Ask the Author: Daniel Quentin Steele
Answered Questions (10)
Daniel Quentin Steele
I honestly don't have a summer reading list, or any kind of reading list. For a long time I read mostly science fiction and fantasy. There were many authors I followed, but I loved the early books of Roget Zelazny most and I admired Samuel Delany's books. I didn't love them the same way but I never found another writer in any genre tht would match him for word magic. Then I read mystery an suspense and finally moved on to romance. Robyn Carr's " Virgin River" was the best overall romance/suspense series I ever found.
Daniel Quentin Steele
Obviously it hasn't been finished yet. It's taken me nearly 10 years to finish four novels - nearly 800,000 words in the WWWM series. I usually make promises and then never finish up, Although I did finish nearly a dozen other books in the same period. Over time you lose some passion but its coming back. This time I will hit the mark on #5.
Daniel Quentin Steele
I'm about 18,000 words into #5 and expect it will run over 100,000 words. I expect it will take 3-4 months to finish.
Daniel Quentin Steele
Frank, the short answer is I don't really know.
The long answer is that my schedule calls for me to finish it before the end of March. I've set deadlines for myself before and they haven't worked. BUT - I've been sitting on this for nearly a year and it's driving me crazy/ I've always been fairly fast at fiction - a hell of a lot faster at non-fiction - And When We Were Married (WWWM) has always been easy to write -one of the easiest things I've ever done. I've never agonized over it. I'm agonizing right now. "The Past Never Dies" was coming along fairly well until I ran into the Roadblock from Hell. I pretty much write from my gut and I wrote myself into a Writers Block. I came up with an idea that transforms the entire series - past and present and future. It doesn't change anything that has happened, but it changes everything. I want to write this thing because it is beautiful, it's moving and it takes the story out 40 years. But something inside me is balking. I don't even know exactly why. But, I haven't written more than a few words in months.I was up to 65000 words and hit the block.
STILL...if I have to tear out 10,000 words and start over at that point I will because I have to.
I was sending out a newsletter in 2012 or 2013 and ran into problems with AOL. Plus I didn't really have any news I could give to the people who'd been following the story on Literotica and then in ebooks. I wasn't doing much. I came to an understanding with AOL and I'm cleared to resume the newsletter, so I will try to start it up in late February or early March. I had 2000+ readers and once I've apologized to the 500+ new people that have asked me what's happening, the newsletter will grow. Which is to say that I will try to honestly let readers like you know what's happening with WWWM and some other things I will be doing.
I will finish WWWM Book 4 and maybe #5 this year. It has amazed me the past two years that readers continue to email me asking about WWWM. It's the greatest compliment any writer can ever receive. I am grateful.
The long answer is that my schedule calls for me to finish it before the end of March. I've set deadlines for myself before and they haven't worked. BUT - I've been sitting on this for nearly a year and it's driving me crazy/ I've always been fairly fast at fiction - a hell of a lot faster at non-fiction - And When We Were Married (WWWM) has always been easy to write -one of the easiest things I've ever done. I've never agonized over it. I'm agonizing right now. "The Past Never Dies" was coming along fairly well until I ran into the Roadblock from Hell. I pretty much write from my gut and I wrote myself into a Writers Block. I came up with an idea that transforms the entire series - past and present and future. It doesn't change anything that has happened, but it changes everything. I want to write this thing because it is beautiful, it's moving and it takes the story out 40 years. But something inside me is balking. I don't even know exactly why. But, I haven't written more than a few words in months.I was up to 65000 words and hit the block.
STILL...if I have to tear out 10,000 words and start over at that point I will because I have to.
I was sending out a newsletter in 2012 or 2013 and ran into problems with AOL. Plus I didn't really have any news I could give to the people who'd been following the story on Literotica and then in ebooks. I wasn't doing much. I came to an understanding with AOL and I'm cleared to resume the newsletter, so I will try to start it up in late February or early March. I had 2000+ readers and once I've apologized to the 500+ new people that have asked me what's happening, the newsletter will grow. Which is to say that I will try to honestly let readers like you know what's happening with WWWM and some other things I will be doing.
I will finish WWWM Book 4 and maybe #5 this year. It has amazed me the past two years that readers continue to email me asking about WWWM. It's the greatest compliment any writer can ever receive. I am grateful.
