Interview with David Estes

David has written more than 20 YA and Children’s science fiction and fantasy books and has just released his latest book STRINGS. More information about David can also be found at his website. We recently did a “slow interview” in our discussion forum and here it is.

Thanks very much for having me! I am a husband, father, writer, and reader, in that order. My family comes first: my beautiful Aussie wife, Adele, my 4-month-old baby boy, Beau, and my naughty cat, Bailey. They are my world, everything else comes after. I am a lucky man, indeed, having left a ten-year career as an accountant and then operational risk officer to pursue my dreams of being an author. Now here I am five years later making a fulltime living writing Science Fiction and Fantasy novels. As I always say, I make up crap for a living, and then people pay me for it!

Tell us a bit about SLIP and STRINGS, what inspired you to write this “Pinocchio” story?

The two books featured above are two of my more recent ones. They are both aimed at SciFi lovers. SLIP is about a futuristic society where population is tightly controlled, so that someone must die before another can be born, keeping the population neutral at all times. Of course, in my story, one unauthorized child slips through the system’s cracks and becomes #1 on the Most Wanted List. SLIP was inspired by real life! The truth is that the earth’s population is growing at an unsustainable rate. SLIP is my dark take on what the future might hold for us.

STRINGS, on the other hand, is my own SciFi take on the classic story of Pinocchio. Keep in mind that this is NOT your childhood Pinocchio story. This is a darker world where mechanical strings control the characters’ movements and punish their disobedience. And at the heart of it all is a secret that will shock most readers to the core! STRINGS was inspired by my love of taking classic stories and creating something darker and more exciting and action-packed for the YA/adult market. I chose Pinocchio because the original story is actually quite dark and full of complex themes like temptation, truth-telling, and what reality really means. STRINGS addresses all those themes in a fresh, SciFi tale of family, loss, and relationships.

What is it with these Dystopian settings you find fascinating?

Great question! Mostly I just love the creativity of predicting what the future might look like based on the problems, technological innovations, and political landscape of today. Will we be living on another planet in two hundred years? What about five hundred? Or will there actually be a virus that leads to the zombie apocalypse? Or will, like I suggest in THE MOON DWELLERS, humans be forced to live deep underground to survive an enormous falling meteor. Not only it fun to guess about what the future may hold, but it’s even more interesting once you take a group of interesting, complex characters and shove them into these crazy settings and see what will happen to them.

Back to STRINGS a bit. Overall it’s a rather dark story in many ways, but you also have Fig, Pia’s funny AI sidekick. Can you give us some insight into your characters and what you were trying to achieve?

Of course! Firstly, I really wanted to bring the original characters from Pinocchio to life in a whole new way. I knew that would mean having some REALLY dark characters with complex motivations and interesting backstories. However, I take a ton of influence from the great Dean Koontz, who manages to infuse humor into almost every book that he writes, no matter how dark the plot. That’s something I’ve managed to do in most of my dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels. For example, in BREW (my witch apocalypse series), I have a magical dog. In FIRE COUNTRY, one of my most popular novels, has gained a cult following because of the way I bring a cactus to life as an almost imaginary friend to the main character. The talking cactus even has his own twitter account! In STRINGS, the character of Fig, a tiny AI with a big personality, represents Jiminy Cricket. However, not only is he Pia’s conscience and friend throughout the story, he also brings a much-needed dose of comedic relief into a story that builds layers of darkness from start to finish. My goal with Fig was to ensure my readers could occasionally laugh, even as they were being swept along in the mystery of the fairytale retelling. Plus, who doesn’t love a funny sidekick?

If I’m not mistaken this is the first time you base a story on a classic story such as Pinocchio. Do you have ideas and plans for more like this?

You are correct, this is my first time writing a story retelling. Though I enjoyed it immensely, I have no plans to attempt another one in the future. As a writer, I like to constantly challenge myself with new genres, formats, and styles of storytelling. My next big project is an epic fantasy series that will likely take up the majority of my time for the next 1.5-2 years! Thus far, I’ve written the first book in the series and am just beginning to revise.

Epic Fantasy is a bit different from what you’ve done so far. Is Epic Fantasy something you’ve always been interested in and do you read a lot in the genre yourself? Any particular authors that have inspired you? Can you reveal something about the story?

