Interview with Kent Wayne
Get to know the Mind Behind The Magic of Echo, The Unbound Realm and more...
A quick intro to Kent Wayne From his author page on Amazon: A lifetime ago, I was in the military. Now, I spend my time trying to appreciate what's in front of me. I love dogs, eastern spirituality, mysticism of all religions, and the willingness to consider all sides of a position. Aren't the most interesting heroes streaked with some villainy and aren't the most interesting villains potentially heroic? Thanks for reading my stuff and if you're a writer, I wish you inspired drafting and insightful editing!
More on who Kent is on his website dirtyscifibuddha.com.
Kent Wayne (I love the alias) has several books available on Amazon. I finally began reading Echo Volume 1: Approaching Shatter after it has been on my To Be Read shelf for the past five months. From the first moment I read his work, I was hooked. It lit up the part of my brain that loves to delve into the darker aspects of humanity. Kent’s tone is gritty, visceral, and brutal, and it explores the dark facets of humanity like no other book I have yet read.
Ok, on to the interview:
Hi there, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. You were one of my first supporters when I started posting book reviews on WordPress, and I’ve loved reading your work since then.
For the Readers:
Your writing is so blunt, intense, and liberally sprinkled with a dark sense of humor (in the best way). I’m curious, do you have a favorite genre to read, and what about it hooks you?
Nowadays, I’m reading (studying) my own stuff, since I’m busy editing the third (and final) volume of my YA fantasy series. Once I’m done drafting a book, I become a rigorous scholar of my own manuscript, reading and editing it over and over until I no longer get hung up on the logical discrepancies or arrangement of words (the cadence and poetry of it). To give you an idea of how in-depth this gets, I went from something like 430k words for Echo Volume 4 to 135k. That’s just the gross cut. As I edited, I also rearranged, added, and subtracted countless words throughout the process. So it’s not just a matter of cutting everything I don’t like, but fine-tuning a sentence here, subtracting a paragraph there, or rewriting something so it gives a better vibe or evokes a stronger emotion. I believe it was about thirty run-throughs before I was content with volume 4. With the more impactful scenes, it was even more, because I wanted to be utterly satisfied with how I wrote them.
When it comes to a series like the one I’m working on (the Unbound Realm), I have to not only read the book I’m editing, but also the previous books, so I can keep everything in line with my prior material. So right now, it doesn’t leave much room to read other stuff. But on a contrary note, when I had more free time, I was heavily influenced by what I read and watched as a kid in the 90s, mixed with my spiritual interests and contemplations I explored in my late 20s and early 30s.
As far as Echo, I drew from Robotech (for the physical tech), generalized future dystopia (I suppose the megacity in Dredd might be comparable), and my own twist on psychic combat. I wanted Echo to be gritty, violent, and have its own sense of dystopic beauty and futility, all while drawing the reader in and providing entertainment.
For Kor’Thank, I drew from countless hours of reading Calvin and Hobbes, as well as Barry Ween. I wanted Kor’Thank to be straight up absurd, psychedelic, and mirror the fun and possibility you get from an upbeat teen adventure movie, mingled with an R-rated comedy from the mid-2000s.
For the Unbound Realm, I wanted to focus on the wonder a naïve young man might experience if he crossed over into a fantasy realm. This one was influenced by The Dark Tower without the hard-R rating (my favorite parts of that series were the interdimensional crossovers, the ensuing culture-shock, and the wildly poetic dialect, which also managed to be brutal and uncompromising). I also, for the first time, wrote in a significant romance, which was heavily influenced by early 2000s Ultimate Spider Man.
There’s a scene in Ultimate Spider Man #13 where teen Peter Parker almost kisses Mary Jane, but they’re interrupted by Aunt May. Once he’s alone, Peter collapses on his bed, arms thrown wide, head thrown back, with a deliriously happy, near-thoughtless smile on his face (I think you can google “Ultimate Spiderman #13 smile,” and check the images tab if you want to see what I’m talking about).
I wanted to capture the energy of that youthful romance, where no one’s jaded, where neither party is trying to control the other with convoluted power plays, or societally programmed expectations. I wanted to write from a perspective where a simple kiss is mind-blowing enough to warrant butterflies in the stomach, and a nigh irresistible urge to jump around and punch the air in triumph.
Long story short: the romance in The Unbound Realm was influenced by the finale of Ultimate Spider Man #13.
What first got you into writing? And when you hit the dreaded writer’s block, how do you keep going?
I first got into writing on a whim—I wrote the first chapter of Echo as a science fiction, dystopic version of the military. I had a vague idea that I wanted Atriya fighting his way through a hostile city (which happens in Volume 3), so I started asking myself “How does he get there?” “What comes next?” The words just started flowing.
Prior to that, I’d tried to write here and there in my teens and twenties, but I couldn’t feel anything beyond a premise or concept. Once I started writing Echo, I could feel the scenes, mindsets, and physical interactions as vivid mental impressions. For some reason, I never got writer’s block after that. It coincided with an interest in Joseph Campbell’s idea of the hero’s journey (his six-part TV series is well worth a watch), and a bit of interest in Jungian psychology, but I can’t really say those are causative factors.
How much of your writing is inspired by true events or people?
Almost none of it. A bit of it is very, very vaguely based on some people I know.
Have you ever read a romance novel with a wounded war hero, and if so, do you think the internal monologues are at all realistic? 😂
I haven’t read a romance novel with a wounded war hero, lol! Probably the closest thing to that would be my ex taking me to see A Very Long Engagement.
Anecdotally speaking, I think most of a war hero’s internal monologue would be about doing their job to the best of their ability, or being frustrated/bored because they’re spending a lot of time waiting for something that may or may not happen.
I’m not an expert at what they might think if they became wounded, but I imagine a lot of it would be wanting to get back to supporting their unit. I know that’s not very romantic, but the military tends to instill a monastic, one-way thought process in terms of mission accomplishment. That was my experience, anyway.
For fellow authors:
Kent Wanye, why do you write?
Writing puts me into a flow state. It gives me the perfect amount of cognitive meat for my brain to chew on.
The main character in your series, Echo—Atriya—is so complex and nuanced. How do you create such immersive settings and engaging characters?
This may sound weird, but I believe in an infinite existence, where every configuration of physics, causality, and probability is expressed some where, some when.
To that end, I believe everything we imagine is actually real, somewhere out there in the vastness of infinity. And if that isn’t weird enough, I believe the Powers That Be want me to write these stories, and consequently drop the specifics into my head. As cliché as it is, I don’t believe I’m creating my characters—I’m just tuning into their lives.
I love seeing how different authors come up with the stories they write. This interview was kind of long, so I've split it into 2 parts.
Part 2 is my next post and will continue with the “For Fellow Authors” Section and a look at who Kent is outside of his writing.
In the meantime, you can find Kent Wayne’s works on Amazon Here.
Check out his website dirtyscifibuddha here.
Till next time, spread the love, pay it forward.