#GIVEAWAY Darksight Interview with D.C. Mallery

I love books that overlap genres so when I found out what Darksight was about I knew I had to showcase it and pick the brain of author D.C. Mallery. Plus D.C.'s publicist Author/Guide is sponsoring a #Giveaway, details below.
Enjoy!

ISBN-13:
 978-1644370612

Publisher: Black Opal Books


Release Date: 6-8-2019


Length:
 358 pp

Buy It: Amazon/B&N

ADD TO: GOODREADS

Overview:

Audra Carter, a popular deejay in Manhattan, won’t let mere blindness keep her from living life her way, sometimes even riding her bicycle through town, relying on keen hearing and uncanny instincts to guide her. Her father, Jenson Carter, a neuroscientist, has devoted his career to finding a cure for her particular form of blindness. He now believes he has. With Audra and several other test subjects, Jenson takes his research to the next level, only to face apparent failure. Jenson becomes alarmed by several bizarre deaths involving the test subjects. He fears his experiment was hijacked by former colleagues with a secret agenda, but the police blame him for the deaths. Audra is kidnapped and forced to survive a series of terrifying ordeals designed to hone a new and dangerous kind of vision that the hijacked experiment unleashed: Darksight. As Jenson races to discover the truth and find his daughter, Audra struggles to survive increasingly-deadly challenges. Will Audra master her mysterious Darksight and defeat her captors to keep both her and her father alive?

Giveaway is one print copy of
Darksight US ONLY
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Interview with DC Mallery:

Welcome to The Reading Frenzy DC, your thriller looks fabulous.
Tell my readers a little about it.

Darksight is about a strong-willed young woman -- Audra Carter -- who happens to be blind, but that doesn't slow her down. She reluctantly agrees to an experimental medical procedure designed to restore her vision. The story is also about her father -- Dr. Jenson Carter -- who invented the procedure. It's meant to be quite safe, but Jenson soon finds himself blamed by the authorities for several horrific deaths involving his test subjects. They all seem to be going insane! Before long, Audra is abducted, and Jenson realizes his experiment has been hijacked. He must evade the police to find his daughter, while Audra needs to survive a series of increasingly deadly challenges designed by her captors to hone certain unique abilities the experiment has unleashed, and to keep her from going insane too.

Wow what an intriguing premise.
 From the blurb it sounds like there are some paranormal qualities to the novel. Is this true?

Darksight rides the cutting edge between state-of-the-art medical science and the paranormal. I like to describe it as Michael Crichton meets Dean Koontz. A reviewer recently described my novel as "X-Files mixed with a dash of CSI," and I think that description fits too.

I have a Master's Degree in Physics, and I really like to dig into the actual science behind unusual phenomena, especially unusual human abilities. But, as a writer, I don't want to be beholden to textbook science, as it can become a straitjacket in some stories. Ultimately, one needs to do what's best for the story, and so Darksight follows a path that drags its characters kicking and screaming from the comfort of modern medical science into what one might call X-Files territory.

Was there a particular event etc.. that gave you the idea for writing this novel?

Darksight was inspired by the very real medical phenomena called blindsight, which is the uncanny ability that some individuals with cortical blindness have to sense objects they can't actually see. With that particular type of blindness, the retina and optic nerves still function, but the part of the brain that processes vision -- the visual cortex -- might be damaged so severely that the person is unable to see anything. Yet these individuals can still be "aware" of objects they can't consciously see. That is, they can somehow see without seeing. No one knows for sure how blindsight works, but it may involve primitive parts of the brain that evolved long ago to give us a form of instinctive "nonconscious" vision. 

Anyway, Darksight asks what would happen if you tried to re-wire the human brain so that those more primitive regions of the brain could provide conscious vision? What would it look like? Darksight also asks the more troubling question of what other abilities lurking within those primitive parts of the brain might be unleashed, perhaps dangerous abilities that have lain dormant within us for eons?

You have published short stories but Darksight is your first novel.
Besides the length what are some challenges/differences between the two writing formats? 

Novels offer room to explore characters in way that's hard to do in a short story. And Darksight is very much a character-based thriller. Both Jenson and Audra are emotionally-damaged individuals who have not yet come to terms with a tragic car accident that not only blinded Audra but killed her mother. In the end, Jenson and Audra will be forced to confront the horror of that accident and overcome their deep-seated guilt if they have any hope of defeating their captors and surviving.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, good luck with the new novel.
What’s next on your writing plate?
Although Darksight was written as a stand-alone novel, it does allow for a sequel or two (maybe more!). And so I'm working on one now. I'm also finishing a novel called Artemesia. It digs into the phenomena of phantom pain. Like Darksight, Artemesia begins with a real medical phenomenon and then finds its way into X-files territory. 

Editorial Reviews

“The blade that clears the path for medical progress has another edge, one that often creates unexpected, unimaginable, even unthinkable side effects, both real and imagined. Such is the case with DARKSIGHT. A tightly-written, fast-paced thriller that will make you think—and disturb your sleep. Highly recommended.” ~ DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly and Cain/Harper thriller series.


"Mallery’s novel is a fast-paced thriller that is part X-Files mixed with a dash of CSI. Along with the bodies that begin to pile up are the questions about what exactly is happening to these people and who is responsible. It is easy to disregard a couple of inconsistencies in a story whose momentum consistently builds from start to finish. Mallery does a great job creating interesting characters with reasonable motives driving their actions. This gives his story weight and credibility which allow it to explore science fiction elements without losing the sense that it is grounded in a reality the reader knows and understands. At its heart, it is a story of a man driven by guilt and motivated by love. Readers will identify with this and find themselves caring about the characters and the outcome of their story." ~ Mark Heisey, The US Review of Books

About the author:

DC Mallery is a writer of suspense/thrillers, screenplays, and other works, as well as short fiction mostly in the thriller, horror and science fiction genres. His short fiction, The Trauma Eater, appeared in Sanitarium Magazine, Ellie was published in Lamplight, a quarterly magazine of dark fiction, and Fireworks and a Kiss at the End of Time appears in Bards and Sages Quarterly. His story The Frequency of Souls will appear in an upcoming issue of Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror, and Installation No. #17 will appear in an upcoming issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly. His screenplay, Emergence, was awarded second place for Feature Screenplay at 2018 VisionFest. His science thriller, Darksight, will be published by Black Opal Books in June 2019. He’s also an avid photographer and his work can be found on Instagram @DCMallery. Visit him on Facebook at DC Mallery or follow him on Twitter @DCMallery.

He is represented for Darksight by Lisa Abellera of Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

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