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THE DEN VALDRON INTERVIEW
How Did You Discover Edgar Rice Burroughs? ~ Part III
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Some of the books by Den Valdron

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How about your non-fiction books, you mentioned Doctor Who?

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A trilogy - The Pirate Histories of Doctor Who.   It started with reviews of Doctor Who fan films.

Did you know that the first woman to play the Doctor wasn’t Jody Whittaker.  It was Barbara Benedetti, a stage actress out of Seattle. When the BBC had its cancellation crisis and put the show on hiatus in the mid-eighties, she was part of a group that started making their own.  Their first story was shot on film, back when the BBC show was on video - they actually had higher production standards. She starred in four stories.

Technically, they’re fan films. But you have a professional actress playing the Doctor in a high quality production better than the BBC at the time, she’s playing a new unique Doctor, she’s playing the Doctor in a series of four half hour adventures. All this when the show is off the air, or at its lowest period. She’s not official? So what? She is the Doctor of the Gap.

From there, I got interested in fan films, a lot are terrible of course. Enthusiasm is no substitute for skill and talent. But there are some interesting ones, and the best ones are amazing.  From there, I got interested in the history of the show, some of the backstage skullduggery, then stage plays, animated versions and the audio stuff, gray market, copyright, missing episodes.

Honestly, the thing with fan films, with the animations, and audios, the reconstructions, all these things that fans do... The thing is, there’s no money in it for them, no fame, nothing really.  They’re doing it out of love.

Isn’t that wonderful. Isn’t that best reason to ever do anything?  Out of love.

I thought I would do one book - The Pirate History of Doctor Who, but there was too much material, so Another Pirate History of Doctor Who, and eventually, The Last Pirate History of Doctor Who.

I think I’ll stop there.  But there’s amazing stuff there. This is a thing I love.  Finding these secret corners no one has peeked into, finding the lost, the overlooked, the hidden gems, the secret delights, and sharing it with people.

The world is full of all these wonderful things that are everywhere, that we miss. I like to track these down, explore them, discover.  We live in an amazing world with wonders around every corner. We need to appreciate it more.

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And you mentioned LEXX?

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Yes.  The great LEXX book. What did I say?  I wrote the book I wanted to write, exactly the way I wanted to write it, and then I put it away.

I actually thought it was long gone.  Since I wrote it, I’d a basement flood, marriage breakdown, I moved three times, two hard drive crashes, career change, and sundry other disasters.

As it turns out, I was visiting my Dad, and he had upgraded his computer, and he needed an external device to read floppy disks.  So I found him one, and then as an afterthought, I got one for myself.  I had a ton of floppy disks, including all my stories, so I figured I should salvage my story disks at least.

Anyway, after I’d salvaged my stories and novels and essays, I had a lot of old business disks that were basically junk. Most of it was just surplus, I was getting rid of stuff, didn’t even bother to look at half of it.  But I happened to check one unmarked disk before I tossed it, and lo and behold, there it was. Lost for ten years, and now it was found.

What I discovered was that when you’re writing the book you want, exactly the way you want it, it gets long.  A few hundred thousand words.

So to release it, I broke it into four books, one for each season.  That worked because the show changed radically every year.  Released one each year.

It’s a shame. There really isn’t much of a market for a book or a book series about a cult television show that’s been gone fifteen years.

But it doesn’t matter.  I’m very proud of the work, and I’m glad that they’re out there in the world.  I’m proud of all my books.

That’s what really matters to me.

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Having the books out?

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Yes.  I mean look, I don’t have children, I don’t have a spouse, or family or anything.  I’m it.  One day, I’m going to die, and then what?

Someone will clear out my home, some of it will go to the goodwill, some of it just to the dumpster. My affairs will be tidied up.  My computer will go into electronic recycling. I’m a writer, my life’s work is in a hard drive, it goes into electronic waste, and everything I did, everything I meant, it all just gets wiped away.

I’m not maudlin, that’s just how it is.

I would like that work out in the world.  I don’t want it to just sit and gather dust in the hard drive until I die, and it gets wiped away.  So, I’m making the effort to get it out into the world.

I don’t know if it sells. I don’t know how much I care. I just want it to be out there in the world, and not gathering dust.  People can read it, people can not read it, but this way, they have the option. There’ll be something after I’m gone.

That’s not morbid is it?  I don’t think it’s morbid.

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So have you completely emptied your hard drive?

