Author: Civilian Reader

An Interview with GEOFFREY GUDGION

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Let’s start with an introduction: Geoff Gudgion?

In one paragraph; I was a scholarship boy who was never bright enough to realise I’d have been happier as a writer than a businessman. Until, that is, I had a spectacular row with my boss and stepped off the corporate ladder. Long before that epiphany, I left school at 17 to join the Royal Navy, who later sponsored me to read Geography at Cambridge University. Both experiences were formative in teaching me to string words together.

Your debut novel, Saxon’s Bane, is published by Solaris. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

Saxon’s Bane is a thriller with a supernatural twist; past and present collide during the excavation of a Saxon warrior’s grave. The writing challenge, and the fun, was to interweave the present day with a Dark Ages legend, and to bring the two stories together in a plausible climax. Although it’s not part of a series, the main characters will probably reappear in a future book. There’s a fey, fit archaeologist who develops a preternatural understanding of her project. Her character has, ahem, legs.

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What inspired you to write the novel? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

I’ve always been fascinated by the history hidden in the landscape, ever since a crusty old professor at university showed me how to analyse English place names. “Allingley,” he might have said, waving a chalk-dusted arm and breathing a whiff of college port, “Saxon name. Aegl-ingas-leah, the clearing of Aegl’s people.” So I took the Saxon legend of Aegl, the warrior, and his love Olrun, the Swan Maiden, and set the Saxon’s Bane in the village of Allingley, on the banks of the Swanbourne.

Inspiration? It can come from anywhere. That sense of otherness you find in ancient woodland. A mossy ring of standing stones. A church. And just the odd glass of red wine.

Tolkien-LOTR-1-TheFellowshipOfTheRingHow were you introduced to genre fiction?

Tolkien! As a child, I devoured Lord of the Rings. I didn’t end up writing epic fantasy, but Middle Earth was the first believable fantasy world I encountered. I was enchanted!

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry? Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

I love being a writer. I’m living the dream, but I’d say I’m still learning about the publishing industry, and about how to stand out from the crowd. It’s a bit like opening a door, thinking you’re joining a party in a room, only to find yourself in the middle of a football stadium where everyone is shouting.

I tend to write early, and research late in the day. I built an arbour in my garden, which is a wonderfully peaceful and productive place to write, when the weather’s good. It’s also out of reach of the Wi-Fi, so there are fewer distractions! If I have to work indoors, I play a recording of birdsong in my study. I find that helps to tune the brain into a creative space.

When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

GudgionG-AuthorPicWhen I found I actually enjoyed English homework at school! I made my first attempts at writing a book during long deployments in warships. Those attempts were dire, and I cringe at their memory. The first piece of writing that made me proud was a short story, “Muse”, which won the Get Writing Conference prize in 2011. It’s on my web site.

What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

I think I’m too new to have an opinion about the genre, particularly when I think genre labels are too confining in any case. They seem to be designed for the publishing machine’s convenience rather than the readers’ benefit.

In terms of where I fit, I’m incredibly honoured when reviewers compare me to Robert Holdstock or Alan Garner. Last week Saxon’s Bane was described as “Good old fashioned mythic stuff; Wicker Man by way of John Fowles,” and I can live with that!

What other projects are you working on, and what do you have currently in the pipeline?

I’m about 80,000 words into a time-slip historical novel, also with a supernatural twist, which is set on a crumbling country estate that has been in the same family for over 600 years. In the 14th Century, the founder of the dynasty swears a terrible oath; in the present day his descendants have forgotten the oath, but perhaps the oath has not forgotten them…

What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?

My last book was Chocolat by Joanne Harris. I love her gentle way of weaving mystery and a little magic into the real world. I’m currently reading Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel. After that, I’m going to immerse myself into the 14th Century with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Ian Mortimer’s brilliant Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.

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What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

I’m a bit of a lunatic on horseback. A good friend lets me ride a horse that I’ve known and loved for years. I can get stale staring at a screen, and the adrenalin-fuelled madness of a gallop, or the surge and soar over a jump, is the perfect antidote.

What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?

