Q&A with Ryan M. Schulz – Author Interview

We’re delighted to welcome Ryan M. Schulz to this Q&A, a writer whose work is shaped by curiosity, creativity, and a clear passion for storytelling. Known for bringing thoughtful ideas and engaging perspectives to the page, Ryan has a knack for drawing readers into his worlds while keeping his voice grounded and authentic.

In this conversation, Ryan shares an honest look at his path as an author — the inspirations that sparked his writing, the challenges he’s navigated, and the moments that have defined his journey so far. It’s a relaxed, insightful chat that offers a genuine glimpse into the person behind the stories.

About The Author

Tell us more about you.

My name is Schulz, Ryan M. Schulz. Jokes, I don’t write spy stories. I’m a neurodivergent, genderqueer-pansexual who grew up in the most isolated city in the world – Perth, Western Australia – before relocating to London in 2017. Here, I not only found my people, but I also found the love of my life (now, non-binary wife) and I haven’t looked back! My favorite colour fluctuates between black, to a variety of pastels, which is very dependent on my mood. I’m either dark and moody or bright and cheesecaky!

What are the three items you’d take on a deserted island?

My wedding ring, my koala plushie that my pop got me when I was a baby, and my laptop – as it has Word and I could write stories without distractions…

Who is your biggest role model?

My mother. She raised me, my brother and my sister practically solo, as my dad was in the SAS which saw him posted away months at a time. She did this while struggling with severe mental health, diagnosed depression at the time, but recently (in her sixties) was diagnosed with ADHD and it just may be that the depression was merely her not coping in life with undiagnosed ADHD – raising three children on her own while dealing with the worries and grief at the thought of her husband dying in war.

What is your favourite book and who is your favourite author?

My favourite book is Carrie. The empowerment she is given on those pages to take revenge on her awful classmates and horrible mother, without consequence, is so addictive. It’s an interesting book to look back on and the adaptations of it on TV and film really highlight the domino effect of how a person’s experiences craft the person they become. You see it in each classmate, the teachers and more clearly in the mother. The new television adaptation will be interesting to see if they include any modern-day themes and topics to see if that impacts any of the characters and changes parts of the story.

My favourite author, is the Master of Horror Mr. Stephen King. My first introduction to him was in my youth, as a child of concern who loved all things creepy, macabre and bloody! Perhaps, like Carrie, as a bullied and teased misfit (although, without the gift of telekinesis) horror was an outlet for me. But it was Stephen King’s film adaptations that saw me begin to hyper fixate on his work, and once I saw the Tommyknockers, then Needful Things and IT, I just wanted to see more and more of his stuff. Only just diagnosed with ADHD (two-years ago) in my adult life, starting my meds at 36 years old – and struggling in my youth with Central Auditory Processing Disorder – I wasn’t able to read a book until my young adult years, but even then that was after a lot of therapy, and practicing coping strategies having been diagnosed with anxiety. The anxiety was likely due to undiagnosed ADHD. Nope, I never finished a single book in High School, but in the lockdowns of COVID-19 I read the entire series of the Dark Tower!

I suppose falling in love with the adaptations of King on screen, when I started reading I was just instantly drawn to his work, and since opening his books have loved his stories and now want to read them all. His focus on society and how it works together, meets how it tears itself apart in moments of crisis, really intrigues me. I find he himself so admirable, in his exposure and publishing of diverse people and powerful women as main characters, despite the peak of career being within the height of patriarchal times. From “losers” like Carrie, Marty (who was a wheelchair user) whom with his big sister discovered a werewolf and saved their town, and Dolores Claiborne (needn’t say a word) not to mention Wendy in the Shining.

Do you prefer e-books, physical books or audiobook?

Physical! The smell. Printed artwork. The break from a screen. Just bliss.

Is writing your full-time profession or a hobby?

What a dream… full-time writing. The number of ideas I have in my head, honestly! Alas, it is very much a hobby at present, and something I do when I find time in between life duties and responsibilities. If it wasn’t for being furloughed because of COVID-19 I honestly don’t think I would have ever written a trilogy.

Week to week, I work for the world-leading production and entertainment company Underbelly, although I am venue based, and represent our theatre Underbelly Boulevard Soho where I work on business development, corporate hires, commercial projects, and both creative and theatrical development with West End and national touring companies.

I also produce our in-house resident show The Vaudevillian Strip, a production which showcases Britain’s most prestigious cabaret artists, in addition to a smaller event I produce weekly in the main bar called Bar Burlesque, welcoming people to indulge in a free night of entertainment with a live pianist and burlesque performances accompanied by the piano.

What social media platform do you like and use the most?

I’m a big fan of Instagram, although I still use Facebook and have recently started using Threads! Links to my socials:

Your Writing Process

How do you go about starting a new novel?

I think of an idea, however that comes to me, and then plot out how I want it to end. I think about what the message is I want to convey? What the final moments are? What is the impact I’m hoping to make? Then, I think about who would be involved to make that happen and I write my ending.

After that’s complete and I’m satisfied, I’ll start writing Chapter One. I do write paragraphs for later chapters that I think up along the way, but I basically start at the end and then let the story write itself. I live through the characters on those pages, and although I basically know the ending, it is such an enjoyable experience to live their lives chapter to chapter, and not know exactly what’s going to happen myself.

