Ask the Author: C. David Belt
Answered Questions (7)
C. David Belt
What--or who--was living in the crawlspace?
C. David Belt
I go for a walk with my wife and use her as a sounding board. That almost always does the trick.
C. David Belt
Letting the voices in my head escape! I love telling stories. Hopefully, they're good stories.
C. David Belt
Be honest. Don’t cheat. Do your homework. Research. Research. Research. Get feedback early and often. (I get feedback after every chapter.) And above all, tell the story that YOU want to tell, regardless of whether you think anyone else will like it.
C. David Belt
I’m currently working on a standalone science fiction novel, “Time’s Plague: A Tale Told in Five Acts.” Here’s the pitch:
Edgar has awoken in Hell.
Or more specifically, in the Hades Penal Colony on Callisto, moon of Jupiter.
The year is 2175, and interplanetary freighter captain, Edgar Cordell, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he didn’t commit. He was framed by his best friend and business partner, Edmund Reagan, his ex-wife, Lyrica, and Edgar’s cargomaster, Georgie “Goner” Cornwall.
The prison is a hellish place, populated with murderers and rapists, the worst of the worst. All of them male. There is no warden, and there are no guards. All sentences are for life. There is no reprieve, no appeal. There is no escape from Hades. No ship ever lands there. It is forbidden and illegal. Prisoners and necessary supplies are dropped from orbit.
The prisoners rule.
Or more precisely, a brutal gang-lord rules—a man who calls himself “Lord Lucifer.”
Within an hour of his arrival, Edgar is savagely beaten and raped. Within days, his face is disfigured and his throat is cut.
But Edgar survives.
As I said, no ship ever lands on Callisto… that is, until a shuttle crash-lands. There is only one survivor—Lyrica, Edgar’s ex-wife, the person in all the solar system that Edgar hates most—the only woman Edgar has ever loved.
No woman can survive on Callisto. There is a plague on the moon that kills all females. When the colony was originally settled, all the women and girls became sick. 80% of them died before the colony could be evacuated.
And then there is the danger from the prisoners themselves. Edgar must find a way to protect Lyrica from the other men, get her off-world, and escape from Hades.
Lyrica is blinded in the crash. Edgar, with his scarred voice and face, is unrecognizable to her. She has no idea who her protector is. And Edgar isn’t about to reveal his identity. He assumes the persona of mad Tom Bedlam (his “prison name”).
Edgar will save Lyrica, he will protect her, but he desperately needs to know why she betrayed him… and what she was doing on the forbidden moon of Callisto.
“Time’s Plague” borrows themes and character names from Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. It is a tale of blindness, both physical and spiritual. It is a tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal, of hatred and madness, of violence and horror, and of honor, sacrifice, and friendship in the unlikeliest of places.
Edgar has awoken in Hell.
Or more specifically, in the Hades Penal Colony on Callisto, moon of Jupiter.
The year is 2175, and interplanetary freighter captain, Edgar Cordell, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he didn’t commit. He was framed by his best friend and business partner, Edmund Reagan, his ex-wife, Lyrica, and Edgar’s cargomaster, Georgie “Goner” Cornwall.
The prison is a hellish place, populated with murderers and rapists, the worst of the worst. All of them male. There is no warden, and there are no guards. All sentences are for life. There is no reprieve, no appeal. There is no escape from Hades. No ship ever lands there. It is forbidden and illegal. Prisoners and necessary supplies are dropped from orbit.
The prisoners rule.
Or more precisely, a brutal gang-lord rules—a man who calls himself “Lord Lucifer.”
Within an hour of his arrival, Edgar is savagely beaten and raped. Within days, his face is disfigured and his throat is cut.
But Edgar survives.
As I said, no ship ever lands on Callisto… that is, until a shuttle crash-lands. There is only one survivor—Lyrica, Edgar’s ex-wife, the person in all the solar system that Edgar hates most—the only woman Edgar has ever loved.
No woman can survive on Callisto. There is a plague on the moon that kills all females. When the colony was originally settled, all the women and girls became sick. 80% of them died before the colony could be evacuated.
And then there is the danger from the prisoners themselves. Edgar must find a way to protect Lyrica from the other men, get her off-world, and escape from Hades.
Lyrica is blinded in the crash. Edgar, with his scarred voice and face, is unrecognizable to her. She has no idea who her protector is. And Edgar isn’t about to reveal his identity. He assumes the persona of mad Tom Bedlam (his “prison name”).
Edgar will save Lyrica, he will protect her, but he desperately needs to know why she betrayed him… and what she was doing on the forbidden moon of Callisto.
“Time’s Plague” borrows themes and character names from Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. It is a tale of blindness, both physical and spiritual. It is a tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal, of hatred and madness, of violence and horror, and of honor, sacrifice, and friendship in the unlikeliest of places.
C. David Belt
I'm a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sitting in the Choir loft in the Conference Center or the Tabernacle during rehearsal, gazing out into the vast, open space, ideas just flow. Part of it is the music. Part of it is the spirit of the place.
C. David Belt
“The Children of Lilith” started as an image in my head. I saw a dark scene in a warehouse filled with shadows. Vampires encircled a mortal, “ordaining” him as a new vampire. I knew two very contradictory things about the scenario: 1: Vampirism was a choice, i.e., no-one could be forced into vampirism unwillingly; 2: The man at the center of the circle was unwilling; he was becoming a vampire against his will. I’ve always enjoyed a good vampire story, but the idea of forced eternal damnation always rubbed me the wrong way. And yet, in life, choices are forced upon us by others. So I wrote a story about the world’s first and only unwilling vampire. I was also inspired by the true story of a woman in Oregon, an LDS wife and mother, who went into the hospital for a routine procedure, received a tainted blood transfusion, and developed AIDS as a result. The choices of a stranger changed her life and those of her family. Yet she chose to not become bitter, to not curse God, but to make the best of the life someone else had forced upon her. In her case, a priesthood blessing cured her, but she made the choice to accept and move forward in faith before she was cured.
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