Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m chatting to Ron Walters about his debut novel Deep Dive, which is out now from Angry Robot! A science fiction thriller exploring virtual reality, video game development, the costs of creativity and the difficulties of juggling work and family, this promises to be a fascinating novel that I think will resonate with a lot of people. It’s out now from Angry Robot books, so read on to find out more about the inspiration and influences that went into writing it, Ron’s journey to being published, and the importance of featuring parental figures in SFF.
Track of Words: To start things off, for anyone who’s not familiar with your work could you tell us a bit about yourself as a writer and what you like to write?
Ron Walters: I love writing all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. It doesn’t matter what sub-genre so long as there’s something in the story that’s, as my father-in-law would call it, off the wall. It’s funny though that Deep Dive is my debut novel, because it’s one of only two adult books I’ve ever written. All the other ones have been middle grade. It’s actually nice toggling between the two age groups. Writing for a middle grade audience forces you to cut out any extraneous details and really makes you hyper aware of the prose you’re using. Writing for adults, on the other hand, is pretty much no holds barred, but while it’s not at all restrictive in terms of subject matter or story structure, all the time I’ve spent focused on middle grade material has helped me tone down my more long-winded impulses. (Seriously, there was a time where I’d happily take a solid page to describe something as mundane as a wall. Now I’m like, There’s a wall. Moving on.)
In terms of me as a writer, I’d say I’m fairly normal. Some days I write with music, some days I don’t. Some days I write 3,000 words, some days I write 500. I tend to write in short bursts rather than long sit-downs, which is a byproduct of being a stay-at-home dad and having to cram writing into whatever downtime I had. When I’m actively working on a project I do my best to write every day, but when I’m between books I can go weeks without typing a single fictional word. Even then though, I’m constantly thinking about writing. I’m also pretty good at tuning out noise, like when my daughters are home and in the next room over yelling at each other about which Barbie backstabbed the other.
ToW: Congratulations on the publication of your first novel! Could you give us an overview of what Deep Dive is about?
RW: Thank you! I’ve kept my writing life somewhat insular until now, at least outside of my online author circles, so it’s super weird seeing friends and family holding my book. But in a good way! As for an overview of Deep Dive, it’s a sci-fi thriller about a video game developer named Peter Banuk who’s so obsessed with salvaging his floundering career that he spends more time working than he does with his wife and young daughters. When he tests an experimental VR headset designed by his tech genius business partner and friend, the headset malfunctions and knocks Peter out. After coming to he discovers that his daughters no longer exist, and he’s somehow the hugely successful game developer he’s always dreamed of being.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
RW: The main character, Peter, is an independent video game developer desperately trying to save his company after his last game released to abysmal reviews. His wife, Alana, and daughters, Cassie and Evie, have always been supportive of his career aspirations but have become increasingly frustrated with how absent he’s been because of work. Peter’s business partner, Bradley Moss, is a tech genius whose experimental VR headset is poised to be either Peter’s salvation or his downfall. There are several other important side characters, including some unsavory types who were great fun to write, but I’ll leave those for readers to discover!
ToW: What was the original inspiration behind writing a book about VR and the costs of working in video games development?
RW: I’m an avid gamer. I also spend an inordinate amount of time on YouTube watching gaming channels like Gameranx, Girlfriend Reviews, Luke Stephens, ACG, and Noclip. I have zero experience in actual game development, so my view is certainly skewed by the content I consume, but one thing that seems to be an issue across the board is crunch time. For those who don’t know, crunch is basically mandatory overtime, when the people working on a given game put in extremely long days for weeks at a time for little to no extra pay, typically when a deadline like a game’s release is looming. Crunch can cause serious mental and physical burnout, not to mention loads of detrimental health problems.
In Deep Dive, Peter’s studio has certainly put in crunch time, but after the last game’s poor reception, Peter made a blanket decision that he wasn’t going to require overtime, and that anyone who chose to put in overtime would be paid for it. He also swore to his wife that he’d cut back on the hours he’d been putting in at work. Unfortunately, old habits die hard, especially when your business and sense of self-worth are on the line, and when the book starts Peter is doing the very thing he promised he wouldn’t do. He basically exists in a perpetual state of personal and professional crunch, which is not a healthy state to be in.
That said, I wasn’t directly trying to address video game crunch when I wrote Deep Dive. More, I wanted to talk about creative burnout in general, which is something I’ve dealt with many times over throughout the years I spent trying to get published. The drive to succeed is good until it’s not, you know? You have to find some semblance of balance. It’s not an easy thing, though, especially when you feel like a failure. You’re always looking toward the next thing, always convincing yourself that if you keep busting your ass a little bit longer, you’ll finally achieve the thing that’s eluded you for so long. To a certain extent that’s true – perseverance does pay off – but you have to figure out how to balance your creative and/or professional pursuits with the rest of your life. In the cases of Peter and myself, that means making sure we’re actively involved with our families rather than letting ourselves get too caught up in our own dreams.
