# Please introduce yourself and your book(s)!
I’m Gabriel Tait, a Toronto author. I began writing fiction at fifty, after carrying the idea for Meeks since my early twenties. Meeks is a psychological thriller about addiction and identity, following one man’s increasingly desperate pursuit of the person he believes he was meant to become. The Ranleigh Tapes continues Ranleigh’s story through recorded confessions, six months into sobriety.
# What is/are the real-life story(ies) behind your book(s)?
The characters are entirely fictitious. I’ve been sober since October 27, 2001, and that perspective informs my writing about addiction. I don’t think I could have written Meeks early in my own sobriety. By the time I wrote it, I had been sober for nearly two decades, so that experience informed the emotional landscape.
# What inspires/inspired your creativity?
The original idea for Meeks came to me in my early twenties. It wasn’t very well developed, but I thought it was solid. Since I wasn’t a writer, I used to offer it to friends who were writing or starting out in filmmaking. None of them took me up on it. That’s where the whole Ranleigh Meeks story began, although I had no idea then who Ranleigh Meeks was. I’ve basically been expanding on that idea ever since.
# How do you deal with creative block?
I write linearly, so if I get stuck, I end the chapter there and move to the next scene. I don’t try to arm-wrestle myself through the resistance.
# What are the biggest mistakes you can make in a book?
What doesn’t work for me is writing full of clichés, with no originality and an overuse of ten-dollar words. Honesty makes the best writing. Authenticity is key. Writing that really works shows you a world in its entirety and captures the essence of its characters.
# Do you have tips on choosing titles and covers?
I don’t have a formula for choosing titles. Once I had my main character’s name, Ranleigh Echo Meeks, I knew the first novel would be called Meeks. The second became The Ranleigh Tapes, and the third and final book is Echo. Taken together, the titles contain his full name.
With covers, I think you need something original and eye-catching that has a connection to the story. I’m not keen on the obvious template look. A lot of covers seem interchangeable, and I want mine to have their own identity. I also wanted cohesion across the three books, so readers could immediately recognize them as a series.
I used AI to execute the current cover designs, but I believe the author needs to remain the creative force behind them. For me, that means having the concept and directing the design yourself. I’m comfortable using AI as a tool to realize that vision.
# How do bad reviews and negative feedback affect you and how do you deal with them?
It’s a bit of the Wild West out there. If feedback is constructive, I’ll consider it. But I think there’s a difference between assessing a book’s merits and saying it wasn’t to your taste.
The example I use is Eddie Van Halen. If you don’t like heavy metal, that’s fine, but giving him one out of five as a guitarist because you dislike the music seems odd. Your taste doesn’t erase his ability.
I’ve seen reviews of widely admired novels that seem to come down to the reader not liking the book or not connecting with it. That’s their experience, but it doesn’t necessarily tell me much about the quality of the writing. I take bad reviews with a pinch of salt and consider the source. They don’t particularly bother me, although I’m willing to listen when someone has something useful to say.
# How has your creation process improved over time?
Meeks was the first book I ever wrote, so there was a lot of learning through trial and error. By the time I got to The Ranleigh Tapes, I’d learned a great deal, but I didn’t want to use that experience to repeat the same thing.
Meeks reads more like a traditional psychological thriller. For the second book, I completely changed my approach and wrote a fictional memoir presented as transcripts of the character’s recorded confession. That required a very different writing process, even though I was continuing the same character’s story.
The third book, Echo, will change genres again. For me, improving means continuing to take risks and finding different ways to tell a story. As long as I keep challenging myself, I think my creative process will keep evolving.
# What were the best, worst and most surprising things you encountered during the entire process of completing your book(s)?
The best moments are when the writing is flowing so strongly that I feel like I’m taking dictation. The worst is when the flow stops.
What surprised me most was realizing, after I’d finished Meeks, that the story had become an allegory for addiction. That was largely unintended. I hadn’t consciously set out to write an allegory, and I didn’t really see it while I was writing. It was only when I could look at the finished book as a whole that it became clear.
# Do you tend towards personal satisfaction or aim to serve your readers? Do you balance the two and how?
Mostly, I write to amuse myself. I figure that if I’m pleased with the outcome, there might be at least one or two readers out there who like it too.
I don’t think playing to the peanut gallery all the time would work for me. If I were primarily trying to give readers more of what they already knew, I probably wouldn’t have taken the risk of presenting The Ranleigh Tapes as a recorded confession. I might have written another version of Meeks. I’d rather follow the story in a direction that interests me and hope readers come along.
# What role do emotions play in creativity?
I think art needs to connect emotionally with the reader, but I don’t think the aim should be to manipulate their emotions.
I’m not particularly conscious of emotions while I’m writing. There were points in Meeks when I hit a good flow and felt very happy with what was happening. But I tend to recognize the emotional impact afterward, when I read the manuscript back.
# Do you have any creativity tricks?
I take long walks every night, and that seems to help. I write linearly, so if I get stuck, I end the chapter there and move to the next scene. I don’t try to arm-wrestle myself through the resistance.
# What are your plans for future books?
I’m working on the final installment of the Meeks trilogy. The third book is titled Echo and is slated for release in late 2027.
# Tell us some quirky facts about yourself
I forget to eat when I’m writing. For The Ranleigh Tapes, I set up a writing space in the garage at an actual workbench. I surrounded myself with things that inspired me, including a Meeks poster and the letter M from the original movie theatre marquee photo shoot for my first cover.
Links
Website: gabrieltait.com