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Thursday, December 5, 2013

Author Interview – Dermot Davis @dermotdavis1

It is vital to get exposure and target the right readers for your writing, tell us about your marketing campaign?

Well, I just threw another batch of spaghetti on the wall but nothing has stuck, so far. I’m open to suggestions.

What movie do you love to watch?

As a playwright, I love movies with clever and sparkling dialogue. Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet is a master class in dialogue writing. The Apartment, The Graduate, The African Queen, Treasure of The Sierra Madre, All About Eve, Harold and Maude… it’s a long list. I’ll watch Groundhog Day over and over again

How do you feel about social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter? Are they a good thing?

Millions of people swear by them but I’m a late bloomer. “Kicking and screaming” is probably how I would describe my exposure to them. Kicking and screaming…

If you could do any job in the world what would you do?

Write, write and, oh, yeah, write.

Tell us about your book? What’s it about and why did you write it?

Stormy Weather is a novel about a psychologist who specializes in dream interpretation and who one day wakes up in a dream that he can’t seem to wake up from. Like a dream detective, he must look around his dream reality for clues in order to solve the enigma of his entrapment.

The book is about dreams?

The book is partly a questioning about what reality or what we call ‘consciousness” really is. Whatever state you find yourself in, then that’s your reality. When you’re in a dream, then that’s the only reality you know. We only call that reality a “dream state” when we’re in another reality that we call “waking reality.” We have no knowledge of a “waking reality” when we’re in the reality of the “dream state.”

But your protagonist knows that he’s in a dream?

Not at first, no. Just as some people question that this reality we share just might be a dream, he also begins to reason within the dream that he just might be in a dream. It’s his training that prompts him to question. However, it’s also his training that just might keep him stuck in his dream state.

Explain that?

Reasoning and intellect can only take us so far. Integration and healing of the whole person can only take place when we allow ourselves to heal on an emotional and spiritual level as well.

This is a book about healing, then?

Yes, although the protagonist, Robert Monro, is not aware that the problems he is having in his life and in his marriage are related to incidents in his past that require healing. It is only when he summons the courage to remember and to experience his past traumas that they provide the key for him to wake from his dream world.

How did you develop your writing?

I began writing plays first, screenplays second and finally, novels, which is an uncommon chronology as most writers tend to start with novels, then go to screenplays and maybe not attempt the play, at all. Writing plays, however, is a wonderful preparation for writing prose of any kind because if it’s one thing that the craft of playwriting teaches you is to be very sparse and very precise with the words you chose. It’s easy to overwrite a novel but almost impossible to do so with a play or a screenplay as to do so takes you beyond the confines and limitations of the medium. The normal length of a screenplay is between 90 and 110 pages, which translates to 90 to 110 minutes of screen time. You have to tell a complete story within that time. Unless you’re Steven Spielberg, of course. Lincoln was 150 pages long.

Stormy Weather

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Literary Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author and the book

Connect with Dermot Davis on Facebook, Twitter & Goodreads

Website www.dermotdavis.com

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