Greetings!
You have arrived at the hub of all the information you’d ever want to know about me: About the books that have been published, what’s soon to be published, tips and views on writing, and everything else you can think of. For those who don’t know, or have come across this page by happenstance, my name is David Danforth. I am an Author of primarily science fiction, horror, and suspense. A reviewer has likened my style to Rod Serling, and although I’m flattered, I would have to say that I simply enjoy creating characters rooted in every day reality, then rip off the roots.
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Before such sightseeing wonders as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was even a gleam in the city’s eye. No Labron to excite basketball fans, no American League Champion Cleaveland Indians to excite baseball fans. Lake Erie was a body of water you didn’t want to jump in for a swim on a hot and humid summer’s day (not if you valued your health), and the only place that generated real excitement for a kid was Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, two hours to the West of my house, by car.
My friends and I used our imaginations to have fun in the neighborhood. My Dad read Dr. Seuss to me at night and I knew then, at an early age, that telling stories was cool. It was fun, and people were interested in hearing them. I sure was. My parents would let me watch Jonny Sokko and His Flying Robot, Star Trek, Twilight Zone and The Night Stalker (Karl Kolchek, not the mass murderer). I watched Godzilla, King Kong, and Planet of the Apes, just to name a few of the hundreds of horror and science fiction movies I watched during my grade school years. As a side note: if anyone is curious about the line my parents drew as to what was appropriate, I was allowed to watch the original Night of the Living Dead on the Friday night weekly horror show on television, but they would NOT take me to see Alien when it came out in theaters. Not saying I agree with the reasoning, just telling you how it was in the Danforth household…
I came up with countless stories in my head, branching off of the stories I would watch unfold on television, or at the movies. But how to get it to the books my father read from each night, when I was young? My solution was to take memo paper, cut it in half, and staple the end. Presto! A blank book to write in. It didn’t look the same, and my stories didn’t have the same attraction that Bartholomew and the Ooblek did. So, what to do? I wasn’t sure.
Until I got my hands on The Stand, by Stephen King. I was in seventh grade, and I heard a radio ad for the book. During that time, radio ads for books was a thing. I also picked up Fletch, by Gregory McDonald during that time for the same reason. But back to The Stand. Among the many things that book did for me, it showed me a book could be written with all the cool elements I had been watching growing up, and be popular.
Three weeks later, my parents told me we were moving west, to San Francisco. Naturally, I was excited. After all, it was California, where it’s always eighty degrees, you live right off the beach, and a movie star lives right down your street. Although I learned quickly perception is not reality (the weekend we moved to the Bay Area it was a heat wave in July and 115 degrees; it’s an hour’s drive to the nearest beach, and the most famous person that lived in our neighborhood was the guy who secretly hoarded Barbie dolls in his garage, then burned his house down for no reason and fled to Oregon), we do have winning sports teams out here (go Warriors, go Giants, go Forty-Niners), so that’s something.
Through the years, I kept writing, I kept submitting to magazines and publishers, and I got a nice collection of rejection slips. Fast forward to Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle, and the first time I heard about eBooks. The more I learned about the Independent Author journey, the more I liked it. I published my first book (a collection of short stories titled, The People You Meet) in 2014. Followed that up two years later with Minutemen, the first book in a six book series of dystopian time travel novels called, The Guardians of Time.
And that’s me! Please feel free to peruse this site and, if you wish to get a hold of me, check out the contact page, or just use the links at the bottom of the page.
David.