Seeing Saxon’s Bane take off, I hope. Then finishing the next book to a standard where it’s accepted by my agent (Ian Drury at Sheil Land). And within twelve months? Who knows, it’s not impossible for that book to be acquired by a publisher. My head is starting to buzz with ideas for the book that will follow, and I’d like those to be thoroughly fleshed out by this time next year, and taking shape on paper. No pressure, then.

Upcoming: “The Mole: The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates” by Peter Warner (Thomas Dunne)

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WarnerP-TheMoleAnother book I spotted in the publisher’s catalogue (I do like going through them, from time to time). This sounds a little different, and one more for the thriller crowd, although it may appeal to a wider audience, given the synopsis…

The fictitious memoir of an unlikely foreign spy planted in Washington, D.C., in the years after World War II

Recruited by a foreign power in postwar Paris and sent to Washington, Winston Bates is without training or talent. He might be a walking definition of the anti-spy. Yet he makes his way onto the staff of the powerful Senator Richard Russell, head of the Armed Services Committee. From that perch, Bates has extensive and revealing contacts with the Dulles brothers, Richard Bissell, Richard Helms, Lyndon Johnson, Joe Alsop, Walter Lippman, Roy Cohn, and even Ollie North to name but a few of the historical players in the American experience Winston befriends — and haplessly betrays for a quarter century.

A comedy of manners set within the circles of power and information, Peter Warner’s The Mole is a witty social history of Washington in the latter half of the twentieth century that presents the question: How much damage can be done by the wrong person in the right place at the right time?

Written as Winston’s memoir, The Mole details the American Century from an angle definitely off center. From Suez, the U-2 Crash, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Watergate, the novel is richly and factually detailed, marvelously convincing, and offers the reader a slightly subversive character searching for identity and meaning (as well as his elusive handler) in a heady time during one of history’s most defining eras.

Peter Warner’s The Mole: The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates is due to be published in October 2013 in the US, by Thomas Dunne Books.

Upcoming: “Day One” by Nate Kenyon (Thomas Dunne)

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KenyonN-DayOneI stumbled across this today, and thought it sounded pretty interesting. In my way, that meant I decided to share it on here. [Ok, by “stumble”, I mean “found in the catalogue which I was reading”…]

I’m a sucker for post-apocalypse New York stories – Adam Baker’s Terminus being the most recent example. Here’s the synopsis – so there was little chance that I wouldn’t be interested in this:

Scandal­-plagued hacker journalist John Hawke is hot on the trail of the explosive story that might save his career. James Weller, the former CEO of giant technology company, Eclipse, has founded a new start­up, and he’s agreed to let Hawke do a profile on him. Hawke knows something very big is in the works at Eclipse – a major computing breakthrough – and he wants to use the profile as a foot in the door to find out more.

After he arrives in Weller’s office in New York City, a seemingly normal day quickly turns into a nightmare as anything with an Internet connection begins to malfunction. Hawke receives a phone call from his frantic wife, and just before the phone goes dead, she indicates that someone is trying to break down the apartment door. Soon, Hawke and a small band of survivors are struggling for their very lives as they find themselves thrust into the middle of a war zone – with no obvious enemy in sight.

The bridges and tunnels have been destroyed. New York City is under attack from a malevolent entity that can be anywhere and can occupy anything with a computer chip. It is deadly. It is brilliant. And it wants to eradicate the population of New York. Somehow, Hawke must find a way back to New Jersey and his pregnant wife and young son. Their lives depend upon it… and so does the rest of the human race.

Nate Kenyon’s Day One is due to be published by Thomas Dunne Books in October 2013. Kenyon is the author of Bloodstone and The Reach, both of which were Bram Stoker Award finalists. His other fiction includes The Bone Factory, Sparrow Rock, StarCraft: Ghost Spectres, and Diablo: The Order.

Covers, US vs. UK Edition: “The Six-Gun Tarot” by R.S. Belcher (Tor & Titan)

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Spotted the UK cover in Forbidden Planet in London today, and was moved to share it on here. I’ve been aware of R.S. Belcher’s The Six-Gun Tarot since it came out in the US (published by Tor), but it seems to have also been quietly released in the UK, recently, by Titan Books. Here are the two covers…

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Out of the two, I definitely prefer the UK cover (on the right). Really cool. If that doesn’t grab your attention, here’s the synopsis:

Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true origins than he’s letting on.