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ot even close.  I’m actually behind schedule.  I’ve got four or five more books I wanted to work on this year.  Well, maybe next year’s the charm.

I’m thinning it out, but I think I’ve got at least another ten or twelve books.  Maybe more.  I figure maybe another five years?

That’s not even counting the Burroughs stuff, if Bill ever gets tired of hosting me.

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Why so long to get it all out there?

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Well, I actually like to write new things.  And I’d like to work on getting traditional publishers for my novels.

What I’d like is for publishers to take my novels once I’ve written them, give me money and then they do all the rest of the work. That’s the plan.

So I have novels and stories, and I want to keep writing more.  I have scripts that I work on. I’m doing some adobe videos.  I have these things I want to write for ERBzine. There’s going to conventions, making contacts.  I’ve published other people.  There’s the day job. All that kind of eats into time.

And in terms of emptying out the hard drive, it’s not as easy as just uploading. You have to design and compile.  Incomplete work needs to be finished, rough drafts need to be finalized. A lot of stuff needs revision, editing, formatting, cleaning up.  Then there’s book formatting, registration, cover design, metadata.  There’s a lot of work involved.

A lot of what’s left in the hard drive is in rougher shape.  It’ll take a bit more polishing to get out.  That’s all right. I have time.

Honestly, I think maybe self-publishing is taking up a little too much time from trying to break through into commercial publishing. But it’s tricky finding a balance.

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You publish other people, you mentioned that before?

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I’ve published two other writers.

Scott Ellis, a friend of mine and a brilliant, brilliant writer who is mostly unknown.  I’ve known him for years.  He’s done these wonderful stories - funny, sublime, touching.

I had this idea that I’d publish a collection of his. That turned into a couple of years of work - nagging and pushing him to pull it all together.  His stories were all over the place, it took him a long time to dig them all up. He’d be sending me these files he couldn’t open in some weird obsolete format, or from some almost defunct online site, or old email.  I’d have to try and open them.

Eventually, we had enough material for two collections - Benny the Antichrist and Crawling to the Moon. I held a book launch for him.  That was the first time I did one, it was for Scott.  Drunk Slutty Elf came second.

I’m very proud of publishing him, his work is great, the stories are wonderful, even the covers are terrific.  Sadly, single author short story collections don’t sell very well.  I’m not very good at marketing. I wish I was, I’d like to push his books harder.

But at least his work is out there.  Maybe he’ll be discovered and get rich and famous, who knows.  At worst, I like that his stories are out and available for people to find, rather than gathering dust sitting in his hard drive.

If he ever pulls enough together for a third volume - he’s got a lot of poetry, essays, maybe more stories, I’ll publish that for him too.  I just hope it will be easier this time around.

The other is R.J. Hore.  He’s a local writer. I knew him from around. He asked me to help him get his rights back from a Zombie publisher. We did it.  So he had four books back.  I told him he could go to another publisher, or self publish. He asked me to do it for him.

R.J. is a really good guy, so I said okay.  It was a fair amount of work, but it turned out well.

This was a little easier than with Scott.  I wasn’t trying to open documents from arcane forgotten word processors. I just had to reverse engineer manuscripts from pdf, format documents for print, design covers, etc.  What am I saying?  It was still a lot of work.

I did my third book launch this year, for R.J. Hore and his books.  It was his first book launch. He’d written fourteen books and never had a book launch, isn’t that tragic?  I’m glad I could do it for him. His whole family was thrilled, his daughters and granddaughters came out for it.  It’s nice to see someone get some respect.

It’s funny, I’ve run three book launches, but only one was for myself.  The first and last were for other people.  I think if I hadn’t ended up doing it for them, I probably wouldn’t have bothered for myself.  I just don’t seem to think that way for myself.  They were all interesting experiences though, and I think they went well.

R.J. Hore’s books are novels.  There’s one stand alone novel - We’re Not in Kansas, a straight up adventure; and a trilogy - Toltec Dawn, Toltec Khan and Toltec Noon, about the American Toltec empire conquering England in the Knightly era.

I’m interested in seeing how they do. As I said, collections don’t sell well, so that’s it for Scott.  And my projects were deliberately non-commercial, so that’s it for me.

But novels, those have a fighting chance in the marketplace. I’m finally publishing something that might actually have legs, that has a chance to actually find an audience, that might sell in the marketplace?  I’m very interested in seeing how we do with his books.

