Author: Civilian Reader

An Interview with MICHAEL MARTINEZ

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Michael Martinez is the author of the highly anticipated (in my opinion) The Daedalus Incident. I actually also already have a copy of the book, but have been dreadfully negligent about getting around to actually reading it. I will endeavour to rectify this as soon as possible. In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to interview Michael, as I’ve chatted a fair bit with him via Twitter and he seems like a great fellow. So, read on!

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Michael J. Martinez?

Well, I’m the new guy on the block, I suppose. I’ve been a professional writer for more than two decades, primarily as a journalist. A few years back, I got it in my head that I could try writing a novel. It seemed healthier and less expensive than your typical mid-life crisis hobbies. To my surprise, it worked out quite nicely

I thought we’d start with your fiction: Your new novel, The Daedalus Incident, was recently published by Night Shade Books. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

The Daedalus Incident combines my love of science fiction with my appreciation for that great tradition of British naval fiction – Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey and the like. It’s about two settings: a future mining colony on Mars, and a historical fantasy in the late 18th century in which sailing ships ply the Void between the planets of our Solar System. Thanks to the machinations of an evil alchemist and an alien warlord, the two worlds are colliding – and may be ripped apart in the process.

Honestly, I just tell people I’m crashing a Royal Navy frigate into Mars. That tends to be enough to capture interest.

Ideally, this will be the first of a series. Both C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian both produced strong series based on the Napoleonic era, and I hope to do a little of that as well.

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

The specific inspiration for the book came from a poster advertising Treasure Planet more than a decade ago. The movie, of course, was deeply flawed, but it gave me the idea of sailing ships in space. I just decided to make it more adult and more realistic, but also an homage to those historical novels as well.

Generally, I find myself inspired by non-fiction, anything from news stories to Wikipedia. Something will just strike me as interesting or cool, and I’ll write it down so I can use it later.

How were you introduced to genre fiction?

StarWars-4-ANewHopeStar Wars and Dungeons & Dragons were pretty much my childhood, so it was easy to go from that to reading great genre fiction. It’s been a constant in my life.

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

Being a writer and working with the publishing industry are two very different things. I’ve been a professional writer my whole adult life, so my writing practices are pretty well established. I outline in a good amount of detail, and I chunk out the writing into sections that I can clear in a reasonable day’s effort. It’s the journalist in me. I need that sense of accomplishment before I walk away from the keyboard. And I’m an inveterate researcher, again likely due to the journalism background.

Working within the publishing industry is a different beast altogether. The artist in me writes books. My dealings with the industry are pretty much business-focused. I see my publisher as a business partner, with each of us having a vested interest in putting out a great product and treating each other fairly. Thankfully, I have a fantastic agent, Sara Megibow, who pretty much takes care of that aspect of it, and I’m fairly well versed in marketing. So it works out well.

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 never really thought I had the chops to be a novelist. I’d written thousands of newspaper articles, dozens of magazine pieces and a couple of non-fiction business books. But I had the idea that became Daedalus for a long time, and it ended up being my first foray into fiction. When I started writing it up, the switch went on. I mean, that first draft was crap, but it was a completed first draft. Getting over that first-draft hump was big for me.

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

This is a great time to be writing SF/F. The genre is growing in popularity and becoming more mainstream. There’s genre fiction that is just so amazing and beautiful and well-crafted that it blows my mind. It’s more akin to literary fiction than anything else. And yet you still have that really fun, adventure-driven fiction as well, and Daedalus definitely fits into that latter category. That doesn’t mean you can’t have nuance and craft in adventure stories, but I definitely like a good ride, and that’s what I write.

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

I’m currently serializing a novella, The Gravity of the Affair, on my website. While Daedalus was delayed, I wanted to give folks a taste of the setting and the style, so I decided to put that story out there. I have a couple other things in the works that…well, there are things afoot, so I don’t want to jinx it. Suffice it to say, the reception Daedalus has garnered is lovely, and has been noticed. ‘Nuff said for now.

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

Scalzi-HumanDivisionI’m one of those terrible authors who actually doesn’t read a book a week. Or even a book a month. I’m woefully behind on my fiction reading, but only because I’ve been spending my free time fiction writing. I have a family and a career outside all this, so there’s only so much time in the day! Plus, I’m big on re-reading; it’s like comfort food. In terms of non-fiction, I’ve been doing research on a few different projects. Telling you the exact books would be a bit of a cheat, really. That said, I cleared John Scalzi’s The Human Division in pretty much one sitting, on the trip back from the Nebulas. It’s a very quick read for the length, and I learned some writerly things along the way.

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

Most of my day-job writing is about business and finance. I could probably go for an MBA if the thought of taking math classes and writing a master’s thesis didn’t put me off. I also brew my own beer and I’m weak around barbecue.

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

I’m looking forward to attending my first WorldCon in San Antonio in August. And I’ll be very interested to see if I can sell another book, so that I can claim that this whole fiction thing is a repeatable phenomena and not simply a fluke.

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The Daedalus Incident is available now as an eBook, and will be published in physical editions in August 2013.

Books Received (Couple of Weeks’ Worth)

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Over the past couple of weeks, another bumper crop of highly-anticipated and interesting-looking books has been trickling in through the mailbox. As per usual, and because it’s too hot to write a full review or article, here is a quick run-down of some books that will hopefully feature again on the blog (some of them are certainties, though). I have not included eBook ARCs that I’ve received.

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Buckell-ArcticRisingUKTobias Buckell, Arctic Rising (Del Rey UK)

The Arctic Cap has all but melted, oil has run low and Anika Duncan, former mercenary turned United Nations Polar Guard pilot, patrols the region to protect against pollution and smuggling.

In a daring plan to terraform the planet, the Gaia Corporation develops a revolutionary new technology, but when they lose control, our best potential solution to global warming may become the deadliest weapon ever known.

