S. Daniel Smith loves to go on adventures. It’s why he loves writing and reading in the first place and why he started the podcast, “Coffee in Space.” Each week he gets to take a new adventure as he interviews authors about their books, their writing processes, and their stances on social issues. Rarely does he walk away having not learned something new.
Dan has been writing since he was a kid and first published in March 2000. Since then, he’s been published in a dozen different periodicals, both online and in traditional print. He has been printed in essays and reportage articles. He is currently writing and editing several short stories and a novel with an eye on submitting in the summer of 2023.
The Five Women
Dan fell in love with writing and books as a boy before he could even read or write. A late bloomer, he would have his mom copy sections of World of Weapons and the family encyclopedia sets so he could call them books. That love was furthered in the 3rd grade when Mrs. Bird would let Dan read sections of a book he was writing to his classmates. It sounded like a suspicious mixture of White Fang and Call of the Wild, but still, Mrs. Bird humored him because it was at least his own words. In High School, It was Mrs. Johnson’s literature class that encouraged him. Growing up poor in Southeast Kansas meant Dan wasn’t an early adopter of the personal computer, but Mrs. Johnson would let him check out a school laptop regularly so he could write his stories, which included great galactic battles between oddly humanoid creatures. Several years after Dan was first published, Diane McDougal became a mentor of sorts when he became an occasional contributor for the denominational periodical EFCA Today. She taught him to write tight, not waste words, and to get to the point. Diane’s impact is still felt in Dan’s writing even today. Finally, Dan knows that his writing is far better because his wife of 21 years, Alicia, regularly goes through red pens on his drafts. Being vulnerable to Alicia through his writing has grown and humbled Dan tremendously, and it’s all been very much worth it.