Writers4Higher: Science Fiction author

Showing posts with label Science Fiction author. Show all posts

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Writers4Higher features author Bruce Ballister

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Bruce Ballister

Hi, Bruce. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I’m a geek, and sort of proud of it. I was a geek before the word was invented. I was cross trained in college with most of a degree in Geology and all of the degree in Commercial Art. Finding that artists made no better living that art students, I pursued the graphic component of civil engineering and design until I was passed up the line to designer and then engineer. About the time Kubrick’s 2001 a Space Odyssey came out, I was already an annual subscriber to Scientific American, and National Geographic. Art and illustration gradually fell away, and my career morphed into public policy, urban planning and grant writing. But for reading, I still love the blend of science and science fiction. Often a great Sci-Fi story requires a reader to make only one small leap of faith to bridge the gap between literary fiction and science fiction. Because at their core, both genres require depth of character, hard decisions, human struggle, and compassion for human failings. Toss in, artificial intelligence, aliens, locations outside our atmosphere, or times easily accessible outside the here and now, and you have science fiction. A writer in Sci-Fi still has to make the problems of the protagonist real and ultimately solvable and the antagonist, sincerely driven by his/her/its own value systems.

My particular background and continuing interest in the sciences informs my inspirations and attempts to write science fiction. Arthur Clark blew me away with the Space Odyssey. Science fiction was cool! My first writing efforts were simple vignettes, conversations between two people at a crossroads, the edge of suicide, the edge of enlightenment, or an arrival at a major decision point. A few of those early efforts went well beyond thirty to forty thousand words and I found out I was writing novels. Surprise! I’m a writer. Now, I have aspirations of becoming not only a better writer, but one with a following. My Amazon fans seem to appreciate my early efforts. If you’re reading this, I invite you to take a chance.

2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

Pulitzer Prizes, nah, I’m not a research/reporter kind of writer, but a Hugo would be nice, but primarily, I’d like to build a fan base that knows, based on the books already out there, that I will deliver. The delivery will included believable dialogue, deep backstory, interesting settings, danger!, probable love interests, (why not?), and a book that will leave you turning pages well after midnight. I am approaching retirement, a threshold I hope to cross without joining too many volunteer organizations, because I’d really like to write in the morning when I’m awake, rather than the wee hours when it’s questionable. And hey! … if you’re a publisher… let’s talk.

3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?

As a third year member of the Tallahassee Writers Association, I’ve had a hard time saying no to the simple ask. (that’s always been a problem). So, the early ask to join the board of TWA morphed quickly to VP, the 2015 Conference Committee Co-chair, and now the President’s slot. Somewhere in there I took on the management of the Seven Hills Literary Competition which I hope to continue after this term as president closes. The presidential slot includes that famous abused phrase, “…and other services to be determined.”

We, the TWA, hope to offer value-added special workshops in addition to a great annual conference that has been moved to the early fall this year. Our monthly Third-Thursday meetings offer insights into the successes of regional talents in a wide variety of genres from historical, romantic, literary, short, non-, science, young adult, etc. -fiction to poetry, screenplays, editing techniques, plot and character development and some you-name-its.

I will never be a real pedagogue, but I love to share. If there’s something you don’t know, and I might, I’ll share it. And that’s pretty much the, philosophy of most of us at the TWA, we support each other, promote each other, and when time permits, we write!

Would you like to find Bruce?

Check out the links to this talented author:

Look for Tallahassee Writers Association on Face Book, and MeetUps, as well as www.twaonline.org https://sevenhillsreview.submittable.com/submit and

http://www.meetup.com/Tallahassee-Writers-Association/

www.dreamlanddiaries.com

https://www.facebook.com/DreamlandDiaries/

Twitter Handle: @ballister49

LinkedIn: Bruce Ballister

Dreamland Diaries Part 1 on Amazon

Dreamland Diaries Part 2 on Amazon

Orion's Light on Amazon

Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher Market! We have gear for the writer in you.

The Writers4Higher Market

Rhett DeVane

Fiction with a Southern Twist

Writers4Higher blog

Rhett's Website

Rhett's funny Southern Blog

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Writers4Higher features Jack Pittman

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Jack Pittman

Hi, Jack. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I have a science background — a BS degree in Chemistry from Loyola University in Baltimore and a MS degree in Technology Management from American University in DC. When I attended Loyola University, everyone was required to minor in philosophy. We science majors groused about this requirement. Give us more physics, not metaphysics, we demanded. But our professors would shake their heads. “As you grow older, you will find the lessons you learned from philosophy will be more useful in day-to-day living than the science courses you took.” I sincerely doubted that bit of passed-on wisdom at the time, but it has, indeed, turned out to be true.

