Author Interviews

D.J. Manly - Author of the Month on 01-January-2011

Author's Interview

I write not only for my own pleasure, but for the pleasure of my readers. I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t written and told stories.

 

When I’m not writing, I’m dreaming about writing, doing something wild and adventurous, or trying to make the world a better and more open minded place to live in. I adore beautiful men, and I know I’m not alone in this! Eroticism between consenting adults, in all its many forms, is the icing on the cake of life!

 


D.J., let's start with you telling us a little bit about yourself.

Well…I live in Canada, in Quebec. My heritage is Scottish/Irish but I speak French as a second language. I teach, do research, translation, and of course write. I sometimes work over eighty hours a week. I’ve been writing most of my life and couldn’t imagine not being able to. I have a cat named Oliver who I reared from the age of two days old, and he’s a big, big baby. I recently bought a house and I’ve been doing a lot of repairs on it but I don’t mind because I own it. I’ve written well over one hundred books and am aiming for two hundred!


What would people be most surprised to learn about you?

Most surprised to know…um…I was the mascot for the Quebec Special Olympics and had to dress up like a beaver. I yelled so much to cheer on the participants that I lost my voice. That beaver costume was heavy man, and people kept playing with my tail!!!


When did you start writing, is it something you've always been interested in, or did it develop later in life?

I began to write at about the age of eight years. I wrote a novella at ten. I used to make people listen to me read…had to have an audience! It was just in me to write and tell stories. I can be a solitary person and writing suits me. It also gave me an escape from an unpleasant childhood.


Has it been everything you thought it would be or not?

I think it’s been far more than I ever expected. I never thought I’d be nominated author of the year in this genre, which I was a few years back, or get the reviews I get. I don’t think I ever expected to actually be paid for something I love so much or have ‘fans’.


How did it feel when you realized that your very first book was going to be published?

I was excited but wary. The e-book industry was young when I started and I’d already been promised things and was disappointed, so I was cautious. I was just lucky to connect with Extasy Books. They really encouraged me. When I got my first review, it was crap. It almost convinced me to give up publishing all together but I was told to be patient. The second review was wonderful so I forgot about the first! I have a much thicker skin now. I realize that not everyone will love what I write all the time. The majority of reviews I get are good ones, and that’s what counts. But it is heartbreaking to get a horrible review your first time out.


What's your favorite part of writing a book?

The conceptualization I think. I don’t like endings because I have to say goodbye to the characters. I love writing the beginning…the middle…but I don’t like the end and I usually agonize over it and change it a few times until I’m happy. It has to resonate with me, if not, it gets rewritten. I also hate coming up with character names. I want the name to fit the character but…damn…that’s tough.


Out of your books so far, do you have a personal favorite?

I suppose, but different books for different reasons. I have various favorites in different genres. For paranormal, I don’t know…The Whispered maybe…or Weeping Roses, coming out in February at Amber…contemporary would be The Pro, I guess. It’s hard to say.


Do you get time to read for pleasure? If so, which books do you enjoy?

I don’t have a lot of time to read for pleasure but I recently ordered a Kindle, so I’ll be able to read before I go to sleep. I like Margaret Laurence, and Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, a lot of classic stories. I do read A.J. Llewellyn, because he’s a great writer…which is why I chose him to write with me…but I try not to read many writers in my genre. I don’t want to be influenced by their ideas. I try and come up with my own and don’t want to copy anyone.


Are there any other genres you'd be interested in writing?

Well, I write contemporary, paranormal, Science Fiction, time travel. If you mean would I like to write hetero? I’ve done that already but it’s not really my thing.


Please tell us a little about your current release.

Current…. um…okay, let’s say December and January releases… I guess that would be and House of Nicolaus at Total-E-Bound, and Sterling For Christmas at Extasy. The Gladiator series consists of three books, House of Simeon, House of Phineas and House of Nicolaus. I did a lot of research before I wrote these books. I like the idea of finding love among diversity, and holding onto it, no matter what. These books are hot…but yet they still have a Romeo and Romeo feel to them.


What can we look forward to in the future from you?

