Interview with Dawson Vosburg, author of Double Life

Dawson Vosburg is the author of Double Life, an adventure/sci-fi novel that, at the time of this interview, stands in the top-100 of the Amazon Kindle charts in both Adventure and High Tech. Perhasps even more remarkable, Mr. Vosburg is only fourteen years old. He took the time to discuss his book and his writing with us.


Tell us a little bit about you and your work.

I live in a little old GM town in Indiana—GM has left and the entire city consists of three major groups: old GM lags, unemployed people who had other jobs, and teens who are always getting in trouble. Everyone else is minority.

I usually write science fiction or fantasy, and always for a teen or young audience. I tried to differ from that in one novel that broke all my general rules and personal trends. It didn’t work out.


Can you give us a spoiler-free synopsis of Double Life?

A kid named Josiah Jones puts on a pair of sunglasses and is transported into his imaginary world of secret agents in the BLUE Agency. He must fight the evil RED Agency, which is a criminal syndication that the BLUE has been trying to stomp out for years. Thing is that the RED are almost as technologically advanced as the BLUE, so the entire thing becomes an adventurous thrill ride with explosions and interesting characters with strong ties along the way.


Your writing seems to blend the adventure/thriller with a touch of sci-fi. Were you inspired by certain books or writers?

Probably the most inspiring writer for me while editing Double Life was Eoin Colfer (author of the Artemis Fowl novels). The humor would keep me alive during the difficult and heartless editing process while at the same time sparking my imagination for the gadgets and strategies of the secret agents.

My two other places of inspiration were both from my young childhood. I would watch The Famous Jett Jackson (a secret agent—I gave him a nod in the book with both names starting with J). The other place was an actual imaginary world with two imaginary friends called the BLUE Agency, where we would fight the RED.


Has the fact that you published your novel at an unusually young age been a positive for you, or has it been a hindrance?

It has been both. A lot of people think I’m just too young—I don’t have the perspective of an adult, I can’t think as deeply. However, it has been a great hook. A lot of people can say that they’ve gotten a book published, but no one that I know of has gotten a book published at fourteen (and at least had some success). I think that the person who has had the most success closest to my age would be Cayla Kluver. She’s sixteen and just picked up a publishing deal with Amazon’s new publishing program, AmazonEncore (they publish good books that haven’t gotten fantastic sales).


At what age did you write your very first story? What was it about?

I can’t tell you how old I was when I wrote my first story, or even an inkling of what it was. I’ve had a lot of false starts, trying to write books since I’m guessing age seven. However, I can tell you that I started writing my first successfully done novel at age twelve…it was a book about three teens and three dragons who become friends and go on a journey to a meeting of dragons where they are cast out for bringing humans. They are eventually brought back to the next meeting (five years later) by a female dragon and her plucky eighteen-year-old friend from Canada. They rebel against the leader of the dragons, who fights the female in a showdown in which she wins and they’re readmitted to the dragon community.

Yep. It was pretty crazy, but I think I’ll be able to make something out of it once I’ve finished all the ideas currently bubbling in my head.


What advice would you give to someone a little younger than you who wants to be an author?

I agree with Jon F. Merz on this one. We had him on our radio show and when I asked him what advice he’d give to writers who want to write a book, and he said, “If you want to write a book, write it.” This has been my mentality since I penned Day of the Dragon in October 2007 (wow, it’s been almost two years now!). You might want all the amenities that a writer gets, but first you’ve gotta write the thing. You’ll never get a novel done unless you spit out the one that’s burning inside of you.


What is the best single piece of advice you ever received about writing?

It’s a combination of the last answer, “Just write it,” and a quote from Winston Churchill, “Never, ever, ever give up.” Coming in second is another Churchill quote, “A man who uses a large word when a small one would do just as well is utterly reprehensible.”


You are very active in promoting your work. Where do you get your marketing ideas/knowledge?

I look at the successes and failures of other people, and ask myself if that would work with my situation and with the kind of book that mine is. I also try to think about the content of my book, who it might be for, and who I could be inspiring by writing it (teen authors). In general, I find people like me and hook them to my book.


Just for fun:

Writing: with or without music?

Without. I can’t stand the distraction of good music.


Writing: are you an outliner or discovery drafter?

I have written one outlined book in my life. It was the one that didn’t work.


Star Wars or Star Trek?

I’m definitely not a Trekkie. I have to say Star Wars, but Episode III was pretty lame.


You're going to spend the rest of your life on a deserted island, and can only take three books. What are they?

The Bible, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Eragon.



What's next for you in terms of writing? Have you started on your next book?

I’m working on the sequel to Double Life currently…there’s a third and final book in order for that, but I won’t reveal anything yet. I do have another series planned to come directly after Josiah Jones has run his course. It’s going to be a fantasy series called The Chronicles of the Harken, and the first book will be called Incognito. That’s all I will reveal about those.


Any parting words for our readers?

Don’t stop reading. I read every day, and I write every day…and there hasn’t been a boring day for me in a long time.

Thanks for letting me do this! I appreciate it!