I served twenty-two years in the US Army which included a tour in Vietnam with the First Infantry Division and graduation form Command and General Staff College. My Army experiences taught me discipline, loyalty, self-assurance, and the value of friendship.

I retired from the Florida Department of Health after thirteen years. This experience taught me the value of community service.

In 2014, my wife Jackie and I will be married fifty years. This experience taught me the values of acceptance and love.

All of these life experiences have inspired and colored my writings. The first book I published on Amazon was Spirit Walk through the Universe. I began writing this non-fiction book in 1999 but didn’t publish it until 2013. It is a collection of my personal essays on cosmology and the nature of God — pretty esoteric stuff, but it brought together the disciplines of science and philosophy in my mind and on paper. I did some research, as I wrote the book, and tried to make sure the science was up-to-date, but I had been a technical writer all of my life and writing non-fiction seemed relatively easy.

Although I had no education or experience in writing fiction, I wanted to write a novel. My first attempt was a children’s book titled The Land of Lost Socks. I floated it around to a few friends as a trial balloon. It got mixed, but mostly negative comments. The plot involved a five-year old Jeremiah (named after my grandson) who crawled into a dryer in search of a lost sock. The drum started turning and the dryer took him to another dimension. After meeting strange, yet familiar characters, the dryer took him back home. His mother tried to convince him that he was knocked unconscious in the spinning drum and dreamed his inter-dimensional experiences. But he knew what he experienced was real and vowed to find a way back.

The plot didn’t work well for me either. I decided to write an adult science fiction novel, Loose Strings, based on Jeremiah as a twenty-five year old genius quantum physicist whose research is leading him to find a way to open dimensional portals using string theory. In the first two chapters, Jeremiah is undergoing psychoanalyses to uncover the basis for his recurring dreams about inter-dimensional travel. The dimensional journey includes side excursions into quantum theory, dream theory, betrayals and conspiracies, mental augmentation, military operations, the code of the warrior, ghosts, dementia, a smattering of adult content, life after death, and the irrelevance of time — something to pique nearly everyone's interest. More information about the Loose Strings premise, plot, and characters is found at the web site; http://www.loosestrings-scifi.com/. The cover art is String Theory 2, a painting by Robert Hollingworth of Melbourne, Australia, used with permission.

Because I had no experience as a novelist, I had to learn about plot consistency, setting scenes, building characters, and writing dialogue. I attended a creative writing course presented by Adrian Fogelin in the spring and retained her as a creative writing coach. I’m still learning, but she gave me the inspiration, confidence, and courage to publish Loose Strings on Amazon.

2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

I definitely want to keep writing. I am currently writing another science fiction book called Moon Shadows. It’s about the exploration and exploitation of our own moon and the moons of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. I haven’t quite decided on the format, it may be a collection of short stories strung together by a common theme — kind of like Ray Bradbury did in the Martian Chronicles. I may do a re-write of Spirit Walk through the Universe. And I left room for a sequel to Loose Strings. Life is good.

3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?

I work as a volunteer for the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross as an orientation and a disaster response instructor. I also volunteer at Big Bend Hospice. Recently, I am hoping to get more involved at the Veterans Domiciliary Home in Lake City.

Would you like to find Jack?

Check out the links to this talented author:

Jack's Website

Loose Strings on Amazon.com

Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher Market! We have gear for the writer in you.

The Writers4Higher Market

Rhett DeVane

Fiction with a Southern Twist

Writers4Higher blog

Rhett's Website

Rhett's funny Southern Blog

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Writers4Higher features Doug Dandridge

Welcome to Writers4Higher

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Doug Dandridge

Hi, Doug. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I was always in love with fantasy and science fiction. I started reading Robert E Howard when I was eight, and Heinlein soon after. Asimov, Moorcock, Van Vogt, the golden age of science fiction. I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and War of the Worlds at an early age as well, and devoured Frankenstein and Dracula at nine. You could say I had a love affair with the fantastic in all its forms at an early age. I used to stay up late at night, well past my bedtime, to watch Shock Theater on TV Friday nights, and would try to watch every science fiction and horror movie that came on. This was followed by Lost in Space, and then the classic Star Trek. And many of the movies and shows were really bad at that time, with hokey special effects and second rate actors. There wasn’t a lot of fantasy back then, at least not that I can remember. The real treasure in science fiction was the literature, as written by the old masters and the talented newcomers. Now when the rare occurred and one was translated to the screen, big or small, they were almost always horrible. Comics were another big part of my life, and of course the movies and TV shows made of them were even worse than the scifi. Today that has changed. The big name actors line up for the big budget, special effects laden extravaganzas that are modern fantasy, scifi and superhero movies. And sometimes the scripts are actually good as well, though more often than not they are not as good as the books they are based on.

