Thanks for doing an interview, Bardlyre!
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Interview with Emily Goglia
Check out an interview I did recently with actress and singer Emily Goglia. We talk metal, bluegrass, books, fantasy, and even law. Pretty cool!
Interview with Avery Dox, Sci-fi Extraordinaire!
Thanks for doing an interview! Right out of the gate, tell us about your series!
In short, it’s about a handful of characters whose lives are dramatically impacted by the discovery of cross-temporal communication (or in other words, a primitive modem that sends and receives binary data across different threads of time). It’s alternate world, set in a vast Pangea-like land mass, pre-continental drift. Different countries surround a large bay, each in various stages of technological advancement and economic development. Most of our characters live in Tenoch, a coastal nation-state currently undergoing a rapid industrial revolution, outpacing its former allies. Without giving too much away, the mass adoption of this new forward-looking technology has transformative effects on civilization.
How did you come up with the ideas that fuel your futuristic world? What kind of things give you inspiration?
I’m a software engineer by trade (and an amateur roboticist on the side), so the idea of interacting with binary data was already semi-familiar. Reading about quantum entanglement and how it violates relativity fascinated me; I got to wondering how exactly it’d work with time dilation at a binary level. I remember reading Jurassic Park as a kid, and Michael Crichton’s explanation of getting dino DNA from fossilized mosquitos blew me away. His inclusion of genetics in the plot provided a sense of plausibility that I hadn’t felt in a story before. I tried to emulate that feeling with this series. My hope was to promise the reader something that would make a huge impact on civilization—as lofty as the wheel, electricity, the internet etc.—without it being a let-down.
Sci-fi is full of awesome technology and terrifying advancements. Tell us about one thing you expect to see invented in the future that will benefit mankind and one thing that will ruin it.
I read about researchers in Russia who’ve been semi-successful in reconstructing imagery using brain waves, similar to those captured in an EEG. Elon Musk is working on something along those lines as well, with AI/ML enhancements. Some people may imagine this as a step toward some Cyberpunky/dystopian wasteland, but honestly, it sounds awesome. It’ll take a while for the technology to mature (obviously), but with all the time people spend interacting with phones and computers and tablets, the idea of a direct neural interface seems like a logical step forward. (On my never-ending task list, I have this absurd project to buy a home EEG kit with a USB output, hook it up to a Raspberry Pi and record my brainwaves while I think about something discrete, like a specific color or object. Then I can run that data through an ML image classifier and see how distinct the patterns are. Maybe I can change channels without a remote!)
Biggest threat to humanity? Maybe this is too serious of an answer, but any sudden imbalance of “mutually assured destruction” is truly terrifying. I realize the Cold War is over, but still…the sheer volume of annihilation that could occur in under five minutes absolutely boggles my mind. Rich Sanchez would say “just don’t think about it,” which is probably good advice. (Also, if you’re in Arizona, check out the Titan Missile Museum—lots of interesting stuff about MAD there.)
Being a writer is hard work. What aspects of the author life have you enjoyed the most and what’s been a pain?
More and more, it seems like individual creators are losing ground to larger enterprises. Gaming is a good example. I’ve toyed around with building games in Unity, but why would anyone bother to play my low-budget indy game instead of a triple-A masterpiece? Most gamers (myself included) expect pristine graphics, motion capture, endless side quests, etc. Anything short of that is subpar. Big gaming studios have entire TEAMS of people dedicated to nothing but particle systems! I can’t compete with that. On the plus side, the games are truly amazing, but for solo developers, most won’t bother producing anything on their own.
Writing, on the other hand, is a creative area that’s less susceptible to enterprise expansion. Sure, some big authors probably have researchers and ghostwriters and whatnot, but for the most part, each storyteller undertakes the same tasks: create a story, develop characters, set scenes, etc. Most still use Word or typewriters. It’s one of the few areas left where a solo creator can still be competitive.
As for challenges, the hardest part for me is maintaining a cohesive story—and all the themes and foreshadowing and everything that comes with it—throughout multiple books. Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but establishing intrigue is easy—the hard part is delivering on it. Everyone’s been sucked into an intriguing story only to feel shortchanged in the end. When there’s no eventual payoff, the reader feels duped, and it can retroactively sour the entire work for them.
What’s next on the horizon for your writing career?
I’m debating between another series and a one-off novel. Either way, it’ll be the same genre: probably some kind of hard sci-fi, a little gritty, with occasional tech/existential concepts. The “alternate world” theme has been falling out of fashion for a while now, so my next project will probably be set in something more familiar, but I haven’t decided just yet.
Thanks for doing the interview! Where can readers go to find more?
Thanks for having me! My Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/Avery-Dox-114805126582598
Ebook/audiobooks for sale here (among other outlets): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089GXTP73?ref_=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tkin&binding=kindle_edition
Publisher info here: https://deadreckoningpress.com/theschema
Grab book 1 of the series today!