As for the inspiration behind using VR, it was a combination of two things. One, VR is clearly going to be a big part of our lives in the not so distant future, whether it’s in gaming or communication (the military already uses it for training simulations). Two, VR allows for so many creative possibilities. Not only is it a very specific piece of technology that most people understand, it’s also a fantastic MacGuffin. You know, that thing in a book or movie (like the Infinity Stones in the Marvel films) that’s integral to the plot. It essentially allows you to do anything you want so long as it works within the context of your story.
ToW: Is VR a particular interest of yours, or did this require a lot of research during the writing process?
RW: I don’t have an at-home VR rig, but I’ve always loved books and movies that deal with VR. Like I said above, VR lets you do almost anything when it comes to the plot of a story. In terms of research, I spent some time reading articles on current and next-gen rigs, but only enough to give myself a basic understanding of where VR might be taking us in the future. I certainly took creative liberties with the headset in my book, but at the same time, total immersion – where the virtual world is indistinguishable from the real world – is definitely where VR is heading.
ToW: As a video game fan yourself, could you talk a bit about some of your favourite games and how they relate to or inspired/influenced Deep Dive?
RW: Here’s the funny thing about me and video games. I remember playing them as a kid on the NES and Sega Genesis, and I think we maybe had an Atari? But it’s only been in the past few years that I got back into gaming enough to call myself a gamer. At the risk of sounding somewhat elderly, I had no idea how much games had changed over the past few decades! I don’t just mean in terms of technical advancements, either. I mean in terms of story.
The games I played as a kid were pretty basic, story-wise. I’m assuming there were narrative-based games back then, and plenty in the years since, but for whatever reason I never gravitated toward them. Now, I can’t get enough of them. In fact, if a game doesn’t have a strong narrative, I lose interest pretty quickly. All of my favorites are story-driven. God of War (the 2018 one), Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us, Control, Days Gone, Bloodborne, they all have such amazing main characters and amazing stories. (They’re also third-person action-adventure RPGs, which I much prefer to first-person games, which is probably sacrilegious, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
My point with all of this is that I remember playing Horizon Zero Dawn for the first time and being absolutely floored by the story, and then playing God of War for the first time and being absolutely floored by that story, especially the relationship between Kratos and Atreus. It was like I was there right alongside Kratos, tearing about draugar while trying to figure out how to be a good parent. That kind of immersion and connection just blew me away, and made me wish I’d gone into game development! Don’t get me wrong, I love writing novels, but it would be super cool to write for a game. (Yes, that’s my way of letting any game dev who might read this know that I’m available!)
I could spend hours dissecting each of my favorite games, but the important thing about them in regard to me as a writer is that I quickly realized there were a lot of similarities, at least on a creative level, between developing games and writing a novel. That realization planted the seed that eventually grew into Deep Dive. I wanted to write a book that touched on gaming, but I also wanted to write a book about what it’s like to be driven by creativity, the highs and the lows and everything in between that comes from throwing your heart and soul into a fictional world and fictional characters.
ToW: It sounds like there’s quite a lot of Peter’s character that many readers will relate to, especially with the idea of desperately pursuing success regardless of the costs. From guest posts of yours that I’ve read, I gather he’s quite an autobiographical character – how does it feel to not just put so much of yourself into a character, but now to have people around the world reading about such a personal character?
RW: I’ll admit, now that Deep Dive is out in the world, it does feel a little weird, knowing I poured so much of myself into it. At the same time, there are enough dissimilarities between Peter and me – our families too – that I don’t feel like I bared my entire soul to the world. However, I said in another guest post that this is the book of my heart because it’s a book I needed to write, so in that regard I did bare some of my soul. At the time when I first drafted it I was really struggling with the fact that I’d spent so many years trying to get a book deal with nothing to show for my efforts. I was close to calling it quits, but somehow I mustered the willpower to write the book that became my debut novel.
So yeah, Peter’s drive to succeed is very much based on my own desire to succeed and my worry that not only was I wasting my time on an industry that didn’t seem to want me, but that it felt like I was giving up time with my family for a pipedream. And yes, Peter’s daughters were very much inspired by my own daughters, the things they do and say, but at the same time, they’re no different than other kids, so I think in spite of how autobiographical some of the details are, there’s also a universality to how I wrote them that other parents will hopefully read and think, Been there, dealt with that. The same with Peter himself. I hope that he resonates with other people who are struggling to achieve their dreams, regardless of whether they’re game developers or novelists or parents.
