 Andy Gavin studied for his Ph.D. at M.I.T. and founded video game company Naughty Dog, Inc. at the age of fifteen, serving as co-president for two decades. There he created, produced, and directed over a dozen video games, including the award winning and best-selling Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises, selling over 40 million units worldwide. He sleeps little, reads novels and history books, watches media obsessively, travels, and of course, writes. BRIAN: Andy, welcome to the Underground. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I must admit, you’re one of the most fascinating guests we’ve had here at the Underground. You’re a very successful software developer, but what went through your mind that made you take up writing? ANDY: From at least high school on I always intended to write a bunch of novels. Work just got in the way. And the thing about making games is that you can no longer do it mostly by yourself. These days, most games are big teams of over a hundred people, with budgets over 50 million dollars. All that means that it’s not about your creative expression (most of the time), but about getting it done, well, on time, and on budget. And the roll of team lead is largely about firefighting and resource (achem...people) wrangling. So, I really wanted to focus directly on the creative aspects. Dozens of story ideas have been bouncing around in my head for years, and I felt it was time to let a couple of them out. BRIAN: These days readers often roll their eyes at the thought of yet another vampire novel. Yet, in Darkening you made vampires fresh again by returning to their mystical roots. What led you to write a vampire novel for your first book? ANDY: There are two answers to that, the visceral and the cerebral. With The Darkening Dream, the visceral part was this image I had – and some might consider me disturbed – of a dead tree silhouetted against an orange sky, a naked body bound to it, disemboweled, and bleeding out. The sound of a colossal horn or gong blares. The blood glistens black in the sunset light. Bats circle the sky and wolves bay in the distance. But sacrifice isn’t just about killing. It’s a contract. Someone is bargaining with the gods. And on the cerebral side, I've always been a huge vampire fan and I've read and watched a large percentage of the oeuvre. But also as a history buff I wanted to write a supernatural story that was more grounded in real history and legend. I'm always thinking, "that could have been so much better if they didn't make up the historical backstory" so I started with the villains. What kind of ancient evil creatures might still be around? What do they want? And what legitimate human reason would they have to destroy the world (Buffy-style)? I don't exactly answer the question in TDD, because the motives of 5,000 year old baddies should be mysterious. But trust me, they have a plan, and the sheer audacity of it will literally shake the foundations of the heavens. BRIAN: The occult, magic, mystical and religious references abound in Darkening. While I was reading I kept wondering how much of this was research-based and how much was coming from your imagination. ANDY: In constructing The Darkening Dream I wanted the meta-story to play off conventional tropes. Broadly, a cabal of ancient supernatural beings has sent one of their number to recover an artifact needed to destroy the world. And surprise, it turns out a group of teens are all that stands between them and Armageddon. How much more Buffy can you get? But that’s just the high level. I also wanted to ground this preposterous scenario in real history and legend. So as a methodology, in designing my array of supernatural beings and occult practitioners I turned to historic sources. Before our modern science and technology rendered magic quaint, it was the domain of religion and superstition. Of belief. And each spiritual and magical system has its own framework. Proponents wrote out of certainty, out of faith. I merely dig up their writings and take them at their word. So in essence, it’s all researched, but I adapt it from real belief systems into those that work in a story framework.
 Nicolas Kublicki (Koo-Blitz-Key) was born in Los Angeles. He graduated from the Lycée Français de Los Angeles and obtained his BA in International Relations from UCLA. He worked on defense and national security affairs on Capitol Hill before obtaining his JD from Pepperdine University School of Law, then his LLM in Environmental Law from George Washington University Law School. He is admitted to the Bars of California, the District of Columbia, and the United States Supreme Court. Nick served at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. and practiced law in Los Angeles. He currently splits his time between writing, the real estate business, charitable and community boards, and as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law.
Married with two young daughters, he enjoys walking, scuba diving, vintage cars, history, reading, and movies.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome Nicolas Kublicki, author of The Telsa Formula, to the Underground. Nick, this is the second novel in your Patrick Carlton adventure series. I read the inspiration for the first novel, The Diamond Conspiracy, was a PBS documentary on the diamond trade. What was your inspiration for The Telsa Formula?
NICK: Thank you for inviting me, Brian. 9-11 was the motivation for The Telsa Formula. I was editing The Diamond Conspiracy on the island of Capri in Italy when the slaughter of 9-11 occurred. My girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife) was a flight attendant who often worked one of the hijacked flights. I didn’t know that she was safe for a couple of days. I flew home under intense security, amid military guards with machine guns and attack dogs. America was under attack. Both as an American and as a thriller writer, I knew that no matter the specific topic of my next book, it would deal with a global plot against the United States. That led to oil and Saudi Arabia as plot elements, then alternative energy, then Nikola Tesla.