Right now, I am working on something very unique about a parallel existence between the living and dead. It’s my next novel. I hope to finish it over the holidays. House of Driscoll 2 with A.J. Llewellyn, who is the perfect writing partner. Two other books are in the works with A.J., but too early to talk about, and also Blackpoint Forever. In early January, expect two new novels from me, Cherished Displacement and Weeping Roses from Amber Allure, and of course the third and final in my Gladiator series at Total-E-Bound. Cherished Displacement is a story which evolves around area 51 in Nevada. The main character is thrust into the past by accident and meets Lewis, a man of the 16th century. It’s a full length novel and I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s a love story of epic scope. Weeping Roses is set in part in the past as well, but not so far back. This story has a gothic feel and begins with a coffin in a root cellar. There are vampires…and a ghost in this story. It is also a novel.

   

Chrished Displacement: Mason had always been concerned about his sister’s job as a physicist at Area 51, and when she calls him in the night and begs him to meet her, he doesn’t hesitate. Patricia has been given a special assignment that is top secret. She has to discover a code which will activate the time machine left behind by the aliens. Patricia has discovered the right combination, but realizing what that type of power can do in the wrong hands, she steals the device and tells Mason to dispose of it. Mason heads out in the night to bury the machine in the desert, only to find that he is being followed. Soon he will be plunged into 16th Century London where he’ll discover there are others waiting for his arrival. Lewis Langley, the son of a 16th century nobleman is completely unaware of his connection to the alien race who invented the time machine, but his grandfather isn’t. Soon Lewis will meet Mason, and it will change his entire life. A love that crosses centuries, ripped apart by time…. Lewis is Mason’s Cherished Displacement even when true love is worlds away.


Excerpt from Cherished Displacement:

 ...As soon as the sun began to go down, Lewis slipped out of the house and rode into London on his horse. It was going to be dark soon, and he hoped to reach the city before sundown. He also hoped that Mason would be there waiting for him. Maybe Mason hadn’t taken his offer seriously; maybe he was afraid.

 

The streets were dark when he arrived. He got off his horse and walked, thinking he should hire a boy to lead him with a lantern. But he was feeling rather reckless tonight. Suddenly he spotted a lone figure at the end of the road, standing in front of the butcher’s stall.

 

“Mason?” he called uncertainly.

 

The figure walked toward him. “Lord Langley.”

 

“Lewis,” he said breathlessly. They were both face to face now. Mason was exactly as he imagined, blond, with the face of an angel. “I forgot the chessboard,” he muttered, his gaze never leaving Mason’s face.

 

“That’s all right,” Mason replied, his gaze fixed on Lewis as well. “I got the mud off my face.”

 

Lewis smiled. “I see that.” There was something about Mason, something almost surreal. “Who are you? Are you an angel?”

 

“What…what do you mean?” Mason laughed. “I’m hardly an angel.”

 

“You’re like a dream.”

 

Mason laughed again. “Have you been drinking?”

 

“No.” Lewis also laughed. “Do I seem drunk?”

 

“No. Where do you want…I mean, where—”

 

“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter where we go.” And he meant that. As long as Mason kept looking at him like that, the place was without importance.

 

“Let’s take a walk down by the river.”

 

“As you wish.”

 

They began to stroll slowly, side by side.

 

“You look different without the mud,” Lewis commented.

 

“Thanks a lot, smart ass.”

 

Lewis grinned. “Smart ass. I wasn’t aware that an ass had a brain.”

 

“Cute.”

 

“So, are you going to tell me why you talk so funny?”

 

“You talk funny, too, so there.”

 

Lewis laughed. “Touché.”

 

There was silence.

 

Mason patted the horse as they walked.

 

“I’ve been to many places,” Lewis said, “and I have never heard such English.”

 

“Not even at that posh university you went to?”

 

“Posh?”

 

“Fancy?”

 

“No, not even there. You’re not really a butcher, are you?”

 

“Does it show?”

 

“A little.”

 

“I do my best.”

 

“But why? You’re educated. I can tell. Why slaughter animals when you could do something better?”

 

“It’s a job, an honorable job.”

 

“Yes, it is. Is your family from the upper class? Did they cut you off as my father is threatening to do to me?”

