An Interview with Jeff Dennis

I am the author of six novels and a collection of short stories, all released by Nightbird Publishing. I have been writing fiction for forty-plus years, moonlighting for thirty-one of those years while working a day job as a technical writer for corporate IT companies in the Atlanta area. My first five attempts at a novel currently reside as dusty manuscripts in the deep dark confines of what I call my ‘apprenticeship trunk.’ They were absolutely dreadful and amateurish (LMAO!). They will never see the light of day, but they taught me a lot about the craft of writing commercial fiction.

In 1993 I founded Random Realities Magazine, an illustrated speculative fiction digest that won Best New Magazine and Best Editor awards from the Small Press Writers and Artists Organization (SPWAO). We closed shop in 1996 due to rising printing and distribution costs, and also due to my desire to spend more time on my writing and music. It was during this period that I began making a few short story sales to small press magazines, establishing a name for myself as an inventive speculative fiction writer.

For many years I played guitar and sang in more classic rock bands than I can remember. I played in bars and music festivals from Nashville to Atlanta to South Florida. Didn’t make much money, but what a blast. Being on stage and seeing audience members singing along and cheering you on is a drug like no other (not advocating drug use here, folks, but hey, whatever sails your ship!).

For more thrilling dirt about my books and music, visit www.jeffdennisauthor.com. There are even a few songs I recorded with some of those bands, and most of them don’t suck (he-he).

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What inspired you to start writing this book?

The idea for Cretaceous Stones began germinating in my mind thirty-five years ago, after Michael Crichton published Jurassic Park. Like many creatives who refuse to grow up, I have long been fascinated with dinosaurs. Considering Crichton’s ‘dinosaur DNA frozen in amber’ idea, I started thinking about other ways to bring dinos back to contemporary Earth. With this trilogy, I wanted to avoid the usual fictional dinosaur tropes (I have read many that suffer from a predictable sameness). I wanted to come up with something fresh and innovative. The enormous challenge I faced was bringing my complex and bizarre concept to life in a clear, believable way. Most of my readers who have been with me through the first two books tell me I have succeeded in doing just that. I believe my technical writing career helped me lay out the complex science in easy-to-understand prose. That said, it wasn’t always a joyride; there were many days of uncertainty during the year and a half I spent writing the novel. But it paved the way for books two and three. There are not as many days of doubt now that I’m well into work on number three, Endangered Species.

Here is the elevator pitch for Cretaceous Stones: Clusters of large meteorites rain down on the Continental Divide between Idaho and Montana. Authorities soon learn the extraterrestrial boulders are loaded with eggs of creatures that went extinct sixty-six million years ago. When Cretaceous Period dinosaurs begin hatching out, the natural world erupts into an unnatural disaster.

Coupled with my love of dinosaurs and paleontology is my passion for literary fiction, most specifically family sagas and tales of human relationships. In addition to the unique premise, the thing that sets Cretaceous Stones apart from other science fiction novels is its focus on the human experience. I give two families (a Montana rancher family of five and a Forest Service helicopter pilot and his family) and a budding romantic relationship between two well-known paleontologists as much – if not more – ‘screen time’ as the prehistoric creatures. Quite a few readers have told me they don’t normally read science fiction but loved Cretaceous Stones. The reason why usually points to the human characters. Readers have seemed to really get invested in my characters. Their experiences resonate with them. That’s music to my ears.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

The title for Cretaceous Stones was perhaps the easiest of all my books’ titles. I knew the Mesozoic era of dinosaur (Cretaceous) I was writing about, and the idea of the egg-laden meteorites (stones). There could be no other title. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Describe your dream book cover.

I have been extremely lucky to have worked with a very innovative graphic designer for the past dozen years: Carole Mauge-Lewis of Mauge Design in Acworth, Georgia. Carole and her team have designed five fantastic covers for me. The first two books in my Cretaceous Chronicles trilogy both qualify as my dream covers. The Cretaceous Stones cover won a prestigious Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) award for best fiction cover of 2022. The book two cover for Dragons of the Great Divide is also fantabulous, and I love it just as much.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Great question! Being a classic rock musician, I have always imagined soundtrack songs as I’m writing my stories. Some that come to mind for Cretaceous Stones are: Space Oddity by David Bowie, Space Truckin’ by Deep Purple, Rollin’ Down the Hill by The Rembrandts, Boom Boom by The Animals, Ride of the Valkyries by the London Symphony Orchestra, (Ghost) Riders in the Sky by Johnny Cash, Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, Black Dog by Led Zeppelin, Barracuda by Heart, Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran, Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis, Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, and three songs by Blue Oyster Cult: Godzilla, Dominance and Submission, and Don’t Fear the Reaper. I think these tunes would make a standout soundtrack for Cretaceous Stones.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I have done a ton of research on dinosaurs, paleontology, and paleozoology; too many sources to list here. For pleasure, I read mostly fiction, usually fifty to sixty novels per year. So far this year I have read thirty-six novels published in 2025. Here are my top five (it might be surprising that none are science fiction):

1. Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo

2. The Oligarch’s Daughter by Joseph Finder

3. The Heart of Winter by Jonathan Evison

4. What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

5. King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

Before my thirty-one-year stint as a technical writer, I slaved for the man as a printing paper salesman, industrial paper salesman, college textbook rep for a major publisher, and a telephone marketer for a computer software tax application. The Christmas season after I graduated college, I played a department store Santa Claus at Sears in Burlington, Massachusetts. Toughest job I ever had. To this day I’m still amazed I was able to pull it off; I cannot believe the kiddies bought it that I was actually Santa. I wrote a semi-autobiographical short story about me posing as Santa in my collection Daydreams and Night Screams entitled All I Want for Christmas. Most of it is true.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

My mother was a voracious reader who passed her love of reading on to me. My first real reading passion was The Hardy Boys series. I devoured most of those young adult mysteries, all the while thinking I would like to try my hand at writing a book someday. I started by writing extremely gory cowboy and Indian stories and similarly bloody episodes of the TV show Combat. I designed my own covers, then stapled them together and shared them with my friends. I thought I had arrived (ha-ha, such a foolish boy). My parents were very worried about me at that point (LOL!). As I moved into early adulthood, my literary interests matured, expanding to works by John Steinbeck, Irwin Shaw, James A. Michener, Herman Wouk, Sidney Sheldon, Lawrence Sanders, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King, among many others. Nowadays, my literary tastes are all over the map. Too many skilled authors from multiple genres who have influenced my writing to list here.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Sitting in my ancient La-Z-Boy recliner in my home office.

What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?

I would tell my younger self to write the stories you want to read but just can’t find anywhere. I would tell him to write to entertain yourself, first and foremost, for if you do, you’re bound to entertain others. I would also tell him to read widely and critically to learn what works and what doesn’t, and to write something every day to strengthen the authorial muscles. But most importantly, I would tell my inexperienced writer self to relax and enjoy every moment of the process, that creating worlds and characters and mesmerizing plots out of nothing can be a magical experience. It’s the cheapest and most rewarding form of therapy I know. And believe me, we writers need a LOT of therapy!

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

I would hope that readers of Cretaceous Stones would be so blown away by the speculative world I created they would be pumped to read the second book in the trilogy, Dragons of the Great Divide. And hopefully after reading Dragons, they would be moved to finish out the trilogy with book three, Endangered Species (coming early summer 2026).

And just where do those Cretaceous dinosaur eggs come from, you ask? Well, I’d love to answer that here, but I don’t want to spoil your fun. It’s all laid out for you in Cretaceous Stones.

Visit www.jeffdennisauthor.com for lots of fun stuff.

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