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!