Welcome back to the Confessions of a Reviewer interview
with writer and all round good guy, David Dubrow.
In Part Two, tonight, David starts by telling you some of
the stuff you need to know about the Armageddon
trilogy and in particular, his new book, The
Nephilim and the False Prophet.
This part of the interview is purely from the heart and
to me, proves that as well as an imagination to die for, Mr Dubrow has
qualities that a lot of us could learn from.
It’s only Tuesday but go grab something nice like a pizza
and a beer, sit back and relax, but mostly……enjoy
CoaR - Moving on to the Armageddon Trilogy. What did you want to get across with this
series?
DD - I wanted to show the real-world consequences of the
ultimate clash of philosophies: what would happen if there really was a
Biblical apocalypse, and how it would affect not just individuals, but our
culture and civilization.
My intent is to treat both believers and non-believers
with respect by showing that each have very good reasons for thinking what they
think and doing what they do. Even the bad guys, the ones working for Hell, are
pragmatists. Also, it’s cool to have people fighting secret battles with holy
relics, magic, and divine-inspired visions to shape the outcome of Armageddon.
CoaR - The Blessed
Man and the Witch was a hell of an introduction to the possible happenings
come the end of the world. Is this how you see it panning out or do you think
it’s all impossible?
DD - It’s all impossible. I’m a staunch believer in the
scientific method. I don’t believe in ghosts or magic or angels or demons. But
I do believe in God.
COAR - Without starting a whole theological debate, how
can you believe in both the science explanation and God?
DD - Many of our greatest scientists, including Isaac Newton,
Rene Descartes, and even Albert Einstein were believers in both God and
science. It’s only recently that the two have been deemed mutually exclusive,
and I reject that.
What’s great about my religious beliefs is that I don’t
require anyone else to share them: my faith in God is secure, well-considered,
and personal to me.
CoaR - You continue the theme with The Nephilim and the False Prophet. It all has a religious theme
and feeling to it. Are you religious yourself? Is this what inspired you to
write it?
DD - Like I said, I’m Jewish, and the religious themes in
the Armageddon trilogy involve, for
the most part, the Christian faith. My Bible ends at the first five books: The
Tanakh, or Pentateuch, if you will. Still, I find eschatology fascinating, especially
of the Christian variety, and I wanted to handle the idea of Armageddon with
respect and seriousness.
Some of my inspiration came from movies like The Omen and The Omen III: The Final Conflict, which I saw as a youngster and it
terrified the hell out of me. Also, believe it or not, the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis inspired me: they have a depth and magic
all their own, where miracles are commonplace from a present God and even the
known and natural become things of wonder.
CoaR - When you read these books it comes across that you
are extremely knowledgeable about the history. How much research did you have
to do for the books?
DD - I did and do a lot. Part of it is an ongoing
process: I’m a news junkie, and I read news and opinion pieces from both sides
of the political aisle at least as much as I read fiction, not to mention books
on recent and ancient history. My occult library isn’t huge, but it’s
decent-sized. Having the Bible and
the Apocrypha and A Dictionary of Angels nearby also
helps. When it comes to the violence in my books, I have a good deal of
personal experience with violence, the people most comfortable with it, and the
tools most often used to produce it.
CoaR - Is it definitely going to end with book three or
is there scope for more?
DD - It’s definitely going to end with book three. I
promised a trilogy and I will deliver. I know how I want it to end, it’s just
getting there that’s the challenge.
CoaR - Once this trilogy is finished could you see
yourself writing something completely different in style?
DD - Yes, perhaps, but I like the multiple character
approach, especially with a big story like the end of the world: you get to
show a lot of it from several different perspectives. The limited third-person
perspective also gives the character’s depth and adds to the dramatic tension:
you only see what they see, know what they think. For me, the genre and plot
help determine the style.
CoaR - What would your ultimate wish be with your
writing?
DD - To entertain as many people as possible. Anything
else that happens is a bonus.
