S. Roy L. Hawkins

 

S. Roy L. Hawkins spent twenty-two years as a member of the United States Navy, served with distinction during the Vietnam era and, of course, experienced the civic unrest that accompanied those times.During his lifetime he has seen much of the world, gotten to know a great many of it's people, and has experienced a diversity of cultures. He has fought in the prize ring, attained recognition as a martial artist, and found time to earn a degree in Law.

Mr. Hawkins now resides in Mobile, Alabama with his wife, Coe, where in addition to his writing, he works in the Shipbuilding industry. Mr. Hawkins' books include SCARAB-4, THE AVALONIANS, PROPHET-SEED and DARKRANGE.

 

"Mr. Hawkins blends many threads through this story bringing all the characters together for a climax that will leave you wanting more. This is a must read for anyone who likes good old fashioned science fiction and warrants a full four star rating." As reviewed by Robert M. Blacketer Scribes World Reviews

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: I was born poor, and raised in a small, dusty, central Texas town named Menard; not even on a good many maps of the state, yet this rustic and often-called ‘backwater’ environment served as a home for a good many hardworking cowboys, blacksmiths and ex-military men, men such as my grandfather, my father, and my uncles. My grandmother, my mother, and my numerous aunts were all church going women who enjoyed literature. As a small boy, listening in fascination to their reading of bible verses, and their winter’s day combing of the classics, I thought even then, that being the writer of such spellbinding works must have held much power, and a special magic. In any event, that’s where I got my start, by that big old woodburning stove in my grandma's kitchen, and I've been a prolific reader throughout my life, through my twenty-two years of U. S. Naval service, my Vietnam experiences, my boxing years, and even to this day.

My two greatest influences have been, and remain Louis L’amour and Ernest Hemingway, two writers who used plain, everyday words, understandable plots and believable characters to carry their ideas across the pages, through the mind and into the heart. Chic, shock, morbid revelation, nor political correctness held no meaning for either of them. I admire and respect that. John Wayne was another man whom I look up to—not the actor, just the man. In a quote from one of his movies, he said, and meant, "I won’t be cheated, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I expect like treatment from them." That’s a good rule of thumb to live by. He did. I do, I have, and I highly recommend it for others.

 

Pageonelit.com: You have written three novels DARKRANGE, SCARAB-4 and PROPHET-SEED -- How are these books different? How are they the same?

S. Roy L. Hawkins:Actually, I’ve written about forty novels and twice that many short stories. Prophet-Seed, Scarab-4, and Darkrange are the only three that I have attempted to publish. The major literary facets that these works have in common are the fact that all three are of the science fiction genre, they were all written to encompass futuristic settings, and all are charactered by strong and interesting individuals.

 

Pageonelit.com: Tell us about PROPHET-SEED - Where did the idea for this book come from?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: Prophet-Seed. Believe me, I caught hell from certain members of my family over this one. I still haven’t been able to convince them that this book is not the anti-Bible, nor is it meant to be sacrilegious in any manner. It’s a story. To read. For thought provoking entertainment, granted. Still, just a good story. Period.

I first began putting this piece together when I was about eighteen years old. I got the idea from my interpretations of the words of the prophets of old—the soothsayers from the Bible; who were these people? Where did they come from? Why were they upon the earth when they were?

The tale chronicles the life of a special forces Colonel, who lives some eight and a half thousand years in the future. Posted to a remote, Pleistocene-like frontier world called Avalon, Colonel Jaekela-Bar-Jaeken is the law there, empowered by his emperor as peace officer, judge, and executioner. His work on Avalon takes a strange and fascinating turn when he discovers that the old colonists there—the descendants of miners, prospectors and geologists who were abandoned on Avalon a thousand years before as a result of interplanetary war—have gone back to an iron-age existence, and have, sometime in the distant past, interbred with sentient beings, natives of Avalon who are called whistlers by the old colonists, but refer to themselves as simply the Folk. The offspring of this ancient interbreeding between the Folk and the colonists are known as Elders, and are much revered by the old colonists as a result of their innate goodness and certain, special prophetical powers.

Jaekela-Bar-Jaeken’s—or Jake’s—love interest is a convicted criminal, a temperamental one-time Lieutenant of the imperial army named Beda Loo, whom he buys from the imperial slave trade in order to have a companion that is strong enough to endure the rigors of his work on Avalon.

Although the story was originally intended as a futuristic, family adventure saga, it evolved into much, much more than that; an epic tale of love, swashbuckling action and the overcoming of hardships and diversity. The book is filled with interesting characters, dastardly villains, unusual life forms, both wonderful and terrible, and perhaps a few revelations that will leave the reader feeling warm-heartedly satisfied and eager for more.

 

Pageonelit.com: Tell us about SCARAB-4 - The book takes place in the year 4066 - How do you design a futuristic setting for for a book like this?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: I originally wrote Scarab-4 as a sequel to Prophet-Seed, but changed my mind during the writing of it; I thought it best to let the story stand on its own, rather than relying upon characters and events from another tale, entirely. It turned out to be quite an interesting story.

