Q&A With Mark Everglade

Today I have the honor of doing a Q&A with author Mark Everglade. Mark is the author of Inertia, Song of Kitaba, Hemispheres – A Cyberpunk Dystopian Novel, & Forever Glitched. Read more about Mark on his website  www.markeverglade.com

Q: Mark, would you like to tell the readers of the blog and I about your books? What genre would you classify your books futuristic or syfy?

 A: Certainly. I write within the dystopian sub-genre of science fiction in a niche called cyberpunk. For fifty years cyberpunk has explored our relationship to technology and how it impacts our social structure by telling stories that revolve around class conflict. The typical cyberpunk antagonist is a demagogue looking to use tech to exploit people by partnering with major corporations within a fascist context. On the other hand, the protagonists are typically poor street urchins who are underemployed geniuses and resort to hacking to make a living. This is the conflict that my books such as Inertia, my most recent one, manifest. 

Q: When did you know that being an author was what you were called to do in your life?

A: As a sociologist, I have spent my life documenting the conflict in society between political parties, between the haves and the have-nots, and between ethnic and other groups. I added an interest in global warming to this and these two facets culminate into the themes of my work. 

I set many of my stories on a tidal-locked planet, Gliese 581g, so that I can drastically play with its ecology to show how nature impacts our social organization, and how nature is exploited for political gain. In Hemispheres, for instance, I wrote about this world where half of the planet is always dark and half is always light, and how a team of ecologists try to increase the planet’s rotation to bring light to both sides. The government tries to stop them due to the economic impact and their fear of equality. So my writing is informed by my values, so I guess you could say it’s a calling in that sense. 

Q: What are you currently writing now?

A: I am writing a new novel, tentatively titled Killswitch. It is like the movie Waterworld meets The Sixth Sense, but cyberpunk style. It’s about a flooded planet and one woman’s journey for redemption as she tries to save the world from a malicious artificial intelligence, only the problem is that the A.I. is in her head. Readers can read Inertia first for a background to the characters and world in the meanwhile. 

Q: Where is your favorite spot to plot, write, & edit your work?

A: In seclusion. I have a fear of anyone reading any of my sentences until I feel I’ve perfected them. I overwork each sentence to the point of exhaustion, and sometimes in doing so I lose some of the spontaneous passion in the work, which I have to reinstate after the fact. I love stream of consciousness writing but it often comes out too abstract to maximize clarity. 

Q: Does Hollywood have the rights to your work? The entertainment industry needs new content again.

A: Not yet, and I agree with the need for new content. Hollywood isn’t interested in art, they’re interested in creating brands. So Star Wars, for instance, has a dozen movies, hundreds of comics and books, thousands of toys, video games etc. As long as the cross-merchandising opportunities are profitable, we will see the same series for the rest of our lives. There’s a nostalgia to this, which is what they rely on to resell the same mediocre story to us again and again, but we need new ideas, yes.  

Thank you for the opportunity to share all of this. Readers can keep up with my work and read hundreds of sci-fi book reviews on my website www.markeverglade.com

Readers can sign up for my mailing list and I will send them a free eBook, too!