Interview with Lou Linked by io9

June 8th, 2010 § 0

I for­got to men­tion that my inter­view with Lou Anders was linked by io9 and scored over 10,000 hits. They hooked it with “which novel is sci­ence fiction’s Harry Potter?”

Good stuff.

The io9 link.

My Writing Mentality (or Fuck You)

May 10th, 2010 § 3

To me the hard­est part about self-promotion and social net­work­ing is that I write best when I have a “fuck the world” men­tal­ity. No sur­prise that in that state I’m not very approach­able and I don’t care if any­one reads (or lis­tens to) my work. I’m try­ing to learn how to turn the atti­tude off and on at will because I’m not sure I have the self-confidence to write well with­out it.

And I’m not sure that I want to. I think I come by this spirit hon­estly and it works for me. In fact, dur­ing my writ­ing slump a few years back, I was meek. I wor­ried about peo­ple judg­ing me and lik­ing my work. I let the world win. Now that I think it needs to go get fucked again, I’m far more productive.

Sure, I could just be an ass all the time, but the inter­net has enough of those, right? Is there a bal­ance? Am I miss­ing something?

Who is D.A. Hayden?

January 8th, 2010 § 0

Who am I? That seems like a good place to start.

I’m a scrib­bler and pod­caster who loves pulp sto­ries, espe­cially sword & sor­cery tales. My favorites are the dark, edgy ones, along the lines of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane nov­els. It’s hard to find such sto­ries, so I write them. I call my style Dag­gers & Dev­il­try. Because it sounds cool and appro­pri­ate. And because the term “sword & sor­cery” was defiled by Hol­ly­wood cash-grabbers.

My first three nov­els of heroic fan­tasy involve set­tings inspired by East Asia, India, and Morocco. South­ern Europe in the Mid­dle Ages inspired the fourth, but I sprin­kled plenty of exoti­cism in, to be sure. I’m not opposed to writ­ing mod­ern pulp fan­tasy, or even sci-fi. In fact, I have plans for such nov­els. How­ever, they will still be Dag­gers & Dev­il­try in style.

I live in Birm­ing­ham, Alabama. My favorite sub­jects out­side of writ­ing are Dao­ism, Tai­ji­quan, pro­fes­sional foot­ball, Crim­son Tide foot­ball, ancient his­tory, diet, and fitness.

I enjoy play­ing and design­ing role-playing games. In fact, my love of pulp fan­tasy began in 1990 when a copy of the Storm­bringer role-playing game (4th edi­tion with a cover by Michael Whe­lan) caught my eye in a comic book shop just out­side of Eglin Air Force Base in Val­paraiso, Florida. Years of read­ing Michael Moor­cock, David Gem­mell, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and oth­ers fol­lowed. Embrac­ing inter­ests aroused by the genre, I stud­ied his­tory, lit­er­a­ture, and reli­gion at the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama. (You can’t really do any­thing but write, teach, or work retail if you major in such subjects.)

I don’t travel much, but I reli­giously attend Dragon*Con in Atlanta each year. If you’re going to be there, drop me an email. We’ll gather and chat a bit. I usu­ally don’t bite.

Geez, I could go on for­ever, but I think you’ve heard enough for now.

Where Am I?

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