Three Questions with Van Heerling. My Guest Today is Martin Crosbie. @Martinthewriter

Welcome to Three Questions with Van Heerling. This is where you get to meet authors, actors, painters and anyone else that is bent toward the arts, but on a more personal level.

Today I am proud to welcome Martin Crosbie, bestselling author of My Temporary Life. His debut novel has been downloaded more than 130,000 times.

VH: Hello Martin, let's get right to it. For what are you grateful?

MC: I do this thing sometimes. When my headspace is cluttered and life starts pushing against me, I do my gratitude game. I do it when I'm driving to my office. I start with really basic things. I say thank you that I have a place to live, or, I say thank you for the fact that my car started, or that I even have a car.

And then, I say thank you for having the ability to drive a car. Then I say thanks for having my health. And, I say thank you for the different people in my life, and the fact that I have them as friends or family or as co-workers.

I have a half hour drive to my office, and by the time I get there, I've said thank you for probably hundreds of things. And, of course, each time you're thanking, inside you're thinking about someone who doesn't have a car, or the ability to drive, or their health, or a place to live.

So, by the time I park, I'm usually tearing up with gratitude and kicking myself for being ungrateful.

Try it, next time you're feeling down. I've been doing it for years, it really does work.

VH:  I will. After a difficult day how do you recuperate? Does it work?

MC: I won't allow life to get me down. Now, that doesn't mean that I walk around with a permanent grin on my face, it just means that at forty-eight years old, I`ve figured out what I have to do in order to pull myself out of a negative funk.

I need to run, and I need to write.

Last Sunday, after a trying week, I ran ten miles or so, with some friends, and then in the afternoon, I managed to get almost four thousand words written. If I can do one of those two things in a day, then it`s a good day. The fact that I did both of them made it an incredibly good day. In fact, that positive energy was still with me the next day.

So, yes, it does work, for sure it works.

VH: If you knew the exact date of your death down to the minute, what would you change about your life starting tomorrow?

MC: Well, I don`t want to know the date of my death, and certainly not the minute, so I hope I never have this information, but if I did...

I actually made a bunch of changes when I turned forty. I was living a very unhealthy lifestyle, and I decided to clean up. I found a couple of spiritual mentors, and they told me that the only thing I needed to change about myself was-everything. So, I attempted to do that.

Over the next couple of years, with their help, I made some physical and mental changes. I had just gotten out of a relationship (that`s guy talk for being dumped), so that part was changed for me. I changed jobs. I started making healthier choices in terms of the people that were around me, the food I ate, and the activities I took part in.

Those were the easy ones. The difficult part is changing the way you think, but it is possible to do that too, and although I can lapse back into negative thinking, for the most part I don't.

So, today, I`m not the person I was a few years ago. I`m far from perfect, and I live with a lady who will definitely attest to that, but I`m not the person I was, so, I don`t think I`d change too much about my life.

Other than my chocolate problem. I have an insane addiction to chocolate, and that's something that'll never change. 

VH: I understand the chocolate thing, believe me. I'm working on it.
Okay I am going to cheat today and ask a fourth question. It is similar to the last.

What if you had two years to live from this moment, what would you change?

MC: I`d eat way, way more chocolate. There`s this thing called chocolate tuxedo cake and it`s the most evil thing you will ever find. It`s layered vanilla and chocolate sponge with chocolate and vanilla cream also layered throughout it.

I would eat a whole chocolate tuxedo cake by myself.

Really, I would. I`ve always wanted to do that. So, forget all those lah di dah spiritual growth, and better health changes that I talked about in the first section of this question-I`d eat a whole cake, and not worry about having any guilt afterwards.

Oh, and I`d finish writing My Name Is Hardly, the novel that follows My Temporary Life. I totally need to get that finished.

VH: Whoa, an entire cake by yourself. If you did that it might take two years off your life! I'd stick with the latter. Finish your next book.

Thank you Martin. 

My Temporary Life

"It has everything, simply everything -a coming of age, a romance, and a thriller rolled into one delightful read.
From the first sentence, we're drawn into the harsh Scotland schoolboy world of Malcolm and Hardly. Malcolm's summers in Canada with his mother offer little comfort. He survives by running; running through the streets, running between Scotland and Canada, running from himself and his past.
Flash ahead 20 years. In Canada, Malcolm meets Heather, a woman haunted by an evil secret. When they camp at End of the World Lake, they discover there is nowhere left to run, for either of them.
Like the great 19th century writers (but with a lighter touch), Martin Crosbie takes Malcolm from a life focused on the primary needs of food, sex and basic survival to loftier aspirations. Hardly's accident and Heather's haunting secret drive Malcolm to believe in something bigger than himself; something beyond his logical accounting world. He enters an intangible, often illusory maelstrom of evil that requires enormous human faith; and tosses the reader onto a thrilling rollercoaster ride. Again and again he refuses to walk away from heart hammering danger.
Mr. Crosbie's deft character-development pen never allows the reader to question Malcolm's choices. He has prepared for this journey since his brave but costly attempt to protect Hardly from the school ground bullies. This time, he's not backing down, whatever the cost."

Martin Crosbie's debut novel has been attracting extraordinary attention. Over 130,000 readers have downloaded My Temporary Life in only a few months, read the first few pages and find out why.

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BIO:

My name is Martin Crosbie, and I live just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. I grew up in Canada and Scotland, two of the rainiest, greenest places in the world.

When I’m not writing I enjoy marathon running (okay half-marathon running, I’m currently training for a full), and hanging out with my long-term, freckle-faced partner, Jacquie.

My Temporary Life was my first novel and I wrote it in the spare room of my home. When I couldn’t find a publisher, I decided to self-publish and release it on Amazon. Because of Facebook, and Twitter, and the help of many, many friends, word or my book spread quickly. In less than five months 100,000 copies were downloaded, and I was fortunate to make it onto several bestseller lists.

I can’t thank you all enough for helping me get the word out there, and saying so many nice things about my book.

I’m currently at work on My Name Is Hardly and I hope to have it released late in 2012.

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