Scarberryfields: Can you tell us a little about your nationality?
Dan:
English and Italian. English going back to the second ship after the Mayflower,
for which offense the stinking Brits confiscated our estates and homes and
forced my relatives to work for their living in the New Country. (Actually, I
like the English, everything but their food, but depriving me of estates and a
solid middle class country gentleman birthright has always seemed a little anal
on their part for the crime of wanting to worship God as my ancestors pleased.)
I’m Italian going back to Rome and Naples from whence my mother came. I’ve been
back three times, the last as part of a continent crawl. I love the people of
Italy, the four-hour meals, the mozzarella di bufala cheese, you can buy in the
countryside between Rome and Naples, the Iodine-smell of the Neapolitan harbor,
the plunging mountain roads of coastal Italy, and not least the fact that the
bustiest women on earth throng the cities and towns of Italy. That is a fact.
Has to be something in the water.
Scarberryfields: When you finish a novel, do you
miss the characters?
Dan: Oddly enough, no. Until you asked that
question, I’d never thought about it. I’ve written five novels, prior to
completing the pair I’m selling on Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Amazon
right now. I can enjoy re-reading them and I like meeting the old characters
again, but I don’t miss them. Probably because they’ve never gone anywhere.
They’re all still In my head. There are worse things than saying goodbye. One
of the saddest little existential dramas I ever saw was a long forgotten horror
schlockfest of a movie called “Seven Keys to Baldpate” about a writer locking
himself in a scary old mansion to finish a novel on deadline. The viewer thinks
that all the murders and mayhem are really happening when they’re all in the
writer’s mind. Including a winsome young woman who the writer falls for-in his
story. And you’re left pondering the question of whether a writer can fall in
love with a figment of his imagination. Or maybe just realize that he needs to
fall in love with somebody. It was much too good a concept for the movie.
Scarberryfields: While writing, if you need help
with punctuation or grammar, where do you turn?
Dan: I was a newspaper reporter, editor, and
high school English teacher and that stuff is so ingrained I seldom look it up.
And if I make mistakes, I should sweat them, but honestly, I don’t.
Scarberryfields: With the number of hours spent
writing, do family members support you or complain about the time spent away
from them?
Dan: They’re fairly supportive, but I’ve been
doing this for a long time. Sometimes it causes friction. I used a line from my
wife, who is still married to me, in my novel about a spectacular marital
disaster and a wife who left her workaholic husband. The wife in the story says
about her husband, a prosecutor, “even when he’s here, he’s not here.” And my
wife used those exact same words to me.
Scarberryfields: Does writing benefit you in any
way and if so, how?
Dan: Let me count the ways. Like breathing.
I literally wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I did not write. I’ve
written for fun, for money, for women. Above and beyond all of those, when
you’re writing (if you’re lucky) you enter a different world, a different realm
of being. In those moments, you’re literally transported in your mind into a
different skin, a different life. We all know we’re mortal and we’re going to
die, but when you’re in that other place you’re godlike and you forgot those
realities for a little while.
Scarberryfields: When you’re writing, do you
shut-off all social networks?
Dan: In the act of writing, I shut out
everything. You can’t stay under forever, but in my younger years, I could shut
out the world for a long time. Today, I’m going to be on Twitter, Facebook, or
LinkedIn when I’m not writing, eating, or doing something with my wife. And the
great thing is I can tell her that ‘I’m doing this to sell my books,” and
that’s a strong argument.
Scarberryfields: Did you use any family members
as Beta readers for your debut novel?
Dan: No. My wife is one of those people that
will read anything medical, but doesn’t read fiction.
Scarberryfields: Do you feel social networking is
a beneficial marketing tool for books?
Dan: It’s the best tool I’ve ever found. My
last two books started out as an internet serial that grew like crazy from an
avocation – I just had some ideas I wanted to write down – to a never ending
demand from readers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, England, France, Germany to
POST MORE OF THE STORY – FASTER. When I reworked them into currently two
novels, I used social media to let the readers who’d followed the story know
through Facebook and a website and then Twitter that the re-done books were
available for sale. And I’ve used the same resources to try to keep reader
interest up and hopefully bring in new readers.
Scarberryfields: What do
you like to do when you aren’t writing? Have any hobbies?
Dan: Travel, the beach, movies, comic books.
I’ve always been a gypsy. If my wife said, “let’s go” we’d be out the door.
Most of the time, I never knew when I walked back in our house after work where
I’d be that night. And really didn’t care. If not for kids, there is no way on
earth to know where we might have wound up. We’ve slept on picnic benches at
the beach when there were no rooms. We wound up spending nearly six months a
year at a North Florida camping resort, rubbing elbows with Snowbirds. We’ve
cruised the Caribbean and took the slow route from Los Angeles to Hawaii on a
cruise ship, and watched the whales mating off Maui. We’ve driven through a
snowstorm in the Alps when there wasn’t supposed to be one and I came the
closest to dying, or I wanted to anyway, of any time in my life when I received
food poisoning from Paella cooked in insufficiently sterilized local water in
the coastal resort of La Manga in Spain.
Closer to home, I’ve always loved the
beaches of Northeast Florida, particularly St. Augustine, and that’s why that
area plays such a large part in the courthouse/crime/adult love story being
told in “When We Were Married.” I’ve always been a movie buff and did as much
movie reviewing as I could while working for the Florida Times-Union and other
newspapers in Northeast Florida. And, I had read and collected comic books
since I was a kid and still love them. I’ve even written a few scripts for
comics that got published.
Scarberryfields: Where can readers go to find your
books?
Dan: You can find WHEN WE WERE MARRIED - VOLUME ONE – THE LONG FALL
AT:
AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008YPL9R6 OR
SMASHWORDS: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115234OR
BARNES AND NOBEL: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-we-were-married-volume-1-the-long-fall-daniel-quentin-steele/1112570691?ean=2940013654587
AND you can find WHEN WE WERE MARRIED – VOLUME TWO – SECOND ACTS
AT:
AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0091FOWWC OR
SMASHWORDS: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/124503 OR
BARNES AND NOBEL: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-we-were-married-2-second-acts-daniel-steele/1108241609?ean=2940013760448
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-we-were-married-volume-1-the-long-fall-daniel-steele/1106754384?ean=2940013654587&itm=1&usri=when+we+were+married
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