Author spotlight with Thadd Evans

Dear Thadd,
Thanks for agreeing to the interview. Tell us, what has been your biggest influence on becoming a writer?
In elementary school, junior high, senior high and college, teachers praised me for my short stories and essays. In high school, my English teacher said, "You're the only one in my class who has anything to say. Write more!"

How did you feel when you got your first publishing contract?
I was shocked, in a good way.

What makes a book great in your eyes?
It makes you laugh, think, imagine and hope. It opens your mind to many possibilities.

What is the biggest piece of your advice you can give a beginning writer?
Read Elements of Style by Strunk and White and The First Five Pages, Staying out of the Rejection Pile, by Noah Lukeman. Also, write as much as you can and join a writer's group. That is an over simplification, but it's a start.

What influences your writing? And why?
Images in my head, movies, books, newspaper articles. For about thwenty-five years, I read about quantum mechanics, a field that is so weird, so fantastic that it boggles the mind. Why? Because these provoke my imagination.

What are you working on now?
Beyond Portal 2212, a science fiction novel about a group of cloned humans who are trying to survive in an alternate universe.

Who is your favorite all-time author?
It's a tossup between James Joyce, author of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Josesph Heller, author of Catch-22.

How do you deal with the dreaded writer’s block?
I get tired, but I never have to deal writer's block.

What’s your biggest reward in being a writer?
Today, it's the fact that my stories are the best way to articulate my ideas about the future. Although movies like Terminator and Blade Runner and other movies deal with that topic, there are many possible futures.