Sci-Fi Romance
Date Published: 1/6/2014
: Born an outcast, raised a soldier, and chosen as a savior. Rafian VCA is humanity's only hope against a vicious new race of predators aimed at taking over the galaxy of Anstractor. In Anstractor: Vestalia, the first book by author Greg Dragon, the planet of Vestalia has been completely taken over by the Geralos. After losing their home and being forced into space, the revengeful Marines of Vestalia decide to take the fight back to the Geralos and win their planet back.
Interview
: Born an outcast, raised a soldier, and chosen as a savior. Rafian VCA is humanity's only hope against a vicious new race of predators aimed at taking over the galaxy of Anstractor. In Anstractor: Vestalia, the first book by author Greg Dragon, the planet of Vestalia has been completely taken over by the Geralos. After losing their home and being forced into space, the revengeful Marines of Vestalia decide to take the fight back to the Geralos and win their planet back.
Interview
What is the hardest part of writing your books?
The hardest part about writing Anstractor is that I am writing to represent a multiverse of several galaxies. Each galaxy has its planets, each planet has its continents and each continent has its people. There are hundreds of races, species, looks and customs. There are political differences, exotic technology, languages, all of which I need to keep track of and reference accurately throughout the various stories. Had I written a book about earth, or something we all know about historically then it would have been a bit easier since all I would have had to focus on was the characters and the situations.
The other hard part about my
writing is that my genre for Anstractor is Science Fiction. With a genre that has
pop culture influences like 1984, Star Wars and Star Trek you have to really be
impressive or fans will put your book (and your person) into check with extreme
prejudice.
I look at the times when
I've gone full on nerd arguing over things in Star Wars with a fellow fan, or
the realism of discovering Warp technology and it reminds me of how passionate
we Sci-Fi fans are. Many of the older Sci-Fi novels that I have read impacted
me in a way that made them treasured gems to me in literature and so I can
honestly say that “Sci-Fi” is much more than a genre. This being said, if you
get in good with a Sci-Fi fan base then you and your world are golden, but if
you come at it half-assed or bad, then you will be burnt.
Knowing all of this has
made me very timid with releasing Anstractor and I am by no means a timid guy.
What songs are most played on your Ipod?
It varies for me, like
many men of my age my musical taste is all over the place but for writing
specifically I go with anything that lacks vocals. When I worked on Anstractor
I listened to a lot of Jazz, specifically John
Coltrane. Writing many of the action scenes within the book was extremely
easy over the rising and falling of a master saxophone player so he was my
go-to artist.
There are a few chapters
in there where Mozart’s Requiem or Chopin’s Nocturne was used to drown out the
noise of the cafeteria where I sat typing away (since those can be loud without
killing my eardrums).
Leisurely I am a Janelle Monae fanboi, so The Electric
Lady has been on rotation in my car.
Do you have critique partners or beta readers?
Now I do! Ha, let me tell
you something, when you tell people that you are working on a novel they treat
it the same way they treat people who make New Year's resolutions. Basically,
they assume that you will post about it all day on Facebook, won't commit, and
will not finish. Authors can fix this of course by having enough nibbles and
bites of the book to sell potential readers on but I didn't think to do that
early enough.
After releasing segments
of the book unto social media I got a lot of interested people but none of them
wanted to risk committing to reading what could be some guy's poorly written
attempt at sci-fi. Now that Anstractor is out and available for sale, the
people in my life that have finished it have all come to me with interest in
playing all sorts of roles in the next book. So the answer to this question
(finally) is yes. I have a large blog following that supports much of what I
write and I have a team at home that have read Anstractor and believe in me as
an author.
What book are you reading now?
I am currently reading A
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess,
it is a dirty Vodka Martini in book form, and I am having a blast reading it.
Having been a fan of the Stanley Kubrick
movie and Malcolm McDowell’s acting,
I’ve always wanted to read the source material for their film and I am taking
the time to do so now.
How did you start your writing career?
I've always written online
(mostly for my blogs) but writing short stories was a personal love that I
would share with only people in my life. Anstractor is my first novel at 80k+
words and it was born out of the pressure that a few people I know put on me to
expand “The Chronicles of Raf” which was one of my more successful short
stories.
Posts
No comments: