Welcome Dale Thompson, author of The Evil Within

Welcome, Dale! This talented and versatile writer starts off by answering a few questions. Below is quite a tantalizing interview:


1. How old were you when you were first published?
I was too old when my first book came out. That’s all you need to know about that. LOL

2. What writing style do you most abhor?
The whole paranormal shtick as currently practiced is a terrible bore. I love paranormal elements in romance as regards magical surroundings, clairvoyance, and folks who can do the impossible. As for werewolves, vampires, and the like, I hate it.

3. What is your favorite writing cliché?
The overuse of mirror images to give an alternate POV to the protagonist is a cliché, although I’m guilty of using it once or twice.

4. When and how do you write? (typewriter, Mac, in a café, for four hours each morning, etc?)
That’s easy. However and whenever. Well, I guess that isn’t a very satisfactory answer, is it? I started my fiction career using a pencil and spiral notebooks. That worked when the only computer I had access to was pretty limited. Starting in the middle of my fourth book, I began to compose directly onto the screen. Now it’s all on the computer, but sometimes I long for the good old days. As for when I write, I prefer the morning but have done some good writing later in the day recently.

5. What is your greatest fear when you first turn in a manuscript? I always worry that I’ve done all I can do with the story. Of course, we get a chance to make minor adjustments during editing, but I’m not at peace until the book is published.

6. In what era do you wish you’d been born?
I came close. Still, I wonder how I would have fared as a writer in the days of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald.

7. Which talent would you most like to have?
This one is too easy. I’d like to be able to cast a spell on my publishers so they would rubberstamp my work, and on the readers so they would anxiously await my next gem. LOL

8. What do you consider your greatest achievement? I relish my ability to think critically beyond the age of anyone in my family for two generations. Getting old isn’t so bad if you can still think, especially if you can act on it.

9. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, only he should have come to that conclusion much earlier in the book. But then, it wouldn’t have been the same book, come to think about it.

10. How would you like to die?
In the act of consummation with a lovely young nubile nymph. Just don’t tell my spouse. Please?



THE EVIL WITHIN blurb:

Among the teeming throng of mankind, can anywhere be found a man who does not harbor a seed of evil within his soul? Battle weary, Army Sergeant Adam Watson retreats from Iraq to his Ozark home, suffering from PTSD and believing he’s seen the worst that man is capable of. Even as he seeks refuge, he finds that same evil in his own country, his own town, his own family—and in his own heart.

Excerpt from The Evil Within:

Blending into the dense foliage, he zeroed in on his target. Fat and furry, the big cottontail stopped foraging and looked his way. With his eagle vision locked on the prey, Adam’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Before he could squeeze off a round, raucous sounds and smells of battle echoed in his brain—cries from his buddies! The harsh metallic thump of an RPG slamming into the Bradley. Explosions! Agonizing screams! The acrid odor of gunfire, melting rubber, cooked flesh; the nauseating stink of death…
Beads of sweat dribbled into his eyes. He blinked, clearing them, and realized the rabbit’s eyes had changed.
Green. Advancing rapidly.
He wanted to fire, but frozen in panic, he couldn’t.
“Adam! Don’t shoot! It’s me,” a man’s voice cut through the static in his brain. He wiped sweat from his face and blinked again. No longer the rabbit he thought he’d targeted, his uncle approached with his arms up.
How the hell did he get here?