Stanley Riiks Interview Part 3

What other writers have influenced you?

The usual suspects: King, Barker, Koontz, Gaiman, J. K. Rowling, no surprises there. But, these guys, for me are surpasses by:

Garth Ennis who writes the best comics, brutal, violent, fun. Preacheris my favourite of his.

Gary McMahon whose Dead Bad Thingsis one of the darkest, nastiest, and filthiest novels I’ve ever read. It’s sublime. I read it years ago, and it’s still one of my favourites.

Andy Remic creates the best fantasy worlds, and inhabits them with amazing characters. And then he kills and tortures them. The blend of horror and fantasy is pure genius. He’s the only writer ever to make me physically wince while reading.

Neal Asher creates worlds I want to visit (Spatterjay), and A.I. I want to meet. SF at its best, complex plotting and great story-telling.

James A. Moore is another fantasy/horror writer who really punches you in the face with his novels. You don’t so much read them as experience them.

The only other author who deserves a special mention is Richard Kadrey and his Sandman Slim books. This series is a serious blast of adrenaline, full-octane, furiousness.

In terms of non-fiction it’s less about the writers and more about the topics, biographies on Ian Fleming, Warren Buffett, Hitler, Jenna Jameson. I read quite a range! I’m interested in how people work, and I like to know how companies and businesses work, like Apple, Amazon, WordPress.

 

What are your other influences?

I love films, I used to go to the cinema every week. I watch everything, romantic comedies, horror films and everything in between. Recently I’ve gotten bored with modern films that are just too long. I find myself bored halfway through a two-and-a-half-hour film, so we’ve started watching classics from the 90s and 2000s, like The Matrix,The Transporter, Leon.

I enjoy manga and anima, and US comic books. Particularly the darker ones like Batman, Preacher, The Sandmanand Vertigo comics.

 

Do you have any rituals or routines when you write?

I used to have a candle that I would burn, but my desk is now filled with mortgage statements and searches, so that would be a fire hazard. I just sit and type on my iMac. For non-fiction I usually need to concentrate more, but I will come back to something and add bits and pieces, expand areas in a very organic way, because I have the structure laid down. For fiction I flow more easily into the story, so it’s organic in a very different way.

 

If you could go back in time to when you started writing and give yourself one piece of advice what would it be?

Keep going. There have been times when I’ve given up, but it’s a very cathartic experience, and creating is a beautiful thing. More people should do it, not necessarily for publishing, but just for the joy of creating something from nothing but their imagination.

Also, I believe that nearly everybody has an area of expertise, and they can share that knowledge.

 

What book are you reading now?

The Soldier by Neal Asher. I’ve read a few of his, the covers are amazing. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s how I pick them usually, and Asher had never let me down.

 

What is your proudest moment as a writer?

Seeing the cover of Think Rich, Get Rich.

 

Are you disappointed with any of your work when you look back on it?

When I edit I’m disappointed by every other word. Editing is actually something I feel quite good at, but it makes me cringe when reading my work back. Like when you record your voice and then listen to it. It doesn’t sound like that in your head. Words can’t capture the perfect of your imagination.

 

What’s next?

I’m editing the first two books in a series of erotic novels for a friend (just a slight change of direction there!). At the moment I’m happy to consume words rather than writing them for a little while longer.

 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089SB6KRM

 

Stanley Riiks Interview Part 2

What does rich mean to you?

I think being rich is being financially independent. Not many people are. Financial independence means not being dependent on anyone, not a company for your wages, not your boss for a job. Having your own income outside of work, having a passive income, having time and money, and not having to choose between one or the other. Be able to live the life you want, to me that’s rich.

 

Is this a get rich quick scheme?

It’s not a get rich quick scheme. Nor it is a network marketing scheme, and it’s not an advert for a game or a course. A lot of the financial books I’ve read are just sales tools. I’m not upselling anything, I’ve just sharing hard-won knowledge.

 

Why do you feel now is the right time to launch a book like Think Rich, Get Rich: 5 Steps to Financial Independence?

The likelihood is we are going into one of the worse recessions on record. Now is the best time for people to be gaining knowledge about finance. This isn’t a book for rich people, they already know the secrets to wealth, this is a book for anyone who wants to know some of those secrets and set themselves up to be wealthy.

 

You’ve been writing for a while now. What inspired you to start writing?