CoaR - What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
DD - Spend time with my wife and little boy. We go swimming,
hiking, visit parks, go to the beach, build Legos, do action figure battles,
and other such things. I don’t have time for hobbies, as such, but one thing I
like to do when I can is bake bread, from artisan boules to brioche to pizza.
There’s an art and a science to it: kneading,
fermentation, resting, shaping, baking. It never loses its magic.
CoaR - Maybe write a cook book specialising on baking
bread?
DD - I don’t know enough to do that. Bakers like Ciril
Hitz, Peter Reinhart, Ken Forkish, and Beth Hensperger spent years and years in
study and practice and teaching and learning before writing their books. All I
would be doing is regurgitating (gross, yeah) what I’ve learned from them in a
home kitchen. I respect their work far too much to assume anything more than a
base level of competence. Also, I still can’t shape a baguette the French way
and still achieve an open, airy crumb on the inside. My boules and batards are
near-perfect, but the baguettes need work.
CoaR - What’s coming in the future from David Dubrow?
DD - The last book in my Armageddon trilogy. All fiction-writing efforts are bent in that
direction. More original articles in multiple publications. I prefer longer
works to short stories. Once the Armageddon
trilogy is done, I’ll get started on the next novel, whatever it turns out to
be, and then the next one after that.
CoaR - I find it very interesting that you don't have a
list of ideas that might take you the next five years to write. Does such a
list exist or do you only work on one thing at a time, novel wise?
DD - I only work on one thing at a time. I pour
everything into it so I can be sure I’ve done the best job I could do. A reader
deserves nothing less than a writer’s best effort. I have a few book ideas for
after the Armageddon trilogy that
have taken up persistent cranial attic space, but they’ll wait. Someday I’d
like to try my hand at heroic fantasy (there’s a little bit of that in The Nephilim and the False Prophet).
Science fiction is like pasta for me: I like to consume it, but I won’t bother
trying to make it.
THE TEN CONFESSIONS
1 Who would you view as your main competitor in the
writing world?
I have no competitors. Not that I’m terribly original,
it’s just that I’m doing my own thing and other writers do their own things,
and I treasure every reader. If my work stands out, it’s because I take a point
of view in my religious-themed horror that’s respectful to Christianity and
appreciates the breadth of thought and consideration behind Christian
apologetics. Without me being a Christian, even. Louis Pasteur, Michael
Faraday, and C.S. Lewis weren’t unsophisticated, Bible-thumping buffoons: they
were brilliant, learned men who had an abiding belief in God. People of faith
get a bad rap today, especially in fiction, which is unfortunate.
2 What book or author have you read that you think should
never have been published?
I’ve read many books that shouldn’t have been published.
The indie and self-publishing boom has been extraordinary for both readers and
writers, but the lack of quality control sometimes makes it difficult to find
the pony in all the horse manure. It’s just the nature of the changing world of
books, so I’ve just got to work harder to push my material to the top and hope
it whinnies.
3 Are any of the things your characters have experienced
in your books been based on something that has actually happened to you? What
was it?
In The Blessed Man
and the Witch, Hector and his wife Reyna attempted to adopt a baby, and
after they took the baby home and cared for him for a few days, the birth
mother changed her mind and decided to parent instead. It’s a thing that can
happen in the state of Colorado; the birth mother has five business days to
change her mind before the paperwork is filed.
Something very similar to this happened to my wife and I
the first time we tried to adopt, and it’s an experience that is about as awful
as it sounds. But we came back from it, and a few months later we successfully
adopted a different child, and we’ve never been happier or more fortunate.
4 Have you ever blatantly stolen an idea or scene and
adapted it for one of your own books? If so, care to share?
No. Not blatantly, not subtly, not at all. I do have this
idea, however, for a TV show about a pair of brothers who travel around the
country killing monsters and saving people, and I bet someone’s going to steal
that someday.