As a lethal game of international politics and espionage begins, it will be up to Anika to decide the fate of the Earth.

Part techno-thriller, part eco-thriller, ARCTIC RISING is a fantastic dystopian science fiction adventure that will appeal to fans of everyone from Michael Crichton to James Bond.

I haven’t read much by Buckell, but I like the sound of this one, so I will hopefully get to it at some point relatively soon. What I’ve read so far by him suggests he’s very talented. I think I just keep missing his work, or it gets released at the same time as a blizzard of other titles that also happen to catch my attention.

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Carr-LegendOfBrokenUKCaleb Carr, The Legend of Broken (Sphere)

Some years ago, a remarkable manuscript long rumoured to exist was discovered: The Legend of Broken. It tells of a prosperous fortress city, Broken, where order reigns at the point of a sword – even as scheming factions secretly vie for control of the surrounding kingdom. Meanwhile, outside the city’s granite walls, an industrious tribe of exiles known as the Bane forages for sustenance in the wilds of Davon Wood.

At every turn, the lives of Broken’s defenders and its would-be destroyers intertwine until secretly, and under pressure from their people, four leaders unite. Together, they hope to exact a ruinous revenge on Broken, ushering in a day of reckoning when the mighty walls will be breached forever in a triumph of science over superstition.

I’ve been aware of Caleb Carr ever since I found a copy of Killing Time and then The Alienist in a Cambridge book shop. He’s never seemed to get much attention in the UK. Hopefully this book, and the re-issued editions of The Alienist and its sequel The Angel of Darkness, will go some way to remedying our oversight. This is near the top of my TBR mountain.

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Child-NeverGoBackLee Child, Never Go Back (Bantam Press)

After an epic and interrupted journey all the way from the snows of South Dakota, former military cop Jack Reacher has finally made it to Virginia. His destination: a sturdy stone building a short bus ride from Washington D.C., the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. It was the closest thing to a home he ever had.

Why? He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner. He liked her voice on the phone. But the officer sitting behind his old desk isn’t a woman. Is Susan Turner dead? In Afghanistan? Or in a car wreck?

What Reacher doesn’t expect to hear is that Turner has just been fired from her command. Nor that he himself is in big trouble, accused of a sixteen-year-old homicide. And he certainly doesn’t expect to hear these words: ‘You’re back in the army, Major. And your ass is mine.’

Will he be sorry he went back? Or – will someone else?

This is the 18th novel in the Jack Reacher series (there have also been a few short stories), and I have still never read a single one. I haven’t seen the movie, either. I have absolutely no idea why I’ve never got around to it… I really must do something about this oversight…

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Peter Clines, Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots & Ex-Communication (Del Rey UK)

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Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. The Mighty Dragon. They were heroes, using their superhuman abilities to make Los Angeles a better place.

Then the plague of living death spread around the globe. Now, a year later, the heroes struggle to overcome their differences and recover from their own scars as they protect the thousands of survivors huddled in their film-studio-turned-fortress, the Mount.

But the hungry ex-humans are not the only threat the survivors face. Across the city, another group has grown and gained power.

Previously a well-received self-published series, Clines’ novels are a mash-up of the zombie apocalypse and super-hero genres. And sound really cool. So I’ll be diving in to Ex-Heroes very soon indeed.

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Cornell-LondonFallingUKPBPaul Cornell, London Falling (Tor)

The dark is rising…

Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect Rob Toshack is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal. Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law – until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a ‘suspect’ who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again. As the group starts to see London’s sinister magic for themselves, they have two choices: panic or use their new abilities. Then they must hunt a terrifying supernatural force the only way they know how: using police methods, equipment and tactics. But they must all learn the rules of this new game – and quickly. More than their lives will depend on it.

This is the new paperback edition of Cornell’s novel, and I much prefer this cover. Not really sure why. More Thriller-esque, I think. I’m more familiar with Cornell’s comic work, but I’m intrigued by this – especially since I recently moved close to London (where I also now work). I have a feeling I’ll be reading this and Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant/Rives Of London series pretty soon…

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Evans-ThingAboutWolvesLeigh Evans, The Thing About Wolves (Tor)

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

In the never-ending saga that is my love-hate relationship with Robson Trowbridge, I, half-Were Hedi Peacock, have had a change of heart. Ever since I shoved Trowbridge through the Gates of Merenwyn, I’ve been the leader of the pack—hard to believe, right? The thing is: I’m half-Fae. So even though my Were side is ready to heed the call of the wild, the other part of me is desperate to take flight. And much as it pains me to admit it, life without Trowbridge is really starting to were me down…

I AM WERE, HEAR ME ROAR.

To make matters worse, the wolves of Creemore want my blood—and the North American Council of Weres wants me dead. So I’m just counting the days until Trowbridge returns from the other realm…and comes to my brave rescue…and becomes my alpha mate. Wishful thinking? Of course it is. But given all the mess I’ve been through already, what’s the harm in doing a little bit of daisy-plucking? Besides, Trowbridge owes me bigtime. A girl can dream.

This is the second novel in Evans’ Mystwalker urban fantasy series. The first, The Trouble with Fate, is inching up the TBR mountain. It sounds interesting, but I am not champing at the bit to get caught up. We’ll see, depending on time available.

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Griffin-GlassGodKate Griffin, Glass God (Orbit)

Sharon Li: apprentice shaman and community support officer for the magically inclined. It wasn’t the career Sharon had in mind, but she’s getting used to running Magicals Anonymous and learning how to Be One With The City.

When the Midnight Mayor goes missing, leaving only a suspiciously innocent-looking umbrella behind him, Sharon finds herself promoted. Her first task: find the Midnight Mayor. The only clues she has are a city dryad’s cryptic message of doom and several pairs of abandoned shoes…

Suddenly, Sharon’s job feels a whole lot harder.