I kind of wish I was better at marketing and promotion, just to experiment with giving those a push.

He has another book, a long lost, much loved manuscript.  His daughter re-discovered it, and we learned about it at the book launch.  Apparently, it’s a favorite, a local publisher sat on it for a year, and then it got lost.  But now it’s found. We might publish it next year.

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Do you think you’ll continue to publish other people?

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I wouldn’t rule it out. I’ve offered to help some people, but it’s funny. People say that they want to be writers, or want to write a book. But even if I offer to help, they don’t follow through.

I’ve always thought the tough part was getting published. But for a lot of people, the tough part is actually writing.

Still, I think I’d do it.  Has to be someone close, or someone whose work I really love and want to get out into the world.

I’m not going it for the money - there’s no money in writing or publishing - or at least not the way I’ve been doing it.  And it’s really a lot of work. So I really have to want to do it.

I did some workshops for the writers guild - five sessions, three hours apiece, hands on work, teaching people to self publish themselves.  I’ve done a lot of presentations and workshops to help writers.

I’d rather people follow their own stars.  I think it’s more satisfying for them to self publish themselves, to own every part of it.  I try to encourage and help anyone who reaches out.

Personally, I don’t know.  I find it’s a huge amount of work.  I think this year I’ve spent more time being a publisher, than a writer.  And more time being a writer than actually writing.

I want to get back to writing, that’s where I live.

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How are you doing on mainstream publishing?

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Well, as I’ve said, I was published by Five Rivers out in Ontario.  They published the Mermaid’s Tale and contracted for another novel, The Luck.  Then a month before The Luck was supposed to come out, they shut down and rights to both reverted back to me.

The Mermaid’s Tale sat around for a few years out of print. I had some hope of finding a regular publisher, but it was kind of burned as previously published.  So once I confirmed that, I re-released it through Fossil Cove.  It’s back out in the world.

It’s set in this fantasy world, in a multi-racial city, the titular mermaid has been slaughtered in a horrible way, and her people summon an Orc to find the killer. It takes a monster to catch a monster, that sort of thing.  As the Orc hunts, she discovers something no one has ever seen before, their world’s first serial killer, but she can’t get anyone to care. It’s a murder mystery, but also a personal journey.

I’m very proud of it.  I think it’s a damned good book.  It’s actually very well received.  I just found a review on Youtube that came out when the book was re-released.  My first Youtube review - “Utterly unique and underrated dark fantasy.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGCBQ90qqyE&t=114s

The Mermaid’s Tale has gotten a lot of good reviews, crazy good reviews. It’s flattering, maybe it’s not a best seller but the people who read it, loved it.  Axis of Andes, someone said it was the greatest alternate history they ever read. I try not to let reviews go to my head, but it’s nice to hear that someone enjoyed it now and then.

I have a book with At Bay Press coming out - Twilight of Echelon.  It’s a collaboration with Robert Pasternak. Basically, he did a series of paintings collectively called Echelon, and I and a few other writers wrote stories inspired by the paintings.  It was supposed to be out this year.  I’m hearing next year.  I’m just waiting. I have huge hopes for this. Ground breaking, award winning, or at least I hope. We’ll see.

Five Rivers and At Bay Press gave me confidence.  I know that I’m good enough to be published by real publishing companies. That’s been established. Those and good reviews, and pro and semi-pro short story credits kind of allow me to feel I’m okay at this, maybe even good at it.

With writers, there’s a lot of self doubt, even self loathing. So it’s nice to have real credits, and even nicer to have good reviews. It can be scary to put yourself out there, and it’s crushing to be rejected or ignored or not to make any impact at all. So these little pieces of affirmation keep us going.

Mainstream publishing is slow. Self-pub, nothing holds me back. I can do a book in a few months, release a few books a year. But if you’re dealing with a regular publisher, it takes a year or two.
Anyway, as I’ve said, I have five novels in circulation, and I’m working on a few more.  A couple of my completed novels, apart from Torakar, are Burroughs inspired, as is one of my upcoming projects.  And I’m working on short stories. As I said, I try to keep busy.

But it’s tricky.  You can query small presses directly, but for a major publisher, you need to go through an agent.  Agents get hundreds of queries a weak, small presses get dozens of submissions.  So if you’re just querying blind.... well, it’s incredibly uphill, almost impossible.  You need a lot of luck.