BRIAN: More than most techno-thriller authors, you weave legal and economic twists into your plotline. Is this something you intentionally set out to do or is it a natural by-product of being a lawyer?
NICK: Both, I think. My books involve global conspiracies. As an avid thriller reader, thrillers are more enjoyable for me if they are believable. To me, it is unrealistic that a global conspiracy could focus only on a single element, such as technology. There are many facets to every conflict. Politics, military affairs, and economics must form part of a global plot for it to be credible. With that said, my focus on lawyers, law firms, DOJ, and my use of law in the plot are definitely results of my legal background.
BRIAN: Without giving too much away, your book had a fascinating, and I thought very original, twist regarding the government using eminent domain as a weapon of national security. Is this something you made up or has the US government ever seized private property as an anti-terrorism method?
NICK: Thank you. I made it up, but as The Telsa Formula attempts to show, it could happen. My legal background is in real estate, where most eminent domain actions occur (the government’s Constitutional right to pay for and take private property for a public purpose). I am not aware of the U.S. government ever using eminent domain as an anti-terror weapon, yet it seems a logical legal addition to the government’s ongoing seizure of assets from criminals and terrorists, such as drug dealers’ homes and terrorists’ bank accounts. The United States is based on the Rule of Law. People sometimes believe that this hampers the government’s ability to wage war on terrorists. In fact, it can present fertile opportunities to prosecute that war.
BRIAN: Telsa covers a broad range of topics and settings. One minute your plot revolves around the golden age of movie stars in Hollywood, the next the reader is at a high-energy research facility in Alaska, and then in an F-16 rocketing over the Adriatic Sea. How long did it take you to research such a broad range of topics for this book?
NICK: It took me a year to do the basic research, yet many of the topics in the book evolve constantly, so I continued researching different topics throughout the writing and editing of the book, all the way up to publication. I love to read, learn and teach, so for me the difficulty lies not in performing the research but in deciding when to stop researching and explaining. For example, the original manuscript had something like 20 to 30 pages on Saudi Arabia and Nikola Tesla each. I had to wield my pen like a machete and slash those pages down to size. Research presents a quandary. On one hand, readers’ time is so precious that I believe it is insufficient for an author merely to entertain. Readers also want to learn. On the other hand, information delivery often acts like a speed bump, slowing down the pace of the action at the heart of every thriller. So I attempt to deliver information in ways that readers want to read.
 Michelle Isenhoff was born and raised in a not-so-busy corner of Michigan. After graduating from college she worked in elementary education. Michelle has published four children's novels, a couple short stories and has two more novels in the works. When not writing, she can still be found with book-in-hand.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome Michelle Isenhoff, author of The Quill Pen, to the Underground.
Okay, Michelle, your website says you write children’s novels. After reading The Quill Pen I have to ask... why just for kids?
MICHELLE: Lol, it’s not! I’m one of the many, many adults who still enjoy the children’s genre. In fact, I think more adults have read The Quill Pen than kids so far.
BRIAN: What was your inspiration for The Quill Pen?
MICHELLE: Believe it or not, it was a dream. But the story evolved and changed so much during its many rewrites that very little of my original idea remains. Once I latched onto the idea of the feather (at first the story contained a magic vial), the rest followed naturally.
Many people have compared The Quill Pen to Tuck Everlasting, because of their similar treatment of life and death, and asked if that book was the inspiration for my own. While I’m a huge fan of Natalie Babbitt, The Quill Pen had a starting point entirely separate from her outstanding novel. Life and death make up Tuck’s central theme, but the idea of consequences is more important in mine.
BRIAN: I read and review a lot of self-published novels. More often than not, I find they are riddled with grammatical mistakes. Your book was very clean and well edited. Did you do this yourself? If not, did you hire a professional editor?
 James Conway was born on the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas and moved thirteen times before he was nine years old. As a Navy brat he didn’t have a lot of friends, so he read voraciously. He was influenced by The Lord of The Rings to eventually become a writer. James spent his formative years in the Chicago area where he was profoundly influenced by Blues music. He attended Ripon College where he studied English Literature, history, and made the decision to dedicate his life to writing. He is married with one son.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome James Conway, author of The Vagabond King, to the Underground. James, in our correspondence you mentioned you originally got the idea for this book in college. Can you tell us a little about how Vagabond came to be?
