Q: What are your perceptions of Death Equinox; what do you expect to do and experience?
Don: Death Equinox is the particularization of the great world changes going on right now. I expect I'll get some opportunities to thrive in those changes.
Q: Do you consider literature to be solely meant for escapism, or should it also be used as a means for exposing the darker aspects of society that people tend to want to avoid?
Don: It's not an either/or question. Writing has to be lively enough to capture both the heart and mind of the reader. To do this fully writing has to work on as many levels as it can. The most successful writing is like Eurydice. When Orpheus turns to see her in the world, she slips away into the dark. Orpheus is then overcome with longing and sorrow. This is how one should feel leaving a good book. The model, the subjective reality of the book, should fill the reader with a desire to recreate in this world some of the shining beauty and darkness she saw in the modeled world. Good books should not only swallow the reader whole while he reads them, they should give the reader a clue as his to remake this world when the reading is done.
Q: With fictional characters, do you think they should be portrayed as good and evil or should they fall more to the grey sides of conflicting purpose as people do in actual life (though individual motivations may seem evil to any given person)?
Don: Depends on what you mean by good or evil. I would define the good as actions tending to greater freedom for humankind. Since experiencing fiction is itself a celebration of that option -- no one's putting a gun to your head and making you read the book -- fiction must have good characters. It's only resonate with the idea of reading itself.
Q: Does writing hold a form of spiritual catharsis for you?
Don: It holds catharsis when I need catharsis, dreams when I need dreams, magic when I need magic. Anything that is created as a by-product of my own Becoming, is resonant with that Becoming. Or as Hermes says, "as above so below."
Q: What do you personally consider to be the most important form of "awareness"?
Don: The awareness of the Self and its responsibility for its own ethics, art, magic, and dreams. This is at times a crushing sense of one's insignificance, at other times ecstasy at one's potentials. It is here that Beauty and Terror start.
Q: Do you write to change the world, change yourself or make a quick buck?
Don: All of the above. You can't make changes in yourself without changing the world. If you wait till you've got yourself perfect before you go about changing the word -- you'll never get around to changing it. Commitment to self-cultivation is not an excuse for lack of worldly commitment. Money of course gives you both the time and amplification of what you're doing, so that you might -- if you work your tail off -- actually see some positive changes you've brought about in this lifetime.
Q: What fills you with hope?
Don: When I see tolerance for different ideas, I am hopeful. When I see questioning of the the basic paradigms of the TV world, I am hopeful. When I see people taking responsibility for making their Dreams become True, I am hopeful.