Photo Content from Wes Dyson
Wes Dyson is a creative marketer and dog-daddy of four Pomskies living in Western MA. He loves classical music and earthy, grass-tasting tea.
Greatest thing you learned in school.
Our high school Latin teacher left abruptly (not my fault) and the school needed a quick replacement. They weren’t in a place to be too picky, and went with someone with very little teaching experience (or maybe even none?). They found him because he’d happened to take a Latin course with our previous teacher. So he was in.
My point is he was an outsider and didn’t feel very beholden to the rules. Things like testing-taking and grades weren’t part of his teaching plans. And that year was probably the most enlightening I’d experienced until then. In his breaking of classroom norms, he shook us up. He forced us to understand we weren’t learning for the sake of a score, but to enrich ourselves. It made learning about “us” for a change. It was such an important shift for me because I wasn’t a very engaged student. But he completely revamped my relationship to learning and I am forever grateful.
He was fired at the end of the year for refusing to give us a final exam.
Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
It can be nerve-wracking sharing your story, or anything really, with the world. But I’ve found people’s excitement for new ideas and adventures to be extremely motivating. I guess the most rewarding thing is that it just wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Lesson learned.
Was there a defining moment during your youth when you realized you wanted to be a writer?
That realization came a bit later, but when I was a kid I’d make up backstories and entire worlds that my toys lived in. I remember a Power Ranger robot and two of the Beanie Baby monkeys distinctly. One the monkeys lived on a planet covered entirely with an ocean and survived under a glass dome around the core. Once day, the glass cracked and they had to make a daring escape as the entire sea collapsed on them. Anyway, let’s just say world-building was quiet in my future.
What’s the best advice you can give writers to help them develop their own unique voice and style?
Developing the voice is near and dear to me, probably because I had such a hard time with it. I lacked confidence all around, not just with writing, so that held me back. While it makes sense that we’d first have to become comfortable with ourselves before we can be comfortable sharing ourselves, it took me a really long time to make that connection. I felt like I had so many things to say, but when they finally came out it was mealy-mouthed and uninspiring.
I’d say integral to one’s voice is a certain conviction to their point of view. Experiment with your observations, lean into them, understand they are unique to you. Stand in them. Get feedback. Cut your teeth.
What are some of your current and future projects that you can share with us?
I’m working on more from the “Myraverse” series as well as a wild sci-fi adventure I can’t wait to share.
In your newest book; MYRACLES IN THE VOID, can you tell my Book Nerd community a little about it.
MITV is about a brother and sister who live in Esa, a world where creation and destruction magic governs everything. The trick to this magic — called myracles — is that it becomes creative or destructive depending on the characters’ emotional state. In other words, a broken heart can lead to destructive abilities.
It’s very much the adventure story. And with magic that relies so much on a character’s wellbeing, it has the effect of making these epic battle scenes into an incredible projection of what’s happening within them, either self-destruction or self-creation. I think that has a way of constantly plugging us into the character’s individual journeys, in the most fantastic way possible. It’s exactly as wild as it sounds.
What do you hope for readers to be thinking when they read your novel?
Top of the list is to have a good time. We’re sailing on the back of a giant turtle named Emilie for part of it, for goodness sake. But if they’re inclined to think a bit deeper, I’d like them to be reminded of their roles in creating or destroying their own future. I’d like them to remember they are exactly that important in their own lives, and in everyone’s around them.
What part of your characters did you enjoy writing the most?
As mentioned, there’s a strong correlation between character and the type of myracles they manifest. I had a blast thinking of all the possibilities; ones with time creation were really fun to imagine.
What was your unforgettable moment while writing MYRACLES IN THE VOID?
There was a different ending when I passed MITV out to beta readers. No one seemed to have a problem with it, but something just didn’t feel right to me. I don’t want to spoil anything, but in that moment I thought about my father, who passed when I was really young. I felt like he was nudging me to change the ending. When I did, I sat back and started to tear up. I healed a lot of things within me by changing how this story ended. If you happen to read the ending, it may be clear why.
