Interview With Author Nick Cappello
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve spent over 25 years in IT and network security, including work in the Fortune 100 space, and I’m the founder and CEO of a Metro Atlanta managed IT services firm. Before fiction, I also co-founded Spinrack, a comic book and entertainment venture, which is where my love of serialized storytelling really took root. I’m a DePaul University alum, and I’ve also published on AI ethics in faith communities. Terminal Velocity is my first novel — Book One of a planned trilogy.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Terminal Velocity. It grew out of a lifelong obsession with cyberpunk, anime, and technology, plus years of thinking about corporate power and control from the inside, working in IT and security. I wanted to write a story about loyalty surviving in a world designed to strip it away — a kid and a dog who choose each other in a city that would rather they didn’t exist at all.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Most of Terminal Velocity got written late at night after client tickets were closed out, usually with a rain-and-synthwave playlist running on loop. I also kept a hand-drawn map of Neo-Kyoto taped above my desk the whole time I was writing — it kept the geography honest even when the plot got chaotic.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Chuck Dixon is a huge influence — his instinct for propulsive, character-first storytelling shaped a lot of how I think about pacing and stakes. Beyond that, William Gibson’s Neuromancer is the cyberpunk foundation everything else stands on for me, and writers like Neal Stephenson and Marie Lu showed me how to blend big ideas with real emotional cores.
What are you working on now?
Book Two of the Daemon & Oneko trilogy, Rust and Ruin — Daemon and Oneko go further than the city ever mapped, and find out they’re not the only ones who got out.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Book Two of the Daemon & Oneko trilogy, Rust and Ruin — Daemon and Oneko go further than the city ever mapped, and find out they’re not the only ones who got out.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Finish the draft before you fall in love with editing it. It’s easy to polish page one forever and never get to page two hundred.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Done is better than perfect” — someone told me that in my IT career long before I ever wrote a novel, and it’s saved me from analysis paralysis more times than I can count.
What are you reading now?
Cycling between a Neuromancer reread and Marie Lu’s Warcross — one for the roots, one for where YA cyberpunk is headed now.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Finishing the Daemon & Oneko trilogy — Rust and Ruin, then Escape Velocity — and seeing where Neo-Kyoto’s story goes from there.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Neuromancer by William Gibson, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a collected Chuck Dixon comics omnibus, and honestly, a blank notebook — I’d probably end up writing my way off the island.
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