- If you were not a writer what would you be doing ?
I would have been an archeologist working in the
field. I have always loved history, and as a kid I was going to do that but as
many of us do I would up going to college and finding out I was pretty good
with computers just as they were coming into the world in a big way. I had a
varied career but was able to retire young. I still love history but spending my days with a brush and trowel bent
over in the elements is less appealing than it was when I was 12.
- If you wrote a book about your life what would the
title be?
I am writing a book about my life (or a small piece
of it) but I can’t share the working title just yet. I will instead plagiarize
a famous film title and say “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” covers it pretty
well.
- What is the hardest thing about being an author?
For me it is the initial writing. It is an odd
thing, in that when I am writing time flies and I am happy. It is really hard
for me to get started though, to sit down and not find a hundred little
distractions that keep me from making progress. Once I am deeper into the
project, maybe at the 20K word mark or so, it gets easier as I begin to have
confidence that it will be good and I will be able to finish it.
- What is the best thing about being an author?
Creating characters and worlds that didn’t exist
until I wrote them, and breathing enough life into them that another person can
visit and feel the experience of being there.
- Have you ever been star struck by meeting one of
your favorite authors? If so who was it?
I have not really had that happen, though I was in a
poetry writing group years ago and there were several people in there who were
really very good. I am much better at writing prose, though I will say I had
some poetry published as well. One of the poets in my group that really stood
out was Lisa Ortiz, and she, along with a few of the others, has had some
publication success herself though not nearly enough in my opinion.
- What book changed your life?
The first time I read the ancient writers I was
amazed that I could connect with someone who sat in daylight or before an oil
lamp and wrote his (or in the case of Sappho her) very human thoughts on what
passed for paper back then. One of the first of those I read was The Satyricon,
(probably by Gaius Petronius, a friend of Nero’s), which is really only
fragments of an ancient “novel” that gives a direct look into what the street
life in ancient Rome was like during the first century. I like the looser
styles of Julius Caesar, Tacitus and Suetonius as opposed to the more dry
histories.
- What were your some of favorite books growing up?
I was really into the Edgar Rice Burroughs’
Pellucidar and Barsoom books as my first real reading interests. Before that I
had books that were primarily about dinosaurs and butterflies.
- What books are currently in your to be read pile?
Since I have started writing another novel I tend
not to read much, but when I do I like quick read thrillers like John
Sandford’s Prey series and spin-offs, Lee Child’s Reacher novels or less heavy
historical novels like Simon Scarrow’s Gladiator novels or some of the older
Roman detective novels like the Steven Saylor’s books about Gordianus the Finder.
- Which do you prefer ebooks, print, or audio books?
Print, I still like to hold them in my hands and
turn the pages. I have read a few books
on my wife’s Kindle though and I suppose I could get used to that.
- If you could live inside the world of a book or
series which world would it be and why?
The past was really interesting but in reality it was
a much harder place to live. In most cases the “good old days” weren’t all that
great. I would want to go into the future, someplace where the universe had
opened up and spilled many more of her secrets. Maybe an adventurous life as
well would be good. To be honest I have not read a lot of science fiction
recently but I think the worlds of the Heritage series of novels by Charles
Sheffield would be a great place to be. I could get a do-over on being an
archeologist in the realm of Builder artifacts.
Spawn of the Cataclysm
Robert Hoppensteadt
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Adventure
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Date of Publication: March 2. 2020
ISBN: 979-8620552344
ASIN: B085DN3K5V
Number of pages: Print 227; Kindle 194
Word Count: 70K
Book Description:
Humans carelessly wielded their power to create new things, a power that far outpaced their understanding. It was only a matter of time until something went terribly wrong. Something did.
Technology has been erased for millenniums, monsters spawned at the end of a world infest the forests and seas, and a new civilization has slowly risen from the long darkness. In sight of the looming ruins of what was once called San Francisco there is an evil growing.
The people of New Gate are about to face their greatest challenge.
