Steven H. Wilson Brings the Night Alive in the Middle of Eternity
It was October 1995 at Farpoint, an annual SF media convention in Maryland. There was a writing contest. The winning entry was to be printed in the convention's program book. I submitted my first EVER Star Trek fan fiction short called A Passion for Peace wherein Kirk and crew rescue a Romulan defector near the beginning of their five year mission. Her tale of a peace movement on Romulus leads Spock to begin pondering the idea of a reunification of Romulans and Vulcans.
I did not win and I was, of course, disappointed...until I ran into Steven H. Wilson, co-founder of Farpoint, fellow fan fiction author, and writer for DC Comics Star Trek and Warlord issues. He assured me that I had been a top contestant and encouraged me to keep writing.
So I did...and over the years, Steve and I remained in contact and saw one another at the Maryland conventions. He has never been anything less than encouraging and as a writer, Steven has shown talent and temerity, ambition and genius. He is the creator of the Parsec and Mark Time award winning podcast site, Prometheus Radio Theatre which delivers original SF, Fantasy, and Horror audio shows and books and has amassed a large following.
Steven's publishing imprint, Firebringer Press, has grown its titles substantially over the past several years, publishing both of my novels as well as Steven's Arbiter Chronicles adventures and Lance Woods's Heroic Park (and since Lance is a contributor to our upcoming anthology, he will be interviewed here next week). This August, Firebringer will publish its first anthology.
Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity will contain 13 tales of science fiction, fantasy, and the paranormal written by eight authors and edited by yours truly. Each story will be accompanied by a black and white illustration provided by phenomenal artist Mike Riehl, who also created our gorgeous cover.
Steve will be one of the authors joining us at Shore Leave where we will launch the anthology during the Friday evening Meet the Pros party. It will then be available in paperback and eBook from Amazon, B&N.com, Smashwords, and just about every online bookseller.
Now, let's catch up with Steve!
Most writers have at least one established author who inspired them. Would you share with us some of the authors who influenced you?
Robert A. Heinlein, of course. Ayn Rand, even though that's not trendy. Ray Bradbury, Alan Dean Foster, L. Neil Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs... a lot, really. I also love the films of Frank Capra, especially when scripted by the wonderful Robert Riskin. Star Trek and a lot of 70s SFTV also inspired me. And I'm a huge admirer of Thomas Jefferson and his ideals. Writing is about ideas, after all. My mind is always stimulated when I encounter any creative work which advocates freedom, compassion, individual accomplishment and competence, be that work a novel, a movie, a TV show or a Declaration of Independence.
Since our last interview, you released your third SF novel, Unfriendly Persuasion, based on characters from your Mark Time and Parsec award-winning audio series, The Arbiter Chronicles. Can you give us a blurb about the story?
Unfriendly Persuasion tells the story of a young war hero, Terry Metcalfe, who's a very reluctant warrior. He's lauded for saving the lives of billions, but he had to kill to do it, and that doesn't sit well with him. When he comes upon a planet of peace-loving people who think they've found God incarnate on their world, he's ready to leave the military and settle down as a pacifist farmer. Unfortunately for Terry, "God" turns out to be a new problem for him to solve, not a solution.
For listeners, Unfriendly Persuasion picks up where the second series of Arbiter Chronicles episodes left off. For non-listeners, the novel opens with the events from the end of the series being related by Metcalfe's arch-nemesis, Sestus Blaurich.
In the latter half of 2013, you released the first four episodes of The Arbiter Chronicles as eNovellas. What prompted the decision to do that? Do you plan to continue?
Several things prompted me to do that. One, a lot of reviews of my Arbiters novels made it clear that many readers weren't hearing the audio dramas, and they wanted to know the previous adventures of these characters. I realized that my audiences were split. Some wanted just prose adventures. So I decided to adapt my radio scripts as novellas. That also gives me the chance to write those early adventures again, knowing what I know a decade and a half after beginning to write their audio adventures. I get to embroider a bit on the original stories. I'm hoping it will expand the audience for the Arbiters.
Continue? Yes. I'll do the next four soon. Ultimately, I want to release all eight of the first series of stories as a hardcover.
Tell us what inspired your magical story, “Don’t Go in the Barn, Johnny!” for our anthology.
Okay, now you're making me go back in time quite a ways. I wrote that thing during my first semester of college, 31 years ago. I was a fanatical jogger then, before I gave myself stress fractures and had to quit. Weather didn't stop me from getting out and running, and some nights, running in (then) rural Clarksville, MD, I would practically freeze my ears off. I would often jog past this magnificent, creepy old barn on Simpson Road, where I grew up. It was surrounded by old trees, we're talking Civil War era here, which seemed to come alive at night. It was as if the night had its own kingdom. And, because I was just 18 and perpetually horny, it seemed to me that, in the depths of that nightmare kingdom, there had to be a beautiful, sinister princess, waiting to claim an innocent young man who strayed into her realm. It's really an erotic fantasy without dirty words. In 2013, when I took it into my head to start writing some short fiction again, I dusted that story off. It was my favorite work from my Freshman honors English class, and I decided it deserved to (pardon the pun) see the light of day.
What can readers expect next from you?
Excuses, mostly. Right now I do not have another book in me. I will again, but not in the immediate future. I know what the next two or three Arbiters novels will be, but I'm not ready to write them. So I think I'm going to focus on shorter works, try to get into some magazines and anthologies. I really want to right six more episodes of the Arbiters audio adventures and get them published, plus the novellas. I might do something with some one-off characters I've created, like my nameless, libertarian vampire and Mura, the gypsy girl with her golem boyfriend. And I might do a sequel to Peace Lord of the Red Planet. Just not sure.
What does Steve Wilson do when he isn’t writing?
I write more. Seriously, I hang out with my family, because that's important. I read quite a bit. I'm crazy about books. When I'm depressed, I self-medicate by buying books. Oh, and I have a couple of jobs that pay the bills. I'm CIO for a metropolitan fire department, which is very challenging and keeps me very busy. And, of course, I'm publisher for Firebringer Press, and I blog weekly and do some podcasting.
