Douglas C. Smyth

I began writing 58 years ago.

While writing novels, I also wrote as a freelancer, and continued to write academic journal articles--until I jettisoned my academic career, (I have a Ph.D in Social Science).

My latest novel, "Will We Survive?" takes place after many pandemics and few survivors "on the surface," while the wealthy hide from the pandemics in underground settlements. Who will survive, the wealthy heirs, or the few subsisting above?

We first encounter Eve and her partner, when a winter hurricane blows Dawit out of the cave where they'd retreated from a Scourge "party". Meanwhile, Alistair, the heir of a dying underground settlement, seeks the unruly surface dwellers to control, while Dawit struggles to return before Eve gives birth.

I've written several fictional memoirs: my latest, "Princess Olga: Uncovering My Headstrong Mother's Venezuelan Connection," was inspired by my mother's dreaming dementia. I realized, there was a story here, of how she became the impressive woman who founded a school and informally invented special ed. She lived to 101.

Princess Olga uncovers a family mystery: why, her mother abandoned extensive properties in Trinidad and a prestigious position in Venezuela's exile community to live in New York, with her three children, leaving her properties unclaimed. Her son sought a legal settlement for them 40 years later. Olga, it turns out, was central to why they fled Trinidad, although she was only 11 at the time.

I began writing Attila's fictional autobiography ("Attila as Told to His Scribes"), when I began to explore the possibility of previous lives, and I came upon some of his history, legends, and folktales.

My wife, Elizabeth Cunningham, a celebrated novelist, remarked while I was writing Attila, "It's as if you were Attila in a previous life!"

Aside from being a writer, I'm the father of three grown children who have all flown the coop, My eldest is now 50. I live on a beautiful piece of land in the Shawangunks, close to a little village, but very private..

I hope you enjoy my novels, and I'd be happiest if I heard from you about them.