This is, I believe, the sequel to Stray Souls, which is tucked neatly in the middle of my TBR pile… I’ll get to it soon, hopefully. Anyone else had a chance to read either, yet?

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Karpyshyn-Annihilation(SW)Drew Karpyshyn, Annihilation (Century)

The Sith Empire is in flux. The Emperor is missing, presumed dead, and an ambitious Sith lord’s attempt to seize the throne has ended fatally. Still, Darth Karrid, commander of the fearsome Imperial battle cruiser Ascendant Spear, continues her relentless efforts to achieve total Sith domination of the galaxy.

But Karrid’s ruthless determination is more than matched in the steely resolve of Theron Shan, whose unfinished business with the Empire could change the course of the war for good. Though the son of a Jedi master, Theron does not wield the Force—but like his renowned mother, the spirit of rebellion is in his blood. As a top covert agent for the Republic, he struck a crucial blow against the Empire by exposing and destroying a Sith superweapon arsenal—which makes him the ideal operative for a daring and dangerous mission to end Ascendant Spear’s reign of terror.

Joined by hot-headed smuggler Teff’ith, with whom he has an inexplicable bond, and wise Jedi warrior Gnost-Dural, Darth Karrid’s former master, Theron must match wits and weapons with a battle-tested crew of the most cold-blooded dark side disciples. But time is brutally short. And if they don’t seize their one chance to succeed, they will surely have countless opportunities to die.

I’ve not read any of the Old Republic series of novels (this is the fourth in that series). Not really sure why. I have, usually, always stuck to the post-Episode IV novels, with a few exceptions. Anyone read any? Are they worth giving a try?

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Napier-BloodRedSeaWilliam Napier, Blood Red Sea (Orion)

Two unlikely heroes are swept up in an epic and bloody sea battle that will change

history, in the second Clash of Empires adventure

1571. Chained to a slave galley in the heart of the Mediterranean, it seems that English adventurers Ingoldsby and Hodge might have finally run out of luck. But they’ve survived worse, and as the men around them drop dead at their oars, they’re determined to escape. By a miracle of fate, they find their way back to dry land and freedom—but are unable to return home. With the Ottoman Empire set on strangling the crusading Christian power before it can take root, hostilities between East and West—Muslim and Christian—are vicious and deadly. And as the sun rises on one day in October, five hours of bloodshed will change the course of history. Once again, the two Englishmen find themselves living on borrowed time.

Another author, like Carr above, who I’ve been aware of for a long while, and yet have never read. I want to start reading some more historical novels, too, so maybe this will be the first. Who knows?

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RyanA-RS1-BloodSongUKAnthony Ryan, Blood Song (Orbit)

Vaelin Al Sorna, Brother of the Sixth Order, has been trained from childhood to fight and kill in service to the Faith. He has earned many names and almost as many scars, acquiring an ugly dog and a bad-tempered horse in the process. Ensnared in an unjust war by a king possessed of either madness or genius, Vaelin seeks to answer the question that will decide the fate of the Realm: …who is the one who waits?

Raven’s Shadow is the first volume in a new epic fantasy of war, intrigue and tested faith.

This is the finished book of Blood Song, of which I received an ARC a little while ago. I still really want to read it, but it’s huge… My shelf is currently groaning under the weight of new Big Book fantasies (inc. Mark Lawrence’s Emperor of Thorns and Django Wexler’s The Thousand Names – both of which I also really want to get around to). Watch this space. I’ll read this hopefully relatively soon.

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StrossC-NeptunesBroodCharles Stross, Neptune’s Brood (Orbit)

She was looking for her sister. She found Atlantis.

Krina Alizond is a metahuman in a universe where the last natural humans became extinct five thousand years ago. When her sister goes missing she embarks on a daring voyage across the star systems to find her, travelling to her last known location – the mysterious water-world of Shin-Tethys.

In a universe with no faster-than-light travel that’s a dangerous journey, made all the more perilous by the arrival of an assassin on Krina’s tail, by the ‘privateers’ chasing her sister’s life insurance policy and by growing signs that the disappearance is linked to one of the biggest financial scams in the known universe.

A new space opera from Charles Stross – always an event to look forward to. Not sure when I’ll be able to squeeze this into the schedule, but I do want to do so.

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Treadwell-AnarchyJames Treadwell, Anarchy (Hodder)

Corporal “Goose” Maculloch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police isn’t expecting much from her new posting: one of those back end of nowhere places where nothing ever happens. That’s until a girl who’s been accused of murder disappears from a locked cell on Goose’s watch. On top of that, something’s going funny with the internet connection …

As the world beyond begins to fail, Goose tracks the vanished girl through the wilderness of Vancouver Island.

Meanwhile in Cornwall a desolate child leaves the home that has kept her safe all her life and strikes out into the unknown.

And a mother, half-mad with grief for her lost son, sets off to find him.

There is a place where all their journeys meet.

But someone is watching the roads …

The sequel to Advent, which I haven’t had a chance to read yet, but would really like to… Sigh. If only I could make time at will…

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Zahn-Scoundrels(SW)Timothy Zahn, Scoundrels (Century)

To make his biggest score, Han’s ready to take even bigger risks.

But even he can’t do this job solo.

Han Solo should be basking in his moment of glory. After all, the cocky smuggler and captain of the Millennium Falcon just played a key role in the daring raid that destroyed the Death Star and landed the first serious blow to the Empire in its war against the Rebel Alliance. But after losing the reward his heroics earned him, Han’s got nothing to celebrate. Especially since he’s deep in debt to the ruthless crime lord Jabba the Hutt. There’s a bounty on Han’s head—and if he can’t cough up the credits, he’ll surely pay with his hide. The only thing that can save him is a king’s ransom. Or maybe a gangster’s fortune? That’s what a mysterious stranger is offering in exchange for Han’s less-than-legal help with a riskier-than-usual caper. The payoff will be more than enough for Han to settle up with Jabba—and ensure he never has to haggle with the Hutts again.

