BTW, I’m a nice guy. Really. All that conflict, torture, and mayhem that you read in my novels, well, that’s not really me. It’s my characters. Well, maybe I have a bit of the devil in me, because my characters often resolve problems with violence. And not just any violence — creative, gut-wrenching violence. Hand to hand conflict, rape, robots, torture, you name it. It’s when my characters face off, when their emotions really go full throttle, that’s when the reader is pulled into the story, when they can’t possibly put the book down.
Can you tell us a little about the next book in the series?
Genetic engineering and artificial intelligence continue to rapidly evolve in Tomorrow’s Children, my next novel, touching off an uprising based in Africa against the Domain. Ray Brown leads the African tribes in their war against the increasingly human androids of Dianne Morgan’s Domain. When David Brown evolves to the brink of integration with Sentinel, the most advanced AI developed by the Domain, Ray has one last chance to save his son and maintain humanity as a distinct species.
Do you remember the moment when you first knew you wanted to be a writer?
If you ask that question to most writers, they will tell you about their first short story written at age 11. Or nine. How they always knew they would become writers. Not me. Although I loved reading fiction beginning at age eight at the local library, the thought of writing novels never crossed my mind. I spent an entire career in the IT business and I loved it, but as the years went by the work turned stale. And when your career becomes boring, it’s time to do something else.
Anyway, I was sitting in my office at Microsoft one night, frustrated by a couple of emerging problems: the increasing number of virus attacks on my client’s systems and the ongoing litigation with the Department of Justice. The more I thought about these problems, the more frustrated I became. Suddenly the solution hit me – get out of this business and write a novel.
And so I did.
If you could collaborate on a novel with any author, living or dead, who would it be and why?
I would love to collaborate with Larry McMurtry. For all-around talent and professionalism, it’s difficult to surpass him. Lonesome Dove is almost perfect literature; there’s not a word I would change. Captains Gus and Call are individually great characters, but when you link them together, the result is greater than the sum of the individuals. And McMurtry maintained the excellence of the characters across their lifetimes in three related but different books. I attempted to do the same with Dianne Morgan, Ray Brown, and his son David, although I fell short of the standard set by McMurtry.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Excellent interview, both Q&A -- very engrossing.
2 - Tom
I am a fan of the fiction genre and a fan of Dan Ronco's thrillers. He knows how to write suspenseful pieces and I look forward to more!