My name is David V. Stewart and I am an author, musician, screenwriter, and educator originally from Lufkin, Texas. I’ve lived
a lot of different places besides East Texas, but aside from a two-year stint in Las Vegas, I have spent most of my professional life in California. During the last ten years I have worked as a performer, playing recitals and concerts on the classical guitar, and as an educator at various levels, including some time teaching at a university. A few years ago I decided to take up a passion that was in many ways much older than my love of music, which is the telling of stories. This site and the works it produces represents in many ways the fulfillment of ancient goals.
DVS Press is also a revival attempt of a very old idea in the greater literary world, which is that of serialized fiction. The vision of this site is one of free content, delivered to end users without up-front cost. Serial fiction represents a means to achieve that vision.
With my last website, The Tears of Prometheus, I was able to do something rather rare: I wrote and published my third novel, Muramasa: Blood Drinker, in serial form. That book is now available on Amazon. I want to duplicate that achievement here, and I have many, many vehicles with which to do that.
I have so many places to show you, full of interesting people and fascinating sights. Worlds full of love, joy, sorrow, hope, despair, and above all, wonder. Won’t you take the journey with me?
Hi David,
if you need a cover artist …
http://ticulin.deviantart.com/gallery/58685751/Book-cover-illo
Thanks for sending me the portfolio! Maybe I’ll be in touch for future projects!
Just read knives of darkness part 1. I have to tell you I won’t be reading part 2. At least not on this site. I will be buying the book though. Nice work and keep it coming.
Part 1 is currently free on Amazon (the sample on the site, btw, is from the rough draft I published as part of a demo of my process), and you can get the second book for free by hopping on my mailing list here https://dl.bookfunnel.com/qsjvcquyl5
Hello, I started writing as a beginner writer some time last year and have some work drafted for a novel I would like to have at the very least reviewed. The problem is I don’t know what steps I need to take or who to approach with my manuscript. I live in southern Kentucky and there aren’t very many if any publishers or writing advisers I can approach locally. Do you have any suggestions?
It depends what your goals are. If you are looking for feedback, I suggest a writing group where you read each other’s manuscripts. Usually they are a bust, but occasionally you can find a group of people in your genre to exchange manuscripts with. Beyond that, there are friends and family. If you are looking for editing services, there are a bunch online, but in my opinion editing is not generally worth it until you are expecting to rake in a lot of money with a book. Publishing itself is another horse, where you’ll have to query agents and do all sorts of other stuff before anyone will read your manuscript, and usually, if they do read it and don’t like it, you won’t hear a thing.
You might consider just putting your book in a drawer (if its done, that is. If it’s not, finish it) and writing another book. You’ll probably learn more from just writing another book than you will getting other novice writers to try to critique your work. It’s really hard to get free help. After you finish book two or three, you’ll have a better idea what’s wrong with book one, and whether you want to bother pollishing it for release.
Sorry if that isn’t super helpful. I’ll have some more in-depth content up soon on what to do for the revision and publication phases of a book.
Thanks for replying. I look forward to your in-depth content. Maybe they should have gotten others to critique there work before they released Star Wars the last jedi. I give it a 2/10. the attention to detail was nonexistent .
Hello. I’ve been watching many of your YouTube videos lately and decided that I would like to read some of your books. Your “Muramasa” novel is the only one that I can find on the Kindle format in the Amazon UK store. Does that sound right?
Also, in your text above, is there a typo?
“A few years ago I decided to take up a passion that was in many much older than my love of music, which is the telling of stories”
It seems like the “in many” should either not be there or should be followed by “ways”.
Thanks! All my books should also be available on the UK store. I’ll the fix the typo.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01H7K4GE6
Hi David, I watch your youtube videos, and enjoy listening to your analysis of stories. Something I’ve thought, when watching the series ‘Revenge’ and, more recently, ‘Iron Fist’ on Netflix, is that, after promising starts, they ‘lose the plot’ after a while – ie. they violate their own constraints and consistency. Just as I start getting into the characters, they do stupid, nonsensical things. I’m not a pro at critical analysis, and would love to hear your take on this, if you have a view and ever decide to analyse these series, or this format of storytelling. At the moment I can only surmise that the original scriptwriter of Iron Fist got replaced by lesser one around Episode 5 or so.
I’m not a fan of most series that attempt long arcs for this reason. It’s not so much the writers get worse as you must artificially prolong and add conflict for the series to remain interesting. With a traditional, limited story, you set up the plot goals and things flow naturally from that. This is why I prefer episodic series (such as Star Trek) to soap-opera style serials where things must continually go on and on. I either get dreadfully bored, fatigued by the lack of progress, or annoyed at the irrational twists or character changes.
David,
I have been watching many of your youtube videos recently and have a question about writing. I am currently writing a novel. I have about 22,000 words so far. Most of it takes place in a made up realm, but it starts with a white american in southern Tunisia on the edge (and at some points in) the Sahara desert. My question to you is how much research must I do on this part of my story to make it believable? Do I need to go to Tunisia and the Sahara, or can I just go off a basic thoughts and stereotypes of the region?
I think it’s fine to do some armchair research. You want to portray the culture and people realistically, but I don’t think its necessary to travel there in this case.
David,
Do you have a video up about writing action scenes? If not, would you consider putting one together?
Sorry if I’ve missed it. I’m fairly new to your YT channel and post there under the name “qwchrbichn”. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this subject.
Sure, I can talk about it on the next writestream and maybe do an individual vid from there.
Hey, David,
In one of your videos, you mentioned that you started teaching at the college level by the time you were 25 years old. You also mentioned that you were already an accomplished musician by this time, and had a book or two written, if I’m not mistaken. It’s inspiring to me that you had already done so much at a young age, but it was also a reminder of how little I have accomplished in my own life. I’m 25 now and I’m starting to feel the clock ticking in terms of needing to do something meaningful with my life. I don’t want to grow old and regret giving into my fears holding me back from pursuing my dreams. I was wondering if you have any advice for somebody like me, somebody that needs to get a move on with their life.
I’m sorry if my writing is bad. Thank you for doing what you do.
It ain’t over ’til its over.
Ronnie James Dio didn’t achieve great success until the second half of his thirties, having been a gigging musician since the 50s. Same with Lemmy.
George RR Martin didn’t achieve his success until he was an old man.
Charles Ives gave up on music for several decades to sell insurance, only coming back to music after a long time.
I didn’t publish my first book until I was 32. I couldn’t do more than one pullup until I was 28. I didn’t see my abs until I was 29.
Tolkien didn’t publish The Hobbit until he was 45.
Last year’s Mr. Olympia, Shawn Roden, was the oldest man to ever win the competition. Dexter Jackson was still placing top 10 at age 49. And your body has an expiration date. You’re mind, not so much.
I mention that I was teaching college at a young age because that usually impresses people, but I should really lay off stories like that. That stuff doesn’t matter. At the same time I was teaching at a university I was giving up the things I really cared about, things I only got around to doing in my 30s. There’s still a dozen things I want to accomplish and I don’t know how to get there, and I wonder if I’m too old to get into it, but I’m going to try anyway, because it ain’t over til its over.