Friday, June 6, 2014

A Chat with Daniel Lance Wright || ONE DAY IN LUBBOCK

William Dillinger had believed the only way to live was unmarried and unencumbered. That is, until he reached the age of seventy two with a criminal history. Regrets over a lifetime of mistakes mires him in daily doldrums until his high school girlfriend suddenly reappears in his life. Hope is seeded that the remainder of his life doesn’t have to match his past. But, he only has one day to find out. 
  
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Excerpt:
He was short of breath, as if sucker-punched in the chest. Then he remembered; when Katy hurt so did he. It seemed clear enough that he suffered a physical manifestation of her sorrow. That had to be it. Her pain was his pain. There was a time they thought as one and felt as one. His heart must be breaking for her. Those feelings never went away, just trampled upon and ignored for a few decades.
What am I going to do with these feelings? What’s the end game here?

Hi William, welcome to the Snarkology. Please tell us about yourself and your writing.

I am a freelance fiction writer and novelist residing in Clifton, Texas.  I’ve been writing since 1998 and full time at the task since 2002. I live with Rickie, wife of 42 years have two children and three grandchildren. Having spent the first nineteen years of my life on a cotton farm on the South Plains and the next thirty-two in the television industry, I have seen the world from two distinctly different angles. Here is a quick list of other published works:
  • "Six Years' Worth"/Father's Press/mainstream/print & ebook
  • "Paradise Flawed"/Dream Books LLC/action-adventure/print & ebook
  • "Where Are You, Anne Bonny?"/Rogue Phoenix Press/ historical drama/ print & ebook
  •  “Trouble”, short story/CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology, Vol. IX/print only
  •  “Dancing Away”/ short story/romance/Untreed Reads/ebook only
  • “Phobia”/Booktrope/suspense-thriller/print & ebook
  • “Defining Family”/Whiskey Creek Press/young adult/print & ebook
  • “The Last Radiant Heart” (re-release)/Sage Words Publishing/science fiction
  • “Annie’s World: Jake’s Legacy”/ATTM Press/soft science fiction/print & ebook
  • “Helping Hand For Ethan"/Rogue Phoenix Press/young adult/print & ebook
  • "One Day in Lubbock"/Booktrope/romance-general adult/print & ebook
Please tell us about your current work in progress.

I have a sequel to “Annie’s World: Jake’s Legacy” in the can and waiting on me to self-edit again. I usually do this up to four times with about a month between them. That period of time between edits tends to freshen my eyes and I catch for problems that way. I will be looking to have “Annie’s World: New Beginnings” published later this year or early 2015. Currently, I’m about 8,000 words and four chapters into the first draft of another romance. And, of course, like most of my other work, it is set in Texas, too.

What is your favorite book genre? Who are your favorite authors?

My favorite genre for pleasure reading is science fiction, but I will read the works of a master of any genre and thoroughly enjoy it. For example, I’m not much of a fan of romance as a rule, but Nicholas Sparks has a way of helping me break that rule. This is true of masters of any genre. Favorite authors are difficult for me to narrow down, there are so many. But here are a few:  Michael Crichton for science fiction, Wilbur Smith for historical, Anne Rice for fantasy and Nicholas Sparks for romance. Although, when I discover a good read, I will search out other works by that author, regardless of achieved fame.

What does your writing space look like?

When we bought our current home, it had a small but nice looking building in the backyard. I stuck my flag on it immediately and claimed it as my writing space. In a previous incarnation it was a shop. Honestly it’s much better looking than most shops I’ve seen. Still, it retains the faint odor of gasoline and oil. To this old country boy, that doesn’t even qualify as a deterrent. The actual space is a cluttered mess. When my wife mentions it, my only comeback is, and will ever be, “So what?” My only regret is that it does not have a bathroom which, most times, doesn’t matter; but when the wind is howling and the chill factor is in the teens, you should really see the sad puppy dog look on my face when I open the door and prepare to sprint for the house.

How long have you been writing?

 I began drafting my first novel in the spring of 1998, but I would not even begin an attempt to polish or publish it for another four years. It began as a nightmare that dogged me for days. One morning I was sitting at my computer and decided to write what I remembered of it and the feelings it left behind. I thought I might gain perspective on why it kept circling my thoughts. After 120,000 words (with more than a little embellishment) I had the draft of my first novel. Although, it did take about six years and editing out approximately 25,000 words to get it polished enough for publication, but “The Last Radiant Heart” is still available and going strong. It’s a sci-fi/metaphysical story.

If you could choose any actor, living or dead, to play your protagonist, who would it be?

 I suppose every writer has a specific person in mind for visualization purposes for their protagonist. I’m no different. To clearly see someone in the mind’s eye helps set the personality in appearance and speech pattern. For “One Day in Lubbock”, the man I had firmly fixed in my head for William Dillinger was the actor Jason Robards. So, clearly, that’s who could and likely would play Will’s part the best.

Author Bio:
            Daniel Lance Wright, known to most as Danny, was born in the fall of 1950 in Lubbock, Texas to Kenneth and Bettye Wright.  Home was a cotton farm for the first nineteen years of his life. 
Elementary, junior high and high school days, from the mid ‘50s through the flower-power era of the ‘60s, were all spent at the same place, Meadow.  Meadow is a town of about 500 conservative farm folks and known for little more than a grain elevator and a cotton gin. 
            Danny became interested in broadcasting and attended a summer-long radio/television course in 1969 in Houston and promptly went to work at a radio station in Lubbock in the fall of that same year.
            From that beginning, he rode a wave of employment in the broadcast industry, but the stint in radio was only a year and a half.  In April, 1970 he landed a news writer/reporter job at KLBK TV in Lubbock and over the next two years solo anchored and co-anchored news sequences, adlibbed weathercasts, hosted half hour interview programs and telethons and became lead staff announcer.
            In 1973 he went to KFDX TV in Wichita Falls and settled in as a weatherman for 10 years.  The final 8 years there were as a television sales and marketing account executive. 
            In 1991 he secured a position as regional advertising sales manager of KWTX TV in Waco and later promoted to Local sales manager over a department of eight advertising account executives.  As is usually the case with mid-level management positions though, it turned into a liability when top management changed. In the spring of 2001 he was politely asked to find other employment.
            To Danny, a leap of faith was called for and took a writing hobby mainstream, joining writing organizations and a critique group. He also signed up for local writing courses and sought new venues to further his education and networking in the industry.
            Daniel Lance Wright’s first published manuscript was released in 2007, “Six Years’ Worth” (www.fatherspress.com).  The second novel, an action/adventure story, “Paradise Flawed” was released in fourth quarter 2009 (www.dreambooksllc.com ).  Both are readily available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.
            Scheduled for release in eBook, chapter serial and print is “The Last Radiant Heart”, a metaphysical adventure, tentatively scheduled for release in spring 2010 through Virtual Tales.
            In May, 2010, the historical adventure of the lady pirate, “Anne Bonny, Where Are You?” is set to be released as an eBook through Rogue Phoenix Press.Com.
Danny has received awards for writing from Writer’s Digest, Art Affair, Frontiers in Writing, Abilene Writer’s Guild, and the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation.
He lives in a bedroom community near Waco, Texas with wife, Rickie.  He has two adult children, Angela and Lance, and three grandchildren—Chance, Corbin, and Carlee.
Hobbies include wood-turning and weightlifting. He is also a certified fitness trainer and has done a limited amount of personal fitness training.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Daniel,
    Welcome to the Snarkology. It's a pleasure to have you here today. :-)

    ReplyDelete