Derrick
Ferguson was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and has lived there for most of
his life. He worked security for many years at a various establishments before
retiring to take care of his health and dedicate his life to his true passion:
writing and sharing exciting stories.
“I’ve been
writing as long as I can remember. Usually I would simply rewrite stories I
read in comic books or saw in cartoons on TV. My first crack at true creative
innovation came from when I was possessed with an inexplicable obsession with MAD Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy.” I filled
up whole spiral notebooks writing two and three page stories about them,”
Derrick said. “From then on I just went on writing whatever struck my fancy. I
was writing fan fiction before I even knew what fan fiction was as I wrote stories
about my favorite superheroes.”
Derrick
wrote mostly for the Star Trek and Marvel/DC fan fiction communities and for
his own personal enjoyment throughout the ’80s and ’90s. During this time he
submitted a fair amount of manuscripts to various publishers who “sent them
back just as fast as [he] sent them out.” New opportunities came about,
however, with the advent of the internet. Derrick and several of his fellow
fanfiction writers joined together to create Frontier Publishing, a fiction
website devoted to publishing serialized novels. The site ran several serials,
including Derrick’s own novel Dillon and
the Voice of Odin.
Unfortunately,
Frontier Publishing had to close up shop after a couple of years, and that may
have been the end for Derrick’s writing career and his now-beloved character
Dillon if Derrick’s friend and fellow writer Russ Anderson hadn’t cajoled him
into sending the completed serial off to a publishing house for one last shot
at getting his writing into print.
“If anybody
has read and enjoyed my Dillon stories then they should go right now and send
Russ a thank you email. If I’m Dillon’s daddy then Russ is his granddaddy,”
Derrick said. “If it hadn’t been for Russ kicking me in the ass and throwing
considerable support behind me to get that book published, you might not still
be reading Dillon adventures today.”
Thanks to
Russ, Dillon and the Voice of Odin
was finally published in 2003 in paperback—or “dead tree format” as Derrick
facetiously calls it—, Derrick’s professional writing career began in earnest,
and over the years Pro Se has been graced with a number of thrilling tales of
Dillon’s adventures as well as many other great works of new pulp.
Like any
great writer, Derrick is a voracious reader, and it was quite difficult for him
to narrow down the list of writers who have influenced him over the years.
“That would be a really long list if I had to name all the writers who have
influenced me,” he said. “But I’ll just give you The Dirty Dozen of the writers
I love the most and who I feel have influenced me the most: Robert E. Howard.
Chester Himes. Roger Zelazny. Ishmael Reed. Mike Resnick. Jim Steranko. Ian
Fleming. Larry McMurtry. Robert R. McCammon. Lester Dent. Charles Saunders.
George C. Chesbro.” With a literary pedigree like that, it’s little wonder he’s
made such a mark in the world of new pulp!
But awards
and hyperbolic praise not what drive Derrick in his career as a writer. “I like
telling stories,” he said. “It is no deeper than that. For some reason God gave
me the gift of making up outrageous stories and the ability to communicate them
in an entertaining manner through prose . . . What do I hope to achieve? That
my stories can entertain and maybe make somebody’s day a little easier and
maybe make them forget their troubles for a couple of hours.”
Derrick is
working on a number of exciting projects for the future: the DILLON ANNUAL COLLECTION Vol. I which will collect six Dillon novellas and short stories, the SEBASTIAN RED anthology. VOODAH, LORD OF THE SAVAGE EMPIRE, continuing the adventures of the hero of the award winning short story, "Voodah of Thunder Mountain" and a fictional pulp adventure based on the real life World War I flying ace Eugene Bullard