A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation.

I’ll be sure to review it as soon as possible (I already have it).

“Before the Fall” by Francis Knight (Orbit)

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KnightF-RD2-BeforeTheFallRojan Dizon’s second outing – good, but unfortunately doesn’t live up to potential of book one

MAHALA IS A CITY OF CONTRASTS: LIGHT AND DARK. HOPE AND DESPAIR.

Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner.

With the destruction of their power source, his city is in crisis: riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered, and the city is divided. But Rojan’s hunt for the killers will make him responsible for all-out anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war.

And there’s nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

Back in January, I developed a bit of a book-crush on Fade to Black, the first book in Knight’s Rojan Dizon series. (I believe “ZOMG!” and “amazeballs” were used in the review…) It was with great anticipation, therefore, that I awaited the arrival of Before the Fall. As it turns out, though, this sophomore novel did not live up to my expectations. It retains the marvellous world (well-realised and atmospheric), fascinating and dark magic system, and generally interesting characters. But… Well, there were a lot of issues that I ordinarily would only have expected in a debut novel. Sad to say, this just didn’t grab me as much as the first.

It’s impossible to write about this series without commenting on the world-building. Knight has created and realised a superb setting for her characters: it is a vertical city, hemmed in by mountains (and other, potentially hostile nations). The rich live at the top, and affluence decreases the further down you go. It is a city of suspicions and paranoia in both the lower and upper levels – the Specials keeping order, and strata envy and snobbery all working to keep everyone in their proper place. It is a wonderfully dark and atmospheric setting, and Knight fills the book with great passages that fill out our mental image of the city. (I do hope there are more than three set in it.)

While the character are all interesting and varied, I felt like Before the Fall didn’t advance them as much as I would have liked. Rojan, who should have been a riveting protagonist (partly because of his actions in Fade to Black, but also because of his magic, situation, and so forth), felt flatter than before. The first one hundred pages were frustratingly repetitive in the minutiae – Knight/Rojan frequently informs us that the Black is so close, calling to Rojan whenever he uses his magic; just as we are too frequently informed that everything has become Rojan’s responsibility. On top of that, we also get rather a lot of why and what he likes about women, then how he’s sworn off women but keeps “falling off the wagon”, how he is supposedly suave (yet surrounded by women who are unattainable). We get that he’s a bit of a philanderer and lover of many women, don’t need to keep telling us. It just felt like we got too much of that sort of thing – if this were a movie, it would be like an over-abundance of establishing shots. There is also more-than-necessary rehashing of what happened in the first novel (but, strangely, without as much detail as would perhaps have been useful?). That’s all a bit vague, for which I apologise – I want to avoid offering spoilers for the first novel as well as this one. All of this makes Rojan a less-than-compelling guide for more of the novel than I expected, this time around. Certainly, there are times when he’s an engaging protagonist, and his connection, affection and objection to his own magic is interesting. Also (and this is perhaps a strange thing to notice), but there was a higher-than-average use of the word “fuck” in the first 100 pages or so.

In addition to my issues with characterisation, the main plot took a little too long to get going, and with the repetitious nature of the character-building, it just didn’t hook me for much time. There were fits and starts, when I would devour larger chunks of the story in short sittings, followed by lulls. Par for the course for most novels, I suppose, but it was a noticeably different reading experience to the one I had for Fade to Black. This is a pity, as the investigation and state of affairs are interesting – the fact that Knight discusses how the destruction of the city’s energy source and supply has effected the city and its population is interesting and well done. In this respect, we really get the feeling that the City itself is a character, and I certainly liked the fact that tangible social and economic upheaval was having realistic repercussions on Knight’s world and characters. Public unrest, simmering suspicions and paranoia, and outbursts of misplaced violence are frequent themes.

Overall, then, I would characterise Before the Fall very much as a bridging installment to the series. Take it as a middle-act, rather than a stand-alone, and I think people will find it much easier to overlook its flaws. I was very disappointed that I didn’t love this as much as the first book. I nevertheless look forward to the final novel, Last to Rise, which is due to be published in November 2013.