All he has to do is infiltrate the ultra-fortified stronghold of a Black Sun crime syndicate underboss and crack the galaxy’s most notoriously impregnable safe. It sounds like a job for miracle workers . . . or madmen. So Han assembles a gallery of rogues who are a little of both—including his indispensable sidekick Chewbacca and the cunning Lando Calrissian. If anyone can dodge, deceive, and defeat heavily armed thugs, killer droids, and Imperial agents alike—and pull off the heist of the century—it’s Solo’s scoundrels. But will their crime really pay, or will it cost them the ultimate price?

Zahn’s latest Star Wars novel, this has been very highly-anticipated. It was preceded by a eBook short story, Winner Lose All, and I am itching to get to this (and complete the Fate of the Jedi series, too…). Zahn’s the author of one of my favourite Star Wars trilogies, The Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command) – I may re-read them sometime soon.

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Which of these grab your fancy? Anything else coming out soon/imminently that you can’t wait for?

Upcoming: “Breach Zone” by Myke Cole (Ace Books)

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Geek Exchange got the exclusive for this cover reveal (this past Wednesday), but given how much I enjoyed the first two novels in the Shadow Ops series, I thought I’d share the cover for the third novel on here, too. So, without any further ado, here is the cover for Myke Cole’s BREACH ZONE…

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Personally, I think this is my favourite of the three US covers, now. I also really like the way the fella up front’s eyebrow is raised in an “I don’t think so…” manner. A nice touch. I like the green hue, too. Can’t wait to see what the UK cover looks like.

Breach Zone will be published in the US by Ace Books (Penguin) in late January 2014; and Headline in the UK, in mid-February 2014.

Also on CR: Interview with Myke Cole, Guest Post, reviews of Control Point and Fortress Frontier.

“Generation V” by M.L. Brennan (Roc Books)

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BrennanML-GV1-GenerationVThe start of a new, fun vampire Urban Fantasy series

Reality Bites

Fortitude Scott’s life is a mess. A degree in film theory has left him with zero marketable skills, his job revolves around pouring coffee, his roommate hasn’t paid rent in four months, and he’s also a vampire. Well, sort of. He’s still mostly human.

But when a new vampire comes into his family’s territory and young girls start going missing, Fort can’t ignore his heritage anymore. His mother and his older, stronger siblings think he’s crazy for wanting to get involved. So it’s up to Fort to take action, with the assistance of Suzume Hollis, a dangerous and sexy shape-shifter. Fort is determined to find a way to outsmart the deadly vamp, even if he isn’t quite sure how.

But without having matured into full vampirehood and with Suzume ready to split if things get too risky, Fort’s rescue mission might just kill him…

Generation V is that rare beast: an Urban Fantasy that managed to both entertain me and surprise me, while also eliciting plenty of chuckles. I’m not as versed in the genre as I perhaps should be, but this was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait for the sequel.

Brennan offers up an interesting spin on vampire urban fantasy (some of which is detailed in yesterday’s interview). For one thing, I liked the Not Born a Vampire, but Born to a Vampire thing – the gradual evolution from human to vampire for those born to a vampire line was pretty intriguing. Naturally, therefore, Fort’s “transition” to vampire, or apparent lack of managing it, forms a good part of the meta-narrative of the novel. The process is kind of random and unknown, and Brennan drops hints about it and the overall process along the way. The vampires in this reality are not the uber-predators we may be used to. Sure, they lack a conscience, and drink blood, etc. But they have extreme difficulty in reproducing more vampires. I liked this.

Brennan offers a lot of detail, but doesn’t get bogged down or over-complex. In many ways, Generation V plays the role of origin story, as the novel has a pretty clear purpose: to introduce us to these characters and this mythology. It does an excellent job, actually. We learn about Fort’s family (see quote below, for his relationship with his siblings), his friends, his manipulative ex-girlfriend, his feckless and douchebag of a roommate.

“My sister, Prudence, fantasized about breaking all of my bones to kindling (as detailed to me last year at Christmas), but Chivalry wouldn’t. He was just giving me a reminder of what I wasn’t. He was a full vampire, and could break a person’s neck before the person even realized he was moving. I was still mostly human, and sucked at sports.”

Fort is an interesting character, and a fun guide to this new world. He is world-weary, but also loves being human, and wants to hang on to it as long as possible. He is also a victim of the economic downturn (sort-of…), languishing in the service industry after graduating from college.

My favourite character, though, is Suzume, who I liked immediately. She’s a lot of fun, and plays a wonderfully mischievous bodyguard with a slight case of ADHD, and a mission to protect Fort. While simultaneously driving him crazy… She’s a “kitsune”, a fox trickster from Japanese mythology, and Brennan does a great job of weaving in this myth into her narrative. (Interestingly, kitsune have featured in more of my reading of late – see Fairest Volume 2, by Lauren Beukes.) Suzume’s clan’s history, however, also presented the only clanger in the novel: while recounting her grandmother’s migration from Japan to the US, the story gets the order of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan wrong, which I thought was a very strange mistake to make (“After the next bomb was dropped on Hiroshima…” – the first was dropped on Hiroshima, the second on Nagasaki…)

The novel is lighthearted in tone (as I mentioned earlier, the story and banter made me chuckled frequently). That being said, Brennan can also conjure up claustrophobic fight scenes and a dash of the sinister, too, and equally skillfully. The author avoids becoming flippant, but does skirt quite close on just a couple of occasions. Generation V is the closest I’ve come across that evokes the style and fun of Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series (which is also superb).

