It’s Wednesday’s Wonders With Daniel Quentin Steele!
Wow! I’m actually on time! As I slide into my chair with the towel still wrapped around my damp hair, in my PJ’s, and fuzzy bunny slippers, but that’s okay because, “I’m On time!” Woot Woot! Sorry Daniel I couldn’t resist. I have been so far behind schedule these past few weeks. Welcome to Wednesday’s Wonders.
KAREN, Thanks for the offer of the interview. New or not, you’re performing a valuable service for struggling Indie authors and I want you to know you’re appreciated.
Thank you Daniel. You’re too sweet. I love putting authors and writers on the hot seat. And even though I ask the same questions of each, I find that the answers are uniquely your own. So are you ready?
Many people don’t like the name they were given at birth. Do you like your given name? If not, what would you rather have been named?
Spike! Actually, that’s tongue in cheek. I honestly never thought about it much before. It’s a fairly sturdy, utilitarian name. Fairly common, but not too common
Do you write under your given name or a pseudonym?
Both.I wrote for most of my life under my given name. I have written pretty much strictly fantasy, science fiction, horror, mysteries, sword and sorcery or epic fantasy. In other words, genre fiction. Then about three years ago I got interested in an adult fiction web site and started writing mainstream relationship stories – in other words romance or dramas about cheating husbands or wives, usually wives. These are stories I call Male Romances/Confessions because they are about love and betrayal and, yes, relationships. Men like them too if you tell it from a male perspective and you usually drop in some sex. I started writing under a pseudonym and got a decent amount of readership and when I started publishing e-books, I kept the pseudonym. It made sense to publish under two names because the two fields – genre and mainstream love/romance/confessions don’t have much of an overlap in readership.
Is there a routine you go. through before you begin writing?
No. When I’m writing hot and heavy, I write hot and heavy. Sometimes I go days or weeks without doing much if any writing. I write in the morning, afternoon, night. I usually write at home in a chair but I’ve written in hospital rooms, in Starbucks and in the downstairs bus waiting area of the Hard Rock in Tampa.
Is there anyone you admire?
Lots of people. Winston Churchill. Robert Heinlein. Roger Zelazny. The director who filmed Gattaca. Bruce Willis. John Wayne. The firemen and cops who ran INTO the Towers on 9-11. And people whose names I don’t know.
The middle-aged guy who went swimming off Jacksonville Beach one day back in the 70s and saw a young girl caught in a rip tide and being pulled out. He went out to her, started swimming back to shore with her and then pushed her ahead, telling her, “you have to make it back yourself, honey,” had a heart attack and drowned. She made it back.
Or the guy who crashed his light plane in a wooded area in Georgia back in the 70s. His wife was in the plane with him. Both his legs were broken, he had internal injuries, but he pulled himself out of the plane and started crawling through the woods to reach help for her. It took him two days to reach a nearby road. She had died in the crash or shortly thereafter, but he didn’t know it until he reached help. He survived.
What do you like to read?
Science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, epic fantasy. romances, contemporary relationship stuff.
Do you have a favorite author?
I honestly couldn’t narrow in it down to one person.
Does it have to be quiet when you write or do you like background noise? TV, music, etc.
I can write in absolute silence and I write to Lady GaGa or Queen or the television blaring in the background. Doesn’t really matter. Just depends on my mood.
Beach or mountains?
I love living at the beach and love to write there. I love living in the mountains and I’ve written there. I’ve written in snow and two weeks of 100-plus temperatures in Florida.
What inspires you?
Almost anything. Four words overheard in a real conversation launched a million-word legal/courthouse/crime/adult romance/crime four volume epic called “When We Were Married.” Strange combinations of words. I wrote a fantasy short when I somehow put the words “diary” and “farmer” together and wondered what a “diary farmer” would be. Ann Landers or Dear Abby have inspired a lot of plots. A letter from a traveling lady’s husband wondering what to do about guys calling her at night asking her what she was wearing led to a novel titled “Ghosts and Shadows” that I hope to post on Amazon in a couple of months. Music does it a lot of times. I’ve got a dozen short novels to finish, all sparked by songs. Kenny Chesney’s “We Went Out Last Night” inspired a short novel about a guy whose life changes when his friends drag him out to a country bar to forget about his cheating wife.
Favorite snack food?
Either Mr. Salty thin pretzels or black olives. Or red or black caviar on saltines.
Doesn’t matter who we are, man, woman, child, all of us get freaked out by something. Spiders, mice, snakes, bugs, geese, etc. What freaks you out?
Spiders. Big hairy spiders. I was driving through Oklahoma about 20 years ago on the way to Fort Sill and there’s a fairly flat, desert like terrain surrounding the base. I saw something hopping down the road ahead of us and asked my brother in law what it was. “A tarantula” he told me nonchalantly and as we got closer I could see a hairy, multi-armed monster the size of a large dinner plate actually JUMPING down the road. Big jumps. Spiders are bad enough. Even in daylight. But tarantulas? Have no reason on God’s Green Earth to exist. That’s given me nightmares for years.
What is the most unusual job you’ve ever had?