Upcoming: “Coffin Hill” #1 (Vertigo)

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I’m really looking forward to this. Out of all the “bigger” comics publishers, I am really falling for a lot of Vertigo series. COFFIN HILL, which will be published on October 9th 2013, looks like yet another series that will appeal to my (rather dark, twisted) taste.

The cover is by Dave Johnson, and the variant by Gene Ha. Inaki Miranda, who handles art duties on this title, is an awesome artist, and one of my favourite recent finds – she worked on Lauren Beukes’s excellent run on Fairest, and put together some of the most striking panels and full-page spreads I’ve ever seen.

Coffin Hill is written by Caitlin Kittredge (who I have no experience reading). Kittredge is the author of the Black London series.

COFFIN HILL stars Eve Coffin, a rebellious, teenage lowlife from a high-society family with a curse that goes back to the Salem Witch trials.

Following a night of sex, drugs and witchcraft in the woods, Eve wakes up naked, covered in blood and unable to remember how she got there. One friend is missing, one is in a mental ward—and one knows that Eve is responsible.

After a stint as a Boston cop that ends in a bullet wound and unintended celebrity, Eve returns to Coffin Hill, only to discover the darkness that she unleashed ten years ago in the woods was never contained. It continues to seep through the town, cursing the soul of this sleepy Massachusetts hollow, spilling secrets and enacting its revenge.

Set against the haunted backdrop of New England, COFFIN HILL explores what people will do for power and retribution.

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Count me very much looking forward to this. This sounds great. As a bonus, here are the covers (without text, etc.) for the second and third issues:

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Upcoming: “The Whitechapel Demon” by Joshua Reynolds (Emby Press)

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ReynoldsJ-WhitechapelDemonI’m only familiar with Joshua Reynolds through his work for Black Library (and have particularly impressed with his contributions to the Gotrek & Felix series). I spotted this via his Facebook page, though, and was rather intrigued…

JOHN DEE WAS THE FIRST.

Formed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the post of the Royal Occultist was created to safeguard the British Empire against threats occult, otherworldly, infernal and divine.

It is now 1920, and the title and offices have fallen to Charles St. Cyprian. Accompanied by his apprentice Ebe Gallowglass, they defend the battered empire from the forces of darkness.

In the wake of a séance gone wrong, a monstrous killer is summoned from the depths of nightmare by a deadly murder-cult. The entity hunts its prey with inhuman tenacity even as its worshippers stop at nothing to bring the entity into its full power…

It’s up to St. Cyprian and Gallowglass to stop the bloodthirsty horror before another notch is added to its gory tally, but will they become the next victims of the horror disguised as London’s most famous killer?

In the tradition of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Josh Reynolds presents the Adventures of the Royal Occultist. Join Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass as they race to halt the workings of a sinister secret society and put an end to the monstrous manifestation in… THE WHITECHAPEL DEMON!

The novel will be published by Emby Press in November 2013.

“Steelheart” by Brandon Sanderson (Gollancz/Delacorte)

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SandersonB-SteelheartUKWhen Superheroes Go Bad…

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics.

But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.

Nobody fights the Epics… nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart — the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David’s father. For years, like the Reckoners, David’s been studying, and planning — and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He’s seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.

I’m going to keep this review pretty short. As a big fan of comic books and super-heroes, I was very intrigued to see what Brandon Sanderson – best known for his magic-heavy, epic high fantasy tomes – would come up with. As it turns out, Steelheart is a fun, quick-paced super-hero novel. It’s a good novel, with an interesting hook, but it is by no means perfect. While I had a couple of niggles, they were easily overlooked based on the strength of the pacing and streamlined prose.

