Joel Dane Interview - Burn Cycle

Photo Credit: © Ben Z. Naftali

Joel Dane is the pseudonym of a full-time writer. As the son of an Army Private and an Air Force Staff Sergeant, he was raised on war stories and inter-service rivalry. He’s the author of more than twenty books across several genres, and has written for film and TV, including a dozen episodes of a Netflix Original Series. He lives in California and Maine–not at the same time–with his family.

      

  

Greatest thing you learned at school.
Without question, typing. It's a skill that I use every day. Also, back in the days when I typed 100+ words per minute, it helped me get temp jobs.

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill?
I realize this anew every month when the mortgage is due. There's nothing like pressing need to spur creativity. Or at least to spur output, which is the moldering earth from which creativity sprouts.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
I started baking bread. I know that isn't extremely publishing-related, but I'm having such a great time. So far I've made a few terrible loaves, having defeated the 'idiot-proof' no-knead method with my idiocy. But then I baked a few quite good challahs and some tasty garlic-rosemary focaccia. My baguettes are coming along nicely, too. The diet, not so much.

What are some of your current and future projects that you can share with us?
I finishing the third book in the CRY PILOT trilogy, and to my massive relief everything is coming together. The series arc works—though not in the way that I'd planned. Which is exciting! I'm also working on a story about a former soldier and an AI who find themselves in … curious circumstances.

Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest and why?
I really enjoyed Brian Naslund's BLOOD OF AN EXILE: just an unabashedly fun book, with a cool twist on dragons. And a sort of … Wolverine edge? And I'm reading Max Porter's amazing LANNY—he's not a new author, but he's new to me—which is sweet and scary and fascinating.

Your Favorite Chapter from BURN CYCLE
I have a very specific favorite chapter, but its effectiveness depends on surprise. So I'm afraid of spoiling the twist. However, I can say that one scene—one moment, really—sprang to my mind early on in drafting Burn Cycle. It didn't exist in any outline or synopsis I'd sent to my agent or editor, but it became the moment I was writing towards.

I was afraid my editor would dislike it, actually. I waited for her to read that far into the draft with increasing dread … until she tweeted how much she liked that exact moment. Whew.

What would I find in your refrigerator right now?
A sad lack of Grillo's pickles, because I ate them all yesterday. Also, a sad lack of everything else, because I live with a swarm of locusts that takes the shape of a devouring teenager.

Favorite things to do alone?
Worry about failure.

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh?
Watching this CLIP

An unbeatable enemy. A planet on the brink. And a squad with a taste for revenge.

In this incendiary new military science fiction novel, an infantry squad crisscrosses the globe on a search-and-destroy mission against a relentless foe.

After cry pilot Maseo Kaytu's white-knuckled victory over the mysterious lampreys at Ayko Base, military command develops new weapons and a new strategy. The updated mission is simple: pinpoint the Hatchery, the “spawn point” of the lampreys, and blast it into a fine powder. Kaytu's battle-tested squad tracks the enemy from remote bases to elegant cities to subterranean caverns, but the lampreys start hitting harder and faster. While the squad is winning battles, Earth is losing the war.

When the search for the Hatchery shines a light on Kaytu's insurgent past, he faces a terrible truth. There is no line he won't cross to protect his squad. Then a vicious counterattack teaches him another lesson: you can't save everyone. In the end, all you can do is the job.

Praise for CRY PILOT

"I picked it up, I started reading. I kept reading. This is that kind of book, intense, involving, with intriguing world development. Recommended. Joel Dane is a writer to watch." —C.J. Cherryh, author of the Foreigner series

"Joel Dane's Cry Pilot is a hyperkinetic and unflinching battle narrative that never loses sight of the truth of being a soldier: the squad comes before all else. Told with momentum and immediacy, Cry Pilot is authentic, exciting, and excellent." —Marko Kloos, author of Terms of Enlistment

"In Cry Pilot, Joel Dane has imagined a fascinating high-tech future Earth where ecological collapse and runaway evolution have conspired to create enemies no army has ever encountered before. Told through the eyes of a young soldier seeking to escape a grim past, the action-packed plot holds tight to a human dimension." —Linda Nagata, author of The Red Trilogy 

“Awesome read! The language takes you into the world of the story. The first-person voice invites you to internalise the world of the character, a time and place strangely prescient. Joel Dane has created a uniquely familiar world reminiscent of the Mesozoic Era of large predators, only in the future. I look forward to seeing what he writes next.” —Nico Lathouris, screenwriter, Mad Max: Fury Road

You can purchase Burn Cycle (Cry Pilot #2) at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you JOEL DANE for making this giveaway possible.

1Winner will receive a Burn Cycle (Cry Pilot #2) by Joel Dane.

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