2003 - 11/2003 Meeting

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WALTER H HUNT

Novels:

The Dark Ascent

The Dark Crusade

The Dark Path

The Dark Wing

His website is: http://www.walterhunt.com/

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: November 8, 2003.

Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Official Attendance: 37.

Meeting Program: Talk by Science Fiction Writer.

Notes:

Meeting Memories:

Newsletter Account:

The November meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church on Saturday, November 8, 2003. The event featured a talk by author Walter H Hunt.

A number of other events were also held before, after, and during the meeting. Charles Garofalo provided the anime feature, THEY WERE ELEVEN, in the Wesley Room before the main event. Concurrent with the anime, Todd Ehrenfels led a lively discussion of STAR GATE: SG-1 in the first section of the church's Fellowship Hall.

Two other events were finalized too late to be included in the newsletter. Paul Dellechiaie set up a telescope in the parking lot to allow everyone to observe the Lunar Eclipse which reached totality around 8:10 PM. For once, we had clear skies and could actually observe an astronomical event without cloud cover. There was also an unannounced club book sale set up in another portion of the Fellowship Hall.

Author Walter H Hunt was the evening's featured speaker. Mr Hunt has written two novels published by Tor Books: THE DARK WING and THE DARK PATH. He is almost done with a third novel, THE DARK ASCENT, and has sold and plotted THE DARK CRUSADE, which will conclude the series.

Although the seeds of his writing career go back to his childhood, the impetus for the book which became THE DARK WING came from the bulletin board of a former employer. Another employee was writing and posting a very bad post apocalyptic serial on the board. Annoyed at such drek, he decided to write his own serialized novel. He had played around with a future history which included a space war between mankind and an avian race, The Zor, many years before. He made the war the focus of his serial and wrote and posted 170 pages over the next ten weeks.

He cleaned up the novel a bit and then began submitting it to science fiction publishers. When the book was rejected, he began working on the sequel. A later interviewer said, "That's insane!" Mr Hunt replied, "No, it's pretentious."

The opus eventually reached the desk of Brian Thomsen. Mr Thomsen felt the book needed to be expanded and refocused in order to make it publishable. This began a 14 year process of musical editing jobs by Thomsen and rewrites by Hunt.

Finally, Mr Thomsen landed at Tor and hit upon a marketing strategy for the novel. At the time, the company had virtually no presence in the military science fiction niche dominated by Baen Books. So the book was packaged and marketed to be just like a Baen book. It worked and sold well.

Mr Hunt said that despite the book's packaging, there was a lot more to it than space battles. He makes sure that there are enough things blowing up to keep that crowd happy, but there are lots of different things happening to satisfy other tastes.

Among those othter tastes are the creation of interesting aliens. He stated that he created the alien Zor and their religion on a M.S.U. (Make Stuff Up) program. He settled upon an avian race whose face is rigid but whose wings have eleven moving parts, creating a language that is largely gestural. "Oh, so they're Italian," said Charles Garofalo. "Capable of soaring prose," added Sharon Archer.

The discussion then turned to the business of book publishing. He held up the hardcover of THE DARK PATH and said that the author's take on a hardcover selling over $ 25.00 like this came to $ 2.38. On a paperback, his cut is about $ .50.

It is not easy to make a living as a full time writer. Three events came together at about the same time to enable Mr Hunt to make writing his profession. First, he has a supportive wife who makes good money. Second, he received his first book advance right around the time he was laid off. Third, he had plotted and partially written a sequel. But there are many satisfactions. Unlike many people, he loves his work. Also, selling his book was the third most satisfying event to happen to him in his life, after marrying his wife and having his daughter.

Mr Hunt was very informative and personable, and accompanied the group to the diner after the meeting. Our thanks go to him and his friend, Robert, who drove him, and to everyone who helped with the set up and clean up of the Church.