If you could introduce one of your characters to any character from another book, who would it be and why?
This could go a lot of ways, but I first thought of a minor MITV character named Spen who’s a bit mischievous, recruits lost souls to party with, and is eternally youthful. If he met Peter Pan, the two would absolutely hit it off, start their own immortality cult and get into such wild misadventures that even Tinker Bell would blush. It would be pretty fun to write.
What is the craziest thing you have ever done?
That’s rather unmentionable.
What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?
Anything that frightens them.
Best date you've ever had?
I don’t know if it was the best, but there was one where we got lost hiking and ending up scaling a mountain rock-face in the dark to salvation. That was a first date and it was entirely my fault we were lost. You can learn a lot about someone that way.
What is your happiest childhood memory?
My grandmother knew a woodworker and asked him if she could have all his scrap pieces. Down in the basement were giant boxes filled with oddly shaped cast offs. I’d spend hours and hours down there with a hammer and nails, building little houses, boats, anything that came to mind. My friends would come over and they’d all build things, too. Then we’d usually wreck them. It was so much fun. We never even realized how creative we were being. We were just being kids.
How far away from your birthplace do you live now?
About an hour.
What were you doing at midnight last night?
Taking my dogs out to pee.
TEN REASONS TO READ MYRACLES IN THE VOID
- Ultra-unique magic system based on creation and destruction
- A character who houses both within him
- Visit a technological hub run by status-obsessed gnomes
- Ride on Emilie, a giant turtle friend
- Visit the Myracles Akademy filled with wondrous happenings
- A sprawling war for resources and political machinations
- Immortality-granting tree sap
- God-like ancients who can perform “Mythik” myracles, like the creation of Pocket Realms
- A twist guaranteed to make you say “Holy Timelines!”
- An epic tale of redemption, family, and self-empowerment
A funny scene that doesn’t spoil anything or take much set up is when one of our main heroes, Gai Izz, first arrives in the big tech haven of Electri City. Gai is fifteen and had spent his entire life in Hop, an ugly, wooden port in the middle of the sea, so absolutely everything about city life was new to him (even toilets).
After performing a myracle of creation, A.K.A. an “Elix myracle,” Gai becomes very hungry, and his stomach rumbles with a Gurgle grr sound. Through an interesting twist of fate, Gai met a gnome named Kabbage, who is begrudgingly taking him somewhere he can eat before he passes out…
“Hm,” Kabbage said. “Seems like they’ve got it under control. Alright, I guess we’re done here. You are free to go . . . wherever, now.”
“Wait,” said the boy. “Yer not gonna tell ‘em what happened?”
The gnome stared at him blankly. “They found the criminals. They can ask them.” He turned around. “It’s not my problem anymore.”
Gai ran to him. “Can ya at least show me where to get somethin’ to eat?”
Kabbage didn’t want to turn around. Was any of this his fault? Absolutely not. So why was it his responsibility to get this kid food? Everything in him told him to keep walking. But he stopped and looked back at that sad boy wearing newspaper pants. “Ugh.” He waved for Gai to follow him.
“Thanks at ya!”
This place was certainly not like Hop. In front of him, a seemingly endless street of busy heads bopping all the way to a giant central spire.
Gai held his stomach. “Can’t we stop here?”
Kabbage turned, “No.”
“Well, what about this one? This smells good. Please at ya?”
Kabbage stopped suddenly and huffed. “Nothing on this street is for us. This is a Thinker neighborhood. You can tell because there’s no garbage stuck to your—Have you not been wearing shoes this whole time?”
Gai shrugged.
Kabbage rolled his eyes. “Down here. This is Kobz Street. Not quite Tinker territory yet, but there are a few options for those of us who work in this area.” He stopped in a long line in front of a building.
At least twenty Electrians were waiting ahead of them.
Gurgle grr. “I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
The gnome directly in front of them turned around and gave him a dirty look.
