20 Questions with David Ekrut

As avid readers, we at Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing have grown bored with the questions in “respectable” interviews. What about the really important ones, like what is their least favorite chore or their favorite flavor of ice cream? This week we’ve booked David Ekrut.

Dr. David Ekrut wrote his first epic fantasy novel while earning a PhD in Biomedical Mathematics, raising three energetic children, and teaching elementary mathematics at Florida State University. Somehow he survived all of this self-inflicted torture without a caffeine overdose, though he did push the limits his brain could sustain by consuming copious amounts of coffee. To this day, he likes to tease his thesis advisor that while waiting on feedback on his dissertation, he wrote an entire novel.

After retiring from a career as a cancer research scientist, he now writes full time (as a medical writer by day and a novelist by night). Taming the Elements, the first book in the Elwin Escari Chronicles has sold tens of thousands of copies in 8 different countries—digital, print, and audio formats are available. Two more novels exist in this series with more in the works.

He grew up reading and rereading the Wheel of Time series. Having influenced him for decades, Jordan and Sanderson are colossal figures in his writings. Whenever stuck in his own works, he studies their worlds for inspiration.

His greatest joy, besides writing about himself in the third person, is to work out believable mechanics for magic systems—a place for him to apply his understanding of physics and engineering in a creative way. Though his first novels have found a modicum of success, he is more excited about the drafts he has in the pipeline, as well as the ideas he has yet to discover.