I loved reading when I was young. And then I just kind of lost interest for a few years, but as a teenager I rediscovered books when I bought one of the Conan novels on my way home from school. I took it home, read the first chapter, then went straight out and bought a couple more books. It was my first fantasy novel and I was hooked. After that I borrowed my dad’s Stephen King novels and read those, and then SF, and everything else. I joined multiple book clubs, I visited the school and local libraries, and loved being in worlds not my own.

I started writing in my mid-teens, and enjoyed the feeling of being god, being in total and utter control of my characters’ lives and the worlds they lived in.

 

Why the switch to non-fiction after many years of writing fiction?

I started writing fiction, but I also had a diary, so my connection with non-fiction is long. I’ve written book reviews for as long as I can remember, and I don’t restrict myself to any one genre. I just write. Sometimes that’s stories, sometimes those stories are real and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t pick categories to write in, it just depends what I’m interested in at the time.

Stanley Riiks Interview Part 1

Stanley Riiks Interview Part 1

Your latest book is Think Rich, Get Rich: 5 Steps to Financial Independence, is out now. Tell us about the book.

Think Rich, Get Richis a simple, step by step guide to money: saving it, investing it, and building your wealth so that you can live your best life. It’s concise and easy to follow. There are only 5 steps, which are broken down into easy bite-sized chunks. This is basically a financial bible.

 

You usually write horror, fantasy and SF. Why write a book about finance?

I’ve always been interested in finance, since about the age of 8 when I had to sell my Star Wars figures to buy Transformers (big mistake!). That’s when I realised I needed to save money, so I could buy the toys I wanted to. I started selling toys at school. I got my first job, a paper round, at 13. I bought my first shares when I was 15, too young to own them so they were in my mum’s name. I got a job as a cleaner at age 25, started my first business as 17. I feel like I’ve been preparing to write this book most of my life. During the last recession, after the housing market crashed in 2008, I wrote a series of blogs about finance. Now I know a lot more, so I decided to write a book.

 

What’s the one financial regret you have?

I’m only allowed one? Not buying enough shares during the 2008 recession. I did buy some Disney, but I wish I’ve bought Amazon, Nike, and Apple too. I also probably should have bought my first property sooner. Regrets aren’t helpful though, learn from your mistakes and move forward. I did get Apple shares a few years later, and I bought Nike shares during lockdown this year. If I had more money I’d buy Amazon too, but I’ve bought four property in the last year instead.

 

Biggest financial success?

My flat in Charlton, south east London. I bought it in 2013 and rented it for two years. It’s now worth nearly double what I paid for it. I think that’s pretty good!

 

Biggest financial mistakes?

Actually, it was one I narrowly escaped. We had been searching for properties for a few months and we found this perfect 3-bedroom house in Canterbury, ideal for a student let. We put in an offer and it was accepted, everything was going through fine, and then we get the survey back. The house had previously been bought at auctioned and had basically been bodged together to look good, but the ceiling was barely held up (the wrong nails had been used), the windows were dodgy and the roof was in serious danger of collapsing. There was nearly £30,000 of work that needed doing before it was even safe. We tried to negotiate the price down sufficiently to cover the costs, but the seller wouldn’t budge so we pulled out. That’s why I’ll never buy a house without a survey.

 

5 Steps doesn’t sound like much. Is wealth really achievable in just 5 steps?

The 5 steps in the book are not particularly difficult, but it does take discipline, it does take sacrifice. And it’s not going to happen overnight. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. Having said that, this is not rocket science, you don’t need to be super intelligent, you don’t need anything other than determination. And is it achievable? Yes, it most definitely is. I’ll be retiring next year at the age of 45, so it is perfectly achievable.

Think Rich, Get Rich: 5 Steps to Financial Independence

Do you want to be rich? Then you need to start thinking about money in a different way…

5 steps to changing your life… 5 steps to financial independence… 5 steps to becoming rich…

This is a simple and easy to follow guide to becoming financially independent. What does that mean? That means not working for your money, but your money working for you. That means not being a wage-slave. Independence means freedom. In 5 steps you too can be financially independent.

5 steps. That’s all.

You need to be disciplined, you need to set yourself some targets and you need to ensure you meet your goals. You need to think rich. Everything in this book is achievable.

How do I know it works? How do I know you can do it? Because I’ve done it, and I’m doing it right now. In the last three years I’ve bought six investment properties, double the size of my share portfolio and have more in the bank than ever before.
This is not a get rich quick scheme. This is a financial self-help book.

Financial freedom is 5 steps away. Are you prepared to invest the time and money to get what you want, or are you happy being a wage-slave until you die? 5 steps is all it takes for you to get financial freedom. Are you ready to take the first step?

