Dragon Soul Press was able to interview Ed Teja, an author featured in the Rogue Waves anthology.

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I’m Ed Teja. Over the years, I’ve been an engineer, a magazine editor, freelance writer (forever), musician, a boat bum (in Caribbean for ten years), magazine columnist, and martial artist (I teach self defense). Now I live in the high desert of New Mexico.

1. What prompted you to begin writing?
   • What prompts someone to breathe? I honestly cannot remember a time when I wasn’t writing. In grade school, I wrote terrible poems and plays that my friends and I put on for rather amused parents. I started writing lots of bad short stories and novels in high school. I was a book worm blessed with parents who loved books and let me read anything and everything.
2. Do you have a favorite story or poem you’ve written? What’s it about?
   • Usually, it’s my latest work and yet… my humorous novel THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO did as good a job as I’m capable of in capturing the life of live-aboard sailors in the Caribbean. It’s a changing world but it tells the story of the world’s best Caribbean boat bum during the time I was there.
3. How many projects do you have planned over the next few years? Tell us about one.
   • Too many to accomplish.
     I’m really excited about an upcoming noir-crime thriller series. It’s about a woman serving
     in a covert special ops group, whose unit is wiped out, leaving her the only survivor. She is given a medical discharge she doesn’t need or want. Trying to adapt to civilian life, she meets a
     storefront lawyer and learns that there are people the law can’t help and who can’t afford the
     kind of solution available to the rich. To remedy that, she becomes the first Storefront Assassin.
     I’ve done three short stories featuring her, completed book one (100k words), and have a
     good start on the second novel (as well as more short stories). I’m contemplating how I’ll
     proceed with publishing, but while I sort that out, I want the second book done.
4. What is your writing process like?
   • I write every day. Full time. Other than that, my process has varied a lot over the years.
     I’m likely to get an idea in my teeth and start writing. See where it leads me. For short
     stories, that’s pretty much it. My wife reads them, laughs at me, points out things here and there that make no sense at all, or asks questions. I let it sit, then go back over it again.
     For novels, things are more complex. I might write entire chapters that I throw out. I follow
     my story where it leads. If it takes me into a cul de sac, so be it. I can always try another route.
     I’ve tried outlining and hate it. As other, wiser writers, have said… why would I write a story
     when I already know what happens?
     When I finish a draft of the novel, friends read it, catch tons of things. I fix them, and then,
     these days, send that draft to my editor in Brazil. She fixes things and provides valuable
     feedback.
5. Where do you draw inspiration from?
   • The world around me.
6. Who is your favorite author / what is your favorite book?
   • This is one of the world’s toughest questions. Hemingway was a big hero of mine for THE
     SUN ALSO RISES and THE SNOWS OF KILAMANJARO. But Milan Kundera was a huge
     influence in understanding the role of lyricism in prose. But as an avid reader, many of the pulp
     writers, and John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee books, and so many others. And, did I mention
     Celine?
7. What is one goal you have for your writing future?
   • To improve my writing (constantly) so that the world I live in, that I see, is real for readers.
     (I take lots of craft courses and reading books on writing is a hobby).
8. What do you hope readers enjoy most from your work?
   • My sense that life is a joy and that confronting the hard things is worth it. Even Ron Anejo
     knows that.
9. Where can readers learn more about you?
   • On Twitter and Instagram. I put thoughts on writing up on this site, and all of my books are at my website.