Superhero villains! This has become a popular idea (for my money, the best example is Mark Waid’s Irredeemable comic series). Sanderson manages to pull this off with aplomb. The plot moves at a quick pace, and Sanderson’s direct prose grabbed me from the opening scene. The story opens in a bank, and we learn that the superheroes – or, “Epics”, as they’re known in this reality – are not all about truth, justice and equality for all. Instead, they are pretty much just about getting what they want, when they want. And everyone else is just an inconvenience, a pawn to used and discarded, or an obstacle to be destroyed. In many ways, there’s something about this cynical approach to super-powers that rings more true than the utopian portrayals often found in comic books: human nature is far more likely to make those with super-powers work on behalf of their own selfish desires than for the good of others. [But then, I am eternally cynical…]

There’s a pecking order to the Epics, based on their broad range of abilities, as well as how many they have. It seemed to me like Sanderson put plenty of effort into devising the “system” of super-powers of this world – not as much as he might for a magic system in his fantasy novels, but he appears to have thought of everything and put more thought into the ‘rules’ than many writers do. The detail he offers in the story – of how the powers work, how some Epics have complementary powers, and also their weaknesses – is very well-woven into the narrative, and I never felt like I was being fed an info-dump (although, there were a couple of instances when things came close…).

SandersonB-SteelheartUSI liked the idea of our (non-super-)hero, David, being there when Steelheart bled. The momentous, covered-up event that has fuelled his quest for retribution against the Epics, and Steelheart in particular. It has dictated almost everything he has done, including collecting perhaps the largest ‘repository’ of information on these oppressing Epics. The novel follows his quest for vengeance, and along the way we meet plenty of interesting and colourful characters. Some of them are a bit thin, but they are never dull. David himself is an interesting guide, although his apparent fetishisation of guns left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable. He hooks up with the Reckoners, a group of insurgents who are acting against the Epics in any way they can – attempting to take them out where possible, but equally content to just upset their various plans. Steelheart is the ultimate target, and with the help of David, they think they may have come up with a way to take him and his inner circle of uber-Epics down. There’s action, a bit of suspense, much plotting, some sneaking about, and a huge climax. There’s also a rather under-developed ‘romantic’ possibility, but that seemed like an afterthought, and was therefore a little predictable.

Sanderson’s prose, as anyone familiar with his work would expect, is very well-crafted. It’s focused, fluid and not at all over-done. I’m still very behind on my Sanderson reading (which I’ve mentioned a number of times here on CR), but after reading this, I am even more eager to get to Mistborn and even the Stormlight Archive (ten epic-length fantasy novels…? Usually, that would be a very scary proposition, especially when only the second novel is coming out this year), not to mention Brandon’s stand-alone novels, Warbreaker and Elantris.

If you like super-hero fiction and comic books, or are a fan of Brandon Sanderson, or even if you’re just a fan of science-fiction and speculative fiction, then Steelheart should certainly entertain. It’s a quick read, but an enjoyable one. The pacing does mean Sanderson doesn’t give himself much time to really get into the characters’ heads, which was unfortunate. I would have liked to have learned more about David’s comrades and their pasts. Maybe in the next book? Steelheart could also function as a good introduction to Sanderson’s work and writing. It’s certainly worth picking up. I hope we get to more novels set in this reality in the not-too-distant-future.

Recommended.

Upcoming: “The Emperor’s Blades” by Brian Staveley (Tor UK & US)

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I thought I had missed all mention of this book until today, when Tor UK unveiled the new cover art (left). The Emperor’s Blades is the first book in Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, and it sounds pretty interesting. As it turned out, though, I’d caught a glimpse of the US cover art a couple of months back (on the right). Of the two, I think I prefer the UK cover, but the US one isn’t exactly hideous. The UK one is very, well, “typical” of the way fantasy and medieval-fiction covers have been developing over the past couple of years, but I do like the colouring.

Check out the synopsis…

The circle is closing. The stakes are high. And old truths will live again.

The Emperor has been murdered, leaving the Annurian Empire in turmoil. Now his progeny must bury their grief and prepare to unmask a conspiracy. His son Valyn, training for the empire’s deadliest fighting force, hears the news an ocean away. He expected a challenge, but after several ‘accidents’ and a dying soldier’s warning, he realizes his life is also in danger. Yet before Valyn can take action, he must survive the mercenaries’ brutal final initiation.

Meanwhile, the Emperor’s daughter, Minister Adare, hunts her father’s murderer in the capital itself. Court politics can be fatal, but she needs justice. And Kaden, heir to the empire, studies in a remote monastery. Here, the Blank God’s disciples teach their harsh ways – which Kaden must master to unlock their ancient powers. When an imperial delegation arrives, he’s learnt enough to perceive evil intent. But will this keep him alive, as long-hidden powers make their move?