Available on Amazon uk

And Amazon.com

Soon coming to other good book sellers.

I’ve been away for a while

It’s been almost a year since my last blog post. (I feel like I’m writing a confession!).

Life has unfortunately gotten in the way of writing. I didn’t write anything at all during the whole of 2019. I posted some reviews, but that’s it.

I also stopped working on the small press that I helped found, Morpheus Tales, to concentrate on my writing, would you believe!

Morpheus Tales is unfortunately on pause at the moment.

But now, during lockdown, I’ve started to write again (it only takes a pandemic!). Not the horror, fantasy or SF I usually write to escape the horrors of the real world, but a book about life. And how to win at it.

It’s called (third title change):

Think Rich, Get Rich: 5 Steps To Financial Independence

Or How The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Poorer

And is now available on Amazon UK and Amazon.com

THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFETT AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE By Alice Shroeder – Reviewed

Despite this being an epic book, I expected more.

How can you sum up the Oracle of Omaha? The most successful investor in the history of investing?

For a man over seventy years old, having his life described in a little over 700 pages gives us about a 100 pages per ten years. Even though the first page is so awash with description (of Buffett sitting in his office) that it’s difficult to read, what we don’t get in the full Warren Buffett. We get a version, the tight-fisted, thrifty, intelligent, teacher, who’s more at ease with numbers than he is with human beings, and certainly more comfortable dealing with a class room full of students than he is with his own children. A man obsessed with making money and keeping it. To the point where much of the time his family acted almost, but not quite, as a distraction, and Buffett doesn’t particularly like distractions.

The failure of this book is the lack of detail about some of Buffett’s investments. Probably the most important part of his life, not only for him but also for most of his readers. We get the glamorous stuff, and we also get the dirty stuff, but where’s the detail of the stuff that made him his money?

Most of the information contained in the book can be found on Buffett’s wikipedia entry. The details of his earlier life are interesting, and the milestones he achieved in his early years are quite extraordinary. But I want a map. I want to see what he invested in, at how much and why: I want a description of how he made his billions. I don’t understand how a book so huge and detailed about Buffett’s life but be so bereft of such important details.

For a financial analyst Shroeder doesn’t seem very interested in the money.

This is certainly an interesting book, and Warren’s life as a self-made man certainly holds your attention. But the missing details of his investments, the things that are skipped over, or just not even mentioned, serve to give us only half an image of this great investor.

Buffett is still my hero, with the knowledge gained from this book even more so. We share much in common, he had a paper-round, as did I. Buffett was making money as a child, as did I, once getting in trouble at school for telling my friends toys. Buffett also skirted a bit too close to the law, well, I’m refusing to comment on that! He was also buying shares before he was sixteen. I bought shares in my mother’s name because I was too young to have them in my own. Unfortunately, and I really don’t know what happened (perhaps discovering horror novels), but our paths diverged and I’m not a billionaire.

This is a personal and probably the most detailed of the books on Buffett, and yet it still doesn’t manage to capture the complete man. It does capture most of him, and it’s a moving story, but I almost feel short changed.

Amazing book, and yet still slightly disappointing.

Credit Crunch: A Survivor’s Guide

The credit crunch has hit me hard. I haven’t lost my job (so far), but my income has decreased significantly (about 25%), the threat of redundancy has loomed over me for the whole of 2009 and is likely to be an issue again in 2010. During this time of difficulties I’ve had to tighten my belt, to cut costs, I’ve had to crunch my own credit, look at my needs and expenses and try to put together a back-up fund for emergencies.

It has been hard. The credit crunch was unexpected by most people, including me, and because there was no warning I found myself unprepared.

To give you some background, I have a full-time job (the joy!), I live in rented accommodation (which until recently I enjoyed alone). I enjoy good food, regular holidays, lots of tv channels, unrestricted broadband internet access, buying things when I want them, not having to save forever to get an iPod touch, and being in control of my money.

That is until I realised how precariously balanced I was on the financial divide. The divide between the haves and have-nots. Because of the credit-crisis it’s not so much of a divide any more, and there’s no border patrol stopping you going over to the other side now.

I plan to put together a series of articles aimed at making you look at your money and getting you to think about how you spend it. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it’s not a 12-step debt removal system, it’s just a common-sense way of looking at money and how you use it. The idea is to take in this information and use it to save yourself some money without having to go without too much.

Next time: Budgeting