As an award winning author, composer, music therapist, massage therapist, and more; it’s a wonder he had time to interview.
Danny Birt is a music therapist, a massage therapist, a speculative fiction author, an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, a composer, a college educator, and an entrepreneur. He’s lived all over the USA and traveled farther, and has had the good fortune to pet many, many very good dogs.
For more information on Danny Birt, see here. For more books by Danny Birt, click here and here and here. Did we mention he did music too?
First off, tell us about your writing past, would you tell us about your early years?
Ah, my early years. Stories abounded, just not on paper. Stories of Lego characters wandering through Lego lands; stories of creatures of the woodlands near my house and what they did out of sight of humans. My mind was rarely bored.
How did you become a writer?
Hm. When I identified as a writer? When I first wrote? When I first published? Take your pick.
How would you describe your written works?
I would describe them as books, manuscripts, short stories, novels, novellas, and oh-my-goodness-am-I-ever-going-to-be-done-editing-this’.
Which authors are your biggest influences?
These days I am most smitten with the heartwarming humor of Terry Pratchett.
What’s the last book you read?
Yesterday I finished a book on Thomas Jefferson.
Tell us about the writing process. How does it all come together?
Different works have come out different ways. Sometimes it is highly plotted before ever I begin to write the story itself. Sometimes I’ve written a fair chunk of story before I realized it was going to end up being a publishable story.
Tell us a bit about Between a Roc and a Hard Place. What’s it about in your own words? What inspired it?
“Roc” is about a baby dragon who was abandoned as an egg and raised by a family of birds. It was inspired by wondering what growing up would be like for such a dragon, and how she would turn out differently in society.
Buy Between a Roc and a Hard Place here.
Who was this book intended for? What age range?
I didn’t set one. I wrote the story that was there to be written. I’ve had some people say it is too verbose for children, not challenging enough for young adults, and too short for adult readers, so maybe the book was intended for non-humans?
Between a Roc and a Hard Place has won two awards. How did your book get found by these publications, and how did it feel to have recognition like that?
Publicity certainly helps! It was nice to have the work be acknowledged.
What themes were you conveying to the reader in your book? It appears they are lessons for kids to learn in this one.
The lessons in the book are, I would say, for anyone who has not yet learned them.
With artwork, did you tell the illustrator what to draw or did you give them artistic license?
Richard received my written requests, and he brought about the illustration beautifully. Some work we went back and forth on a few times, some came perfect as they were. The border of the story-within-a-story was all Richard, for example, and was something I may have never dreamed up – but was a perfect match.
If you could do it all over again with the knowledge you have, what would you do differently?
Hmm… this is a tough one. Off the top of my head, I would say that while I was still in the “Roc” mindset, I might have written the sequel which so many people ended up requesting.
Review: Danny
Birt’s Between a Roc and a Hard Place is a young-adult/children’s
novella. It starts with the main character’s mother, Wimsaalwn, who is a
dragon, hiding from human hunters. She desperately tries to find a place warm
place for her egg to gestate. She finds a nest filled with roc eggs. Rocs are
huge birds that don’t have a long life span with dragons around. Wimsaalwn
leaves her egg in the roc nest and leaves to fight the hunters. The roc parents
return, and they accept the egg as part of their family. The eggs hatch and
they name the dragonling Tephra. Tephra learns she is different from her
family, but they welcome her into the family anyhow.
During her upbringing with the rocs, she meets many animals including a snake,
a salamander, a stork, a tortoise, and an owl. Through Tephra’s adventures, she
befriends these animals and becomes the dragon of prophecy. The dragon to unite
the egg-born.
Tephra unites the egg-born, and they help each other along the peninsula where
Tephra’s nest resides. They keep humans from mining for gold in her mountain
without killing them. She later saves another dragon from a pirate ship and
learns to communicate with humans through a parrot. She does so to talk to the
human’s king and makes a peaceful deal with them, making it, so humans and the
egg-born co-exist peacefully.
Between a Roc and a Hard Place is a fun novel that has a strong message of caring for others despite their differences. And an even stronger message is that family doesn’t necessarily have to be blood. The book says that family are those who you care about, regardless of species.
The book is generally easy to read and can challenge people in expanding their vocabulary because the word choices are beyond the norm. The characters are well thought out, and all have different and interesting personalities.
At eighty pages, plus illustrations, this book is a short and enjoyable read. The author uses his wit to keep the reader entertained. In reading the book, it was easy to read the next chapter, then the next one, and then the next one. This book is highly recommended, and it should be considered a must read!