 

“No.” Mason grinned. “Military.”

 

“Your father is a soldier.”

 

“Ah…an officer.”

 

Lewis stopped. “You are a mystery.”

 

“Do you like mysteries?” Mason stopped and tilted his head to one side, waiting for his answer.

 

Lewis sucked in some breath. “I like this one...”



And there is a series coming from A.J. and myself that will astound you. It will be at Total-E-Bound in April, 2011, a serial…stay tuned for that. It is intended to blow your mind! There will be a chapter a month. The series is called Blood Slave Nibiru Vampire Warrior Series. Here is a description: Nibiru, known by some as Planet X, is poised to strike earth and wipe out everything in its path. Stride, a solitary vampire with powers delivered down to him through his sorceress mother, senses its arrival. And he intends to survive…to escape to the planet itself in hopes that he will find a blood source there. What Stride finds is a desolate place with no life in sight. Then he sees him, the vampire who sought him out on earth just before the disaster struck, the one who told him…. there are only two. Only two vampires with no humans to be found meant only one thing, only one of them could survive. Zero knows it’s only a matter of time before he becomes Stride’s blood slave. His ship crashed on Nibiru, and his human lover has perished, leaving him alone and vulnerable. And Stride is tracking him in a deadly game of cat and mouse, determined to survive.


Let me leave you with a little taste:

Emptiness. That’s all there was. It resounded all around him like some sort of independent energy force. This sense of being completely alone was ominous, so much so that it was how he knew he was still out there.

 

He’d come so close. He’d almost had him once but like grains of sand, Zero had filtered through his fingers. It was a simple—a well-known game of cat and mouse. In the beginning it had been fun, but eventually it would become tedious and he’d have to end it. There was no escape from fate. They both knew it was only a matter of time.

 

Stride paused and looked around him, every instinct honed for any sound, or sign of movement. Nothing. There wasn’t even a rat left to feed on, not that he particularly enjoyed the flavour of those nasty things.

 

Overhead, the foggy sky was darkening. There didn’t appear to be any actual sunlight, which he supposed was kind of a fringe benefit. Yet, at various times the clouded sky brightened just enough for Stride to declare that it was daytime. This so called daytime was irregular. It didn’t happen in twenty-four hour cycles like it should. But then, nothing was as it should have been anymore.

 

He sank down on his haunches and surveyed his surroundings. In front of him sat a cluster of overgrown trees. Beyond that, more open spaces of mountains and nothingness.

 

This was a very odd place. The contouring of the landscape might have been conceptualised by some sort of an idiot. If it had ever been colonised, he couldn’t fathom what sort of commerce they would have practiced here. There were no normal concentric zones, dividing cities and agricultural lands. Instead, there were just miles and miles of open spaces. Then suddenly a forest would appear out of nowhere for another few miles, leading one towards big mountain slopes where a multitude of caves appeared to have been hand-carved out of the rock. This pattern repeated itself over and over, with small bodies of water, now mostly mud, scattered round here and there.

 

Planet X—that’s what many scientists on Earth had called it. Others called it Nibiru. Scientists believed Nibiru had crashed through the solar system a long time ago and wiped out all the dinosaurs. That had never been proven, of course, and now it never would be. The only ones who could give credence to that theory—any theory—would be two lone blood drinkers.

 

His kind had mostly been wiped out down there on Earth. Once some brazen vamp had decided to introduce himself to humanity, the hunt was on. Humans had a new enemy, right in their own back yard, and they had carte blanche from the authorities to kill them all. After all, it really wasn’t murder. You couldn’t murder the dead. And, of course, the religious right had a field day talking about how “vampires were Gods curse on humanity.”

 

The “war on vampires”, aside from providing rednecks with the opportunity to go and kill something, served to distract humans from their misery. The fact was, their environment was going to shit. People were dropping like flies from the crap they breathed, and capitalism was failing everyone except for those at the top. The very rich just kept on getting richer. Corruption ran unchecked. The rest were losing their jobs and being thrown out of their homes. Perhaps Nibiru’s destruction of Earth was some sort of blessing in disguise.

 

 

Thanks for this interview, D.J.!


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