Very true. I’ve mostly written in the SciFi (primarily dystopian and post-apocalyptic) realm, as well as some Urban Fantasy, so tackling a major epic fantasy project is completely new for me. Yet, epic fantasy is a genre that I have always been interested in, both as a reader and a writer. I grew up reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (I read the covers off the books my parents gave me) as a kid, and later fell in love with the Eragon series, as well as Game of Thrones. I am definitely inspired by epic fantasy authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, and George R.R. Martin, to create a fully fleshed out world with complex and vibrant characters who will be forced to change significantly over the course of the series.

I’d love to give out a few hints about the story: 1) Here there be dragons! 2) A Hundred Years War 3) Eight dead kings 4) An oracle’s prophecy about those wielding magic 5) Not one, but two lost princes.

I hope those five tidbits whet your appetite for my new book!

As you point out you have moved a bit between genres already. How has your fans reacted in the past and how do you think they will react to this major shift?

Fans of my most popular series, The Dwellers Saga, which was 100% dystopian, were in for a surprise when I released my next major series, Salem’s Revenge. The first book, Brew, began with a group of disgruntled witches, warlocks, and wizards who decided to take over the world–a witch apocalypse. Although adding an element of fantasy to my work was a big change, my readers seemed to have no problem with the transition, especially because the series still had a post-apocalyptic vibe to it. My agent referred to it as “The Walking Dead…but with ruthless witches instead of bloodthirsty zombies.”
The great thing is that many readers of SciFi also read Fantasy, so I’m not getting too far away from my typical audience with my new epic fantasy series. I suspect my fans will come along with me, and that they’ll enjoy this series even more than my previous ones, especially because the fantasy genre allows me to be even more creative with the story line. Plus there’s dragons!

Let’s go back to your SLIP series a bit. Your main character is the SLIP, Benson. What was important for you when you created this character and did he change much from what you initially had in mind during the writing process?

Ahhh, SLIP. The Slip Trilogy has quickly become a fan-favorite. It’s a story of family, friendship, and hope, in a world that’s stacked against the Kelly family. With Benson, I originally planned for him to be an innocent boy, a victim of an unfair system that punishes babies for the “crimes” committed by their parents. And in a lot of ways, he IS innocent. But at the same time, he doesn’t simply roll over and play the victim. He takes control of his life, his future, and vows to learn the truth about his past. This will cost him severely, but along the way he becomes MORE than what the world believes him to be. So to answer your question, he changed A LOT from my original vision, especially when he suffers tragedy and heartache partway through the story. Although it nearly breaks him, it DOESN’T, and he comes back stronger and more capable than ever before.

Your main character is of course Benson and at the beginning of the book he is just a child, but you also have the more adult characters, both good and evil so to speak. Is it more challenging to write one vs. the other or do they all come naturally to you? I’m not an author in any way, but I’d imagine writing from a child’s perspective must be harder?

Great question. I think every writer has character types that are more difficult for them. To be honest, I hadn’t originally planned for Benson’s childhood to take up so much of the first book, but once I started delving into his humble beginnings, I realized that Part 1 would need to be all about his origin, which would allow readers to better understand the teenager/man he would later become. It was very tricky writing from a young boy’s perspective, particularly because of his unique situation, but after a chapter or two I settled in and it became easier. In terms of “good” vs “evil” characters, my wife always says that I scare her sometimes because of how easy I find it to write “evil” characters! I guess it’s just fun for me to get into character as someone I would never be in real life, almost like an actor who takes on the challenge of playing a villain (Heath Ledger as the Joker for example). That being said, I prefer to write characters that are not necessarily clearly on either side of the good/evil line. I call them the “gray” characters, and they are usually the most complex and interesting.

Have you ever struggled between what you would like to happen to a character and what you considered more sensible to occur? Can you tell us when and what you did at last?

