While growing
up, David H. Reiss was that weird kid with his nose in a book and his head in
the clouds. He was the table-top role-playing game geek, the comic-book nerd,
the story-teller and dreamer.
Fortunately,
he hasn't changed much.
David is a
software engineer by trade and a long-time sci-fi and fantasy devotee by
passion, and he lives in Silicon Valley with his
partner of twenty-six years. Until recently, he also shared his life with a
disturbingly spoiled cat named Freya.
(Farewell,
little huntress. You were loved. You are missed.)
David's first
book, Fid's Crusade,
has just recently been published; this was his first novel-length project, but
it certainly won't be his last—he's having far too much fun!
About the Book:
Consumed by grief, rage, and self-loathing, a brilliant
inventor rebuilt himself to take on a new identity: the powered-armor-wearing
supervillain, Doctor Fid. For twenty violent years, Fid has
continued his quest
to punish heroes who he considers to be unworthy of their accolades, and the
Doctor has left a long trail of blood and misery in his wake. After a personal
tragedy, however, Doctor Fid investigates a crime and uncovers a conspiracy so
terrible that even he is taken aback.
Haunted by painful memories and profound guilt, the veteran
supervillain must risk everything to save the world that he once sought to
terrorize. Every battle takes its toll…but the stakes are too high for retreat
to be an option.
In the end, it may take a villain to save the entire Earth
from those entrusted with the Earth’s protection.
Praise:
"Fid's
Crusade by David H. Reiss is one of the most refreshing and lively
takes on the superhero genre I've seen in years. His title character's crusade
is colorful, compelling, and takes wonderfully unexpected turns, and the novel
delivers an impressive emotional punch (to go along with the super-powered
ones). It stands easily alongside other character-driven superhero novels like
Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, Carrie Vaughn's After
the Golden Age, and Paul Tobin's Prepare to Die!." - Hugo
award-winning author Tim Pratt
ORDER YOUR COPY:
Amazon
I’d like to know more about
you as a person first. What do you do
when you’re not writing?
I take up new hobbies and drop old ones at a prodigious
rate, the vast majority of which involve exploring the crafts, skills and
experiences found in works of fiction. I’ve built replica lightsabers and
forged medieval armor, programmed autonomous drones and brewed my own mead,
studied the design of modern military weapons and knapped flint arrowheads,
started fires with sticks and started fires with lasers. Also, I’ve become
equally mediocre at multiple martial arts, archery, sword fighting and
paintball.
When did you start
writing?
That’s a difficult question to answer; I genuinely cannot
recall any time in which I wasn’t already a writer. I’m reasonably certain that
my mother would have mentioned if I was actually born with a pencil in my hand,
but it can’t have been too many years before I acquired one. I filled far more
of those pale-blue stitched-cover composition notebooks with stories than I
ever did with schoolwork.
As a published
author, what would you say was the most pivotal point of your writing life?
Strangely, I think that the most pivotal moment of my
writing life wasn’t directly related to writing at all. I was taking a
figure-drawing class and a very frustrated professor told me that my problem
was that I was drawing an arm the way I thought that an arm ought to look
instead of looking at the model’s actual arm. The teacher was right; I’d had a
picture in my head as to how the bones and muscles should work and how the
joint would bend and how the shadows should fall. And many of my ideas were
simply wrong.
Truthfully, I’ve never managed to become a particularly good
artist, but that event did teach me to check my assumptions and to spend time
studying rather than relying purely upon imagination. I like to believe that my
prose is stronger for that shift.
(Second most pivotal moment: getting a rave review from a
Hugo award-winning author after Fid’s
Crusade was the winner in the ‘Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror’ category
of the 2018 Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize.)
If you could go
anywhere in the world to start writing your next book, where would that be and
why?
To my home office! I’m a territorial person and I feel most
comfortable in familiar surroundings. There are plenty of places that I’d go
for inspiration, but to actually write…I want to be home sitting in my own
chair at my own computer desk.
(It would be more useful if I could send my housemates
anywhere in the world. I’d get more work done with a few extra hours of
silence.)
If you had 4 hours of
extra time today, what would you do?
I’d spend one of them reading, one of them writing, one of
them sleeping, and one of them thinking about getting some exercise but
deciding that one hour isn’t enough time to get to the gym, work out, get home,
and take a shower…so I might as well go back to reading, writing, or sleeping
instead.
Where would you like
to set a story that you haven’t done yet?
I’ve been slowly constructing a fantasy world for what may
be my next
Back to your present
book, Fid’s Crusade, how did you
publish it?
I’d begun the process of shopping the book to agents, but
later decided that getting the book published in time for my grandmother’s one
hundredth birthday was more important. I decided to self-publish and I’ve never
regretted that choice; the novel was dedicated to her and I was able to give
her a signed copy as a present.
In writing your book,
did you travel anywhere for research?
Yes and no. I didn’t do any new travel for research
purposes, but much of the story takes place in locations that I have travelled
to in the past.
Why was writing Fid’s Crusade so important to you?
It’s strange…Fid’s
Crusade was started as a side-project, a brief short story intended to
clear my head after I wrote myself into a corner on another project. I fell in
love with the characters and the world as I worked. The more that I poked at
it, the more that I realized that there were powerful stories that I could tell
from these characters’ perspectives.
Every story that I write is important to me, but there was something in the
narrator’s voice in Fid’s Crusade that resonated. I wanted to share this story
with with the world.
Where do you get your
best ideas and why do you think that is?
I think that I get my best ideas while petting cats. I have
a hypothesis that purrs stimulate creativity, but thus far I have been unable
to acquire funding to perform a proper scientific study.
Any final words?
I’ve been writing for my entire life but only recently
became serious about producing novel-length works and publishing. This has been
an extraordinary journey and I’m having a blast. There’s plenty more to come,
just wait!