Where do you like to write?

My ideal place to write is in a hotel room on a little self-organised retreat. I look up cheap hotel deals, book a weekend or a few nights to get me in the headspace, then take myself away from distractions and put myself in a clean and tidy environment and pop my phone where I can’t reach it. I started my recent release Filament Lit Nights South-England in Dover and later finished it in East-England on Herne Bay – I love going to the sea and being able to take short walks beside the ocean. It’s something about the sounds of crashing waves that helps clear my head to get it into writing each day.

What do you like most about writing?

I love the fact that you can make anything happen. That it makes you feel as if you can do anything. Things that you may not feel confident or strong enough to carry through in real life. That you can create worlds and scenarios you can be part of, exist in or bring to ruin, that you may literally never have the chance to in this life.

What do you find stops you from writing more?

Definitely finances. I moved to London to live in a more progressive open-minded city with progressive, open-minded and likeminded people. I found them. But London is expensive. I’ve got to work. Working five days a week, then finding downtime with my beautiful wife, as well as enjoying this phenomenal city’s creative works and industries proves hard to find regular time to sit and focus.

What genres do you like to write and why?

Always Queer, in one way or another, because I can introduce themes and topics in a storyline that our community experience day-to-day with hope that one day it will reach someone it needs to, and that they’ll think twice about their opinions or actions – while also giving people in the community themselves stories they can relate to and identify with (or even consider issues that they haven’t faced themselves or potentially taken the time to understand).

Horror, because it allows me to explore themes in the most raw, brutal and confronting ways, while splattering blood left, right and center! Dark Fantasy, because it gives me the ability to create worlds filled with aesthetically divine mystical characters, and dark scary villains of power (that can use that power to crumble this infested world) – or heroes with power which can be used to defeat darkness (to save the world and try make it better).

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring writers?

Don’t listen to anyone else until the professionals (eg. Editors) step in. Even then, take what they say to your own discretion. Listen to your heart and write from it. Don’t think logically, you can tidy up logistics after, just start writing. Keep the story close to your heart while you’re writing it and don’t let others impose, influence or divert it from what you set out to create.

Showcase Your Book!

How many books have you written and if more than one, what’s your favourite?

I’ve written five books with a sixth on the way. The first three, are part of a Queer-Horror entitled the GB&T Trilogy, which is a story that starts at the dresser of a drag queen who is zapped of energy, motivation, and entirely defeated, but filled with rage, hate and anger, provoked by their very own community.

It ends in a post-apocalyptic world that slowly invites supernatural elements into the timeline as the story progresses. In order, they are called Glitter, Blood & Tears, Glory, Blood & Tears and finally, Genocide, Blood & Tears. In essence, the trilogy is a parting piece to my days as a drag queen and former cabaret compere.

The fourth, is yet to be published and currently being edited, but it follows a widowed mother and her young daughter, as they move from the capital city London to an industrial town called Slough, in order to make ends meet. It aims to show the strength in a certain generation of a woman, carrying on and doing what she has to do no matter what she’s faced with, and relates heavily back to your earlier question in which I answered, that my idol is my mother.

In this story, I turned almost everything and everyone against the main character stripping all her support systems away, to explore the real extreme outcomes and dark twisted possibilities of what could occur if one’s fresh start was less resetting and more a full-throttle paranormal nightmare! Watch this space.

The fifth is very much my favorite, hence skipping ahead to publish it before the fourth book I wrote. Released the 20th of August this year, Filament Lit Nights journeys with a lost soul and a vaudeville that comes with an extra price for entry. Grief. Love. Sex. Blood. All under the filament lights of the Big Top. All the characters are from different walks of life, but end up finding themselves on the same path and with the same curse. A curse that isn’t holding any of them back. In fact, it’s what brings each of them together.

But I ask you this: what if a curse could save, could mean finding family, and could give lost souls a new purpose? In Filament Lit Nights, the stories behind the vaudevillians of ‘Lucious Poise’s Travelling Vaudeville’ are woven together in a spellbinding, dark, romantic fantasy, where modern-day vampires, queerness, gender identity, feminism and various relationship dynamics come together in an exploration of finding oneself and loving freely.

How long did Filament Lit Nights take you to write?

It must have taken me about seventeen months. I first began in Sept 2021, then wrote pieces along the way before going away to finish it in Feb 2023. But then of course there was the reviewing and editing processes – so from September 2021 to today it took four years to get packaged up and published. Not to mention my gorgeous spouse wanted me to do things properly and took the time to find me an incredibly talented cover designer (Lisa, @littleforestcat_), and paid for her services to work with me as a wedding present, as well as hiring the brilliant editor Lindsey Middlemiss and the two PR agencies BookBuzzPR and Twisted Chaos PR.

Lastly, what is your favourite thing about being an author?

Having control over what I want to work on. Being able to shout and scream about topics and themes that should be explored and considered, by shaping them into characters’ lives, and creating those characters with the hope that people are drawn to some and repulsed by others. I love being an author because at the end of the day I get to write my thoughts and create narratives, how I see them, and then share those thoughts and narratives with the world!

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