Interview with spec fic author Shelly Campbell

Speculative fiction author Shelly Campbell joins me today to chat about her dark sci-fi series, Dark Walker Series.

During her virtual book tour, Shelly will be giving away a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn participant. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. Shelly writes speculative fiction ranging from grimdark fantasy, to sci-fi and horror. She’d love to hear from you.

Welcome, Shelly. Please tell us about your current release.
Breach is book 2 in the Dark Walker series, an interdimensional sci-fi/horror. In book 1, Gulf, our main character David is inexplicably becoming invisible while trying to save his family from nocturnal monsters trying to get through the door that he inadvertently opened into a mirror dimension of his world. In Breach, we get to dive behind the curtain and really get immersed in this alien world David’s found himself in. Mix up Narnia, Total Recall, Stranger Things, and Doctor Who and you’d have something resembling Breach.

What inspired you to write this book?
In Gulf, I leave a lot of questions hanging unanswered and I wanted to start digging into some answers. Plus, David is my favorite character and I wanted to spend more time with the guy. Unfortunately, as a horror writer, that means putting him in some pretty grim situations and seeing how he scrapes his way through them.

Excerpt from Gulf:
Something that sounds like a dog scrabbling across hardwood jolts me awake. I focus on a low wooden ceiling and struggle to place my surroundings. My legs tingle under a heavy weight, and when I push away what I assume is a blanket, the dictionary slides off my knees and falls to the floor with a thud. The busy scratching intensifies, reminds me of mice running through our hollow walls back home, or cockroaches.

That sounds bigger than cockroaches. I frown.“Shit!” I whisper, scrambling to the edge of the loft, and blinking into the darkness below.

James is standing in front of the couch. A wedge of pale moonlight from the kitchen window ribbons across his back, and his shoulders shudder. He’s shivering. A moving shadow ahead of him catches my gaze. It’s a black hand extending under the door, elongated fingers splayed, claws scrabbling for purchase on the worn planks as it reaches for James’s ankle.

“James!” I yelp.

He shuffles closer to the five-panel, oblivious to my call, but the maneater hears it and rattles the door violently.

“James, stop!” I plunge down the ladder and my feet hit the floor so hard my ankles twinge. Spinning, I grip the couch as I round it, grasping for my brother’s shoulder. I miss, barely raking his back as he shuffles ahead with his hand reaching for the crystal doorknob glinting in the moonlight. “James!”

The black questing hand snags around his ankle and yanks hard.

James’s chin snaps against his chest as the rest of him rag-dolls backward. A thick smack reverberates through the floor as his head ricochets off hardwood.

I scream and jump over him.

The claw twists James’s foot sideways and jerks back, mashing my brother’s heel against the bottom of the shuddering door, deaf to his waking, harrowing wail.

Blood trickles down his foot.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’m currently tackling the third book in my Sol Survivor series. The first two books are out, Knowledge Itself, and Madness of People. It’s a YA solar flare post-apocalypse set in Canada years after the sun has wiped out electrical grids. I’m co-writing it with my good friend Megan King. It’s got neurodiversity and disability representation, and found family vibes. It’s been a lot of fun to explore what near future post-apocalyptic Canada might look like, and we’d love it if more folks checked out the series.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I started getting reviews from strangers.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I don’t write full time. I teach H2S Alive (an oilfield safety course) and First Aid a couple times a week and the rest of the time, boys are in baseball and hockey. They’re getting older now though, so it’s easier to carve out an hour here and there for writing, especially because I don’t work full time.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I have a group of critique partners who I consider to be good friends. I can’t quite remember how it started, but one of us highlighted and commented on the word ‘limned’ while reviewing someone else’s first draft, and afterward, we all started jokingly including some form of the word limn in our manuscripts. Like an Easter egg for us to find as we beta read for each other. The majority of my manuscripts still have limn or limned hidden in them somewhere.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A dragon, a fighter pilot, or a writer. One out of three. There’s still time for the other two.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Thank you. Thanks to every one of you who take chances on writers you haven’t read, who share books they love with other people, who leave reviews, who host blogs, who love reading plain and simple. I couldn’t do this without you all. Keep feeding those imaginations!

Links:
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