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| Silver Fox's
INTERVIEW |
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Edward Daniel Detetcheverrie
author - artist - poet |
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| SF. Why and when did you start writing creatively?
EDD. I wrote my first story The Adventures Of Charlie when I was in the fourth grade. It was about the misadventures of an orange striped tabby newly adopted by a man who already owned two other cats. The cats could communicate fluently amongst themselves and with other animals, but not with humans. I wrote it because I'd been reading since the age of three and it finally dawned on me that I should be able to write, too. I was pretty arrogant as a child, I suppose. I thought I'd written this great novel anyone would love to own and read, but it mainly just appealed to other kids and a handful of adults who knew me. Boy, was I disappointed! SF. Where do you get the inspiration for your stories / poems / artwork? EDD. A significant amount of the material in my stories comes from my nightly dreams. The rest often strikes me at really inopportune times�like when I'm sitting on the toilet or navigating a busy highway�and is usually just in bits and pieces. SF. Are there parts of you contained in your works? EDD. Very much so, and let me add that every author I've met who's work I've read has also written themselves and their lives into their works no matter how much they've tried to deny it. It's apparently an ego-thing. A self-dissection. Therapy of sorts. No wonder it's so addicting! SF. Do you identify with any one particular character? If so how? EDD. In my published works, I identify very strongly with my sci-fi hero Alex Roglitz. He's pretty much exactly who I long to be. Headstrong, laid-back, confident, an action-type. I try to keep him real by sometimes letting him blunder his way through cases, by allowing him to fart, to burp, to stumble over his words. I feel very much at home when I'm writing him, wearing his skin. However, the hero of my mystery (who joins the sci-fi series to become a major hitter later on), Geoff McKenna, is probably the character the most like me overall...quiet, observant, mainly non-confrontational and intellectual, trying to prevent catastrophes long before they happen, leaping to the forefront and bringing the whole story back to heel once things have gone way too far. SF. What genre(s) / art form(s) are you most comfortable with? EDD. I strongly dislike labels or being made to conform to someone else's ideals. Usually, I write the story, then figure out what category it would seem to fit best in. My favorite books and films are cross- or multi-genre. So far, I've published two science-fiction collections, a mystery, and a humorous horror collection. My sc-fi series veers into comedy, fantasy, horror, erotica. The humorous horror wavers between very black humor, light romance, fantasy, and mystery. I'm currently preparing to embark on a brand-new series of supernatural thrillers. I equally enjoy the wild ride of allowing my imagination to run free, and the challenge of trying to keep things realistic enough so that my audience can better sympathize with certain characters and situations. SF. Have your life experiences influenced your work? If so , how? EDD. I feel every experience, good or bad, is a learning one, and I have had the pleasure of being able to experience and learn so very much within my brief life span! I started studying veterinary medicine and zoology when I was in elementary school, which gave me a nice background for character Geoff McKenna, veterinary student. At about age eleven, I grew fascinated with parapsychology and the occult which also manifests as Geoff's own interest in these fields. I've had a strange fascination for New York City ever since I first really visited the place at about age five or six, and this is where my science fiction stories are based out of. I learned to fly at age sixteen and enjoy working aircraft into my works. My background in security helps me when I write my para-policing sci-fi and mysteries.... My strange life has had me hobnobbing in Annapolis with politicians, telling jokes at a picnic with an astronaut, dining at The Meadowlands with magazine publishers, lunching in the restaurant located levels below the Capitol building in D.C....and yet I've also been homeless more than once, I suffer from chronic bronchitis (progressively debilitating disease with no known cure), I've shoveled horse manure, and currently reside in a one-room house. I've lived in six different states from Florida to Maryland and as far west as Colorado. I doubt I could write as effectively had my life been bland or even just "normal". I've got a lot of cool stuff to draw from. SF. What would you like to do differently the next time? EDD. While I was with my first girlfriend, I stopped writing for four years in order to devote all my attention to her. Idiot. Relationships come and go, but never lose sight of your dreams! SF. When can your fans expect to enjoy your work again? EDD. I'm hoping to release my next science fiction title, Quasar 169: Physical Evidence, within a few months