JC: Sure Brian. I had always been toying with the idea of a coming of age novel and I had collected some notes but it was nothing really profound. Then I had something of an epiphany in history class. I was asked to write a paper on Napoleon. I was asked to pick a side: did Napoleon represent the “Great Man” theory of history or the “Wave” theory. In other words, if Napoleon had never existed would history be profoundly different or would someone else have taken his place and history would be the same as with Napoleon. I couldn’t write the paper because I saw both things as being true at the same time. It might not seem like a big deal but it was a profound moment for me. If something can be two things at the same time the implications are Earth shattering, it means that there can be no right or no wrong, no this or that etc. I started questioning everything I once believed and my psychological world evaporated around me. So, as the main character Chris is questioning the world around him, so was I.
BRIAN: I was intrigued by the strong vein of mythological references running throughout this book. Can you elaborate on why you underpinned the book, especially Magda’s character, so heavily with mythology?
JC: Because so much of the novel is internal, it exists in Chris’s head, I needed to portray a setting that would describe and illuminate the thoughts in his head. While the book certainly has a physical setting it is the psychological setting that is more important. I don’t think I could have pulled off what I needed to do had I not made reference to mythology.
One of the fundamental themes of the book is the dualistic nature of reality. This is why I have paired so many opposites together. This is why Chris (the young man) falls in love with Magda (an older woman).
After college I became familiar with the work of the great scholar Joseph Campbell. He said something to the effect that, in the 1st age of man the religious symbols came from the animal world. In the 2nd age of man they were from the agrarian world. But, in this age of man the human race itself must become the symbol. I tried to portray this in Magda’s character through the use of mythology to make her more mysterious and even divine.
As I am answering this question it occurs to me that one of my goals with the book was to portray human beings for their often overlooked greatness. This may sound over the top but we are each the physical embodiment of universal power. We truly are. Let’s face it, every parent considers their child the golden child that was born to save the world. That’s because it is true. We are each infinitely greater than we realize. But everyone seems to get worn down with the humdrum of life and ignore that aspect of themselves. I used mythology and archetype in my attempt to portray this.
BRIAN: Tell me about your love of The Blues and how it influenced your writing.
 Born and raised in the cornfields of Illinois, Bryan enlisted in the Army upon graduation from high school and served his term overseas. Afterwards, he moved to Las Vegas and enrolled in UNLV’s college of business. It took a degree in Accounting, years of daydreaming in cubicles, and a collection of stories piling up on his hard drive to learn he is a writer and not an accountant. His writing style is influenced by authors Raymond Chandler and Carver, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Charles Bukowski, and Haruki Murakami. He currently resides with his family in Las Vegas, Nevada.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome Bryan R. Dennis, author of THE UNCANNY VALLEY, to the Underground. Bryan, I hear a lot of agents and traditional publishers won’t touch short story compilations. Did you try traditional publishing before self-publishing?
BRD: I never tried traditional publishing. I looked into it, but it seemed like a lot of effort to enter what amounts to a lottery, so I went directly to self-publishing. Short story compilations don’t sell as much as novels and novellas, which is why I assume publishers turn them away. Since I’m independent, I can write what I like and self-publish without much concern about sales, profit margins, ROI, etc.
BRIAN: What grabbed my attention when I saw THE UNCANNY VALLEY on Smashwords was its cover. Asimov immediately jumped to my mind. Did you design this?
BRD: I designed it in Photoshop. Asimov was one of my favorite authors and I’ve read just about every fiction work he ever did. The design was a nod to that “Golden Age” of science fiction that he hailed from: the leather biker jacket; the almost black and white color scheme, and the Twilight Zone-ish motif in the background and lettering.
BRIAN: Your first novel was Epitaph for a Coyote. Please tell us about it.
BRD: As a challenge, I wanted to write a literary, satirical novel, that takes place in Las Vegas. I started by dissecting the shallow, materialistic version of the American Dream. This was a challenge for me because I prefer writing speculative fiction. In Epitaph I took the speculative elements that I’d normally have on the surface and put them in the subtext. Without giving too much away, it is strongly hinted in the novel that one of the characters is not quite human, yet I never come out and say it. In speculative writing I use fantastical metaphors to say something about reality – but in Epitaph I used reality to comment on the mysterious and fantastical.
BRIAN: Your profile on your website is intriguing. It says “A man, blind his whole life, one day received the gift of sight only to witness the nearby explosion that forever silenced his ears. This symbolizes my journey through life thus far.” Is this literally about you or is it truly symbolic? Can you expand on this?