5 Have you ever anonymously left a bad review for someone
else’s book? If so, care to share?
Yes. For several months I wrote book reviews for an indie
horror site that I’m no longer associated with, and the site got many review
requests for books that should have never made it past the critique group
stage. Poorly-written books with frequent grammatical errors, overly repetitive
sentence structure, unrealistic dialogue, and/or derivative to non-existent
plots. While I didn’t like doing it, I helped the site by honestly reviewing
some of those books and putting those negative reviews under the site’s banner
rather than my own.
The mitigating factor is that the reviews never made it
to Amazon or Goodreads, which could have harmed their sales. I won’t do that
sort of thing again, as book reviewing is a gigantic can of worms, especially
if you’re a writer yourself. It’s easy to make enemies in a small world.
Negative reviews hurt, but you suck it up, determine if the criticism is valid,
make the decision to learn from the experience (this is very important), and
move on.
6 What’s the one thing you are least proud of doing in
your life and why?
Man alive, Nev. Every day I do five things I’m not proud
of before I get out of bed in the morning, and you want me to pick the worst
one ever?
Impossible, but here’s a relatively recent one: I allowed
myself to get pressured into giving a book review a much higher rating than it
deserved because I didn’t want to make the author or his friends mad. As it
turned out they got mad at me for entirely different reasons, so I was only
delaying the inevitable. It’s a mistake I won’t make again. That reviewing can
of worms thing again: learn from my mistakes.
CoaR - Are you saying you were asked / told to give a
book a higher rating than you thought it deserved?
DD - Absolutely not. People are smart enough not to put
something like that in writing. But if we’re going to be grown-ups about it, we
do have to admit that peer pressure is a thing.
7 What’s the one thing you are MOST proud of doing in
your life and why?
Marrying my wife, becoming a dad. I’ve done a bunch of
things that are pretty cool, but nothing tops that.
8 What’s your biggest fault?
Overconfidence in my own rectitude. Obviously, I have
quite a way to go.
9 What is your biggest fear?
The fear every parent has: something awful and
irrevocable happening to my child. I’ve been around, seen stuff, done stuff,
some of it terrible, some of it extraordinary. Whatever happens to me, I can
deal. I just don’t want my son’s spark to dim, is all.
10 If you had to go to confession now, what would be the
one thing you would need to get off your chest?
Well, Jews don’t go to confession the way some Christians
do. However, our highest holiday, Yom Kippur, is the Day of Atonement, where we
attempt to atone for our sins. It’s a fast day (that is, we don’t eat from the
night before Yom Kippur through the day into the evening: moonrise to
moonrise). So, on Yom Kippur, one of the things I would get off my chest is not
sticking up for you, Nev, when a mutual acquaintance was running you down
online. It was shitty and I’m ashamed that I didn’t speak up and I can’t
believe I kept quiet. Some tests you pass, and some you fail, and that one I
failed, and I apologize.
CoaR – I would just like to point out that this apology
is not necessary. The situation in question was not something David could deal
with openly at the time. It is none the less appreciated. Thanks dude.
Well that, unfortunately, is the end of the interview.
You should, by now, know nearly all you need to know about David Dubrow.
If you want to know more then come back tomorrow night
when I will be posting my review of The
Nephilim and the False Prophet. and will provide you with all the
links to buy it and all the links you need in case you want to get in touch
with David or just follow what he’s doing.
I want to say a personal thanks to David for giving up
his precious time to take part in this interview and for being so open and
honest about every single aspect of his life. I know some of this was difficult
to talk about in a manner that didn’t come across as facetious.
You pulled it off Dirty Dave!
By the way I would also like to point out that David
Dubrow is not dirty in any way shape or form, that I am aware of! For whatever
reason, I called him that one day and now I can’t get it out of my head.
Maybe I’ll change it to Diamond Dave!
Thanks again for visiting Confessions of a Reviewer!
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