Interview William E. Darke

by

Kay Layton Sisk

1) While ECHOES is your first novel, it’s not your first book. Please tell us a little about your non-fiction.

Ah yes, the other me. As Stephen J. Reid, I wrote and had published my first book (a craft book on weaving corn dollies) in the mid-1970s. In2000, I published a science book on ozone and climate change. These can both be viewed at http://www.williamedarke.com/SJR. In more recent times, I have been under contract to write a big, glossy Earth Sciences book for the university freshman market, a project that has been “in progress” seemingly forever. Truth to tell, I’ve grown rather bored with it. Since I’ve always wanted to have a novel published, Echoes has taken priority of late. Perhaps I’ll return to the science now, but then the first draft of my next novel is already written, and the call to return to that and finish it instead is growing louder. So, who knows.

2) At Wings, we have significant input into our covers. Yours is quite eye-catching. What is the significance?

 Eye catching? Is that a pun?

The arch depicted on the cover of the book is the one described in the story. It spans a quiet country round in the Welsh hills to the east of Aberystwyth, a coastal town that overlooks Cardigan Bay. The arch was built 200 years ago to celebrate a king’s golden jubilee, or so the local history books inform. Once part of a thriving estate, the arch looks incongruous today, standing alone far from anywhere. I therefore contrived a story where a Celtic Goddess called the Morrigu wanted it built to serve as a conduit to another world where beings like itself await their chance to enter and destroy this one. Along the way, the Morrigu becomes trapped when the world’s first photograph of the arch is taken, and it has to wait 200 years for a chance of freedom when the photographer’s descendent moves into the area. The eye is a manifestation of this goddess as it draws close to the moment of liberation.

3) Your signature line calls Echoes a tale of the supernatural. How would you be more specific in its genre: time-travel, sci-fi, fantasy?

It is really a mixture of all of these. It is a ghost story, a love story, and even involves the main protagonist being thrown back in time to the moment when the first photograph is being taken, lending it a hint of sci-fi, too, I suppose. To be honest, I dislike classifications.

4) How much of your hero is you?

As with most writers, I inject a little of my own personality into the characters, and inevitably the lion’s share goes into the hero of the piece. Aspects of him are certainly me, but I don’t necessarily agree with him on every point! For example, he is accomplished on the guitar, but I never really mastered that. These days, my wife would not even let me try.

5) As a romance author, I’ve met many lawyers, pharmacists, technical writers, who write romance. Your educational background is in astronomy and atmospheric science. How did this influence Echoes?

Hardly at all. Echoes was just written for fun and contains none of the horrors of science, just the horrors of the supernatural! Yes, I suppose one might even say it also contains traces of horror, though not much.

6) Why set Echoes in Wales and not, say, London or Scotland?

I lived in Wales for eight years, several of them spent in a village just down the road from the arch shown on the cover. Since the tale is one that draws on elements of Celtic mythology, it made sense to stage it in this part of the country. I even went so far as to give the hero a cottage overlooking the village where the story is set, which is closely based on the home of friends who have lived there for many years. As far as I know, they haven’t been haunted by any Celtic goddesses yet, but that could change...

7) You’ve started your own audio book company and have experience in recording books for the blind. How did you get interested in the latter?

I have a friend in England who has been blind since she was six years old. She often complained that audio library books were too tame and that she wanted some sci-fi and horror to liven-up her reading list. I therefore volunteered to read for the library she used. It taught me a lot about orating a story, and I found the process enjoyable. I wanted Echoes to be available in audio too, but Wings are not licenced to produce audio books (even if they wanted to, which they don’t). I therefore decided to set up Darke Arch Audio and release the audio version simultaneously with the eBook and Trade Paperback. Makes for a nice set!

There’s more information about the audio version on http://www.williamedarke.com.

8) Tell us about the book you are currently writing.

This is a time travel story which begins in New Hampshire, moves to Colorado, then to Liverpool in England, and finally to Washington D.C. The main protagonist is a girl named Claire who happens to find a pocket watch when she is 12 years old that allows her to move short distances into the past. The experience is extremely unpleasant, however, and after several disastrous excursions, she desists from playing with the watch. Years later, as an adult, she discovers that the watch is just a small part of something far reaching and very dangerous which is already beginning to unravel the fabric of space-time. When it becomes clear that someone is playing with her destiny, and that this same someone had risen to great eminence and is in a position to bring about global destruction, Claire is forced to act at last in an effort to save us all! This story does draw a little from my scientific background, but it’s largely hokum!

9) William E Darke is a pseudonym. Why did you choose it?

To separate my fiction from my non-fiction efforts. It’s also a bit of fun. Originally, I was going to be David Darke, after the name of the ship in Graham Masterton’s novel “Pariah”. Then I discovered this was already taken. My wife actually came up with the William E. part, but that’s quite another story.

10) If you could have dinner with one other author, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Douglas Adams, of “Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame. I love his quirky humor. We were also born around the same time and had a number of views in common, at least based on interviews he has given. Sadly, he is now deceased.