I'd like to welcome David Walton to the blog. Read on to find out why I'm convinced he must have a time machine or a clone stashed somewhere in order to accomplish so much.
What
are you working on right now?
My second novel, Quintessence, is coming out from Tor
this March. I'm about 70% through
writing the sequel, which is provisionally titled Quintessence Star. I’m pleased by the way it’s coming
together. I think fans of Quintessence
will find it enough like the original to feel like they’re returning to the
same world, but there are a lot of new mysteries and plot elements that make it
a fresh new book, not just a reboot of the first one. I’ve also recently finished a new science fiction novel
called Superposition, a quantum physics murder mystery with a lot of fun plot
twists along the lines of movies like Inception and The Prestige.
What's
your pre-writing ritual?
Besides a full-time job writing software, I have six
children and a seventh on the way.
I don't have time for ritual!
My writing opportunities come in small increments, and I never know when
they'll be interrupted by a crying baby, a young child who needs help getting a
snack, or an older child asking about homework. I've learned to take what I can get and make the most use of
the time available for putting words to the page. Before I had kids, I had a LOT of time to write, but I was
much less productive with it. Now
I have less time, but I feel like I'm a better writer.
What
is one of the most surprising/interesting things you've discovered while doing
research for a story?
I discovered that, contrary to popular myth, few people in
Columbus's day actually thought the Earth was flat. In Quintessence, therefore, I turned the truth
upside-down: in the novel, although the traditional belief is in a round Earth,
the Earth is truly flat, and it is quite possible to sail off the end of
it. At the very edge of this flat
Earth, where the sky reaches so low to nearly touch the ground, the influence
of the stars is so great that the normal rules of nature no longer apply...
Tell
me about your favorite story that you've published. What inspired it, and what
does it mean to you?
I tend to be most pleased with what I've written
recently. Those stories are, after
all, inspired by my most recent thoughts and experiences. I've published around 20 short stories,
but it's been a few years since I've written any, since I've been focusing on
novels. So I'd have to say my
favorite of my published stories is Quintessence (at least, it's very
nearly published). Quintessence
was partly born from my own struggles reconciling my religious upbringing with
my love of science. The characters
in the novel live in the sixteenth century, when religion was still a central
part of life and culture, but an experimental approach to science was just
beginning. They encounter a very
different science than exists in our world, but the challenges to their core
beliefs are just as unsettling.
You
can have lunch with any writer, living or dead. Who would it be, and why?
Orson Scott Card.
He's still alive, so it's possible, right? His writing was one of the first reasons I became a writer
myself, and I've benefitted greatly from his books on writing. He was a judge in a contest that led to
my first professionally-published story ("All The Rage This Year", on
which the world of my first novel, Terminal Mind, was based). I only met him once, briefly, at a book
signing. I still enjoy his
fiction; I'm currently reading Ruins.
What's
one of the best novels and/or short stories you've read recently?
Children of the Sky, by Vernor Vinge, and its
predecessor, The Fire in the Deep, which include one of the most
fascinating alien species I've ever encountered.
Writing
is a sedentary endeavor. What do you do to stay healthy and active?
Not as much as I probably should. My day job is a sedentary one, too, which makes it
worse. We do like taking five mile
walks as a family, when the weather is nice, but in the winter, we get very
little exercise.
***
David is the author of the Philip
K. Dick award-winning novel Terminal Mind. He lives near Philadelphia with his wife and six children,
where he works as a software engineer for Lockheed Martin. He also plays jazz piano and invents
puzzles and brain teasers. If you want to know more, you can visit his website
at http://www.davidwaltonfiction.com .
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