Interview with Bill Noel - Author of the Folly Beach Mystery series!
Bill Noel - Author of the Folly Beach Mystery Series!
Thanks for doing an interview!
Right out of the gate, tell us about your new book!
Tipping Point is the nineteenth novel in the Folly Beach Mystery series. Chris Landrum, the main character in the series, and his friend Charles Fowler are taking a peaceful kayak trip through the marsh near Folly Beach when a single-engine airplane plummets toward their watercraft. They survive—barely—but two of the plane’s four passengers are killed. After learning the pilot had been poisoned, Charles, a self-proclaimed private detective, decides it’s up to the two retirees to catch the killer.
Once again, Chris, Charles and their cast of quirky characters are challenged to solve a crime the police are unable to unravel before lives are lost, possibly their own.
The series has been described as light, humorous, and the perfect beach read in the contemporary cozy mystery genre.
You’ve written a lot. Most authors never even put out half the content you’ve written. What gives you the drive to keep writing more and more?
I’d just turned sixty when my first novel, Folly, was published in 2007. You don’t have to do the math, I’m a fossil. I’d been a longtime reader of mysteries and wondered if I could write one. I had been a university administrator for many years, so knew I could write nonfiction, but the transition to fiction was something I finally summoned the nerve to try. To make a long story much shorter, I wrote Folly to see if I could. The fantastic response I received from readers was the inspiration to continue writing the series. I once heard an interview with a woman who purportedly was the oldest person alive. The interviewer asked her the secret of a long life. She said, “Guess I just forgot to die.” I’ve been blessed with an incredible home life that’s allowed me to follow my writing passion. After the first book, I simply forgot to stop.
I haven’t personally read everything you’ve written, but my favorite has been The Pier. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for The Pier and the iconic Lost Dog Café.
Folly Beach is a real place. It’s located in the shadows of Charleston, South Carolina, and is as different from historic, stately Charleston as a penguin is to a porta potty. Folly is small, less than a half-mile wide, six-mile long. The Charleston Visitors Guide describes Folly as a “charming bohemian enclave perched on the self-anointed edge of America.” To me, it has an aging hippy, beer-for-breakfast, shared with your Doberman feel. The Folly Pier is a thousand-plus-foot long fishing pier and an iconic feature of the small island. Over the years, several people have committed suicide on Folly Beach. In The Pier a death is ruled suicide by the authorities, but, of course, since Chris and Charles get involved it had to be anything but suicide.
The Lost Dog Cafe is the favorite breakfast and lunch restaurant on Folly Beach. In the series, it’s the place where Chris and his cadre of quirky characters often gather to discuss whatever crime they’re in the middle of solving. As an author, it’s also a fantastic location to do book signings—especially if the books are in the Folly Beach Mystery series!
Being a writer is hard work. What aspects of the author life have you enjoyed the most and what’s been a pain?
I suspect I’m like most writers. The most enjoyable part of the experience is writing the book: creating characters and a setting, devising a plot, stringing approximately 80,000 words together well enough to entertain the reader.
Unfortunately, I believe most successful novelists are schizophrenic, not in the clinical sense, but close. For example, in writing a book I have murder, mayhem, conflict, and strange voices bouncing around in my head. Schizophrenic? To compound the problem, writing is a solitary pursuit. I work in a world of my imagination. Real people are problems for me. They interrupt, they question, they distract. I work best in isolation.
And that brings me to the part that’s a pain: selling the books, aka marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing book signings where I can talk to the people who are reading or may wish to read the series. That’s the fun part, but a successful writer can’t limit the marketing effort to book signings. Blogs, promotional websites, the author’s website, podcasts, other social media platforms all are part of a successful marketing effort. I’ll be the first to admit, those are far from the fun parts of being an author.
What’s next on the horizon for your writing career?
I’m often asked when I will stop writing books in the series. My answer is simple and honest. I’ll stop when it ceases to be fun. Fortunately, I don’t have to live off the money I make from the books. If I did, I’ll probably be writing answers these questions in the dirt under an overpass somewhere. I was fortunate to be able to retire from a real job eight years ago. If writing can’t be fun, I have no business doing it. And I’ve been told many times over the last fourteen years how much enjoyment readers get from the books. I sincerely, believe they would be able to tell if writing them was no longer fun for me. At this point, I’m fairly certain there will be at least four more books in the series. After that, who knows? I don’t.
Thanks for doing the interview! Where can readers go to find more?
My website is: www.billnoel.com. I can also be found on Facebook under Bill Noel, or Folly Beach Mystery Series, and even the Bill Noel Official Fan Club started by two fantastic fans of the series.
You can buy TIPPING POINT here: click me!
You can buy THE PIER, my personal favorite, here: click me!
Interview with Author W. C. Little - Awesome Historical Fiction!
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