Writing is rather like painting; one can put before an audience anything that comes to mind. However, the embodiment of an artist’s imagination must be believable and entertaining; all other desired perceptions should fall into place if those two prerequisites are met. Insofar as creating a futuristic setting, especially one involving human beings, projection is the word. Where will we be culturally and technology-wise in the next two millennia? In answering that question, the writer must put on paper a projected picture, taking into account wars, pestilences, natural disasters and social upheavals. Pretty hard to predict, especially when the setting must be kept at a sensory level that a reader can relate to. Imagination. Imagination and common sense. Those are the answers, and I endeavored to utilize them well in the telling of Scarab-4.

The ship carrying the emperor’s grandson has been torpedoed somewhere out on the forty-seventh frontier. His nanny and bodyguard manage to get the child, the emperor-select onto a lifeboat, and with the corsairs in hot pursuit, they crash land on a perfunctorily-surveyed world called Scarab-4, where they brave an incredibly hostile environment, and attempt to evade the frantically searching corsairs while waiting and hoping for rescue.

Knowing that the corsairs will sterilize the planet Scarab-4 and all in and on it if he sends ships and troops to rescue his grandson, the emperor calls upon the best of his imperial Marshals, the elite of his own personal guard, to do the job. Major Beauwulf-Ben-Gavilan, AKA the wolf, is sent in solo, to either save the child or kill him in order to prevent his falling into corsair hands. However, on Scarab-4, Gavilan finds much, much more than what he had been sent after; he stumbles upon an ancient ship, an omnipotent device of awesome destructive and creational powers, a machine that holds the power to alter all of the theological and scientific teachings of man’s history.

The story abounds with strange creatures, exotic settings, finely-intertwined plots and interesting characters, including horned angels and dragons. For those who enjoy old fashioned science fiction, this book was written for you.

 

Pageonelit.com: DARKRANGE -- Is a very interesting book that speaks of revelation. Where did the idea for this book come from and how does it relate to your other books?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: Recently, the scientific world has come to realize that the going of the dinosaurs was not the first, nor indeed was it the last mass extinction that has taken place upon this planet. It is most certainly a dangerous and vulnerable orb we live upon. The environmentalists and tree loonies constantly whine that we are killing the planet and its creatures. Well, let me reassure them, chances are very good that we won’t live long enough to do it. The universe, or the earth itself will probably take care of that—again—and with much more unimaginable effect than we pitiful humans could ever bring about. Point: As recently as 80,000 years ago, a super volcano called Tubo, in Indonesia, erupted with such disastrous effects that all save about 5,000 people throughout the entire globe were killed. This has been proven through genetic testing; an ancient bottlenecking of the human gene pool. At any moment, Earth could be struck by another piece of unplotted cosmic debris; a rocky or heavy body in excess of a mile and a half in diameter could end the world as we know it. Further, even now, the lava chamber within another super volcano—Yellowstone National Park—is rising, and could erupt unexpectedly. In addition, it is a proven, scientific fact that the poles of this planet have shifted many times in the past, and are expected to do so again. What causes this? I submit that a cataclysmic shifting of the earth’s crust could bring such a thing to pass; the flood of Noah was not just a fanciful tale—it happened, and more than once.

What would be the repercussions of any of those scenarios above? If man survives such a cataclysm, what will he be like? How will he live? What will his world be like, and how will he perceive it?

In Darkrange, I attempted to answer some of these questions, and managed—I believe—to spin quite an interesting and entertaining tale in the doing of it.

Some eight hundred years after a disastrous shifting of the earth’s crust, the planet is sparsely populated. Its people live in clans governed by warlords called Cappens. These clans make their livings through farming, hunting and gathering, but more often, through bloody raids upon each other. Oddamn, or Odd, as he is called, is the son of the Cappen of the Ussen of Shadowhill Grange, and is the premier warrior among them. Odd has often wondered why he is so much stronger, faster and smarter than the other battlemen of his people. When a Doctor woman of the Ussen is kidnapped by the fierce and mysterious Darkeyes and taken into the forbidden grounds of the Darkrange, he finds out.

The Darkrange is a foreboding grange of strange flora and fauna, a forbidden place of the beforeones, those who were upon the world before the mighty Gooden, the god of the Ussen, lifted his hand and punished them for their wickedness, punished them with fire and flood so that only the good and few of them were left alive.

Deep within the moss-hung hell of the Darkrange, Odd learns the truth of the world, his people, and his own strange legacy. This book is a can’t-put-downer.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback from readers? What do they say to you about their interpretations of your book? What do they like about the book?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: Most of the people who’ve read these three books have done so two or more times. All of their feedback has been positive and congratulatory—they want more of the same. Most like the story, plot and characters, disregarding the genre completely.

 

Pageonelit.com: Are you working on a follow up? Or something totally different?

S. Roy L. Hawkins:I’m currently working on five more books, all science fiction, one of them a sequel to Darkrange. Another piece, tentatively titled Champion, should be finished by next Summer.

 

Pageonelit.com: What was the last book you read?

S. Roy L. Hawkins: The last book I read was Last Of The Breed, by Louis L’amour.

 

Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing.

S. Roy L. Hawkins: I am a world-class billiards player, and billiards, like boxing but unlike making love or riding a bicycle, requires a lot of practice to stay sharp. It takes up a good deal of my time. I also like to paint, sew, cook, and I do a little gardening from time to time.