JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR  ...    JOHN DILL

John Dill is a science fiction writer from South Carolina

He is the author of the BRAXIN KING series. Books One and Two are available on Amazon in Kindle unlimited as well as paperback and Book One is available in Audible as an audio book. Working on Book Two for audible in the future. Hopefully Books Three and Four will be available by early 2019.


What got you started as a writer?
 I was born a writer and a musician. But it was music that opened the door for me to writing. Composing songs led to poetry and from there to short stories. It was inevitable that I move into novels. Especially when I realized novels are simply a collection of short stories tied together by a common theme.

Your genre is science fiction, so how did your interest in science and the future develop?
I’ve always had a fascination with all things science. I remember as a boy wanting to build a robot. I almost organized a team of my neighborhood friends to build one, but we never made it beyond the stage of what to build it out of.  Then there were all those Hollywood contributions to my fascination that began with the 1960’s version of War Of The Worlds at our local movie theater.

There are moral and political overtones in your writing? Would you say you were a writer with a point of view to project? If so, what is it?
Yeah, I have a contorted mixed up mess of political/moral thematics playing through my writing but not with any direct intentional bias. It just seemed to fit in to the stories and emerge from them almost as a coincident consequence.

How do you find your characters? Do you have a favourite?
Again, the imagination is a wonderful playground. I don’t really focus on building a character into my books as much as just concentrating on developing circumstances and conversations relative to those circumstances out of which characters just seem to develop of their own accord. I look at where I want to take my readers and how to get them there and then fill in the blanks. With the Braxin King series I was dealing with entire species, so I developed the species first and let the characters reflect each species as I imagined them to be.

What’s the hardest thing for you in writing?
Finding the time to complete something. Since I don’t make my living as a writer I have to work in my writing where I can. One’s personal life can become an overwhelming obstacle to completing a story, forcing you to focus on reality in lieu of imagination. The problem with a big imagination is how little it contributes to the daily grind of reality.
 
And what’s the best thing?
Holding that finished novel in hand.

What are you currently working on?
Book Three of The Braxin King along with a rework of Book Two. I rushed Book Two and came away unsatisfied with the finished product, so I’ve also almost completed a second edition which I hope to have available in paperback this year. I plan to create an entirely new universe in this series now that I’ve created an entirely new universe to be replaced by the newer version. And if that isn’t confusing enough, wait until you ask me what’s wrong with the universe we now inhabit.

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