DCL's Who's Who?
Travis Hiltz, that's who!

DC LEGENDS: Who Is Travis Hiltz?
Travis Hiltz: Husband, father, under published author and obsessive collector of books and comics.

DCL: What's your background?
TH: Nothing too exciting. No radioactive spiders or being rocketed from a doomed planet. Born and bred in New England. My mom was a small town New Hampshire girl, my father was crazy and I'm a combination of the two.

DCL: Where do you live?
TH: Keene, New Hampshire. Famous for it's pumpkin Festival and having one of the widest main streets in the USA.

DCL: When did you start writing and how long have you been writing?
TH: I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember. I started writing in High School, but didn't get brave enough to show my stuff to anyone until college. I took a couple writing courses and had a one act play I wrote produced. My first time being paid to be a writer.

DCL: What are your influences?
TH: Let's see: old pulp novels (especially Doc Savage, the Spider and John Carter of Mars), Cliffhanger serials, anything Jack Kirby ever did, Philip Jose Farmer, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, the Marx Brothers, every comic I've ever read, Universal Monster movies, Daniel Pinkwater, my kids, Doctor Who, old hanna barbara adventure cartoons, and years of insomnia.

DCL: What attracted you to fan fiction?
TH: Probably my only chance to get to play with the heroes of the Marvel/DC Universes. Very appealing to get to write these guys as well as having the chance to fix things that seemed to me to have been done wrong by the pros.

DCL: What do you consider to be your best work to date?
TH: For Avengers 2000: Tuesdays are Quiet on Deneb-7 in Avengers Spotlight; DCL: Angel and the Ape in Brave and the Bold.

DCL: What excites you the most about writing?
TH: The part where you are just going along and suddenly an idea, bit of dialogue or character just leaps out of your brain and you go 'That's brilliant! Where the heck did that come from?

DCL: Tell us about The Justice Society Of America and what future plans for the series can we expect?
TH: I'm pretty thrilled to be writing the JSA. They are in my top three favorite super teams.

I want to make good use of their huge history.

My first four or five issues will be setting up the team line up and setting up a couple sub-plots that'll be big parts of my run, as well as hopefully containing some entertaining adventure stories involving time travel and the fifth dimension.

After that it'll be a trio of solo stories and then Dr. Fate is coming back.

Want to do a JLA/JSA team up but haven't come up with an idea I like and of course, I've got to have the Injustice Society come back.

DCL: Hobbies? Other interests?
TH: I read a lot, watch a ton of movies, play with my kids, cooking and wandering around the internet in search of good used comic/book sites.

DCL: What's a typical Day In The Life Of Travis Hiltz like?
TH: This summer, I've been the stay at home parent, so spending the day hanging out with my kids, doing stuff around the house and running errands, then if my kids let me have a turn at the computer I work on my writing. I work mostly nights and weekends till the fall. So, it's tricky balancing out seeing my wife when she's awake and getting some writing done.

DCL: What else should we know about you?
TH: First I want to sing the praises of Tim and Derrick for encoraging me when I got started in fanfic as well as letting me get away with some crazy ideas and write a ton of characters that I have loved reading about. They're cool guys and decent writers to check out, once you're done reading all my stuff.

Also want to do a bit of self-promoting, Blackcoat Press is publishing my first professional work in their anthology series 'Tales of the Shadow Men'. I highly recommend their stuff if you are a fan of victorian sci-fi and mystery or the pulps.