Deborah joins the Luna Novella series with The Carrying Capacity of Paradise, an SF story set off-world. You can order it here.
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1. Who were the writers who inspired you to become an author?
I wanted to be a writer from about 3rd grade on. At the time, I was reading YA stuff by Pamela Sargent—Earthseed, Eye of the Comet, and others. As I got older, I read the children’s section of my library dry, and since YA offerings were thin on the ground when I was young, moved directly to more adult works by authors initially like the Diane Duane and Piers Anthony. (The world was younger then, and so was I.) Since then, authors like Terry Pratchett and Clive Barker have become my writing heroes.
2. What is the very first piece of fiction you ever wrote?
I wrote short stories on wide-lined paper in grade school. I don’t remember what they were. The first ones I tried to get published as a teen, I managed to get one into a local paper, a science fiction story about a girl who lived on a high-gravity planet. Buoyed by that success, I tried to get into the venerable Dragon magazine with a tale about a blind ranger who saw through the eyes of her animal companion fighting a medusa, and one about the offspring of a god dragon, who had to make peace with her mother’s legacy. Both resulted in polite letters of rejection, which made me despair of writing for some time, hehe.
3. What is the hardest part of writing, in your experience?
Writing itself is the easy part. It’s the “selling it and marketing it” that’s hard. I’m terrible at self-promotion, because I was raised to be comparatively a modest person, and continually blowing my own horn makes me cringe.
4. Tell me about your book. What was the inspiration behind it?
I read about the asteroid 4 Vesta back in 2018 or so, and wrote a poem about a nature preserve on that asteroid, which sold to F&SF. But I wasn’t done with the setting I’d created for the poem; I wanted to set a story there, which became a murder mystery tinged with a bit of social science, psychology, and philosophy.
5. This is your first novella with Luna Press. How did you approach the ‘getting published’ process? Any tips, resources that you can share with our readers?
I use the Submission Grinder and Codex, a forum for neo-pro writers, to keep up with markets opening and closing. I actually sent The Carrying Capacity of Paradise to Luna Press as part of a collection of short stories, ranging from flash to novelette and novella in length. I was fortunate enough to catch their eye, and they asked for just the novella, which I was very pleased to give them!
6. What is your take on social media, when it comes to being an author? Do you think that an author should have at least one channel of communication with the readers?
I maintain a social media presence on Facebook and Bluesky, but I don’t know how many people actually read any of it! Frankly, many aspects of authorhood feel like shouting into the void. I’d love to hear from people who read my work, but I don’t often get that privilege.
6. What are you working on at the moment?
I’m editing a short story set during the early 1200s, and need to finish up the end of a trilogy set in a secondary world in which an island ruled by the fey was conquered by humans several hundred years ago, and their civilizations blended as a result. In the current era, that civilization was subjected to a William the Conqueror moment, and the people are beginning to rise up against that conquering. Every one of the books in the trilogy has a strong element of mystery to it. I plan to release the series in 2025.
7. If you had to recommend an author and/or a book, who would it be?
I like Galilee by Clive Barker. It’s not a horror book at all. It comforted me throughout the year of my divorce, and it was the book I took with me on the plane to say goodbye to my dad for the last time. It shows the resilience of people and demigods alike. We make mistakes. But we can pick ourselves up, learn from them, and do better going forward.
You can order The Carrying Capacity of Paradise here. Discover the full series!
About Deborah:
Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. She’s known for her prize-winning poetry and acclaimed short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in F&SF, Analog, and Asimov’s. For more about her work, including her Elgin-nominated poetry collections, The Gates of Never and Bounded by Eternity, please see https://www.deborahldavitt.com/. For information about her podcast, please see www.youtube.com/@ShiningMoonSpeculativeFiction.
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