Would have to be a trifecta. During college break, I worked for a paving company in Northeast Florida. They did it the old fashioned way. Two guys stood in the bed of truck filled with steaming asphalt and shoveled it onto a parking lot where it was spread out to cool. So I stood on asphalt that was likely 250-300 degrees (you needed good work boots) and spent 8-10 hours a day, shoveling hot tar. I didn’t need any sleep aids. SECOND job was moving houses in West Florida. I had to go under these old houses and set them up on rollers to move down the road. And hope none of the jacks slipped while we were setting them up. THIRD – worked in a library in Palatka and moved the entire supply of books inside completely around the library. More than likely a few million volumes. So if I didn’t have a love of books before I started, I probably picked it up by osmosis.
I read on another blog, that a writer was working on 10 novels at once. Confusing! Do you work on one or multiple novels at a time?
For most of my life I’ve been pretty much focused on one thing at a time, athough I’ve written novels while writing short stories and working for a daily newspaper writing news stories all at the same time. Today I’m working on finishing the third volume of the four-volume “When We Were Married” legal/romantic epic, while writing a short story, “Time Wounds All Heels,” for a web site I started on, and a long short story/novella “Message Found In A Fortune Cookie” as the last piece of my “Ghosts” anthology I hope to release in November.
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
Travel – I’ve cruised all over the Caribbean and probably will go again in the Fall or at Christmas, hit the beaches of Northeast Florida, particularly in the winter when the crowds thin out, watch movies and write about them.
And last question…Do you have anything new coming out that you’d like to share with us?
I just posted a 100,000 word urban fantasy titled “Lady White Eyes” on Amazon’s Kindle Select. It’s fantasy/horror/adventure. “Ghosts and Shadows” which I mentioned above will be about a 90,000 word mainstream collection anchored by a 50,000 word short novel that I’ll be posting on Amazon’s Kindle Select as well. The collection centers on an interconnected set of characters in the North Florida area who pop in and out of each other’s stories, the way they do in real life. The centerpiece features a 50-ish couple who’ve been married for 36 years when the husband finds that his wife has been involved with a younger man for six months. The story is about what happens to them in the three years following that discovery.
For further information or to contact:
You can find the books at:
Lady White Eyes – Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008SUSE8O
When We Were Married – Volume 1 – The Long Fall – Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008YPL9R6
When We Were Married – Volume 2 – Second Acts – Amazon:
When We Were Married – Volume 1 – The Long Fall – Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115234
When We Were Married – Volume 2 – Second Acts – Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/124503
When We Were Married – Volume 1 – The Long Fall – Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-we-were-married-volume-1-the-long-fall-daniel-quentin-steele/1112570691?ean=2940013654587
When We Were Married – Volume 2 – Second Acts – Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-we-were-married-2-second-acts-daniel-steele/1108241609?ean=2940013760448
And for an interesting quick look at one of the main – and hottest – characters in the When We Were Married series, check this out:
I loved your answers and I’d go insane lying under one of those houses 🙂
I am curious as to why you write about women cheating. 🙂
And a guy writing romance is quite rare, I am going to have to pick up one of your books and see what romance looks like from the other point of view! Thank you Daniel for stopping by and I wish you much success in all your endeavors.
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karensdifferentcorners 
KarenL: Hope you dont mind my jumping back in but I just read your comments about MY comments and had to add another 2 cents. As to working under houses with spiders and assorted other vermin, I never thought about it but I obviously don’t have any fears of tight confined places.
As to why I write about women, cheating, considering that I have been married for a long time and have never worried about my wife, I woiuld probably give a psychiatrist a good topic of study.for analysis. But I think that I can at least give you a superficial explanation. I think a lot of male writers that write about cheating women have some sort of axe to grind. They’ve been hurt by women in one fashion or another. Or,there’s something sexually stimulating about the idea of women basically shaking off the shackles of our Christian morality and becoming sexual predators in the way men have always been.
But in my case, I happened to start reading a few stories on an adult erotica site and they dealt with the impact of a wife or girlfrjend cheating on a man. And it seemed to me that no matter what women may think, men are much more emotiionally fragile than women and nothing demonstrates this more than infidelity. Women usually have more of asupport network of friends, family. Men have a few close friends and their wife or girlfriend. Women are much more important in men’s lives than most men ever want them to know.
And, I think also, infidelity, sexual unfaithfulness strikes at a deeper, more vulnerable area of a man than the reverse does with women. It’s a cliche that sex is pretty much a physical thing with most men. I think, and from being a man and being around men, most men can have a one-time or even a continuing sexual relationship with a woman and it never goes anywhere beyond a really good way to pass the time.
Women, on the other hand, and most men I think believe this, may lie all day and tell you that if they’re having an affair or sleeping with another guy that it’s just for the sex. Like men. But we men don’t believe that. If your woman is having sex with another man, it’s more than sex. There’s an emotional context to it and the real threat that infidelity poses to men is not that we have been betrayed, but that in a very real way our woman is pulling away, getting ready to leave.
Anyway, I found myself attracted to the writers who could convey the sense of loss, pain, upheaval in life that infidelity or relationshop woes create in men. And those are the emotions I like to explore.
I hope you do check out the books I’ve written and the new “Ghosts” coming out I hope in October. And there will be more in the future.
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Nope I don’t mind at all. It’s your interview 🙂 Tight places? I have a touch of claustrophobia 🙂 But I have helped my son take out and put in a trannie while his mustang was on jacks. At least I didn’t panic. I lost a step nephew like that when he was 18 many moons ago. As for the infidelity, I think I’ll reserve my comments, but I have heard your explanations about the differences before.
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Great interview! Daniel has a mind of his own– that’s good for a writer.
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