“Are you always this chatty?” said Kabbage. “It’s not my fault you’re hungry.”
“Actually,” the boy said, recalling how he used the last of his strength to create that seaweed rope to save his life. Of course, he wasn’t going to push the issue. “. . . A’kay.”
The line moved up by one person. Gai groaned again. Kabbage huffed and tapped the person in front of him. “Excuse me. My friend is dying. Would you mind if we skipped ahead of you?”
This other gnome Kabbage tapped looked shocked he’d dare ask. “I’m sorry, how is that my problem?”
“Can’t argue with that,” said Kabbage.
“So, ugh.” Gai shifted his weight. “How do ya feel about all this Carpè stuff?”
“Despicable,” he said. “I always said it was a matter of time.”
“A matter of time,” repeated the gnome in front of them, nodding along.
The boy said, “So there’s really bad people there?”
“People?” said Kabbage. “No, no. Those are monsters. Evil. Monsters.”
“I see. And ya fight over myracite?”
“Evidently so.”
The line moved two more people. All the boy could think about was eating. But there was also a creeping worry that he still needed to find a way past those ships and out of the city. “Why can’t we eat at the other place? Without the line?”
“Must you press on that button? I’ve had a long day.”
“Sorry at ya . . .”
The line moved another two people.
Kabbage exhaled. “You see how everyone in this line has red hair?”
“Really more of a dark red.” He peeked down at Kabbage’s head. “I thought it was brown like mine.”
He ran his fingers through it, insisting, “It’s reddish in the sunlight. Anyway. Darker hair is for Tinkers — working class. That restaurant is for Thinkers — the bosses.”
“What’s hair got to do with it?” said gurgling Gai.
“When a gnome ‘becomes an adult,’” he said, mockingly with air quotes, “we get white hair. It’s a gnome thing. It’s a status thing. It’s an annoying thing.”
Gai remembered Baald’s log again. “So that’s why ya use white hair dye?”
“Shhh!” Kabbage waved his arms frantically.
The gnome in front of them turned around again. “Did he just say white hair dye?”
“No, no,” said Kabbage. He said, ‘might wear pie.’ Kid’s awful hungry.”
That gnome in front came close to whisper, “Because if you have some, I know a few guys that would lov—”
“Nope,” Kabbage interjected. “No one has any. Ha, ha!” He turned to Gai, whispering, “You have about as much brains as you do shoes, my friend.”
Gai said. “I don’t have any shoes . . .”
“Fancy that.”
The line moved four more people.
“Alright, we’re getting close.” Kabbage jingled some coins in his pocket. “Do you know what you want?”
“Do they have watermoss?”
“Do they have watermoss? Where. Are. You. From?”
The boy didn’t want to spill too much information. He still felt weird about being in the city while wanting to meet their enemies in Carpè. “East,” he said.
“East of . . .”
“East of . . . here.”
Kabbage sighed, holding his forehead. “Well. They don’t have watermoss. We don’t get many whales coming here for dinner. What else do you eat?”
“Ya don’t have to get snippy. How would I know what kind of moss ya have?”
Kabbage pulled out his coins and counted five. “Just look at the menu. Please.”
They were next in line.
Gai said, “I’ll get whatever ya eat.”
“Oh? Booger Soup, then.”
“Yuck, no!”
“Relax, I’m kidding. Booger Soup is only a holiday thing.” Kabbage actually chucked for the first time. “No, no. Alright. Their babanut salads are pretty good.”
“Babanuts!”
Kabbage pressed the button and a nice voice came out — What is your order, please? “We’ll take the babanut salad.” That will be three binnx. He counted out the coins he had, “One. Two.
Three.” Bing. Out came a bowl with green leaves and fleshy fruit chunks in it. “Thank you.”
“I thought ya didn’t have watermoss.”
“This isn’t watermoss, kid. Lettuce. Grows from the ground.”