Brian Staveley’s The Emperor’s Blades is due to be published in January 2014. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

An Interview with JAMES MAXEY

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James Maxey’s Dragon Apocalypse is a series I have been eager to read for a long while. It has been one of many victims of Kindle Invisibility Syndrome (I bought Greatshadow soon after it came out). Now that I have acquired Hush and Witchbreaker, I’ll be sure to blitz through the series, which so many reviewers (many of whom share my tastes in this sub-genre) have enjoyed. So, without further ado, let’s get to the questions…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is James Maxey?

I’m a guy who daydreams a lot and has enough discipline to write down some of the crazy stuff that crosses my mind.

Your latest trilogy, Dragon Apocalypse, has been published by Solaris. How would you introduce the series to a potential reader?

First, I refrain from calling it a trilogy, and usually only refer to it as a series. The three books out now constitute one arc of a larger story, but there will definitely be future books featuring these characters. It’s a big world with lots of potential, and my eventual story-arc covers decades.

My short pitch for the series is that it’s “X-men meets Tolkien”. The setting and scope of the tale are definitely epic fantasy, but the characters – and to some degree the plot lines – are more superhero inspired. Every major character in the series has some kind of superpower. Instead of battling super villains, they battle dragons, and also each other.

Maxey-DragonApocalypse-Contents

The first book, Greatshadow, is mainly the story of Infidel, a woman with a mysterious past who is super strong and invulnerable. The story is told by Stagger, her best friend, who is secretly in love with her but never confesses his love until the moment of his death in the middle of the first chapter, after he’s accidentally been stabbed with his own knife. His spirit winds up tied to the knife that killed him, so that he winds up haunting Infidel, witnessing her trying to carry on with her life. After Stagger dies, she feels like she’s done with the life of a vagabond mercenary, and wants to make one last big score so she can be insanely wealthy and retire in peace. To do this, she joins up with a hunt to kill Greatshadow, the primal dragon of fire, with the goal of looting his legendary treasure trove. However, the hunt is being organized by the Church of the Book, the dominant religion of the land and the group responsible for her bearing the nick-name “Infidel”. She has to join a party of knights and priests sworn to kill her if they ever learned her true identity. Complicating matters even further, the leader of the dragon hunt is the legendary knight Lord Tower – the man she left standing at the alter near fifteen years before. Hijinks ensue. It’s a love story.

What inspired you to write the novels? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

My previous series, the Dragon Age (not related to the video game), was actually science fiction in fantasy drag. Everything in the books has the look of epic fantasy, but underneath it all there’s scientific explanations grounding how our world became the world of Bitterwood. Having written all those epic fantasy books without any recourse to magic, I wanted to go in the opposite direction and create a world where science just doesn’t have any say in the rules. So, instead of the sun being a giant ball of burning gas, the sun is actually a dragon named Glorious who flies across the sky at the same time every day because he’s kind of obsessive compulsive. Also, the Bitterwood novels were fairly gritty, with a few moments of humor, but mostly a very serious tone. The Dragon Apocalypse is much more humorous. It’s not a parody of the fantasy genre, but it does have a lot of fun playing with some of the more absurdist underpinnings inherent to all fantasy.

Maxey-DragonAge-Books

How were you introduced to genre fiction?

Comic books, mostly. Once I discovered superheroes, it was all over for me. My mother worried reading all those “funny books” would warp my mind. Boy, was she right! From comic books, I branched out into reading a lot of science fiction in high school, branching out into more fantasy in college, then, for a long time, settling into reading mostly non-fiction about science, history, geography, etc. I get much more day dream fuel out of reading about the real world than I do reading about made up places.

The Dragon Apocalypse novels are your second series to feature dragons prominently. What draws you in particular to dragons?

As you might suspect from my reading material, I’m something of a nerd. From the time I was in high school until well into my 30s, I played AD&D religiously. Usually, I was DM, so I got to play the roles of all the dragons and other monsters the players would fight. And, dragons really had a lot of questions surrounding them. Just what did they want all that treasure for? If they could talk, did that imply culture? They were pretty smart, genius level in fact, and a lot tougher and stronger than humans. Why weren’t they running the world? Eventually, these musings laid the groundwork for the novels I would go on to write.

