K.S. Hello and welcome to the blog. I am very excited to have you here. Why don’t we start off with a small introduction? Tell us a little about yourself.
N.D. Thank you, I'm very excited to be here myself. My name is Nick Davis, I'm an Englishman and been living in the USA for over 10 years now. I have 2 kids, on my second wife and still chasing the American dream. My wife calls me Grumpy, but only when I don't have a cup of tea in the morning.
K.S. Any interesting writing quirks or stories you would like to share with my readers?
N.D. It takes me forever to get a story started, I hum, har and procrastinate like crazy before getting started. Then I fight with myself to get to 10K, finding any excuse to not write,then I just settle in and get to the end. Add into this my writing environment, which is normally an hour every night with my kids, or my wife constantly talking to me to get my attention. I am amazed I get anything wrote at all.
K.S. When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? What sparked the desire to pen your first novel?
N.D. I used to write for White Dwarf magazine as an article writer, I got to talk about one of my favorite hobbies. The Tether, the first book in the Tether saga took an age to write, and it took an open letter from Neil Gaiman at the start of the 2009 NaNoWriMo for me to finally finish my first story.
Now, I cannot stop, it’s an amazing feeling weaving a story together and seeing where my characters take me on the journey.
K.S. What genre do you write?
N.D. I had a long talk to my wife about this the other day, I don't think I can pinned down any genre as I enjoy them all. The Tether Saga novels The Tether and Accept One are paranormal stories, that also happen to be a action adventure stories in the style of James Patterson.
The Wonder Tales are series of all age Fairy Tales and Fables written in the style of the Brothers Grimm. Now I really enjoyed writing these, the feeling of freedom you get with a Fairy story is hard to explain. I guess it was because I was writing a story that my children could read.
At the moment I'm currently writing a bawdy comedy based on the Legends of an Englishman, who is very Jack the lad.
The best thing to describe what I do is Fantasy, I write Fantasy novels.
K.S. What would you say has inspired you most in your writing career? Or, who is your favorite author and why?
N.D As I mentioned it was a letter by Neil Gaiman that finally got me to pull my first story together. My favorite author is Terry Pratchett, his satirical Discworld series is amazing, he is a writer that can have you laughing at the start of the page, and in tears at the end. Simply amazing.
Also for the sheer fun of the dialog I really enjoy Brian Michael Bendis writing, check him out you will be amazed at the character interactions, and flow.
K.S. What does your family think of your writing?
N.D. My parents think it’s great I have a hobby that keeps me quiet, my wife loves that I am finally telling stories, my kids just give me odd looks, and ask why my stories are so long.
K.S. What was one of the most surprising things you learned while creating your book/s?
N.D. I heard many times that a write loses control of the characters they create and they start wandering around the story by themselves. I thought this was nonsense, then I started to write and I found they just would not behave. Created some amazing arcs, unexpected scenes and some amazing dialog.
K.S. What inspires you?
N.D. The oddest things, The Tether Saga came from a bible quote left by one of those door to door church recruiters. The Wonder Tales came about because I wanted to tell stories that my children could read. The Legends of an Englishman are actually some of my life experiences and I have half a dozen noted down outlines for some other stories.
Take a look around you, life is pretty weird all by itself, add some of your own madness to it, something almost impossible and you can get great stories almost out of nothing. The process of storytelling is amazing.
K.S. Can you tell us a little about any of your novels?
N.D. The Tether Saga, is currently two books in length and a third is in the works. Here is the overview of the story.
The Tether Saga is a Paranormal Action Adventure Series, set against the back drop of Baltimore city. The novels follow Sarah, a mixed up teenager who is given the Tether by a mysterious old man who saves her life. Through a series of incidents she learns the Tether allows her to control a mysterious Angelic Guardian called Paul, and to cast enchantment like indices.
The Tether Saga takes you on a head long helter-skelter nightmare journey into a reality that is disturbingly familiar, but has unearthly creatures stalking its shadows. As Sarah tries to figure out what the Tether and Paul really are. She is aided by CT, the Grandson of the original Tether Keeper, along the way Sarah discovers the amazing powers she can tap into and how to control the Tethers Angelic Guardian Paul. All around her, demonic figures and shadowy organizations line up to take the Tether from her, or try to control her directly and Sarah starts to learns the line between, friend and foe, good and evil is very blurred indeed.
Excerpt from The Tether, Book one of my paranormal action adventure series.