You do better by going to conventions, making connections, either directly or for referrals. That guarantees that when you submit, they know who you are, and they’ll give you an honest look.  But you have to spend a lot of time and money going to conventions.  I’m not good socially, so it’s exhausting.  I usually sign up to give a lot of workshops and panels, I’m very good at doing programming, and it ups my profile. But that takes a lot of work.

This year, I really hit conventions hard, made contacts, got referrals, so I’ve actually got irons out in the fire with a decent chance.  We’ll see what happens.  If nothing, I’ll just write more and try again next year.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just going through the motions.  I’ll keep at it. I know I’m a good writer, but that’s not necessarily what counts.  So I may break through, or I may not.  If I don’t, well, I still have the self-pub option for my ‘commercial’ projects.

I’m at the point in my life where I’ve realized I’m not going to be the next J.K. Rowling, or Steven King.  Don’t get me wrong.  It would have been nice, it would have been really nice, particularly the readership and especially the money.  I could still break through, but I don’t know how realistic it is.  The big time fame and money is out of reach, I think.

But I still think I’ve got a shot, maybe at mid-levels, or a very well respected small press. I’d like to walk into bookstores and see a little bit of shelf space for myself, I have modest dreams. Maybe that will happen. Maybe not.

But that’s okay. I have a decent day job to take care of my needs.  I don’t have much else in my life. I love writing, it makes me happy, it balances me, it completes me.  So I write, and I’ll keep on writing. I think that’s worth it.

If you can spend your life doing something you love, that’s worthwhile.

I think there’s maybe a lot of people out there that don’t get that chance.

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Maybe you’ll be discovered after you pass on, and then you’ll be famous?

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Honestly. That would annoy the living hell out of me.  Who wants to be successful when you can’t be around to enjoy it?

I just want my stuff to be out there, hanging around after I’m gone.

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Where can we find your books?

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Oh that’s easy.  My books are available online, either as ebooks or print books on a variety of platforms.  Off the top of my head, you can find me or my books on Google, Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Ingram-Spark, Draft2Digital, Smashwords, Drivethrough, Biblioteca, Vivlio, Scribd, Palace.

Here’s my Amazon Author’s page:
https://www.amazon.ca/stores/D.G.-Valdron/author/B08BFCMV57

Smashwords Author page:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/D.G.Valdron

You can look me up on Google, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, I believe they’ll take you to my author pages, which will take you to the books themselves.

Or you can look up individual titles.

Also, keep an eye out for At Bay Press.  Feel free to harass them. Demand they publish Twilight of Echelon.

Seriously, just google “D.G. Valdron” that should get you on the right track to find my books, the free stuff I put up on the internet, and hopefully, eventually my commercially published novels and stories.

You can also look me up on Facebook - Den Valdron, my facebook picture is a giant rock that looks like a Buffalo.  I’m a little camera shy.  It’s actually an Archway rock from Fossil Cove in my home town.  It’s big enough, you can walk right under it.  It means something to me, so I took the name and used it for my publishing Imprint - just a nod to my roots.

And you can also look up my website at denvaldron.com.  I have a blog that I try to update regularly, filled with interesting stuff (I hope), as well as pages for my books, and even some free work.

That’s about it.  I’m a writer, I have books, I hope you’ll buy them.  This turned out to be a long interview for such a simple message.

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BOOKS BY D.G VALDRON, currently in print

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The Mermaid’s Tale
Axis of Andes, part one
New World War, Axis of Andes, part two
The Bear Cavalry, the True (not) History of the Icelandic Bear
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Drunk Slutty Elf and Other Stories
Drunk Slutty Elf and Zombies
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Giant Monsters Sing Sad Songs
There Are No Doors in Dark Places
What Devours Also Hungers
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The Dawn of Cthulhu
The Fall of Atlantis
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The Pirate History of Doctor Who
Another Pirate History of Doctor Who
The Last Pirate History of Doctor Who

LEXX Unauthorized, Series 1 - Backstage at the Dark Zone
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 2 - The Light at the End of the Universe
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 3 - It’s Light and it’s Cold
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 4 - Little Blue Marble

ALSO PUBLISHED BY D.G. VALDRON, UNDER FOSSIL COVE

Benny the Antichrist and Other Stories, by Scott Ellis
Crawling to the Moon and Other Stories, by Scott Ellis

We’re not in Kansas, by R.J. Hore

Toltec Dawn, by R.J. Hore
Toltec Khan, by R.J. Hore
Toltec Noon, by R.J. Hore