Writing Wednesday: A conversation with Dave Freer
Storm Dragon nominated for Prometheus YA Award
I first learned of author Dave Freer from Sarah Hoyt. I was a regular in the Sarah’s Diner group and knew her from social and convention appearances. At the time I was offering creative writing classes to homeschool groups and she was giving me ideas for interviewees.
I’ve read several of Dave’s novels over the years, so I was thrilled to learn he had written a boy’s adventure book for Raconteur Press. In addition, Storm Dragon was recently nominated for a 2026 Prometheus Award for Young Adult novels. Dave was a 2023 Best Novel winner for his Cloud-Castles novel. The Prometheus Award is awarded and voted on by members of the Libertarian Futurist Society.
I highly recommend Storm Dragon to parents wishing to encourage their sons and daughters to read kid-friendly novels. While the book is billed as a boy’s adventure book, middle grade girls and grown-ups will enjoy it as well.
Let me explain that I grew up reading adventure and mystery series. I started with The Bobbsey Twins, then grew into The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, the Little House on the Prairie books and all the fiction in the elementary school library. So I love a good book written for emerging readers.
Storm Dragon fits that bill . . . mystery, comradeship, skill-building, dealing with bullies, bravery in unsettling circumstances, and (for my personal tastes) strong family ties. Adults can read this and nod to themselves, saying I recognize those corrupt bureaucrats and bullies.
In addition to the story-telling and the characters, I loved the language in the novel. Dave writes with British and Aussie colloquialisms. While I enjoyed savoring many of the phrases I learned from past reads, think of the fun you will have discovering and explaining these phrases to your child; phrases like “bring a torch with you,” or “a scarecrow of withy and clothes.”
While time contraints between Flinders Island and south central Texas kept us from in-person chats, I was able to send some questions to Dave and get his responses. Here is part of our chat:
Q: Will there be a sequel? Have you had readers asking what happens when Snarky grows bigger?
A: If I live long enough, there will be a sequel, re-uniting Snarky with his pod, dealing with the relationships between humans and Storm-Dragons, dealing with the escaped ship with its bad-guys, and the environment and a few other surprises.
Q: Has your career in oceanography and time on Flinders Island influenced your world-building for Vann’s World?
A: Naturally, my experiences — growing up as a commercial fisherman’s kid, between the bush and the sea — and training and working in fisheries, and now living on a remote island, with 0.2 people to the square mile, does affect my world-view. That has to affect your writing. I have lived in cities, done a desk-job for a couple of years, so I know that too. We live a largely self-sufficient life, and a lot of that relies on the sea (I live on island, after all) so the tides, and things that live in the sea are very much a part of our live. All the biology and ‘world-building’ are based on real present or historical life-forms.
Q: Have you fished or caught fish with a string and hook like your characters did?
A: We fish with hand-lines (a string and a hook - literally 3 mm cord, with a 50 pound nylon trace on the end). Poor fishermen have fished this way forever. Fishing-rods are not really necessary. They’re nice, work better in some cases. But some of my earliest memories are of fishing with a piece of old line and a hook. Dad had let me take his knife while they were working on the boat, but told me to look after it. I dropped it down the embankment into the harbor. I could see it, and climbed down after it and fell in. Got myself and the knife out (luck, not skill or brains). I can still remember the terror, and the determination not to lose the knife. I was five, I think. So yes. I have done that.
Q: I sense your characters are molded by the same ordeals you go through on the Island as you plan, organize, and repair things. Did your characters talk to you as you said the Cloud-Crafters characters did?
A: All my characters are real people - or, really, various pieces of real people. My one gift is that I am a good listener and observer, and I remember and can mimic. Look, I was an odd kid, with odd parents. As many of us do, I learned to be a chameleon. For some people they just become cogs that fit in. For me I just used it as camouflage and used it to stay more or less out of trouble, but it meant I became very good at noticing how people talk, how they think, how they act. And of course, while writing... I play the parts and speak the voices.
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I highly recommend Storm Dragon to readers of all ages. You can find it at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. It’s got great ratings at this date: 4.8 stars with 151 global ratings, with one reviewer saying it reminded him/her of Tom Swift in science fiction. Don’t forget to leave a review and rating for the novel (it’s how we tip our authors). And if you’re friends with Dave Freer on social media, drop him a line to let him know how much you appreciated the book.