“Oh. And what’s this?” Gai picked up a morsel of food beside the bowl. He sniffed it. His eyes lit up, and he munched the whole thing down in three satisfying bites. “What was that?”
“. . . Bread.”
“Are there more breads?”
Kabbage pressed the button again. “Can I get another loaf, please? Yeah, mine fell on the ground. Yeah.” Bing.
Gai scarfed the second one down just as quickly. “Oh, Zeea! This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever eaten!”
“Relax, kid. It’s just bread. You have the whole salad.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, shoveling handfuls in his mouth. The people waiting in line were watching with disgust.
“Yeah. Who needs a utensil?” said Kabbage. “Get those dirty hands all over it.”
“Can we get more bread, now?”
“Kid.” Kabbage pulled out his remaining two coins and jingled them. “I’m not made of binnx here.”
“Ya trade these things for food?” Gai opened his palm for Kabbage to give ‘em to him. The gnome obliged, so the boy looked over the coins.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“I can help! Watch this.” Gai closed his eyes and brought the two coins together. As soon as his belly started buzzing, he brought the two binnx together, and Pow! A blue burst of light shot out, and only one oversized binnx remained. “Can ya trade a big coin for a big
bread?” Gurgle grr.
The people waiting in line gasped.
“Oh, my—” Kabbage grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him into the crowd. “Nope! No brains! You can’t just—Ugh!” “Where are we goin’?”
Kabbage ducked behind an alleyway, pulling Gai. “You’re one of them?” he yelled. “Are you the one they’re looking for? I could get arrested!”
“If ya mean the Carp people, no. I know nothin’ about ‘em, actually.”
“Ugh, I knew none of this was my problem. Why did I . . . Wait. You really know nothing about them?”
“No.”
“Watermoss. Bread-awe. Open-toe footwear. Somehow, I buy that you know nothing.” Kabbage sighed. “But how do you explain the . . . Was that a myracle?”
“I think so.”
“So you can just . . . make things out of nowhere? Like a real myracle?”
Gai shrugged.
“Like, you could make money out of nowhere?” said Kabbage.
“I don’t think it’s out of nowhere. It makes me real hungry. Could we go back to the bread—”
“My friend, I have plenty of bread at my place.”
“Yer place?”
“Of course. You’re going to need a place to sleep, aren’t you? Friend?”
“No,” said Gai. “I’m thinkin’ me and Em can probably sneak past those ships. She’s pretty fast.”
“What a cruel thing, indeed.”
“What is?”
Kabbage folded his small arms. “Dear Emery needs to sleep, too, you know?”
“It’s Emilie. But maybe yer right. I am thinkin’ a lot about what I need.” Gai yawned. One side of his brain said he had a mission to do. The other said he didn’t know how far Carpè was, and even if he did, was it really right to make Emilie keep swimming so hard? Past all those powerful looking ships? What was a Wonder Weapon, exactly? “I can stay with ya ‘till early mornin’?”
“What are friends for?”
“Thanks at ya! Let’s go tell her were settlin’ in for the night.”
“Mm. Whatever, kid.”
There once were two children,
a girl and a boy.
One could create,
the other, destroy.
Within every heart lies the power to bond or break.
On an isolated port of floating garbage called Hop, Gaiel Izz and his sister, Lynd, never imagined they’d be able to change anything…
Not their nasty neighbors, not their hungry bellies, and especially not their missing father.
That will change when they discover the power of myracles — magic that either creates or destroys.
As the brother and sister set across Esa to bring their family back together, this power will either unite them or shatter their entire world to pieces.
It will all come down to what truly lies within their hearts…
Create or destroy?
You can purchase Myracles in the Void at the following Retailers:
And now, The Giveaways.
Thank you WES DYSON for making this giveaway possible.
1 Winner will receive a Copy of Myracles in the Void by Wes Dyson.
jbnpastinterviews
morning.
ReplyDeleteI feel better in the morning
ReplyDeletearound supper time
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