Interviewer Denise Alicea w The Pen & Muse book review site stopped by to chat with me about my new book, the mysterious, action-packed space romp, Crossline, what inspired the story and the characters, and advice I might offer to new writers:
Interview with author of Crossline, Russ Colchamiro!
Q: Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!
A: I live in Queens, NY, married with two kids and a crazy dog. I’m a baseball junkie, and I love to travel whenever I get the chance, which hasn’t been much since fatherhood came along! And I probably shouldn’t watch it as much as I do, but The Big Bang Theory is total comfort food for me. When it’s on, all is well.
Q: Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
A: Published through Crazy 8 Press, Crossline is a rollicking space adventure about an American space pilot — Marcus Powell — who has been selected to test Taurus Enterprises’ Crossline prototype ship and its newly developed warp thrusters, which, if successful, will revolutionize space travel as we know it.
But during his journey Powell is forced through a wormhole and into a parallel universe —including a parallel Earth — where he finds himself at the center of a civil war he may have been destined for all along.
On this other Earth, he reluctantly teams up with a gorgeous, trigger-happy rebel leader, a pot-smoking Shaman, a crafty pie maker (watch out for her!), and a weary soldier who really hates his guts. Powell then has to survive a cross-country rescue mission with them and some trippy vision quests long enough for his wife and young daughter — who are back on his home Earth — to outsmart Taurus’ reclusive CEO, whose own secrets may prevent Powell from ever making it back home.
So what you’ve got with Crossline is a really fun scifi adventure, mixed in with humor, action, and mystery to solve. I think people will dig it.
The origin of Crossline is two-fold. It began as a short story trilogy I wrote in high school, around 1987 or so, very loosely based on the ‘troubles’ in Ireland, even though I really knew almost nothing about it. Ha! And then about ten years later I started working on a space adventure comic book idea. It never saw publication, but I knew I wanted to tell this epic adventure as a novel. But the short story trilogy is really the heart of Crossline. The space component then gave it a setting to become fully realized.
It’s a bit more intense than the novel itself, but here’s a pretty cool book trailer to give you a scope of the novel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ8fey7_4VA
Q: How do you create your characters?
Click here to read the rest of the interview …
