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This month’s featured author is Eric Klein.
He’s a lifelong science fiction and fantasy reader but has always enjoyed stories that show how science and technology affect people’s lives.
His latest book The One: A Cruise Through the Solar System includes research on the various technologies used, and shown. Including a wrist communicator to the actual relative location of the planets. All of the technology and science used in this story, in fact, is directly based and extrapolated from what we currently know.
What is your writing Kryptonite?
Time – I never have any for writing.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
Currently, it is book two of two in a series, that will have several shorter pieces in it. Other works will be separate with little or no connection between books.
What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?
Cover Artist, hands down the best investment I made.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
When I was first learning to read, I would do it out loud so my mother could listen in and correct me / explain to me as needed. She noticed I read something in The Little Prince incorrectly and corrected me. I was convinced she had it memorized. But it turns out she just understood the language better than I did at age four.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Don’t wait thirty years to get back into writing for fun. It can not all be school or work writing.
What did you edit out of this book?
I removed a three-page safety lecture for spacecraft styled on the ones they give on airplanes or ships. But later used part of it in a flashback, so three pages became three sentences in the final story.
If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?
Writing is not full-time for me, so real work is in a communications startup and doing telecom security.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
A hawk or an eagle. I am always looking to travel and see everything and my stories reflect this desire.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
Remembering that they are people too, with their own motivations and feelings. It is actually necessary to prepare some background on them to understand how and why they react as they do.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Two in progress and one (we would now call fanfic) from thirty years ago that I will never go back to.
Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
Yes, I read them. The bad ones I try to see if there is something I can learn from. For example, I had one that criticized me for two-dimensional characters. I am using that to develop more backstory and ideas about the secondary characters too. Good reviews I share on social media.
What is your favorite childhood book?
The Phantom Tollbooth.
What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your resume alone?
I have do Off-Broadway theater both acting and technical work. I have done lights for concerts like Deborah Gibson and Bobcat Goldthwait.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
Lots of Easter Eggs in my novel, several that no one seems to have found yet.
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yes, back in high school. It was compared to the themes in ‘The Gold-Bug’ by Edgar Allan Poe
Where is your favorite place to write?
Row 13, seat C on BA Flight 177, oh wait. You said favorite not most common. I prefer to write from home whenever I get the chance.
Do you remember the first story in your genre you ever read and the impact it had on you?
I don’t recall which one was first, I went through the Robert Heinlein juveniles and most of Andre Norton in under 6 months. I was fascinated that there could be all these other places and things to do out there if we only got to go. But then again I was raised on the original Star Trek series (first run) and the Apollo Moon Mission.
What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
I was working out with a personal trainer, we did not have the boxing gloves or her pads. So she held a pink ball for me to punch. Made quite an amusing picture of me clearing some stress onto this little pink ball.
What’s a song from your book’s playlist? In The Mood by Glen Miller, kind of gets the brain moving without using the verbal part.
Dragons or Spaceships?
T.A.R.D.I.S – all the advantages of a spaceship with time travel too.
Great interview Eric! We hope our readers like you as much as we did. Do us a favor and check out Eric’s latest book: The One: A Cruise Through the Solar System available now. Kindle Unlimited readers can get it for free.
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