U.L. Harper author of The Flesh Statue visits with Writing Daze

When Writing Daze caught up with U.L. Harper on his virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book he gladly talked to us about what he has learned from writing a book that has made him a better writer and person and did he have plans for writing another book. Here’s what he had to say;


My next book will hopefully be my best work. I’ve learned so much about reading and writing from my experience with The Flesh Statue that I have the confidence of a prized boxer heading into my next novel. For years I’ve been calling this upcoming novel Sequel. Just recently I’ve changed the name to 12-feet tall. I’ve also caught on to the promotional aspect of the writing world a little. Let me briefly explain. The Flesh Statue is available on POD. One reason for this, is, if I had a traditional publisher, chances were, as a new author I’d blunder interviews and most promotional opportunities, not to mention, I couldn’t get anyone to go to a book reading, no matter what. Only now have I found ways to speak about The Flesh Statue in a progressive manner. Now I better understand how to get more people to an event. Now I can better use the Internet and understand how search engines work. Though, promotion isn’t all that’s been improved through time.

I’m finding that I can get people behind my book project. I’m finding that people won’t necessarily buy my book but they’ll buy the idea of it and they’ll be more than happy to buy me. When I’m focused, people like to hear me talk. They even like to hear when I have an opinion that they don’t like. Realistically they like honesty that’s not too serious. My marketing plan is this: Be seen and be honest. Done. The thing about this is I had to draw the line between selling myself, selling the product and selling out. This is a hard thing to think about once you’ve decided you are your product. To understand this you must appreciate that I had to get into myself to recognize myself properly. Is selling yourself selling out? The answer is no. Selling yourself is the opposite of selling out. How’s that, one might say. Well, if you create a product and sacrifice it’s integrity to make a quick buck, then, yeah, you might have to figure out a way to live with that. If you put your heart into it and you’ve spent years trying to get it read and are making money on it, then, no, you’re not selling out. The best way to make sure that someone reads your work is to sell it. They have to give it a shot because they bought it.

All this comes to mind after you start putting on events or start doing interviews, because you don’t necessarily want to do every interview. You don’t want to be at every event. So you begin to ask yourself, is this for the money or for the love. You have to make a decision. To me it’s for love of myself because it’s the only way I can give back to anyone else. That’s what I learned.


About the Book:

Langley, sick of his suburban life and sick of watching the man who raised him wither from the relentlessly ugly clutches of Alzheimer's, moves to Long Beach with the hopes of finding more. What he finds is a group of poets with a message, a message they want to get out.

When Langley moves to Long Beach he instantly finds himself in a new world of poetry and graffiti. A world that is in the throws of destruction and in the need of revolution. Langley is forced to make the decision; does he stay in this new world with its collapsible revolution, or does he attempt to endure a life marred in the memory of his death mother and in the current state of his Grandfather.

The Flesh Statue follows Langley on this search for answers and along the way introduces us to an array of characters from the eratic Cinci who is trying to escape a troubled past, to Bert, a man who is willing to fight and burn for his ideals, to Latrail, a young woman taking on the role which Langley should himself be filling.

About the Author:

U.L. Harper was born in Los Angeles California. However, he was raised in the public school system in Long Beach California. He attended Lincoln and Madison Elementary and moved to San Pedro where he attended Richard Henry Dana Junior High School. For the last few months of junior high he moved back to Long Beach where he attended Franklin Junior High School. He then went to Long Beach Poly where they told him he wouldn't be anything when he grew up and that he wasn't allowed to take a creative writing class. The teachers called him stupid. At least before 1993.

You can find the author at U.L. Harper