DANA RAIL

Dana Rail — Bio & Miscellany

Most writers are introverts by nature, but me, I’m downright reclusive. While I’ve published both fiction and non-fiction under my real name, and placed in several screenplay competitions, I opted for a pen name when my creative interests underwent a profound sea-change and I undertook my “Great Work,” as the Alchemists would have it: my work-in-progress speculative fiction/SFF series.

Why the pen name? Mostly because the chronic chore of trying to explain this mad hobby of mine to all but my closest family and friends proved so taxing that I decided to shut up altogether and fly under the radar. So it is that “Dana Rail” is the name I call myself when I put on my Wizard’s Hat and my Cloak of Invisibility, and sit down at the butcher block desk in my writer’s studio, “the Birdsnest.”

There’s something about the purposeful obscurity of it all that gives me the freedom to imagine our possible futures without that hectoring “real world” voice in my head that sounds so much like a bemused relative. It is better so when one’s imagination lives in an alternate universe where Magic–and the Grail Hallows–have reappeared in our dis-enchanted postmodern world.

Thank you for keeping me company on this journey. I hope it takes us both to marvelous and unexpected places.

Speaking  of Company…

I am repped by a superb (and fantastically supportive) agent, Maura Phelan of Green Light Literary.

My own personal Birdsnest also includes two fellow writers and sometime collaborators whose names will appear here from time to time, Hayden Crowe and Sydney Wren. Without their birds-of-a-feather fellowship I might not have the courage to soldier on along this personal quest for the Holy Grail of creating damned fine stories.

On the Web

DanaRail.com is my home/news page, but I blog on several other sites. Go to this page for more on that.

My social media links are listed on Linktree, (some are linked to the icons on the top right of the menu above), and you can contact me via snail mail or email on this page.