Ask the Author: Dale Thomas Vaughn
Answered Questions (5)
Dale Thomas Vaughn
Read. Write. Rinse and Repeat.
That's what my mentor told me. If I were to expand, I would add that if you want to be a serious writer you'll need to take it seriously (but not too seriously). Find a mentor, hire a coach, take classes, join writer's groups, go to other authors' readings, enter contests, and plan to take a long time to get any good (if ever). And within all of that, just write things you'd like to read (because that means other people will like it too).
That's what my mentor told me. If I were to expand, I would add that if you want to be a serious writer you'll need to take it seriously (but not too seriously). Find a mentor, hire a coach, take classes, join writer's groups, go to other authors' readings, enter contests, and plan to take a long time to get any good (if ever). And within all of that, just write things you'd like to read (because that means other people will like it too).
Dale Thomas Vaughn
I set a timer of 25 minutes and I allow myself to suck. Once the cap is off the bottle, I usually keep going well enough.
Dale Thomas Vaughn
A bit of scotch and instrumental music usually does the trick.
Dale Thomas Vaughn
I like to dream about the future. I asked myself what legends people would tell if they grew up on Mars. Would they care about Earth? Would they feel it in their bones? Would they romanticize cinematic films from our era the way we still recite Shakespeare and Moliere, Virgil and Sun Tzu? How long would it take for them to yearn for home? How much do we take this beautiful blue planet for granted? From there, I began building a world. I'm a sociologist, so I started with the structure of a society on Mars, and I decided that the only way it would differ from Earth is if it was cut off from the influence of our squabbling planet. Then... the journey wrote itself.
Dale Thomas Vaughn
I'm 50,000 words into a Historical Fiction that is roughly inspired by Arthur legends, set in 1840s Texas.
Here's the prologue: This is a story about King Arthur… well, not really. It’s a story about a young man caught up in the poisonous tumult of the American frontier. A time of pushed boundaries and mixing peoples and the chaos of the libertarian fever dream of ungoverned clusters of individuals making what passed for society from thin air with no experience or education. The prevailing strategies of schoolyard bullying and safety in cliques was only exacerbated by increasingly efficient guns and a sense of entitlement to any land a person liked the look of.
It tells the stories of real frontier people, who were often outcasts due to their sexuality (did you know that legendary lesbians helped settle the west?), their progressive metropolitanism (did you know there were Bohemian villages in Texas?), and their anti-racist beliefs (did you know there was a southern underground railroad?).
In that ugly world there is a legend about a small group of people who tried to do something grand. About people who built an organized society based in egalitarianism and non-aggression and love. This place attracted minds who were curious about otherness and willing to create space for something completely new. This place was a western utopia. If you go looking for this place and these stories in history, you’ll find many of them, and you’ll find maps that show this place really existed. This place, this Camelot of the west, disappeared into the dust and no archeological evidence has been found to prove it existed. In the deep collective imagination of humanity lives this story about making something beautiful in a time of fire and damnation. It repeats culturally and generationally. We don’t need a tomb marked “King Arthur” or “Merlin” or “Gwynvere” because they exist in us.
This Camelot of the west existed - and it started with one young man, an old chief, and a pair of elemental women. This is their story.
I'm also blocking out a novella about one of my favorite characters from Birthright. The entire Birthright series has been outlined, I intend to write the first draft in Q1 of 2022.
Here's the prologue: This is a story about King Arthur… well, not really. It’s a story about a young man caught up in the poisonous tumult of the American frontier. A time of pushed boundaries and mixing peoples and the chaos of the libertarian fever dream of ungoverned clusters of individuals making what passed for society from thin air with no experience or education. The prevailing strategies of schoolyard bullying and safety in cliques was only exacerbated by increasingly efficient guns and a sense of entitlement to any land a person liked the look of.
It tells the stories of real frontier people, who were often outcasts due to their sexuality (did you know that legendary lesbians helped settle the west?), their progressive metropolitanism (did you know there were Bohemian villages in Texas?), and their anti-racist beliefs (did you know there was a southern underground railroad?).
In that ugly world there is a legend about a small group of people who tried to do something grand. About people who built an organized society based in egalitarianism and non-aggression and love. This place attracted minds who were curious about otherness and willing to create space for something completely new. This place was a western utopia. If you go looking for this place and these stories in history, you’ll find many of them, and you’ll find maps that show this place really existed. This place, this Camelot of the west, disappeared into the dust and no archeological evidence has been found to prove it existed. In the deep collective imagination of humanity lives this story about making something beautiful in a time of fire and damnation. It repeats culturally and generationally. We don’t need a tomb marked “King Arthur” or “Merlin” or “Gwynvere” because they exist in us.
This Camelot of the west existed - and it started with one young man, an old chief, and a pair of elemental women. This is their story.
I'm also blocking out a novella about one of my favorite characters from Birthright. The entire Birthright series has been outlined, I intend to write the first draft in Q1 of 2022.
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