealth project, soon to be announced – that are all about helping readers discover great books, and to help authors reach and engage with reader audiences to build successful author careers.
…and then, of course, there are the other two hundred books I could write, when I get my hands on that elusive time machine.
What are your favorite genres to read or watch, and how do they influence your writing?
I have always been fascinated by stories about 20th century conflicts, especially the Second World War and the Cold War, be that via novels, non-fiction books, comics, TV programmes or movies about everything from large-scale warfare to deeply personal tales of espionage, treachery, and deceit. I’ve traipsed around many a historic location, and hundreds of museums, often dragging exceedingly patient parents, friends or partners along with me. Conflict is at the heart of all drama, be that a battle between huge opposing armies, or something much more down to earth and mundane – the kinds of situations we all encounter daily, whether we realise it or not. I was brought up on a diet of the classic 1960s and 70s WW2 movies like ‘Ice Cold in Alex’ and ‘A Bridge Too Far’, and famous cold war movies such as ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ and the ‘The Odessa File’. My third book, ‘The Dark Place’ was heavily influenced by these.
How do you infuse your own life experiences into your narratives?
This is an interesting question, and reminds me of some advice I recently picked up from an online video lecture series from Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher thrillers. We are often told to ‘write what you know’ but as Child says, that’s actually terrible advice for most authors. Most people have not lived the lives of Jack Reacher, Harry Potter or George Smiley. We don’t, and will never ‘know’ what these characters are supposed to know. The things we want to write about, and which, presumably, readers want to read about are not things that we have experienced. I’ve never had anyone try to shoot me, and frankly I’m not keen to find myself in that situation, but I need to be able to write convincing scenes in which people are trying to do that to each other. These are things that we imagine, that we research, that we make creative assumptions about, not what we ‘know’. The better advice is to ‘Write what you feel’, as we’ve all experienced the broad range of human emotions. We know what it is to love, to be spurned, to lose something or someone, to be scared, to be jealous, to be angry, to feel threatened. Our experiences may be of an order of magnitude smaller than those of our fictional characters, but if you have truly felt something, then assuming you had a modicum of writing ability, you can reproduce that and infuse it with an amplified intensity to create a scene that people will be able to relate to.
What of your book(s) are you the most proudest of, and why?
I think most authors tend to say that they are the proudest about their first book, because going from ‘zero to something’ is the hardest step. It is a venture into the unknown; a year or more of voices – some imagined, some real – telling you that you are kidding yourself if you think you can do this. I prefer to ask myself, ‘Which of your books was the hardest to produce as a creative endeavour and which nonetheless turned out well?’ In that respect, it is my 3rd book, ‘The Dark Place’, without any doubt, of which I am most proud. It is a historical thriller, which required a lot of research. It also lacks a traditional hero but has instead a cast of anti-heroes, which is in itself quite challenging. But moreover, it is a book that spans multiple timelines, from just after WW1 to 1970, and in which I jump back and foreword. This involved writing a solid first draft in a linear story, then literally cutting up those four-hundred or so pages into hundreds of sections and then manually re-arranging them while covering them in post-it notes with reminders to myself on how to glue them all back together. It was a massive mind puzzle, one that – I think – worked very well, but not one I’m keen to repeat anytime soon. When I think of the authors I’ve read and admired – the likes of Jack Higgins, Len Deighton, Alistair MacLean, John Le Carré, Robert Harris, Michael Connelly and Lee Child – it is my book that most closely approaches that standard of story-telling.
What is your most recent book and/or what are you working on currently?
My last book was ‘Over The Hill Backwards’, a contemporary drama with a lot of dark humour that revolves around a former punk rock icon who is forced to realise that there are far more important things in life than fame, wealth and adulation. It’s based in LA and, curiously, Coventry, UK, a city I lived and worked in for sixteen years. It was originally a screenplay, but I chose to convert it into a novel and to work on something ‘lighter’ after eighteen months spent on ‘The Dark Place’.
Having worked for many months of 2023 & 2024 on a book discovery app, I’m now working to finish my tech thriller/dystopian novel, The Liberty Gene which explores the relationship between mankind and a more capable, but shackled AI intelligence.
Is there a book project you have in mind that you plan to write one day? If so, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Yes, in fact I wrote sixty-thousand words of it. It’s a crime thriller set in Berlin just after the fall of the Third Reich, and which I currently refer to as ‘BERLIN 1946’. It’s inspired by films like Graham Greene’s ‘The Third Man’ and ‘The Good American’ by Joseph Kanon. I put it on hold in 2022, as I knew that I’d struggle to market it effectively, and as I didn’t quite have the last third of the story mapped out. I will, touch wood, finish it in the next couple of years.
You can find Damian Vargas on www.damianvargasfiction.com where you cn join his exclusive reader members’ club, The Shadow Network and get free novellas, big discounts on eBooks and exclusive content.
Damian Vargas's author blog 