About D B Ruschena

 
Born in Philly, Pa, USA in 1973 I started life on a property just outside it with the almost magical name "Willow Water Farm" which I’m sure has influenced my life-long love of trees and their mythology. After some time beyond memory somewhere in New York, I moved first to South Africa (which I do remember) and then to beautiful, cosmopolitan Melbourne, Australia (my mother’s home town) at the age of 4. In Feb 2007 my husband’s work took us to the South coast of Sydney until, again following my husband’s work, we moved to Nagoya, Japan in June 2008.
 
To have the opportunity to live and write in Japan for at least 18 months is truly the fulfillment of a life-long dream! I live with my handsome, gentle husband and our fourteen year old cat Brigid, named after my favourite Celtic Goddess - a name I also chose for my protagonist in my screenplay: The Shadowkeeper.
 
Beyond writing my own stories, my passions lie mostly in the stories of others: anime (Japanese animation); film (From Hollywood, Hong Kong or Paris as long as the story whisks me away!); and the history, mythology and spiritualities of the ancient world.
 
Main writing influences (chronologically):
  • Snow White (Disney’s which I saw as a two year old and actually remember the experience!), Narnia, The Hobbit and Star Wars which hooked me on luscious, fantastic worlds where Good fought Evil and won, no matter how small its Champion or perilous the fight;
  • Japanese animation (from Ghibli to Tokyopop), for the importance placed on character development even in the midst of the most action-packed sci-fi or fantasy (even when they’re written really badly!)
  • Mrs. Wendy Taylor and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence. Mrs. Taylor read these books to us in grade four and, after re-reading and re-reading them right through grade 7 (finding nothing else which satisfied me as much), writing over-took reading as my favourite activity and I sought out my first books on how to do it (and first came across the Quest Narrative Structure which I didn’t really understand till first year at Uni.);
  • Comparative Lit. 101, Monash U. The class in which I first saw a screenplay and had my eureka moment - this was how I had always written: a novel without "the boring bits" (the long descriptive passages I always swore I’d return to, when I’d finished the action and dialogue, to make it real prose!)
  • The mythology and culture of the many ancient civilisations that have seized my obsessive brain at one time or another - most enduringly, my own Celtic/Gallic heritage;

    •  

    Career & Education:
    I earned my B. Arts at Monash Uni, Melbourne, majoring in Philosophy (Politics, Metaphysics) with minors in Ancient History & Archaeology and Comparative Literature. I received my first writing commission in 1996, ghosting the autobiography of a post WWII immigrant to Australia, for private publication. Since then, though not necessarily as a writer, I have been lucky enough to have spent most of my working life in storytelling of some sort.

    In September 1997 a volunteer technical production position at Vision Australia’s Radio for the Print Handicapped segued into a job duplicating audiobooks on tape for their Talking Book Library and Studio. In February of 1998 I was in the right place to hear about an opening in the studio and I began my career as producing and directing audiobooks.

    Writing was always on my mind and, over 2000 and 2001, I looked seriously at screenwriting for the first time, taking various screenwriting and script analysis classes at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 2002 I attended Robert McKee’s Story Seminar in Brisbane.

    In October 2002 I began freelancing at Melbourne’s other audiobook studio, Bolinda Audio (it’s a tiny industry here,) and in March 2003 became their Executive Producer. Quickly realising that, as with all management positions, being Executive Producer was more administration than hands-on production and soon found my studio time grinding to a halt. Not seeing any way to take a backward step, I decided to bite the bullet and focus on my own stories at last - I resigned in April 2004 and dedicated myself to writing. My first project was my screenplay, The Shadowkeeper.

    In 2005 The Shadowkeeper was entered and did very well in three Hollywood script competitions (including the Academy’s Nicholl Fellowship in which it was a Quarter Finalist.) As a finalist in the ScriptPIMP awards I was invited to the awards night in LA and was able to spend some time there getting to know a bit more about that industry - and about myself as a writer. I learned that what I love about writing is the act of making up the story, of creating the characters, putting them into a situation and finding out what happens - something, I discovered, a working feature screenwriter rarely gets to do. The beauty and efficiency of the screenplay or graphic-novel script will always be my first love but after that experience, I decided that my focus should be on writing stories for print - heavily influenced by my screenplay skills of course!

    I am currently developing "The War of Wind and Moon", a fantasy novel which incorporates issues inspired by a life-long study of Philosophy of Religion and History with a cracking good tale of good and evil!

  • Pages

  • In my part of the world it's...


  • Currently Reading

  • Recently Reviewed

  • Other Bloggers

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Search