Interview with Dale Furse, author of the Wexkia Trilogy

Today, I’ve got another visitor with hidden talents! Since joining eNovel Authors at Work, I’ve found myself rubbing shoulders with an incredible bunch of special, multi-talented people and Australian author, Dale Furse is definitely no exception. Find out all about her books first, and then, stick around to see what she was up to back in the 80s!

Wexkia! The home planet of the most powerful beings ever known. Their re-emergence is about to ignite fear throughout the universe.

Nell’s family reveals the truth of her alien heritage. If that information wasn’t frightening enough, Nell’s life somersaults as ever-increasing evidence proves her family wrong.

She is something else.

With friend Sam by her side, she travels to an alien world where she must defend herself against her enemies and find a secret book that contains the truth about her ancestry – whatever that may be!

Author, Dale Furse takes us on a fantastic adventure to a world inhabited by bizarre beings. Confused by her life-changing experiences and facing an uncertain future, who can Nell trust to help her?

Purchase link  – Amazon US

 

Who was responsible for the extinction of the wexkians?

In the sequel to Curse, book 1 of the Wexkia trilogy, Nell embarks on a double quest: to find the missing pages of the Book of Wexkia and to locate the incarcerated Shahs – a wexkian just like her. With faithful friends in tow and surrounded by unseen enemies, she travels to the worlds of Corl, Linque and Gramlax where she hopes to find the answers to her endless questions.

But as Nell learns to control her growing powers, who can she trust? Will the risks she takes to unlock the secret of her race’s origins and expose the true adversary lead to war?

Using her vivid imagination, author Dale Furse, once again transports us to a world of bizarre beings and fantastic scenery, as we join Nell and her friends on their alien adventure.

Purchase link – Amazon US

 

Hi Dale and welcome to my blog!

Thank you for the invitation, Fros. It’s great to be here.

Let’s start with the typical question, shall we? What has inspired you to write the Wexkia Trilogy?

I have said before on my blog and others that the actual idea is from one of my many childhood fantasies. I loved to imagine that I was an alien. Most of my imaginings were what I’d call normal, some though, did venture on the um…ridiculous, lol.

Although I’ve told this story in different words before, it’s the only one I will confess to at this point. I may tell other stories in the future, but I’ll probably wait until I get so old that I wouldn’t care less if I happened to have those men in white coats coming to take me away, (ho ho he he ha ha)

When I was little, my imagination persuaded me that I could fly. Yes, I might have been a little crazy, probably still am, lol. Anyway, I climbed onto the windowsill of the army house we lived in at the time. It was high at the front and low at the back thanks to the slope of the land. My bedroom window was at the side and towards the front of the house. I was small so it was really high to me. And still, I jumped right out of that window. I know, right? It wasn’t really high enough to hurt me much physically. The bushes I fell in helped, although the broken branches got their own back on my flesh. Needless to say, my mum wasn’t impressed. Yep, I was in big trouble. Now whether it was because I could have hurt myself or that I broke her bush, I don’t know. J My siblings still laugh at me about the incident. No, they’re not nice, not nice at all, lol.

That’s hilarious! What other writing have you done? Anything else published?

I’ve written, and do still write, short stories. My shorts usually aren’t like my novels that I write for children and teens, they are adult orientated. I don’t have enough stories with the same theme for an anthology, so I’m thinking of putting them into a collection.

Any hobbies or interests that you enjoy in your spare time?

I used to be in a band, Eclipse, where I played guitar and sang. I still have an acoustic guitar and enjoy annoying my family every so often.

I bet they love it! What are you working on at the moment? Tell us a little about your current project(s).

I’m in the dying throes of a sequel to an unpublished novel. Both novels centre on a young man from Earth and a boy from a different planet who end up on another different planet because of a couple of crazy gods of the Light Realm and their not-too-bright servants.

Sounds intriguing, and quite amusing too! What genres do you read mostly, and what are you reading now?

I love to read anything and everything, but I do love Science Fiction and Fantasy, High Fantasy and Historical Romance. Now, I’m between books of the Merry Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton so I’m reading Screenwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff and The Indie Author Power Pack that includes, Write, Publish, Repeat by Sean Platt & Johnny B Truant, Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran and How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn. They’re all great books so far.

Thank you for mentioning these books, they all sound like must-reads. I’ve read Let’s Get Digital and it’s a gem. Are there any sites or writing tools that you find useful and wish to recommend?

Indies Unlimited is a great site. They have tutorials on anything and everything an independent author would need to know and/or do. The Passive Voice is my daily newspaper that I read with my morning coffee. There are tons and tons of others out there like Joe Konrath’s blog, Joanna Penn, Author Marketing Club, ALLi (I’m going to join that one day) etc

Describe your workstation. Are there any favorite objects you have there for inspiration?