Daniel Quentin Steele
My latest and ongoing novel, "When We Were Married" was inspired by a conversation I overheard. I heard a wife tell her husband about something that happened "when we were married." And since I knew they were married, those four words lodged in my brain. I wondered where they came from, and what the impact of those simple four words might be on a troubled marriage. That grew into the 25,000 word story that became the first chapter of WWWM. And it kept growing.
Daniel Quentin Steele
I'm inspired in a variety of ways. Sometimes an idea will literally pop into my head from my subconscious. I've written short stories inspired by a comment on a talk show, by movies, by other stories and novels. Paintings have inspired me to write, as have songs. I seem to get more ideas from county songs than any other, why I don't know. Twisted words have turned into stories. I was thinking about dairy farmers one day and somehow that got twisted into "diary farmers" and that turned into a fantasy about a literal 'diary farmer.' An old, old comedy routine by Dick Shawn titled (and sung) "Don't Sit Down, Oh No No No No No, Don't Sit Down," about a defense lawyer's advice to his client facing the electric chair became what may well be one of the filthiest - in its literal sense - stories I've ever heard of. But it was a straight SF story. Someday I hope to see if published somewhere. So, anything can be grist for my literary mill.
Daniel Quentin Steele
The fourth volume of an ongoing novel/series titled "When We Were Married." I was up to a half million words before I started Volume 4 - "The Past Never Dies." I expect the series will be well over a million words before I finish the eighth volume. WWWM is a love story, the story of a doomed marriage, a divorce that literally changes history, and the story of two larger than life individuals trying to find their way without each other. It's also a story of the courthouse and the legal system, cops and prosecutors and public defenders, monsters and murderers. It ranges from Jacksonville, Florida around the First Coast of Florida to Washington, D.C., New York City, the Caribbean, Paris, France to Central Africa. Characters include psychiatrists, assassins, two warring International drug cartels, an army of Mexican Ninjas, Killer Grannies, a CIA operative nicknamed The Widowmaker, the most evil lawman on two continents, a South Florida drug lord who owes a debt to the prosecutor protagonist of the novel, the Hero of the Gunfight on Fourth Street, a heroic Irish priest, The Angel of Death, and a Killer Cop in Jacksonville. And the sexiest beauty with the biggest breasts in the state of Florida. It has been a fun book to write so far.
Daniel Quentin Steele
Read - a lot. And write until your fingers bleed. Write what you want to write, not what's popular or selling. The odds are you're not going to make much, if any, money out of your writing. So at least give yourself the satisfaction of writing a book you'd like to read. Write something you can be passionate about. If you get bored, nobody else is going to be able to get through it. Try to sell your books through an agent or through a publishing house, but don't let years pass while you pound your head against the walls of the publishing industry. It's too easy to post or self publish through Amazon or Smashwords or Barnes and Noble, if B&N is still around. If you decide later that your book is unmitigated crap, you can always take it down. But give it electronic life so that if anyone is ever interested, they can stumble across it. You might be wrong and your book worth publishing.
Read - a lot. And write until your fingers bleed. Write what you want to write, not what's popular or selling. The odds are you're not going to make much, if any, money out of your writing. So at least give yourself the satisfaction of writing a book you'd like to read. Write something you can be passionate about. If you get bored, nobody else is going to be able to get through it. Try to sell your books through an agent or through a publishing house, but don't let years pass while you pound your head against the walls of the publishing industry. It's too easy to post or self publish through Amazon or Smashwords or Barnes and Noble, if B&N is still around. If you decide later that your book is unmitigated crap, you can always take it down. But give it electronic life so that if anyone is ever interested, they can stumble across it. You might be wrong and your book worth publishing.
Daniel Quentin Steele
The best thing is that flow, that sweet spot, when the words tumble out and there's no work involved and the world inside you seems as real as the world around you. The second best thing is seeing your dreams made tangible and virtually immortal on paper or on line.
Daniel Quentin Steele
Brute force. I make myself sit down and write lines, and more lines, and more lines. I'm writing my way out of a block in my current novel. I know I can do it because I wrote my way out of an18-year block in the 80s and 90s. I wrote short stories, newspaper and magazine articles and comic book scripts, but I couldn't make myself write a word on the novel I'd been working on and I couldn't move on to another novel until I finished the one I'd started. One day I made myself start writing the next page and the next and the next. It was like chipping the words out of stone and I knew what I was writing was crap. Years later, I can re-read the novel and I can't tell any difference from the words I'd sweated blood over and the stuff that had flowed without any effort. After that, I never thought I'd hit another block. I never expected it, but I did. But again, I made myself start writing words and lines and it is slow, but they're coming.
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