BRD: I like to include humor in my writing, and this line is a just a tongue-in-cheek metaphor. It means I’ve learned to appreciate the talents I’ve been given, while accepting my limitations.
BRIAN: Your list of professions is quite broad, everything from fry cook to corn detassler to combat infantryman. When did you decide to add “writer” to that list?
BRD: I’ve worn many uniforms and hats, but I’ve always been a writer. I should add “writer” at the beginning of that list as well as at the end.
 William Peter Grasso is retired from the aircraft maintenance industry. He is a US Army veteran and served in Operation Desert Storm as a flight crew member with the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. These days, he confines his aviation activities to building and flying radio-controlled model aircraft. East Wind Returns is his first novel.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome William Peter Grasso to the Underground. William, here in the Underground we like to highlight emerging and self-published authors. So, the first question is did you try the traditional route of finding a literary agent and publisher, or did you go straight to e-publishing?
WPG: I completed the original version of East Wind Returns in 2006 and tried the traditional route, amassing the requisite 100 rejections. I saved the dozen or so rejection letters that were complimentary to the work, but overall the experience left me unimpressed with my prospects in the trad publishing industry. Four years later, with the indie ebook revolution in full swing, I took some time off from other writing projects to revise EWR (actually, no story elements were changed—just some narrative I had come to consider unnecessary was deleted), with the intention of publishing it as an indie ebook.
BRIAN: Tell us about your experience with self-publishing. Is it something you want to stick with or are you seeking a traditional publisher?
WPG: I’m delighted with my experiences with Kindle Direct Publishing. Once your book achieves a certain level of success there—such as staying in your genre’s Top 100—its search algorithm becomes a major marketing partner, at no expense to you. At this point in my life, trad publishing has little artistic or financial appeal for me.
BRIAN: How long did it take you to write, edit and prepare East Wind Returns for publishing? I was impressed with how clean the copy was for a self-published book, did you use a professional editing service?
WPG: EWR was originally written in about 12 months between 2005 and 2006 for the trad publishing arena. The revision for indie publishing took about six months, from
start in the fall of 2010 to publishing in March 2011. So the writing and prep for publishing took about 18 months total—with four years in the middle to think about it.
I do not use a professional editing service. My wife is my editor, and while not a professional,” she produces a very professional product nonetheless...and keeps our overhead to an absolute minimum.
BRIAN: What authors influenced your writing style the most?
WPG: I’m deeply influenced by Tim O’Brien, Norman Mailer, Wally Lamb, and
Ernest K. Gann. I know Gann is not exactly a household name anymore, but his
aviation-themed novels of the 1950s were staples of my childhood.
BRIAN: East Wind Returns just went over 1000 copies sold since its release earlier this year. It has received amazing reader reviews. Did you expect this kind of reaction?
WPG: I had no idea what to expect. Sales were modest but encouraging for the first few months. They took off after a good deal of web exposure in August.
 Michael Manning is a 41 year old practicing pharmacist and has been a fantasy and science-fiction reader for most of his life. He has dabbled in software design, fantasy art, and is an avid tree climber. He lives in Texas, with his wife and two kids. Mageborn: The Blacksmith Son is his first novel.
BRIAN: I’m pleased to welcome Michael G. Manning, author of Mageborn: The Blacksmith’s Son, to the Underground. When did a pharmacist from Texas realize he wanted to be a writer?
MICHAEL: Somewhere around age twelve I think, after I started reading Robert Heinlein’s books.
BRIAN: You said on Facebook it only took four weeks to write Mageborn. If so, that’s pretty amazing. Can you give us a quick rundown on how Mageborn came to be?
MICHAEL: I went on a reading binge with my kindle and eventually I ran out of things I wanted to read. So I sat down and started thinking about what I wanted in a book… basically just listing things. After a short while I decided if I couldn’t find a book that had what I wanted I would write it myself. The Blacksmith’s Son was the result.
BRIAN: Okay, Michael, I pulled a quote from your Facebook site: “Editing sucks.” Do you do all you own editing or do you ask your family and friends to read your work before publishing it?
MICHAEL: Both… I go through it and I have friends read through and make suggestions. In the future I hope to afford an actual editor to assist, but for now it’s just me and some friendly volunteers.
BRIAN: You self-published on Kindle and are selling Mageborn for 99 cents. Did you first attempt a more traditional publishing route or go to Kindle first?
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