Ultimately, this is recommended for anyone who wants their Urban Fantasy with a healthy does of fun, an interesting new twist on vampire and supernatural mythology, and a decent story. True, it is very much part one of a series: it feels like an opening salvo, focusing perhaps too much for some readers on laying the groundwork for something larger and more long-term. But, I had a blast reading this – it’s quickly-paced, tightly-written, and often funny. I really can’t wait for the sequel, Iron Night.

Certainly recommended.

Guest Post: “The Yesterday That Never Was” by Aidan Harte (Jo Fletcher Books)

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Today, I bring you a guest post by Aidan Harte, author of the historical fantasies Irenicon and The Warring States. Here, he discusses how authors perceive and play around with the historical periods they can write in…

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THE YESTERDAY THAT NEVER WAS

AidanHarte-AuthorPicFantasy and Historical Fiction are in essence extreme forms of Travel Fiction. They take us to destinations that can’t be otherwise reached. Historical Fantasy is a hybrid for brave souls looking for untraveled paths in unmapped lands. Its terrain is more expansive than it was – as the world tilts, reorienting itself to an Eastern pole, the West is no longer the default setting.

Anyone writing Historical Fiction must accomplish two, unfortunately contradictory, things:

1. Immerse the reader in another era.

2. Keep him from drowning in it.

The same onus falls on the writer of Historical Fantasy but he has an extra challenge – after building a believable world, he must test it to breaking point by introducing unbelievable elements. Happily, that’s not as difficult as it sounds. Privately, each of us believes that everyone who died before we were born was a sucker. They don’t know what we know and we can never forgive them for it. Just as the untraveled believe absurdities of foreigners, we patronise to people imprisoned in the past’s dusty mausoleum in a way we’d never treat those lucky enough to cohabitate the same point in time and space as us.

All this is to say that the average reader, whatever he tells himself, really has no trouble believing that citizens of olden times were credulous as slow-witted children. Given that, the introduction of supernatural elements is a doddle. Dragons are only marginally less improbable than the Charleston. Our condescension is not altogether without wisdom. The fact is that people living in pre-scientific societies did not delimit the supernatural from the everyday as rigorously as we Moderns. The average medieval chap would be surprised to see a unicorn, but not nearly as much as you – I’m assuming that you’re not reading this blog from an explored tract of the Amazon.

ClarkeS-JonathanStrange&MrNorrellIn the end, the fantastical elements in any novel are distracting fireworks that count for little if the bedrock of character, plot and storytelling is absent or faulty. The art is to find an intellectual and emotional connection between the reader and the past. I’ve praised Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell before, but some things bear repeating. Susanna Clarke inhabits her chosen milieu completely. Her infectious wit and generosity draws us helplessly in. The manner she treats the squabbling magicians bursting into Regency England as kindred spirits to the Romantic poets is inspired. It’s not the spells we remember so much as the awkward double act of Strange and Norrell, the noble manservant Stephen and the masterful Duke of Wellington.

That effortless marriage of voice and subject was a continuing inspiration for my Wave Trilogy, although the tone is very different. Irenicon and its sequel The Warring States are set in Etruria, an Alternate History Italy. The most challenging part of realising this medieval world was not creating the mysterious Waterfolk, or the flamboyant martial arts, or the baroque arch-villainy of Bernoulli. All that was pure imagination and came easy. What I really sweated over in the first book was rendering the conflict that was tearing the small town of Rasenna apart. It wasn’t that I lacked inspirational material; anyone perusing a history of medieval Italy will find conflict aplenty, but all the research in the world doesn’t help when you can’t see the living people underneath. You have to be able to smell their breath. It took me a while to understand why the Guelphs and Ghibellines keep quarrelling. The minutia of titles, dates and details obscured the human passions. The truth is that it wasn’t an abstract quarrel for primacy between the Holy See and the Holy Roman Empire that kept the city-states boiling. The factions’ banners were pretexts, vaporous as the shadow battles over “hinge issues” that animate the election years of our democracies. What was and is at issue was power. Who holds it. Who wants it. Once I realised that, realising the inherent drama was easier, though I still had work making a world of guilds, priests, contessas, and strange Italian names inviting to modern readers.

Harte-WaveTrilogy-1&2

This business of making readers at ease can be taken too far. The past remains another country. The average medieval person had views on morality that make the Taliban look easy going. Saints and relics occupied a space in 14th century Italy filled by iPads and smart phones today. I’ll buy just about any anachronistic mechanical contrivance in my Steam Punk novel, but nothing jars more than Victorian characters with the mores of 21st century hipsters. Why ever leave the sofa if we’re all the same?

We travel to experience the world’s variety but some contemporary authors, certainly those writing Literary Fiction, tip toe and genuflect around the issues of race, gender and age. This is patronising in a terrible new way. The joy of traveling is to see strange sights, people we’re not used to, smells that make us dizzy, flavours that make our tongues beg for mercy. Victorian authors, God bless their jodhpurs, had none of this pusillanimity. When Ryder Haggard had a yarn to spin, he waded into the unknown with aplomb – sensitivities be damned – and readers love him it.

FromHellThe sense of discovery is part of Historical Fantasy’s continuing appeal. It’s increasingly hard to imagine life Before Google, that benighted era we left behind in 1996. The world BG was a world where ignorance, speculation and rumour were the rule. The past is a place where the most fantastical things are routinely accepted. If an unmapped world could contain Australia and the Americas then why not unicorns and dragons too? The most ambitious Historical Fantasies pull us over the borders into the unknown. Peter Ackroyd (in Hawksmore) and Alan Moore (in From Hell) take the reader on tours of two very different Londons and make a convincing case that doers of dreadful deeds make their own reality. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian can be read as Historical Fantasy. Its setting is clearly the 1850’s Mexican borderlands but the villainous Judge Holden – polyglot, immortal, alchemist – is an ogre direct from the Grimm’s fairy tales. Or perhaps he’s just a flamboyant fraud. Or perhaps he’s a figment of the narrator’s imagination. McCarthy’s expansive, elusive prose allows for many interpretation.

