Interview D. L. Chance

by

Katherine Pym

1)     As someone in the entertainment business, you must travel.  Is there a place your heart calls home?

Because it is the first place I knew, the lush Deep South countryside will always hold a very special place in my makeup. But for now, and the foreseeable future, I’m content to live and work mainly in North Texas.

2)     Tell us more about D L Chance.

D.L. Chance is the brash, ambitious, determined, hard-headed extrovert who takes the natural God-given talents, potential and goals of the more introverted Don Chance and brings them to life.

3)     How long have you been writing? 

I’ve enjoyed writing ever since I learned how to line up words in correct rows as a small child. But, even though I wrote hundreds of songs and poems before, I didn’t get serious about writing until 1996, when I wrote my first short Western novel (61,000 words) from start to finish. It took off from there.

4)    How do you develop your characters? 

I just use people I’ve known over the years and in the various places I’ve lived and worked. I might tweak a few individual characteristics here and there for more flavor, but they’re basically just real folks I’ve taken and put into situations with other folks I’ve come across in my time.

5)     What is your genre or genres?  If you have more than one, which do you prefer?

My favorites are Westerns and Science Fiction. I’m equally okay with either the past or the future; anything that takes me away from the relentless present for awhile.

6)     Looking at your title, it sounds like a song.  I almost want to sing.  How does your background in music influence your writings?

Good songs have a certain flow, a certain internal consistency; and I like to get those aspects in my prose. And I want to entertain readers through my novels and short stories the same way I entertain audiences with a song. If I can take them somewhere else, out of their ordinary lives, for awhile – whether it’s with a song or a story – then I’m content that I’ve done my job.

7)     Tell us a little about your new novel Miss Rosalie And The Primrose Fool.

The story is set in the tiny ranching village of Melrose, New Mexico, where my dad was a church pastor for a year when I was a kid, and it includes several actual events that happened there that year. But the relationship between the principal characters is more like the decades-long courtship between my Aunt Patsy and Bill (who was as much family as anyone else officially married into the Chance clan), the man she finally married a few years before she passed away.

8)     Where do you write your stories?  Are you tucked away in a quiet nook, or elsewhere?

My wife, Sharon (Sharon Galligar Chance, also a writer and prolific book reviewer), and I have desks sitting face-to-face in our home office, and it’s nice to occasionally catch each other’s eye over the top of our monitors while we’re working. We can also bounce ideas and phrases off each other that way, which makes our writing better.

9)     From all your experiences, have you found any certain truths that guide you through life?  Do you try to impart any wisdom in your stories?

The only truth I live by is the idea that my ultimate success or failure, no matter what I’m involved in, is entirely up to me. Failing is a lot easier than succeeding, but succeeding is a lot more fun – and I’m all about having fun! The only wisdom I pass along in my stories is whatever wisdom my characters impart from their point of view. It’s their story, after all, and I’m just the guy putting it down in words.

10)  Tell us something about your next project.

HENRY 401 is about a legendary gun from the Civil War – number 401 from a lot of 400 special-order Henry rifles – and how two modern-day antiquities experts are hired to search through history for it and maybe solve the mystery of its unlikely serial number; if they can survive the search. It’s tentatively scheduled for release on December 6.