YES. In my opinion, this is one of the major issues with the traditional publishing industry, particularly for debut authors. Most publishers are unwilling to take risks, mostly because if the risk doesn’t work out, they can lose a lot of money. Fair enough. However, I firmly believe that the “sensible” choice is usually the wrong one. For me, each character has a story to tell, and they need to be free to tell their story, regardless of how an author feels that character’s decisions/outcome will be received be readers. I have three examples I can share, although I have many: 1) In the pivotal 7th book in my combined Dwellers/Country Saga, THE EARTH DWELLERS, one of the main characters dies in an act of genocide where the entire tribe is wiped out. Some readers asked me “How could you do that!?” The short answer is that I didn’t want to–I had to. It was the right ending for this particular character in this particular dark and war-torn world. IT WAS REAL. It changed the other character’s in important ways that would help drive their actions in the right direction for the rest of the story. It was sad, but true. The sensible thing would’ve been to let this beloved character live, be the only survivor of this horrific event, but I simply couldn’t. 2) in the sequel to SLIP, again I had to kill another character who, in a perfect world, shouldn’t have had to die. Unfortunately, however, that wasn’t the right story. In real life, people die, sometimes unexpectedly. In my dystopian books, I simply cannot pull punches, because it’s not fair to myself, to my characters (who need to grow), or to my readers. 3) this example isn’t about killing a character, I swear! In FIRE COUNTRY, the main character, Siena, could be described as rather simple. Maybe even naive. Some reviewers have even called her “dumb”, although I don’t feel that is a fair characterization. But MOST readers have fallen in love with her, and FIRE COUNTRY has quickly become a fan-favorite with a cult following, earning higher reviewers than any of my other series openers. Why? Because I wrote Siena the way she had to be. She is a normal girl trying to figure out her place in a hard world. She sees the world differently than a lot of people, but I believe that’s why most readers love her. And I’m willing to ignore the few who call her stupid, because I know she’s not. Just because she talks in slang and has a tawng doesn’t mean she’s a fool. She spoke to me in HER voice, and I listened, even if it didn’t feel sensible at the time.

Let’s talk a bit about marketing. How do you go about the marketing aspect and especially related to your online presence? Anything you’ve seen work better than other things? I notice your Dwellers sage is free on Amazon at the moment, is this type of marketing something you’ve tried before?

Something I learned very quickly when I became a full time author, is that the business/marketing side is as important as the writing side. Having an online presence is crucially important, so that your readers can really connect with you as an author and as a person. Personally, I focus much of my time on Goodreads, which has the best community of readers in the world, in my opinion. Although I am reasonably well-known on the site as an author, I participate more as a reader, chatting about the books I’m reading and discussing other subjects of interest, like TV, movies, sports, etc. I spend most of my time within my own Goodreads fan group, David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite, which is one of the most active YA-focused groups on the site.

In addition to the time I spend on Goodreads, I do a lot of price promotions, like the one you noticed right now. I love offering my books for free for a limited time, in the hopes that readers will enjoy them and then buy my other books. It really pays to have a large backlist of SciFi and Fantasy novels, which gives me the flexibility to give away a ton of books for free. Specifically, I use BookBub to promote these free days. BookBub is the BEST site by a long shot. I’ve done 16 BookBub promos to date and I plan to do a lot more. As an example, this latest one, where I am giving away a 3-book boxed of The Dwellers Saga, has been downloaded more than 41,000 times in 3 days. That’s HUGE. If just a small fraction of the readers enjoy the series and go on to buy the sister series and/or my other trilogies, then it will provide a boost in sales for months to come. I’ve done a number of free promos through BookBub, and they have always paid off in a big way, so I highly recommend the site to authors. I also recommend that readers sign up for BookBub, they provide awesome book deaks to your e-mail every single day!

N.E. White: You just convinced me to try BookBub…

Awesome! I just completed a BookBub promo for the boxed set of The Dwellers Saga, and I had 42,000+ downloads in 3 days. That is the power of BookBub.

One thing to keep in mind is that BookBub spots are really competitive, so it can be challenging to get approved. But you can keep trying with the same book once a month, or continuously with different books. The lower you price your book the better your chances are. It also helps if you have a lot of positive reviews on Amazon. I hope it works out for you 🙂

As we now round up our second slow interview I would like to thank David for having joined us in our little corner of the web. It has been a pleasure :).

Thanks very much, Dag, it was an awesome experience!

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