At its best, Historical Fantasy pits its constituent parts – History and Fantasy – against each other. That inner tension, that vast uncertainty, is why we love it. Ultimately none of us are quite as sure of ourselves as we pretend to be. How pleasant to go somewhere now and again, where absolutely nothing is certain.

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Aidan Harte’s IRENICON and THE WARRING STATES are both out now, published by Jo Fletcher Books in the UK.

Also on CR: Interview with Aidan Harte, Excerpt of Irenicon

An Interview with M.L. BRENNAN

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BrennanML-GV2-IronNight

I don’t read much Urban Fantasy. I don’t really know why. But, last week I read ML Brennan’s Generation V, which I found to be a lot of fun. Naturally, after liking the novel, my first inclination was to send the author some interview questions…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is ML Brennan?

I’m an avid reader, a writer, and in my day job an adjunct professor. A lot of the time I wish there were many more hours in the day, since all three of those occupations have big time requirements!

I thought we’d start with your fiction: Your latest novel, Generation V, was recently published by Roc Books. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

Generation V is the first in a series of books. Right now, I’m contracted for three books, but I’m hopeful that the series will do well, because I have ideas and plans for several more.

The elevator pitch of my book is that Fortitude Scott has a useless degree, a minimum-wage job, a cheating girlfriend, and a roommate who stiffs him on the rent. And he’s a vampire… mostly. But when a little girl is kidnapped, suddenly he’s the only one who is willing to try and do something about it, so he teams up with a wise-cracking shapeshifter and heads off for a rescue mission that will very likely kill him.

This is a book with a very non-typical hero – he isn’t the most powerful character, in fact he’s almost on human levels of weakness when the book begins. In order to beat someone, he has to outsmart them, or make friends and alliances that can help him. There’s no “End of the World” peril – instead, the peril at the heart of the book is one that Fortitude could very easily just ignore and it wouldn’t effect his life at all. His entire family urges him to just look the other way, but he doesn’t, and so it’s his own choices that lead to the life-threatening peril. There’s a lot of banter, a bit of dark humor. But at the core, it’s about a person who is afraid of himself and his heritage, who has to decide between the path of least resistance or something harder.

BrennanML-GenerationV

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

Inspiration is a tricky thing for me – no one thing inspired me, rather it was a combination of a lot of ideas and topics that I found interesting. Over time I had a lot of scraps of ideas, and they eventually coalesced into the world that Fortitude inhabits.

But I was interested in the idea of family and heritage – Fortitude is a person who has very little in common with his family, and in fact is deathly afraid that he’ll eventually take on the kind of very selfish and harsh worldview that they possess and view as natural. This folds in really well with how I was interested in writing vampires – as dangerous predators, rather than some of their more benign depictions in recent movies. I am also a professor, and one of the things that those of us who teach have really been exposed to in recent years are films, lectures, and books about the idea of an extended adolescence. I also am very personally familiar (through my own experience and those of my friends) with what it can feel like to get a graduate degree and then enter a job market where the only jobs you seem able to find are ones that you could’ve done with a high school diploma. Those things really had a part in how I created Fortitude – he’s twenty-six, underemployed, stuck with a bad roommate and a bad relationship, but his biggest problem is his lack of self-confidence and ownership in his life. Over the course of the book, that starts changing, and it’s a theme that I’m looking forward to exploring in the sequels as well.

How were you introduced to genre fiction?

My brother is older than me by two years, so my first introduction to genre fiction came very much because I was the classic younger sibling: whatever my brother was doing was interesting to me, and whatever he was reading I wanted to read as well. I’m lucky that my brother was fairly tolerant, and he let me borrow all of his books. Thanks to him, I read Ender’s Game, the Death Gate Cycle, Star Trek novels (my favorites were the Peter David ones), and the Thrawn trilogy of Star Wars books. When I was a little older, our tastes and interests diverged, and I headed in the direction of David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, and Margaret Weis’s Star of the Guardians series.

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

Very much. Traditional publishing was always my goal, and I worked very hard to achieve it. I spent almost a decade of very serious writing before I sold a book, and I have to say, starting a project feels different when you know for certain that you will be paid for it, and it is a very, very good feeling.

In terms of writing practices, I’m very much a planner. I don’t start writing a book until I have a very clear direction and an overall outline of the book very solidly hammered out. I know other writers who start writing and figure out that plot as they go, and while I respect their process, I know that I’m just too much of an anal-retentive control-freak to try that myself. Sometimes the outlining can take a few months (and sometimes even longer than writing the book itself takes), but it’s the method that works best for me. I like having already ironed out any timeline or motivation issues before I start working, and having an outline in front of me helps figure out if my plot or characters are somehow out of balance.

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’ve always enjoyed reading, and writing is something that I realized very young came pretty easily to me, but I didn’t have much desire to be an author when I was younger. Or, maybe a better way of putting it is that I didn’t want to be solely an author. I grew up in a single-parent household where my mother worked very, very long hours to provide for us, and so I was very leery at the thought of embarking on a career path that didn’t have a solid paycheck and reliability. So, while I did want to write, I always wanted it to be something on the side, with a regular paycheck always there just in case writing wasn’t enough to pay all the bills. I had that plan in mind all through college, in fact, and right up into my first month of law school.

And that first month of law school, unfortunately, is when I realized that I didn’t want the writing to be something that happened on the side – it was what I wanted to do all the time. I wasn’t happy about that realization at the time (as you can imagine, neither was my mother or my spouse), but there it was. I left law school and entered an MFA program, and writing has been the center of my professional life ever since. (In the interests of full disclosure – yes, the pay was every bit as low and unreliable as I’d feared when I was younger.)