Excerpt Chapter One
“We didn’t create the virus, it lived in the wild. We found it when Howler monkeys began starving to death even though they stripped every local crop in the area. The virus triggered their metabolism to speed up ... we were paid by the Defense Department to develop an offensive application, said we could keep exclusive rights to all its commercial uses if we delivered. It could have changed the way we grow food but they pushed us. It wasn’t ready to test, and when the earthquake hit… is out now. The death toll will be on their heads. And ours.”
Translated from the Cataclysm
Rik Arrowen leaned over the gunwale, his gaze following dancing green shafts of sunlight that plunged into the depths. He strained his eyes, thought he saw movement. A huge shadow drifted slowly below the light. He knew the creature they Hunted was down there, a hungry thing that lurked unseen.
“It is here,” he muttered.
A school of silver fish darted upward, their bodies flashed like a thousand mirrors. Rik’s heart jumped in the instant before a sail-sized fin, jagged and scarred, cut slowly into the green twilight before receding back into the murk. He had no time to catch his breath, or shout a warning, when the great misshapen spawn rose fast and straight into the light, its gaping jaws filled with teeth. The thing ignored the weighted haunch of bloody meat they had drawn it in with, and hit the wooden galley on the port side with enough force to knock four Hunters into the bay.
As the hull rocked, the water turned red and raw screams filled the air.
***
“What a beautiful day to be alive.”
The voice blew away Rik’s memory and brought him back to where he stood, high above the countryside on the windy battlement of Stonehaven’s north wall.
“Oh, forgive me,” the voice continued. “Did I startle you?”
Rik did not bother to turn around.
“No, Jerold,” he replied. “I was watching the bay. It’s been six days since we lost those four Hunters to the spawn. I can’t stop hearing their screams as the thing ate them. Nothing we could do. We hit it with five harpoons and it still swam away. On the way down, it swallowed the bait haunch whole, and would have pulled us under if we hadn’t cut the rope.” He paused for a moment. “I have never seen one that big. I hope it has gone back out to sea.”
“May the Mystery welcome them all,” Jerold said. “I don’t often see anyone else up here this time of day. I like the solitude, the view calms me when the Council is crawling up my back about money.”
Rik scanned the horizon. The morning mist had burned away, and the sea breeze held a hint of pine. To the west rose a low range covered with giant redwoods, some of them hundreds of feet tall. The ridge continued to wind its way from the south, ending in cliffs at the mouth of the bay. The wide channel reflected the blue of the sky, and ripples that ran counter to the waves marked strong currents that carried the tide out to sea. Across the water, the redwoods picked up again and became the great northern forest. Long ago, when the seas were lower, a famed bridge the ancients called Golden Gate stretched above the treacherous waters from shore to shore. Nothing was left of it now but a few worn mounds of concrete piles at each end.
Below the fortress, starting near the base of the hill, the city of New Gate sprouted like a garden. It spread down to the bay, a bright jumble of buildings and spires that tumbled to the busy harbor. There, sailing ships and galleys crowded together, bare masts bobbed within the walls of the breakwater. New Gate was home to almost twenty thousand souls and a passing refuge for a few thousand more at any given time. Now, it was bursting at the seams with wagons and people who could be seen crowding the streets and setting up stalls in the Market Square for the upcoming Equinal Games.
To the east and scattered around the bay were ruins. Most were settled into oddly geometric mounds and small hills covered in green, but in some places, they rose like monstrous patches of black lace from the dense hardwood forests that covered the lowlands around the bay. The largest cluster of these, called Lily’s Bones for reasons nobody could remember, contained broken and crumbling towers so immense that their ragged peaks were sometimes lost in the clouds.
About the Author:
Robert Hoppensteadt lied about his age and started working in Reno when he was fourteen, washing dishes on the late shift at a casino restaurant. Since then he has been a grunt in the Forest Service, a carpenter, and, after receiving a degree in Information Systems, a recruiter and senior manager. Now he writes full time. He has lived on both coasts and several places in between but currently resides in Virginia with his wife and two seriously spoiled and obnoxious cats.