Kneeling down she got a closer look at what looked like an unusually small crab. The strange looking creature stopped as if it was taking a good look at her. It was crab shaped with a dark blue coloring to it. The crab had one tiny pincer and one particularly large misshapen claw. Instead of a smooth shell that you would expect to see on most crabs, it shell was covered in small knots and what looked like barnacles. Sarah reached out to it; the crab-like creature scuttled back warding her off with its large claw.
“What are you?” Sarah asked.
The crab-like creature continued to scuttle away from her and disappeared around the corner into the opposite corridor. Fascinated Sarah began to follow it when a familiar musty, obnoxious egg smell hit her nostrils and Sarah stopped her in her tracks suddenly filled with dread.
“Where have I smelt that before?”
She sniffed again the smell was even stronger, and she could hear a faint scuttling noise. Following the noise and the tracks of the retreating crab creature she turned around the corner and stopped short, her mouth and eyes went wide at the sight waiting for her.
The entire corridor was filled with hundreds of the scuttling crab like creature she saw in the nurses’ station. They flowed around the frozen hospital staff like water and all seemed to be moving around aimlessly. Then as one the crab like creatures stopped and Sarah could feel a thousand beady little eyes staring at her. Feeling uneasy she took a step back bouncing off one of the inanimate staff members and lost her footing on the frozen floor and fell heavily on her bottom. The fall sent a sharp pain through her belly, making her groan. The scuttling crab creatures watched her intently and the nearest one started to move towards Sarah. She kicked it away instinctively with her foot, and scuttled herself back on her hands. The creature skidded into its fellow before turning to look at her. For a moment there was total silence and then it was broken by the menacing sound of hundreds of pincers clicking. A hissing sound started to rise from the mass of crab creatures. Not wanting to see what would happen next Sarah’s slipped feet slid on the floor as she tried to back away from the creatures. Finally finding her feet, Sarah turned and started to run back down the corridor, she heard, rather than saw the malevolent tide of crab creatures start to scuttle after her.
Kneeling down she got a closer look at what looked like an unusually small crab. The strange looking creature stopped as if it was taking a good look at her. It was crab shaped with a dark blue coloring to it. The crab had one tiny pincer and one particularly large misshapen claw. Instead of a smooth shell that you would expect to see on most crabs, it shell was covered in small knots and what looked like barnacles. Sarah reached out to it; the crab-like creature scuttled back warding her off with its large claw.
“What are you?” Sarah asked.
The crab-like creature continued to scuttle away from her and disappeared around the corner into the opposite corridor. Fascinated Sarah began to follow it when a familiar musty, obnoxious egg smell hit her nostrils and Sarah stopped her in her tracks suddenly filled with dread.
“Where have I smelt that before?”
She sniffed again the smell was even stronger, and she could hear a faint scuttling noise. Following the noise and the tracks of the retreating crab creature she turned around the corner and stopped short, her mouth and eyes went wide at the sight waiting for her.
The entire corridor was filled with hundreds of the scuttling crab like creature she saw in the nurses’ station. They flowed around the frozen hospital staff like water and all seemed to be moving around aimlessly. Then as one the crab like creatures stopped and Sarah could feel a thousand beady little eyes staring at her. Feeling uneasy she took a step back bouncing off one of the inanimate staff members and lost her footing on the frozen floor and fell heavily on her bottom. The fall sent a sharp pain through her belly, making her groan. The scuttling crab creatures watched her intently and the nearest one started to move towards Sarah. She kicked it away instinctively with her foot, and scuttled herself back on her hands. The creature skidded into its fellow before turning to look at her. For a moment there was total silence and then it was broken by the menacing sound of hundreds of pincers clicking. A hissing sound started to rise from the mass of crab creatures. Not wanting to see what would happen next Sarah’s slipped feet slid on the floor as she tried to back away from the creatures. Finally finding her feet, Sarah turned and started to run back down the corridor, she heard, rather than saw the malevolent tide of crab creatures start to scuttle after her.
K.S. Where can we buy your novel?
N.D The novel The Tether is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, you can also buy it direct from my website http://www.alt-world.com
The Tether is also available in all eBook formats including the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony eReader and on the Apple iBookstore. If you cannot find it in your eReaders store then take a look at Smashwords as well.
K.S. Do you have a website, fan site, or Blog that we can visit?
N.D You can read about my interests, and other details about my boring life over on my blog at http://www.alt-world.com
K.S. Do you have any closing advice to aspiring writers?
The best piece of advice I ever got was this.
“Just write”
By writing, by putting our ideas down we can start to tell the story we want to tell, instead of just forming it in our heads and never going anywhere with it. So if you want to write, do just that... Write!