Name: David J. West
Age: 37
Author of: “The Dig”
Current Geographic Location: Pleasant Grove, Utah
Original Hometown: Hamilton, Montana
Twitter: @David_JWest
Website: http://david-j-west.blogspot.com/
Recent publications: My first novel, Heroes of the Fallen and it’s forthcoming sequel Blood of Our Fathers are speculative historicals. I also have about a dozen Lovecraftian, weird westerns and heroic fantasy tales being published this year through various markets.
Do you think alien life exists in the Universe? Yeah, I believe the Universe is just too vast for there not to be something(s) out there. So there has got to be worlds without end and thus life out there. Some of it god-like in reason and some shambling monstrosities and others perhaps both.
If you could travel off Earth, would you? What if it meant you could never come back? I might, but if I’m not coming back–where I’m going had better have vanilla frappacino’s, symphonic metal, an infinite amount of good books and a great chair to curl up in.
Better mention the wife too.
What inspired your essay? I had a lot of things gel together for this piece. A movie I can’t remember the name of that I saw when I was a kid about the Italians trying to conquer Ethiopia during World War Two. The Nubian ruins of Jebel Barkal (*see National Geographic Feb 2008 for a quick summary). And even a local man’s weird tale of a tomb that he claims he found in the mountains of Utah. The characters themselves are gifts from the Muse.
What music or movies helped you to write this essay? I make my own soundtrack for different projects and for this I listened to desert flavored pieces from Nightwish, Ofra Haza, symphonic Zeppelin, and the just cool Massive Attack.
How many rewrites did you do before submitting? Three or four, plus I scrapped the first draft which was more of an outline, without an ending.
What is your favorite bit?
This was no tomb, no temple to strange gods of yesteryear. This was a ship lost in a sea of stars, marooned on a primitive island.
David’s work is always carefully composed. A true craftsman.
Great interview, David. The story sounds terrific.