1. How old were you when you wrote what you consider your first story?
I was ... 15 years old.
2. What inspired you to write it?
I'd just switched over from high fantasy to horror in my reading tastes. Me, my girlfriend and another friend got in to see Halloween II (the original sequel, not the new Rob Zombie thing) and I loved it. Hadn't even seen the first Halloween yet. Well, right after that my high school composition teacher assigned a short story. So I wrote a piece called "Insanity" about a picked-on boy who gets revenge. The story would get a kid arrested in this post-Columbine society, but my teacher loved it.
3. What was the first book you wrote?
The first one I finished is called The Prometheus Syndrome. I went through and did an overhaul on it a year or so back and now Bad Moon Books will release it next year.
4. Of all the books you've written, which is your favorite?
That's tough. Shara will always be a very special book to me, but Amara's Prayer, my graduate thesis, is probably my best work.
5. Which book would you like to forget you wrote?
None, really. The one that will never, ever see print is called We the People. It's a sci-fi story written during my political awakening. Futuristic society, Greenpeace has taken over the world, Colorado was nuked and is now a minimum security prison area for people who don't conform, young man is sent there and finds NORAD and then a space ship meant for colonization of another planet. Bad stuff.
6. Who is the most influential person in your life?
Wow. I guess the person who has the most influence over me now would be my wife, of course. But I have to say kudos to Mom, who taught me to love reading. She doesn't have much education herself, but she read to me as a kid and always made sure I had books to read. That was huge.
7. Who is your favorite author?
Only one? Living, I'd say William Peter Blatty. But I love most of John Steinbeck's books, and Charles Dickens. And ... Okay, Blatty.
8. If you could only own one book, what would it be?
What the hell? You didn't tell me this would be a torture session. Only one book? Gah! David Copperfield, the best book ever written in English.
9. When and where do you write?
Whenever nobody's bothering me, wherever I happen to be with a computer. Sadly, it isn't often enough.
10. Do you have a "day job?"
A pair of them, actually. I teach English at Western Heights High School in Oklahoma City and, because teachers make squat for pay and I'm a bit of a sadist, I also work as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher and tester for Oklahoma City Community College.
11. Do you have a "dream job?
Umm, yeah. Full-time novelist.
12. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
The Oregon coast. Like Legolas, I never should have seen the sea. The sound of the tide, the smell of the salt, the mystery of the place where the land ends and the water begins, plus the lushness of the land ... It's just an amazing place to someone born and raised in the inland wheat fields of Oklahoma.
13. What is your guilty pleasure?
Sheep. No, wait! Don't print that. Every once in a while I get melancholy and will listen to old Air Supply CDs. Okay, maybe we should go with the sheep thing.
http://stevenewedel.wordpress.com/
--MyMiserys
(The Black Glove would like to thank Steve Wedel for his time and effort)