to a year. Ideally, I'd like to put out a book a year. Meanwhile, send anyone bored over to my site at AuthorsDen.com. I've got numerous poems and articles as well as a weekly blog I entertain with. SF. What books / poetry / artwork have you read / seen lately that you would like to recommend? EDD. I just had Tim Dorsey autograph his latest book, The Big Bamboo, for me a few hours ago, and if you enjoy madcap psychopathic mayhem that defies most attempts at literary categorizing, then I highly recommend his stuff. I'm trying to hook up with a copy of Christopher Moore's latest book, A Dirty Job, on eBay right now and recommend anything at all by this gently zany author. I'm a big fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child�particularly anything they've written featuring their awesome character FBI Special Agent Pendergast. I grew up reading and re-reading Ian Fleming's James Bond and Walter Farleigh's Black Stallion series. I love Rick Ragg's true tales of his family in Ava's Man and It's All Over But The Shoutin'. Everybody needs to read Good Omens: The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. And speaking of Gaiman, I always heartily recommend that everyone frequent their local comic book shop for some of the keenest, cutting-edge humor, horror, and fantasy in both storylines and art. SF. Do you have an agent and if not are you looking for one? EDD. I do not currently have an agent. I was told it might possibly benefit me to get one, but to be sure and fire him or her down the road once I've figured out the whole big-league publishing game for myself. Any takers? SF. Who did your cover for you? / For whom have you done book covers for? EDD. I did my own cover for Lighthearted Darkness, which I found personally very cool and thrilling. I was a manager at a major bookstore for two years which gave me quite a chunk of insight into what sells and why. Basic, simple, catchy designs really grab the attention as do clever titles. Oddly, a considerable number of really lame books feature some of the most involved paintings for their covers. My first publisher really screwed up the cover for Trumpet Of The Unicorn. I tried to tell them it should feature the skull of an animal like a cow, a deer, or even a dog, partially buried in substrate, with a single slender curving horn erupting from about the center of its forehead. What I got was a sun-bleached cow skull with two broken side horns and a freakish central horn as well. My story went from a mixture of paleontology and mystery based upon legend, to a cover that looks like something off a book about a nuclear mishap in the Nevada desert during a dust storm. Where do you get off putting three horns on a unicorn? So, my next two titles through them feature the title over a perfectly blank background. I just wasn't gonna take any more chances. I painted the cover for Robert Shuster's I, Vampire. It comes across as a bit comic book, a bit Edward Hopper. For fun, I painted my Quasar 169 hero, Alex, on the back. SF. Off all of your released works which is your favorite? EDD. My favorite will be the forthcoming To Kiss A Quasar, featured in Quasar 169: Physical Evidence. It's the most unnerving story I've ever written, and while everyone who's read the rough drafts have had a lot of negative emotional reaction to it, it's the portrayal of a young woman's abusive life which makes my fans so angry when they read it. The story is rather well crafted, written in a different style than what I normally produce, and revealed in such a manner that the reader cannot help but feel for the victim. It's the power I realized I had over my readers, the ability to manipulate their emotions to serve the storyline, which really makes the entire tale zing. Everyone reacted exactly as I hoped they would. Despite the dark cruelty flowing through it, it stands as a gem amidst my works. Aside from that, I'm pretty happy with The Brief Romance Of Augustine, featured at the end of Lighthearted Darkness. It's just begging to be made into a Tim Burton film along the lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride. I had fun poring over your selection of queries. Thanks for the opportunity to ramble mindlessly on about myself. --Ever Eddie D. Detetcheverrie SF. Thank You so much for having this interview. I first discovered Edward Daniel Detetcheverrie while browsing through AuthorsDen. It didn't take long before I started reading and enjoying his blend of comedy and horror. I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, but do have a loong history of enjoying the ones that allow you to laugh in a non malicious way. In classic films like Jaws, American Werewolf in London there were several funny scenes that still stay in my mind. Whether A Vampire in Brooklyn, or the Scary Movie series. This is Not always the easiest of combinations. Edward is a nice guy with a hilarious outlook on horror and does it well. I hope you will take the time to visit his website and buy his books. This way, years from now, you won't want to kick yourself for passing up the chance when he is too well known an author to find except at book signings. Post your comments and he is sure to respond. |