Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
My name is Daniel J. Davis. I’m in my early forties, Yankee born and raised, but a Southerner by choice. I did hitches in the Marine Corps and the Army during the heavy years of the GWOT. I had a few tours in Iraq, including Operation Phantom Fury.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you I was some kind of badass, but I wasn’t. I just kept my head down, followed orders, and got really lucky when it mattered. 

As for my background as a writer, it really started in 2009. I was in a medical hold unit on the tail end of my Army hitch, awaiting separation. I picked up writing as a form of art therapy, and my wife took a large role in that. She helped me brainstorm ideas, shape stories, and refine them into something worth reading.

I’ve kept at it ever since.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
As much as I hate to say it, a good chunk of my influences aren’t books. I know that’s some kind of artistic sacrilege. But I was a ‘80s kid. I grew up up on Saturday morning cartoons, action movies, Nintendo, and D&D. They probably did more to inform my notions of storytelling than any of the classic pulps or great works of literature.

Also, Greek mythology. I was a HUGE nerd for that stuff as a kid, and I’d read both The Iliad and The Odyssey before high school.

As for keeping myself from becoming derivative, I think my most successful pieces have a humorous edge to them. Or at least a sardonic one. I have a healthy sense of gallows humor, and a natural tendency to sort of look at things sideways. 

An old bit of writing advice I heard is that story happens in the gap between expectation and reality. Thanks to my twisted humor, I tend to see those gaps everywhere.

With self-publishing easier than ever, there are tons of books being released every day. What makes your work stand out from the crowd? What can readers get out of your work that they can’t from anyone else?
If one thing stands out about my work, it’s the humor. There are guys who do action, adventure, and plotting better than I can. You should know, since you publish several of them. There are also guys that offer powerful examinations of the divine, the metaphysical, and the True in their fiction. Again, much better than I can. 

Where I have an edge is taking those same situations, and making them funny. 

Case in point: I looked at the old fantasy trope of the gods’ power being directly related to their number of worshipers—a D&D-ism if there ever was one, by the way—and wondered what would happen to all the “abandoned” gods. After all, there are hundreds of forgotten religions in our own history, if not thousands. 

That idea blossomed into a short called “The God Whisperer,” about a human who adopted a “rescue” god from a shelter, and found he had a destructive little hellion on his hands. I entered it into the Writers of the Future contest in 2015, and won first place for the quarter. It ended up being my first professional sale.

Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
Honestly? I’m a Twitter shitposter. My current handle is @brainleakge03, if you want to enjoy the show. 

Before that, I spent a LONG time focusing on long-form blogging, “traditional” networking strategies like going to cons and writers’ workshops, and all that other stuff. But it was just a massive time sink, and it didn’t do much except take energy away from my fiction writing.

I get a lot more interaction from posting dumb jokes, pop culture observations, and spicy D&D takes on Twitter, and it takes a fraction of the effort. 

That said, my approach probably wouldn’t work if I wasn’t selling things like Elf Hard: An Explosive Tale of Christmas Action.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
I can’t say that it has, because 99% of everything I’ve written has been aimed at tweaking those expectations, if only a little.

This is probably where I break ranks with most of the Superversives, the PulpRev guys, the Iron Age guys, and other indie SFF movements. I actually like deconstruction and subversive takes on old tropes. 

That said, there’s a very fine line. Unforgiven was a masterful deconstruction of the classical Western. But in tearing the tropes and the mythology apart, it created a compelling character study about a gunfighter at the end of his life.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have things like The Last Jedi, which tore down an icon for no other reason than to make room for the writers’ new characters. It was cynical, and it showed an active hatred for the story it was deconstructing.

To me, that’s the line. You have to love what you’re deconstructing, and you have to put the pieces back together in an interesting way. 

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
My newest work is actually an ongoing web serial called The Dungeon Mucker. You can read it for free on Royal Road, along with my other (on hiatus) serial, The Isekai Detective.

The Isekai Detective is a straight hardboiled detective yarn, featuring a private eye who specializes in recovering kids who fall out of our reality and into fantasy worlds. It tackles the unspoken link between teenaged "Chosen One" protagonists, and real life horrors like human trafficking and child soldiers.

The Dungeon Mucker, on the other hand, is about an orc janitor who falls in love with the Dark Lord’s head torturer, and has to find a way to get her to notice him. It’s a black comedy. It’s also extremely violent.   

Of the two, The Dungeon Mucker has attracted more interest and reader feedback so far. Like I said... my most successful work tends to be humorous.

I’ve also got a webcomic in the works. I’m reluctant to say much about it before the first installment goes live. But if you enjoy the Wargate books—particularly Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Forgotten Ruin series—you’ll want to keep an eye on my website, brainleakage.com.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
Aside from DMR releases, you mean? (No, I definitely did not mean that—DMR)

The first newer book that springs to mind is the above-mentioned Forgotten Ruin. A battalion of Army Rangers goes through a portal to a bizarre Tolkien/D&D-inspired fantasy world, and proceeds to lay the hate on orcs, ogres, and other monsters. It’s no exaggeration to call it the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Okay. Maybe it’s a little exaggeration.

As for older books, I’ve recently been enjoying Don Pendleton’s original Executioner paperbacks. If you’re a fan of the Punisher, do yourself a favor and read these. Mack Bolan’s ongoing war against the Mafia is an epic for our time, and that is a hill I will die on. 

Any final words?
Just a thanks for the invitation and the opportunity. Looking forward to seeing what new releases you guys are bringing us in the coming year!