KD: First, let me
thank you for conducting this interview, or at least a portion of it on VVA5. I’m told by my publisher and by
Amazon the book is coming out in two weeks and there’s no way I’d have time to
write any marketing blurbs on it. So thank you; you get a free copy. [Laughs]
JJ: For any of my
readers who don’t know, VVA5 is Vampires Vs. Aliens, Book 5.
KD: Right.
Thanks. We abbreviate all the titles here, so I just think of it as VVA. And
for my blog readers, just let them know, this is part of a larger interview
that’ll be on your site — well, the rest of the interview will be on your site
but this portion strictly devoted to VVA5
will only appear on my blog so if anyone wants to re-blog this excerpt, that’s
fine by me.
JJ: So what
type of series is Vampires Vs.
Aliens and how did you come up with such an oddball title/concept?
KD: I’d been
doing some deep philosophical writing and I wanted to take a break and write something
completely different so I mixed two genres I’ve done a lot of writing in:
science fiction and fantasy.
JJ: But how did
you come up with that?
KD: I’d
been hearing some buzz about a British kids’ show — those and Australian
children’s television are about the closest thing you can find to the good
old-fashioned fun stuff we had in the U.S. during my childhood — so anyway,
this show was titled Wizards Versus
Aliens and I thought, with a title like that, even if it’s bad it’s going
to be entertaining to watch. So I watched three seasons and I’d
been watching The Vampire Diaries and
I thought, let’s mix these in the blender and see what we get.
JJ: I’ve seen The Vampire Diaries but I’m
not familiar with the British show.
KD: It’s
probably still on YouTube. There’s an alien spaceship secretly orbiting Earth
commanded by their king with the focus on his Young Adult son and daughter, the
prince and princess. So I started with that premise but as time went on I
gradually developed the alien culture and religion, and increased the size of
the alien cast.
JJ: So how did you tie the vampires into that?
KD: Since
you’re familiar with Diaries, you know
that’s simply a love triangle between a teenage girl and a pair of vampire
brothers. So I took the love triangle aspect but changed it to a teenage girl
going back and forth between a handsome young vampire and a dashing young alien
prince. Of course, when I say “young” they only look young because both aliens
and vampires have lifespans of centuries or longer.
JJ: Do you have other vampires, as well?
KD: Oh sure.
There’s a whole hierarchy. When they first become vampires they’re called New
Bloods and they have these hyped up sensory perceptions and emotions, along
with powers they don’t know how to use. Once they settle down, they become
Young Bloods who are less wild and more in control of their supernatural
abilities. After a few centuries, they’re sort of middle-aged, so they’re much
calmer and wiser. By the time they’ve been around for thousands of years, they
become Elders who’ve experienced so much that nothing fazes them and they can
no longer experience any emotions — they’ve become mere husks acting purely on
logic.
JJ: So as they age, they lose their humanity.
KD: Exactly. And lastly, we have the really old vampires called
Ancients. They’ve been around longer than the Earth and may have arrived before
humankind developed.
JJ: How do the vampires get involved with the aliens?
KD: The aliens come from a planet whose sun has gotten extremely
hot and now they keep running out of water. They’ve developed a technique to
raid other worlds and steal the water they need to survive. Of course, without water,
all the humans and animals on our planet would die out — and we’re the food
supply for vampires.
JJ: So the vampires want to stop the aliens purely out of
self-interest?
KD: Exactly.
JJ: Besides the teenage girl, are there any characters who
aren’t aliens or vampires?
KD: Oh sure. Many segments of society are represented. There’s a
crusading reporter — sort of a noir character who keeps a Glock and a bottle of
scotch in his desk drawer; a lot of the protagonist’s Young Adult friends, and
her father who’s a general commanding the local military base.
JJ: Now, you structure your books differently from other
writers —
KD: I wouldn’t say —
JJ: What I mean is, you’ve blogged about episodic fiction
—
KD: Oh, right. I see where you’re going. The generations of
writers that preceded me were all influenced by the literature they read. I
read the classics as well but I was also part of the television generation so
TV influenced my writing as much as books did. I’ve blogged about how, when I’m
writing a series as opposed to a one-off book, I treat each book in the series
like a season of a TV series and each chapter like an episode in that season.
So, my series aren’t like The Hardy Boys
or Nancy Drew where there are fifty
books in the series and you can pick up any one and get a self-contained story
in that one book. In all my series, my books are in chronological order so you
really have to start with Book 1 and read them in order. Because it’s all part
of a larger, ongoing story.
JJ: So if you start with Book 4, you won’t understand the
backstory plot or the characters?
KD: Plus, if you do that, you’re gonna find out a whole lot of
spoilers. That’s why it’s hard for me to talk about VVA5 without giving away things that happen in the previous books:
I don’t want to spoil the story for those who haven’t read them yet.
JJ: You’ve been
criticized for —
KD: [Nodding] I’ve seen that Amazon review, too.