What I view as my first serious foray into writing happened when I was an undergraduate in college: a short story that I’d written was published in a literary magazine. I do look back on it very fondly – I had no personal or professional connections to that literary magazine, and I mailed the story to them with just a standard cover letter. My story had already been rejected from easily two dozen other literary magazines, but I kept at it, and I was published. That experience really helped years later when I was trying to get a book published!

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

I think the genre that I’m working in – urban fantasy – is really exciting. Dip into urban fantasy and you can find everything from hard-bitten, noir-ish police procedurals with monsters, to very sexually-charged paranormal romance. Urban fantasy is a big tent genre, which is why I have so much fun with it.

I think what can potentially be problematic about some urban fantasy is when authors start becoming formulaic in the hopes of getting an audience quickly. I made some decisions in my book that I felt helped make it be what I think urban fantasy should always try to be: something fun and new.

Your novel features vampires. What’s different about your vampires, and why do you think they (and other undead beasties) have been, and continue to be so popular with readers?

I think vampires rest in our cultural consciousness so well because they hit a lot of our buttons. Vampires look human, so they can pass among us unnoticed, and we can’t immediately identify them as a threat. Vampires are traditionally humans who have been changed and converted, so that hits on our fear of treachery, that the person who was an ally, friend, or loved one today might turn on us tomorrow. Vampires feed on human blood – this frightens us because it raises the horror we have of being prey, and of being consumed. Vampires typically have a level of sexualization – this also brings up that fear of not recognizing a threat, and of facing treachery later. I think all of those elements make vampires more popular (and sustain that popularity) over creatures that don’t play on those fears. For example, the Creature From The Black Lagoon: it poses no threat of infiltrating society, it can never betray you since everyone already hates it, while it does have a bit of subliminal sexual horror in that it sure seems to gravitate to pretty women in bathing suits, but it doesn’t seem to possess genitalia, and no one is going to be seduced by it, so no worries there, and finally it doesn’t really seem to eat us – mostly just squeeze us to death, if my memory of the movie is accurate.

So, vampires have a very long-standing appeal. In terms of the vampires in my book, I actually made a lot of changes to the traditional presentation. In the majority of vampire fiction, the vampire is a human who has been transformed into a vampire, and through that transformation process they are now ageless, immortal, and undead. I’ve always found this kind of idea a bit problematic. For one thing, a creature that reproduces just through a tiny blood donation? Talk about a population explosion! For another, a character that never gets older and will never die? That’s a fairly static character with very few outside pressures. I was never interested in writing about an immortal character.

The big change that I made for my vampires is to make them a separate species. These aren’t transformed humans – they have a lifecycle that includes growing up, old age, and ultimately death. They also have a reproductive cycle that is rather finicky and difficult, and it gives a good reason why vampires haven’t just overrun the planet – in fact, my vampires are a species in total crisis, and right on the edge of extinction.

BrennanML-GV2-IronNight

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

In the pipeline is Generation V’s sequel IRON NIGHT. It’s with the copyeditor right now, and I’m currently working on the third Fortitude Scott book, which has to be finished by the end of the summer, so that’s pretty much filling most of my days.

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

I’m a fairly wide reader, so if you asked me that week-to-week the answer would always be changing. Right now, I’m reading non-fiction, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It’s good – very challenging, extremely applicable to a lot of what is happening right now, but ultimately very optimistic. This has been on my stack for a while now. I haven’t read any Sagan before, though I did have a general working understanding of him.

SaganC-DemonHauntedWorldMy first encounter with Carl Sagan was actually thanks to The Far Side comics, which my brother and I used to read in the paper every day and puzzle over. There’s one comic that’s supposed to be Carl Sagan as a kid, and it’s two little kids looking up at the night sky, and one says to the other something like, “Look at all those stars, Susie! There must be hundreds and hundreds of them!” Which is funny, if you know about Sagan’s famous comment “billions and billions.” My mother explained that to us, which led to my brother reading one of Sagan’s books on outer space. I remember looking at the pictures but nothing else…

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

I guess it would depend on what readers’ expectations of me were. One expectation that I’ve actually encountered a few times (primarily, it must be said, from friends of my parents who don’t do much genre reading), is this idea that if I write about vampires, than I must be an active believer in vampires, ghosts, witches, UFOs, and just about everything else, or that I have some kind of obsession with one of those topics. That’s definitely not the case. While I have an interest, it’s similar to the interest I have when I read about mythology. Curiosity and enthusiasm for Norse myths doesn’t mean that I have an altar to Odin in my closet, or that I’ve decorated my house with runes.

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

Oh, lots of things! I’m going to my first convention as a writer in just a few weeks – ConnectiCon, and I actually will be on two panels, so I’m extremely excited about that. At the end of the summer I’ll be at WorldCon, which should be pretty amazing. And then Iron Night will be published in January, so I’ve got a lot of really great stuff to be looking forward to!

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Be sure to check out Brennan’s website, Facebook and Twitter for more information about the Generation V series (sometimes called the “American Vampire” series, apparently), and more.

“Lexicon” by Max Barry (Mulholland Books)

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BarryM-LexiconA superb new thriller, from the author of Jennifer Government

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics—they are taught to persuade. Students learn to use language to manipulate minds, wielding words as weapons. The very best graduate as “Poets,” and enter a nameless organization of unknown purpose.

Whip-smart runaway Emily Ruff is making a living from three-card Monte on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. Drawn in to their strange world, which is populated by people named Brontë and Eliot, she learns their key rule: That every person can be classified by personality type, his mind segmented and ultimately unlocked by the skillful application of words. For this reason, she must never allow another person to truly know her, lest she herself be coerced. Adapting quickly, Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy, until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Parke is brutally ambushed by two men in an airport bathroom. They claim he is the key to a secret war he knows nothing about, that he is an “Outlier,” immune to segmentation. Attempting to stay one step ahead of the organization and its mind-bending poets, Wil and his captors seek salvation in the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, which, if ancient stories are true, sits above an ancient glyph of frightening power.

