INTERVIEW: Daniel W. Shegrud Shares His True Author Payday

Welcome to the Tuesday Author Interview with Christina Boyd for the Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

CHRISTINA: I first met fellow Washington State author Daniel W. Shegrud through the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. We were both up for the Best Romance Unpublished Writers Award in September 2025. I sat with him and his lovely wife at the awards banquet. I was delighted when he agreed to this interview.

When did you first think you had a book to write, and how did you start? 

DANIEL: As a kid, I was a reader. I was reading at a fourth-grade level before I started first grade. I read all day, every day, and often half the night. I went through so many flashlight batteries reading under the covers, my dad bought me rechargeable ones.

My intense love of reading continued until college ended, and I had to get a real job. Real jobs really get in the way of reading, you know? But I solved that problem. In my early thirties, I started driving a truck. On the road for up to eleven hours a day, I passed the time by reading books on tape.

I know, some misguided souls believe that hearing a book is not reading a book, but I swear, whenever I reflected on a book I’d heard, I saw it in my mind as printed words on a page. I drove a truck for twenty-two years, and in that time, I had a book going almost constantly. I listened to lecture series, college courses, classics, and big hitters like Alexandar Solzhenitsyn, Isaac Asimov, and Stephen Hawking. Mostly, however, I read novels. Thrillers, mysteries, sci-fi, romance. If it had a discernible plot and an active narrative, I devoured it.

Early in my trucking life, I had on a particularly forgettable novel and had a random thought cross my mind, born of boredom: I can write a better book than this. Shortly after, I started composing in my head instead of listening, and when I had a brilliant plot all scripted, I wrote the first paragraph of my debut novel.

Ten years later, I wrote the second paragraph. Five years later, I started writing paragraph three and kept at it until, five more years later, I typed The End on my first completed novel, The Planet Perfecters. That was in 2016. My second book, Annie Always, came out in 2017. I’ve since written three more complete novels, two half-done novels, and five children’s picture books.

CHRISTINA: What a fantastic journey. I love how a lifelong passion for reading naturally evolved into writing, and the fact that your first novel took twenty years to complete makes your perseverance just as inspiring as your creativity.

What’s more difficult to write? A love scene, a love letter, or something else?

DANIEL: The love stuff is easy. I’m big into love stories. What’s difficult? In a word, transitions!

CHRISTINA: It's funny how the emotional scenes come naturally, while it's often the transitions that become the biggest writing challenge.

What comes first: plot or characters?

DANIEL: That all depends on the genre. With my sci-fi/comedy and thriller, the plot came first, and the characters appeared as needed as the story progressed. With love stories, my favorite thing to write, it was always the characters first. All three of my love story novels started because I met a woman with a particular quirk and the thought popped into my head, “What would it be like to love her?”

Annie, in Annie Always, is severely handicapped. She was patterned after a girl I knew in high school who had almost identical impediments. That girl had a lot of drive and spunk, and I greatly admired her.

Ematrude, in Whether to Dance, is extremely quirky and high-energy, with a penchant for loving others to extravagance. I patterned her after a girl I worked with in hospice.

Terry, in Barbee's at the Beach, which is coming out in August or September, was a mid-Sixties owner of a motel in Westport. In our first encounter, she was caustic, confrontative, and combative (Aah! Alliteration! Awkward!), but by the time I checked out, she had proven herself to be caring and considerate (I really need to stop doing that.)

All three women were unique enough to prompt the novel-spawning question.

CHRISTINA: I love how real people can spark unforgettable fictional characters. It's fascinating to see how those "what would it be like to love her?" moments became entire novels.

Do you put people you know, or their characteristics, in your book?

DANIEL: People? Yes and no. Characteristics? Absolutely! Though I often perform on stage, I’m not an extrovert by nature. In other words, I love an audience, but I hate a crowd. Whenever I find myself in a crowd situation, I almost always migrate to the edges and watch. Always have. Even as a kid. I’m fascinated by quirks, idiosyncrasies (I can’t actually say that word; I always put an N between the A and C), mannerisms, and gestures used by the more gregarious types during social intercourse (cue the Beavis and Butthead giggles, “He said intercourse.”)

As a high schooler, I got involved in theater and actively pursued acting. All those things I observed, I put into my stage characters. Now that I write novels, I do the same.

CHRISTINA:  What a great approach. Borrowing personality traits and quirks rather than whole people makes characters feel authentic while still being entirely their own.

How did writing your first book change your writing process?

DANIEL: I had no writing process when I wrote my first novel, so I had nothing to change. Only a great deal to learn. The process of writing my first novel was comparable to a torturous double-decade college course. Truth is, though I knew how to read a story, I had no idea how to write one. I had received straight As in all my college comp courses, but a composition and a novel are two entirely different monsters. After my 20-year self-education, once I had a clue how to write a book, I applied all my battle-scarred lessons to the next novel, and it only took nine months, with far less re-writes.

I still trek through all the same creative mountains and valleys as I did with the first book, but do so at a much more productive pace. I thought about using the word "alacrity" in the last sentence, but I’m trying to pretend I’m not a pompous novelist.

CHRISTINA: Now that's a learning curve!

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

DANIEL: Boring. I’m still considered boring by most folks who know me, but as a novelist, I’m able to amuse myself.

CHRISTINA: What was the greatest moment of your writing career?

DANIEL: I have three. First: one of my children’s books, Flying Lessons, attempts to answer the question of why God allows pain. It’s a heavy subject, and one I don’t expect kids to understand, but my hope is that someday, when that question becomes personal to them, they will remember what I wrote, and it will help them. One day, a woman came up to me at the post office and told me she had read my little book, given to her by a friend. She said her husband had passed after a long and painful illness, and her faith had been shaken almost to pieces. After reading my book, she found her grief more bearable and her faith, if not restored, at least on the mend.

Second and third: it is basically the same story. Twice last summer, a child came up to me in a park and told me they knew me because I was the guy in the back of their favorite book. When chatting with them, I discovered each of them reads at least one of my children's illustrated books every day. In each case, both sets of parents were thrilled their kids had found something they loved more than TV.

All three of those events constitute what I call an author’s payday. My goal as an author is to get rich off my books, buy a remote island, and fly all over the world in my personal jet, visiting my adoring fans. Barring that, I’d like to at least make enough money from them to retire someday. However, if the issue were ever forced, I would trade every penny made from my books, past and future, for those three encounters, and any others like them that may occur.

CHRISTINA: Those are truly meaningful moments. Knowing your words have comforted someone and inspired children to love reading is a remarkable legacy.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with such candor—it was a pleasure learning more about your writing journey.

Daniel W. Shegrud, author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel W. Shegrud started his professional life as a barber, but standing in one place grew old, so he hit the road. After 22 years as a trucker, driving everywhere grew old as well, and he shifted gears again, entering the nursing field. It was messier than trucking but more satisfying at the end of the day. After ten years of that, he realized the nursing field requires a younger body than he possessed, so he went back to driving. He now transports folks around the greater Metaline area and beyond in a community bus. Someday, he hopes to retire and spend his days writing the best books this side of illiteracy. For most of his working life, Dan drove trucks across the Western United States. To keep himself awake, he listened to literally thousands of recorded books and dreamed of writing his own someday. After twenty-two years on the road, he shifted gears and became a Hospice CNA. With much more free time on his hands, he made that dream a reality. Now he drives a community bus in his adopted hometown and dreams of someday retiring so he can write books full-time. Connect with Daniel via his website.