ToW: I can really see Deep Dive resonating with parents, or people with other dependents, as it taps so much into the difficulties of juggling responsibilities. Is that a theme you see much in SFF as a whole – and is it something the genre could explore more?
RW: As it happens, I’m going to be on a panel for TBRCon2022 with other Angry Robot authors discussing that very topic. It’s happening on January 30th at 11 am EST/ 4 pm GST / 5 pm CET. Here’s the link: https://fanfiaddict.com/tbrcon-2022/
But to properly answer your question, I’m sitting here racking my brain trying to think of books that use parenting struggles not only as a character arc but an integral part of the plot, and I’m only coming up with a few. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Swashbucklers by Dan Hanks, and The Second Bell by Gabriella Houston all talk about the importance of family in a way that’s intrinsic to their plots. So I think the proper answer to your question is yes, SFF writers should very much start producing more stories that address parenting not as something that exists on the periphery, but as something that’s as important as whatever monster the characters are facing. I think the second season of The Witcher touched on this really well, with its focus on the relationship between Geralt and Ciri. And, like I mentioned about, the thing that hooked me playing God of War was the relationship between Kratos and Atreus, and Kratos’ struggle to be a good parent.
ToW: While this is your debut published novel, I gather it’s far from the first you’ve ever written – I think that’s something a lot of other writers will understand! Now that Deep Dive is published, how do you feel about the previous books you’ve written? How has the publication process affected your view on what you’ve written before?
RW: Deep Dive is actually my ninth novel. Obviously I’m a little biased, but of the other eight, I’d say three of them are good enough to be published. But one thing I’ve learned over the past decade of trying to break into the publishing industry is that “good enough” isn’t always enough. You can write an objectively decent book, but there are so many other factors that come into play when a publisher decides whether to buy it. Some of it has to do with timing and luck, finding the right editor at the right time who’s looking for a book like yours. But even then, an editor can love it but the marketing and sales teams can decide they don’t know how to properly market it, or they can look at what books are coming out over the next couple of years and decide that yours is either too similar to some or too different from the projected trends. Knowing all of that, however, doesn’t make it any easier when you put so much time into a book only to be met with a resounding thanks but no thanks.
Strangely enough, though, all of that has made me somewhat less critical of my previous books, at least the ones I think are worthy of being published. My earlier books were very much training books. I had a lot to learn about writing, and each book I wrote taught me something that I carried over into the next project. That remains true to this day, but while I subjectively love all my books, I’ve got an objective enough eye now to know what (outside of luck and timing) likely prevented them from getting published, which in turn helps me now when I decide to start a new project.
ToW: What do you hope readers will get out of Deep Dive by the time they’ve finished it?
RW: That they were entertained and enjoyed the ride, and that some or all of Peter’s struggles resonated with them. It would also be really cool if they told their friends about it, especially friends who might think a sci-fi thriller about a game designer isn’t for them. (In general I’d say Deep Dive is a good, light introduction to sci-fi and gaming.) Word of mouth is hugely important, especially for debuts.
ToW: To finish off, can you tell us anything about what’s next? Do you have another book or other stories in the works, or plans for what you’d like to work on in future?
RW: At the moment I’m working on a new book that blends VR tech and epic fantasy. It’s still in the unfinished, really rough first draft stage, but I’m slowly closing in on the end. I also just finished the second round of revisions for my middle grade fantasy debut, Calix and the Fire Demon, which comes out later this year from Owl Hollow Press. It’s about a 12-year-old boy named Calix who accidentally unleashes an ancient Irish fire demon and learns he’s an heir of St. Patrick, tasked with keeping the world safe from mythological and supernatural threats. Once that book’s in the bag I’m going to start writing the sequel. If you can’t tell, I like to keep myself busy!
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Ron Walters is a former journalist, college registrar, and stay-at-home dad who writes science fiction and fantasy for all ages. A native of Savannah, GA, he currently lives in Germany with his wife, two daughters, and two rescue dogs. When he’s not writing he works as a substitute high school teacher, plays video games, and does his best to ignore the judgmental looks his dogs give him for not walking them more often.
You can find Ron on Twitter and on his website.
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Big thanks to Ron for agreeing to an interview, and for contributing such interesting, thoughtful answers. Deep Dive sounds fantastic, so make sure you check out Ron’s website and/or Twitter page for more information, then go out and grab yourself a copy! Deep Dive is out now in paperback, ebook and audiobook from Angry Robot.
Check out the links below to order your copy* of Deep Dive:
*If you buy anything using one of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
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