I’m going to keep this review very short (for me). Lexicon is filled with twists, revelations, and a superb blending of timelines that makes it rather difficult to review sans spoilers. Needless to say, though, Lexicon is a thoroughly enjoyable, gripping and original thriller.

The novels starts with a kidnapping at an airport that is at once amusing, while also quite excellently, uncomfortably mirroring the drugged-nature and mindset of the victim, Wil. (A brave choice, to be sure, as it was a little weird…) Over the course of the novel, we follow Wil, as he has one brush with death after another – the plan of his kidnapper, Tom, goes to hell in a hand basket fast, so they form a weird kind of partnership (I won’t spoil why).

The narrative switches between Wil’s story and that of Emily. Emily, one of our primary protagonists, is great. She starts off as a huckster on the streets of San Francisco, scraping by on card tricks and scamming tourists and gullible locals alike. She is approached by some strange man in a suit, who seems to have a considerable power of suggestion… After passing a potentially-degrading test, she is taken to the school (mentioned in the synopsis, above), and we see her learn various aspects of what they can teach – advanced persuasion, if you will (or, linguistic manipulation, if we’re being a bit more honest). The school is run by an ancient secret society called the Poets, which uses words as weapons. Emily develops into their most gifted, and also troubled, member. Her story follows her rise within the school, and her education there. In her younger years, I was reminded of Veronica Mars, for some reason. I could totally see Kristen Bell playing her in a movie… I thought Barry handled her story arc, and development very well. There were plenty of endearing moments, and also heartbreaking moments.

As story progresses, these two threads inevitably join (not how I expected, but it happens about a third of the way in). Barry mixes up timelines without much signposting, but it works.

The author writes with a great prose style: it is inviting, engaging, extremely well-paced, and sprinkled with a fair few quips and funny asides, which only made me love the story and characters even more.

Overall, Lexicon is a superb thriller. It touches upon a number of modern questions of privacy, identity, and perhaps most importantly, the rising obsession of data-collection. Barry weaves these topics into a tapestry that also underlines the power of language and coercion. It is utterly engrossing, and brilliantly written.

Very highly recommended. Lexicon is easily one of my favourite reads of the year.

Guest Post: “SEEDS IN THE DESERT” by Peter Liney (Detainee Blog Tour)

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Liney-DetaineeI’m not exactly sure when THE DETAINEE started to take shape in my mind. For a long time I had this notion that I wanted to write a book about the human spirit, about the fact that, no matter how dark the situation, given hope, we always find a way to survive. Like those seeds that lie dormant in the desert, year in, year out, waiting for rain, and when it comes, suddenly burst into the most beautiful of life. Or the victims of kidnapping, political prisoners, those held for no reason and often under the most appalling of circumstances, where do they find the will to survive? To wait for the arrival of that shower of life-giving rain? Continue reading →

Guest Post: “My Favourite Novel” by Robert Goddard

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I’m very pleased to share with you this quick guest post by author Robert Goddard, whose latest novel – The Ways of the World – was published yesterday, by Transworld (details at end).

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My Favourite Novel: THE MAGUS by John Fowles

Fowles-TheMagus1977I first read The Magus shortly after it appeared in its revised 1977 edition, following original publication in 1966. Part of the appeal of the book then was probably to do with me being just the right age to be intoxicated and enthralled by its hallucinogenic mixture of psychological thriller and searing memoir. Beyond that, though, there’s the energetic lyricism of the writing. That’s what I relish most when I look back at it now.

The book works on the reader rather as the shimmering Aegean setting, the twin femmes fatales of June and Julie and the tormenting figure of the magus of the title, Conchis, work on the narrator of the story, Nicholas Urfe. First there is seduction, then there is mystery, then there is torture and finally an enigmatic resolution. No one part of the structure convinces as fiction without the others.

It is a brilliantly sustained piece of work.

Would that I could say the same of John Fowles’ writing career. After The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), there was a slow and disappointing decline into virtual unreadability. I went to a talk by the great man once, in Exeter, some time in the mid-1980s. Alas, all that met me at the venue was a sign reading ‘John Fowles is unwell.’

‘John Fowles is depressed’ might have been more accurate, as I discovered when I read his diaries, published a few years ago, following his death in 2005. It’s probably best to know as little as possible about a writer you admire. Their personalities are apt to disappoint.

So, forget the writer. But enjoy his work. Anyone who hasn’t read The Magus has something to look forward to. I envy them.

By Robert Goddard

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Goddard-WaysOfTheWorldRobert Goddard’s latest novel, The Ways of the World is out now. It is, I believe, the first in a new series. It is very close to the top of my TBR mountain, so hopefully you’ll be seeing more of it on the blog in the near future.

Here’s the synopsis…

1919. The eyes of the world are on Paris, where statesmen, diplomats and politicians have gathered to discuss the fate of half the world’s nations in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was the Great War. A horde of journalists, spies and opportunists have also gathered in the city and the last thing the British diplomatic community needs at such a time is the mysterious death of a senior member of their delegation. So, when Sir Henry Maxted falls from the roof of his mistress’s apartment building in unexplained circumstances, their first instinct is to suppress all suspicious aspects of the event.

But Sir Henry’s son, ex-Royal Flying Corps ace James ‘Max’ Maxted, has other ideas. He resolves to find out how and why his father died – even if this means disturbing the impression of harmonious calm which the negotiating teams have worked so hard to maintain. In a city where countries are jostling for position at the crossroads of history and the stakes could hardly be higher, it is difficult to tell who is a friend and who a foe. And Max will soon discover just how much he needs friends, as his search for the truth sucks him into the dark heart of a seemingly impenetrable mystery.