I was also the little scientist growing up, reading books on astronomy, playing with my chemistry set, watching the moon launches. I really wanted to be some kind of scientist when I grew up, but two things interfered. I really didn’t know what kind of science I wanted to study, and I never really grew up. I was just as interested in magic. I didn’t believe that magic actually existed, but I liked the idea of it.

I spent my years in the Army, then a succession of majors at FSU, followed by Graduate School in Clinical Psychology at Alabama. School didn’t work out, and that’s a story in and of itself. So while looking for a job after losing one I wrote an anger fueled non-fiction book about graduate school and the field of psychology. One hundred thousand words in two weeks. That never went anywhere, but it allowed me to write other books, once having proved that I could accomplish that task. Wrote two more books that first year, both awful, and then wrote the first one that actually was worth anything. I fell for an agent scam that cost me three hundred dollars, probably cheap for the lesson learned, and avoided agents for many years, only submitting to the few publishing houses that accepted unsolicited manuscripts. After fifteen years of trying and failing to get published, mostly with rejection letters that acknowledged my talent but stated a belief that there was not a market for the kind of story I wanted to all, I tried self publishing, which has turned out to be a success story.

What really inspires me to write what I do is the poorly thought out work I see on TV and in the movies. There are still a lot of great books out there, but I will go to see a movie, like Independence Day for example, that has so many plot holes I feel like I am going to fall through the floor on the way out of the theater. I am inspired to turn out well thought out stories, using as much of the real world as I can put in them. Real physics, real biology, real human interactions, at least as far as I can understand them. I think most times I succeed. Not always, but more often than not.

My books? I could write a book on my books. I have sixteen on Amazon, and am always working on one or two more. I have two series of hard, far future science fiction, one doing extremely well, the other good enough. I also have a series that is a mix of High Fantasy and Military Technothriller that is doing well enough, though I was warned in the past to not cross genres like that. But I have never been one to listen to advice I didn’t want to hear. A true High Fantasy, several stand alone Military Scifi, and the one Vampire book finish the list. Some people have told me The Hunger, the vampire book, is quite good, but it just isn’t selling. I may just have to let that one rest and concentrate on scifi.

Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

Further than it has so far. I am doing well so far, developing a base of loyal fans who are asking when my next book is coming out. In my best selling series, Exodus, I have sold 25,000 ebooks of the first three, 12,000 of book 1 alone. I want to build on that momentum. I have been asked what I would do if I were offered a conventional publishing contract, and I honestly have to say I just don’t know. In some respects that would be the dream come true, as I would have an editor and a cover designer, though from what I hear I would still have to do most of my own promotion. But there would be the cost of not being able to produce as much as I want, some limitations put on me by the publisher. But right now I’m just enjoying the ride. It as such a relief to leave my state job and become my own boss. Those people are crazy in State Government, and they were making me crazy too. Now I can do what I love, travel when I want, even looking forward to buying a house in the near future. I am going to Dragoncon in Atlanta at the end of October, and will be taking a master level writing class focusing on science fiction, with some well know authors as guest lecturers. I would like to go to Europe and call it research or a future series. I’ve got my first taste of living the dream, and I want more of it. I think if I work hard and continue to keep doing what I have, I will continue to attract fans and sell books. That means listening to those fans, maybe not doing everything they want, but paying attention. Constantly learning and growing. And I might just petition the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s of America to join without being signed with a major publisher

How do you use your talents/time to help others?

I am really a big animal lover. I have four cats at home, and would have dogs if I owned my own place. I use some of my earnings to support animal charities, big cat rescue, the Humane Society, various organizations that support the preservation of nature. People where I used to work would ask me why I didn’t support human charities, and I would answer that my heart is with the animals who can’t defend themselves. On the writing front I am always willing to lend a hand. I contact people online all the time who ask me how I am getting sales, and I tell them what I did. I’m not sure all of what I did got me where I am, but it’s the only way I know how to help them. I belong to many writers groups online, at Facebook, and use that medium to help. I have tried to help some people who really didn’t want the advice, other than a one sentence secret on how to get ahead. Unfortunately there is no such secret. I had to work a lot of years to get something out there that people wanted to read. I had to take risks in putting it out where people could criticize it. And everyone else has to do the same. If they want to listen I will give them my advice, for what it’s worth. If not, then I will wait till someone comes along who wants to learn. I had to learn a lot of hard lessons, I would like to make it easier for the next person to come along.