[Laughs]. Whether it’s three books or
ten books in a series, you have to look at it as one long story being told in
installments. Now each book has its own theme and its own plot related to that
theme but it’s also part of a larger storyline and there are multiples subplot
threads, some of which are continued from the previous books and may be resolved
in this book but there are also new subplots that may start in this book but
continue into the next book. Sometimes the subplot will become so significant
that it’s a lead-in to the following book. So that gives me the opportunity to
use a television and film writing staple known as the cliffhanger.
JJ: But doesn’t
that make the reader feel like they’re being cheated out of the story?
KD: Oh no. Just the opposite. I grew up watching Flash Gordon, Lost in Space, The Time
Tunnel, Batman — they all had cliffhangers and that made it even more
exciting. Flash Gordon always ended
on a cliffhanger with Flash, Dale Arden, or Dr. Zarkov at times literally
hanging from a cliff. Batman made us tune in “same bat-time, same bat-channel”
to see how Batman and Robin would survive their latest peril. Now what Irwin
Allen, the producer of Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel would do, is tell a
self-contained story for fifty-five minutes and the last five minutes was
basically the first five minutes of next week’s episode — also a self-contained
story but since you were five minutes into it and the words “To Be Continued”
flashed across the TV screen, every episode ended with a cliffhanger. But they
were all complete stories and sometimes in syndication they’ll lop off last
five minutes to add more commercials and you lose the cliffhanger but you don’t
lose any of the main story. That’s sort of what I do. You get your money’s
worth; you get your story. But, you also get a preview of what’s coming.
JJ: As a writer
myself, it sounds like you’re ending on a climax rather than a dénouement.
KD: Well, remember the rising action that leads into the climax
is coming from a subplot, not the main plot. For example, to bring us back to VVA5 without giving away spoilers, one
of the characters had a running subplot in the previous book that turned her
entire life upside down and led into an unfortunately common YA theme of
depression and suicide. So while that may lead to one of the previous book’s
cliffhangers, in VVA5 her story and
entire subplot is capsulized as the first chapter and it becomes the inciting
incident for the rest of the book and the one that follows.
JJ: Are we
talking about your protagonist, the teenage girl?
KD: No, this is a different character, a very religious girl who
starts out with a schoolgirl crush and ends up demoralized, losing her faith,
and suicidal. Regardless of what choice she makes, there’s someone who pushed
her to this point and there are people who care about her, so there will be a
reckoning. Of course, when that happens it will spawn consequences as well.
Always new plot threads.
JJ: You
mentioned themes —
KD: Yes, it’s a very topical series. Since it’s not deeply
philosophical like my previous series was, I started referring to VVA as my little bit of fluff but it’s
been heavily influenced by current events so I don’t think I can call it fluff
anymore. I’ve been willing to change the dynamic of the series and make it very
fluid, very flexible to adapt to new themes. At one point the aliens were
potentially conquerors but in the real world at the time I was writing it we
had a serious refugee problem. It dawned on me intergalactic aliens would make perfect
refugees, so the refugee crisis became a dominant theme in the third book. Book
6 deals with the theme of authoritarianism. While we’ve all been dealing with
COVID-19, my characters had to deal with a deadly so-called “alien virus”. One
theme has been the targeting of certain groups by hatemongers. Once the alien
presence becomes known, humans are divided on the issue with groups like “Alien
Lives Matter” and “The Earth For Humans League” springing up. I had one beta
reader who told me “I don’t know who to root for. I keep alternating between
the aliens and the vampires.”
JJ: So who are
the bad guys?
KD: Well, you know life isn’t always about good guys versus bad
guys, heroes and villains. I think it’s more about people who find themselves
in situations where they must make choices, and that often means moral relativism
comes into play. Is it wrong to murder hundreds of aliens? What if doing so
saves the lives of eight billion humans on Earth? And if you go through with
it, does that make you a hero or a villain?
JJ: How many
books are in the Vampires Vs. Aliens series?
KD: At the moment, it’s an ongoing series. I’m just finishing
writing Book 7 now. I believe Books 5, 6 and 7 are scheduled to be published
this year. There’ll definitely be a Book 8 to follow. A second omnibus
collection is also going to be released in 2022.
JJ: The omnibuses are —?
KD: The omnibus editions are print collections. The first omnibus is already out at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and it collects Books 1
through 3. The second omnibus will collect Books 4 through 6; and Book 7 will
be a good jumping on point for new readers because it introduces a new
protagonist and some major plot changes.
Some housekeeping notes: I can't post the links for the print edition until the publication date (March 15) so I'll come back and add those links and the link to the rest of your interview when they're available. Meantime, the ebook editions of Vampires Vs. Aliens Book 5 can be pre-ordered now at both Amazon (for Kindle) and All Other Ebooks (including Apple, Nook, and Kobo). We'll also be updating the links on my blog and the Amber Book Company website.
