Extrait :
KC: You have a science background, and are known for your Rifters trilogy, and more. Had you always hoped to be a novelist? Will you tell us what inspired you to dive into writing fiction?
PW: The trigger that I consciously remember was Walt Disney’s audio adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I heard it on the radio one morning when I was seven or eight, and I immediately scribbled what I could remember across three pages of foolscap. My parents didn’t exactly encourage me, but at least they didn’t call me out for my obvious plagiarism. At which point I must have figured that here was something I could get away with.
I didn’t really immerse myself in writing, though, until after I’d fled academia in the mid-nineties, sick to death of biostitutes more interested in following the money than the data. (Hey, can’t blame the collapse of the sea-lion population on the fishing industry— those guys pay our salary. Let’s look at the sexually-transmitted disease angle instead…) At which point I had no job. And I’d pretty much run out of degrees to get. Writing was the only thing left.
