Interview 10/10/13

D.A Wearmouth

Name or Pen Name: Darren Wearmouth

Email: dampwearmouth@gmail.com

Biography:

I live in Manchester with my fiancé Dawn, we love the place. I work full time as a Technical Project Manager delivering technology solutions, I’ll stop here as it can get pretty dull. I joined the army at sixteen and spent a few years in various locations around the world, following on from that, I worked as an Engineer for a Telecoms company for over a decade in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Between my job and spending time with Dawn, I write. It would be great to go full-time at some stage, and my aim is to keep improving as a writer and to produce some works that hopefully people will like.

Social Media Links:

www.twitter.com/dampwearmouth

www.facebook.com/firstactivation

•Where do you get your ideas for your books?

The initial concept of First Activation came to me while I had a hangover. I was in the Asda supermarket in Stockport, being bumped around on a busy Sunday morning and was feeling a little bit jaded. I casually started to wonder how I could wipe our humanity with existing or near future technology, and what would be the most effective way to harness it. This may sound a little weird, but I can assure you it isn’t something I think about every day.

•Out of all of the books you have written, do you have a favourite? If so, which one and why?

First Activation, although Second Activation is rapidly becoming my favourite, now we have started to flesh out the story. I do have some fun shorter stories and journals, but they’ll never go anywhere apart from my hard drive. I wrote these to prove to myself that I could be capable of creating a novel length work of fiction.

•What do you think makes a good story?

For me personally, I like to see fallible characters. I get bored quickly with faultless action heroes as the outcome to most scenes is fairly predictable. The bad people should also have a likeable trait, like a nasty sense of humour or a misplaced reasoning that they think is well intentioned. A good story should have some conflict between these types of people and bring something original to the party.

•Who are your favourite authors?

John Wyndham, Richard Matheson and D.J Molles. Day of the Triffids is an excellent book, and is far more than ‘plants take over the world’. I am Legend is great, and the film doesn’t really do the book justice, then again, I can’t imagine Will Smith lying on his living room floor, swallowing a whole bottle of whisky then crashing around the room. D.J Molles is an indie author of the ‘Remaining’ series, his books are fun and inventive and I’d recommend anyone to give them a try.

•If you could pick one actor to play a character in your book, who would it be?

Donald Sutherland would be perfect to play ‘Ron’ in First Activation, he does the ‘sinister old man’ very well. It would be a dream to see the book adapted into a screen play, but realistically, it’s probably not going to happen.

•If you had one piece of advice for an aspiring author, what would it be?

Look very carefully at the small press when considering publishing your work. We turned down two offers and self-published when realising that they couldn’t really offer anything that we couldn’t do ourselves. Marketing is a key element for any book, so if you want to invest in your own work, you should get the rewards yourself, and not give away a chunk of royalties to what amounts to nothing much more than middle-man/a person with a laptop and a website. Naturally, there are some good operations out there, that will market your book and be of some benefit, but it’s not being ‘traditionally’ published if they do nothing more than upload your MS to the KDP platform and use Createspace POD.

•Please can you tell us about your latest book and what it is about?

First Activation is a Post Apocalyptic Thriller which tells a story of survival and discovery. A commercial flight lands in New York to discover a deserted airport, and the sight of corpses littered around. The passengers first encounter is with an airport security guard, who promptly kills the steward at the bottom of the deployed slide then commits suicide. Harry, the narrator, and his brother Jack form a break-out party to investigate.

•Is there anything else you would like to share with your readers?

We’ve completed the framework for Second Activation and have started writing it. There’s some good things in store, and a few old faces will reappear, which spells trouble for Harry and Jack.