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry? Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

One specific writing practice I engage in is that I never look back. Once I start writing a book, I never read any of the first draft until I get to the end. Forward is the only direction. Also, I try to write as swiftly as possible, since I really think momentum matters. The faster I write, the better the story flows. I get into zones where my own thoughts go silent and it’s like I can hear the characters talking to one another. Which, arguable, is a symptom of an undiagnosed mental illness, but let’s not go there.

As to whether I enjoy it… well, yeah. People often ask me what I’m smiling about, when I’m just sitting around looking like I’m doing nothing. What I’m usually smiling at is something funny one of my characters just said in my head. I hope I never reach an age where I outgrow my imaginary friends.

When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

I wrote a lot of short stories in high school, then a lot of terrible poetry in college. When I was 25, I put butt in chair and vowed to write a novel. It took me two years to accumulate 60,000 words. It was unrelentingly awful in just about every aspect. The characters were cardboard, the plot was random, the style was pretentious and opaque. The best thing about the book is that it taught me a lot about how not to write a book. Failure can be a great roadmap to success.

What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

I confess, I read almost no current fiction. I used to write a book review column for Intergalactic Medicine Show, and reading nothing but new releases for a couple of years left me yearning to read some older material, stuff I’d always meant to get around to reading, but somehow never had. These days, I’m reading classics almost exclusively. Just this week, I finished A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and now I’m reading King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard. I’ve got a warm place in my heart for these older pulp novels. There’s something charming about reading books from an era when people were still creating the genres of fantasy and science fiction.

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As to where my work fits in, I’d say the writer I’m most often compared to is Terry Pratchett. I mix humor, action, and philosophy and try not to take my books too seriously, while also taking care not to slip into slap-dash silliness. I never want to let the humor get in the way of you caring for a character or undercutting what’s at stake in the plot. Ultimately, I write books that I want to read. I think that my pulp fiction affinities are pretty evident on the page, with my emphasis on larger than life characters having big adventures against exotic landscapes.

What other projects are you working on, and what do you have currently in the pipeline?

My debut novel was a superhero tale called Nobody Gets the Girl, which came out ten years ago this October. I’ll be celebrating the anniversary with a new print edition of the book this October that will include a new story set in that world. After that, I’m kind of at the mercy of publishers to find out what’s coming out next. I’ve got a steampunk novel under consideration by a couple of publishers, and recently finished the first draft of a new superhero novel called Accidental Gods that I’ll be shopping around soon. While those books are working though the publishing pipeline, I plan to work on a new Dragon Apocalypse novel.

What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?

In addition to the pulp novels, I recently read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and reread On the Road. On my daily commute, I’m listening to Jane Eyre as an audiobook. My most recent non-fiction was Gulp by Mary Roach, and I just today bought a book called Wretched Writing, which is about, you know, wretched writing. Lately, I’ve been working on three books at once; an audio book while driving, a bedtime book I read on my Kindle, and some kind of non-fiction paperback on hand for the times when I have little snippets of time to kill.

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What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

This July, I wrote an entire first draft of a novel in just 4 days. (The superhero novel I mentioned, Accidental Gods.) Admittedly, non-consecutive days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the following Monday. Four fifteen hour sessions of just typing as fast as I could to never let the story lose it’s flow. I had a small window of time where my old day job ended and my new day job hadn’t started, and wanted to find out if I could use the intervening days for something productive. Now, I entertain fantasies of locking myself in a cabin with a bottle of tequila and a laptop with no internet connection for one long weekend and seeing what I might emerge with…

What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?

In March, I turn 50. I’m going to have a huge party the night before, then, the next day, celebrate by taking a 50 mile bike ride. I’ve been building up to it all summer; so far, the longest distance I’ve done is 30 miles, but I think with another six months of training I’ll be able to do it.

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Be sure to check out James Maxey’s website for information about his novels. In addition, The Dragon Apocalypse was recently collected into a handy omnibus eBook.

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