Haha, I am using an old dining room table. It’s lower and more comfortable than my desk. It’s full of skulls, dragons, goblets, little skeleton musicians, a wizard playing chess with a dragon, stuff like that, oh, and a messy pile of notebooks. Here’s a pic of my pretty little skull pen.

Hey, I love that! Thank you for sharing  it with us. What were your most and least favorite subjects in school?

I loved English. I loved writing stories and learning about Shakespeare’s plays. I would memorise every play we had. In my final exam, I didn’t read the question properly and went about writing a copious amount of words about the wrong play. I failed that exam, lol. I hated home economics then and still do now.

If you could choose another profession, what would that be?

I always wanted to be a singing actor. I used to fight with my sister about what movies to watch on weekends. For some reason, we only saw old movies when we got to watch TV. My sister wanted the old westerns and all I ever wanted to watch were musicals, especially, if they starred Doris Day. I was going to be her when I grew up. Mum liked her too, thank goodness.

Oh, I love musicals too! They make my heart sing like no other type of movie. Who is your favorite poet? Quote a couple of lines from your favorite poem.

I love this one from that same English class. Yeah, I memorized poems too. (Clears throat) How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – “How do I love thee, let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”

Great choice, Dale! You’ve already mentioned you’ve been in a band but I understand you’ve also done a bit of acting. How intriguing! Would you mind telling us more about your background in music and theatre?

How much time have you got, lol.

I was studying classical guitar when I lived in Brisbane and passed a few grades. I loved it and when we moved to Charters Towers , I tried to find someone who could help me continue, but there wasn’t anybody. Charters Towers is a small town and the only music I could find happening was country music. My little family and I joined one of the clubs and I taught my two daughters to play guitar. My eldest daughter preferred bass and when she was reasonably competent, we grabbed a guy from the club and formed our band. He preferred bass too but we made him play lead guitar, lol. My hub decided he’d be manager and set about lining up gigs through North and North West Queensland. Our democratically voted name was Eclipse, and we played anything from Chuck Berry to Alanis Morissette and our own original music.

Dale is pictured on the far left. This snapshot is so 80s!

Sounds exciting! So what happened? Did you have any success?

We had a ball for a few years, gained fans, and watched the sun come up before we went to bed a few times. Ha, I could bore you silly with stories about that time in my life, but I’d better move on… As all good things do, our fun times came to and end. Our lead player moved out of town and my daughter, wanting to spread her wings, joined other bands in the area. My younger daughter had already moved out of town and had started doing her own music. I hooked up with other bands every now and then too, but I started looking for other ways to indulge my creativity. I’m proud to say both my girls continued to perform and write music. They are both extremely talented. Yeah, I’m a little biased.

At some point, I developed an interest in theatre and, with my sister, joined the local Theatre Restaurant, Towers Players. I was with them for several years, acting major and minor parts, and of course, building sets. We performed many musicals and we all pitched in with whatever had to be done. I enjoyed every play I was involved in and I played everything from a nun to a Wild West bargirl until we moved to Townsville. Just before we left, I directed the musical, Rome Sweet Rome.

Dale on center stage in a red gown and feathers.

During all those years, I wrote short stories, songs and plays as well as working intermittently on my first full novel. Townsville Little Theatre produced and performed The Shed, a one-act comedy play I co-wrote with a friend, with Stella McMahon. Towers Players also produced and performed the play in Charters Towers and in Opera in the Outback at the Undara. That was pretty cool.

I started taking writing courses for my fiction, writing more shorts and novels, and that is where I invest all of my time nowadays.

Wow Dale, I’m so impressed! And what a talented family you have! Thank you so much for sharing this with us and for being here with us today. For someone as hugely creative as you are, I think wishes are needless. So I’ll just say, keep creating, honey!

Thank you very much Fros; I’ve enjoyed our chat immensely!

BIO

Dale has enjoyed many creative pursuits including playing guitar and singing in a band, acting and directing in theatre, writing novels, short stories, plays, songs and poems.

She also reads any genre so long as the story is good. Her writing is the highly imaginative, interweaving of Science Fiction and Fantasy where she forges tales that also take on an Action Adventure feel. After over thirty years of writing, she still delights in her journeys to unknown places, meeting unheard-of peoples.

Dale adores her family, friends and the wonderful people who read her stories.

CONNECT WITH DALE

Website: http://www.dalefurse.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaleFurseAuthor?ref=hl

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaleFurse

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6154702.Dale_Furse

Amazon Author page http://www.amazon.com/Dale-Furse/e/B0080JKMLK