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One Book Interview #55 – Allan Batchelder (Author)

May 17, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

 

#55 is here.

Actor. Comedian. Teacher. Writer. Author. Curmudgeon.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Seattle – Allan Batchelder

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Everyone? Huh. Everyone. Okay, I’m just gonna pull something outta my…past: Watership Down. Or The Little Prince. Okay, that’s two books. Hey, I’m a writer, not a mathematician.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

The Complete Works of Shakespeare. You’ve got History, Tragedy, Comedy and Romance (Fantasy, sorta). And sonnets and epic poems. Enough to keep you busy for a looooooong time.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

The Elfin Ship, by James Blaylock.  It’s his first book, and I read it when it came out, so I don’t know if it still holds up. But I loved his sense of adventure and humor. Now, he’s a leading figure in Steampunk.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite


I often think the second book in my series – the one that gets the least love – is my favorite. As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) As one of my colleagues noted, it sort of combines fantasy with a detective mystery.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Conan, by Robert E. Howard. I think I read this when I was 12 or thirteen (filched from my dad’s reading pile).

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Man, that is a tough one. It’s either The Black Company by Glen Cook or Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

That would be Immortal Treachery Book 1: Steel, Blood & Fire

You can find Allan here.

Allan is a professional actor, educator, writer and former stand-up comedian. During his years on stage, he’s gotten to participate in countless battles – some even with other people – involving longswords, rapiers, daggers, staves, pistols, bottles, loaves of French bread and, of course, his grimy little fists. Allan is a lifelong fan of epic fantasy and horror, so you can just imagine how much he loves Grimdark. He’s currently working on the fifth and final book in his series, Immortal Treachery, before he tries his hand at a) steampunk and b) horror. His books are available in paperback and kindle formats on Amazon. Allan lives in Seattle, within a few miles of the two richest men on Earth and can thereby assure you that there’s no such thing as financial osmosis

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: #amwriting, #author, #dystopian, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, horror, writing

One Book Interview #53 – Richard Writhen (Author)

April 26, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

After a short hiatus needed because of the blood-fuelled poetry and prose of the last author to grace these pages, the One Book Interview is back.

This week we have a writer who has been published in various online magazines, has published several novellas and is currently working on his first novel.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Rhode Island – Richard Writhen

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The best book that I’ve read in recent years is Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. It’s a very dark and realistic mystery and deftly manages many plot threads at once. I had seen the film awhile after it came out on video and was really blown away, so when I later saw the novel at The Strand, I picked it up and read it in full at least thrice. The tone, the characterization, but above all the way the characters’ actions ring true to real human behavior all make this book something special for me. Plus, without giving any spoilers, the way it accurately reflects the true human lack of control over chaos makes for the perfect ending.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

I would say The Martian, but I haven’t read it. Maybe Call of the Wild, which is one of my favorite books. It’s about a dog who starts out as a pet but is dognapped and forced to become a hard-working sled dog. But it’s really about surviving at all costs and finding the alpha within yourself. He fights and fights and at one point is on the verge of death but he never surrenders. And eventually, he finds satisfaction, not in a perfect life like he once had, but in the fulfillment of his destiny.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

The Lovely Bones. Every once in a while I will read something from a genre or sub-genre that I have little interest in based on the title alone. I knew I had to check this one out so I picked it up used and was pretty taken with it. A quaint story about a girl who is murdered but winds up in the afterlife a la Beetlejuice or whatever and she tries to communicate with her surviving friends and family and point them towards her killer. It had a grimdark feel to the deaths and the repercussions for the characters. Another thing I would liken it to is What Dreams May Come.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

The Hiss Of The Blade. I think that by my third novella, I had gotten a bit better and the style is a bit more mature than the first two. Plus, it’s a bloodbath, which is optimal for me. I’m a big fan of French extreme cinema like Haute Tension and Inside.  It’s also more grimdark, with an evil king and armored guards and castles and gauntlets and all that jazz. And a bunch of blades too, of course.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Well, aside from Call of the Wild, it’d probably be Watership Down. There’s so much happening in that one novel that it’d take a college philosophy course to cover it all, but some of the standout points for me are the accurate portrayal of spirituality, again the survival against all odds motif, the deception between members of the same species, the betrayals, the almost god-like power that humankind and even cats have over the small animals like the rabbits.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

The most influential book that I’ve read in the past few years would have to be A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Aside from being astonishingly well-written, its grasp of subtext and meta is unparalleled. The only novel that I would really liken it to is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; both of them are basically experiences like real life, and while you are reading them, the point of it all is not immediately evident. It’s entertaining, but the real brilliance in such a book is after it ends, when you are (hopefully) blindsided by the real message as the pieces fall into place like so many puzzle pieces in your mind, as you sort it out. That’s really the approach that I have now; it’s not a thousand pages that you need to throw at the reader, but rather a level of veracity and internal continuity that makes the contents of the book literally live in the reader’s mind. And few authors can really do it.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

It stands to reason that my shortest, simplest novella is my first, A Kicked Cur. It took much longer to write because I worked on it as an amateur, only once or twice a month, before I became more serious about my writing. The process took about two years and four months, but I’m happy with it, though no work wrought by human hands is ever finished. The second and third novellas were much faster, taking about eight months apiece once I had adopted the “nulla dies sine linear” approach. The fourth is at about that same mark now, but is going to take a bit longer to complete,  so about a year.

You can find Richard here.

Originally from Rhode Island, Richard Writhen also lived in NYC for about ten years. He has been e-published on several notable sites such as the Dark Mondays Blog, the Mighty Thor JRS Blog, Michael R Fletcher.com, Rob J Hayes.co.uk, Grimdarkmagazine.com and Ragnarokpub.com and is the author of three novellas on Amazon KDP: A Kicked Cur, A Host of Ills and The Hiss Of The Blade. Richard also writes short form stories in the styles of Gothdark, Grimdark, GDSF and Psychological Horror, and will eventually be exploring the weird west.

 

 

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Filed Under: English, Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged With: #amediting, #amwriting, #author, #dystopian, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, writing

One Book Interview #51 – Andy Peloquin (Author)

February 22, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

“Fantasy transcends age, gender, religion, race, or lifestyle.”

As the One Book Interview moves into its second half century, we’re lucky enough to have another award winning writer with us.

“It is our way of believing what cannot be, delving into the unknowable.”

Author 51’s  dark fantasy books have hundreds of positive reviews on Amazon US alone.

“It is a way of discovering hidden truths about ourselves and our world in a brand new way.”

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Somewhere in the US – Andy Peloquin

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes.

No one else will ever be as spectacularly clever, and no matter how many times I’ve read this series, I can keep reading it and still find new surprises and discoveries.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Warlord of Mars.

I know it’s fiction, but it would make me so happy to imagine myself as John Carter of Mars, leaping around the planet, swinging his sword, and being a total bad-ass!

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames.

I’m the sort of person who DOESN’T do something just because everyone tells me I should. My Fantasy Fiends Podcast co-host told me to read the book pretty much every week for three months. When I finally caved and read it, I was very happy I did

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Thief of the Night Guild (Queen of Thieves Book 2)

It’s one hell of an action-adventure heist story, and a whole lot of fun to write.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Probably The Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Last Battle.

There’s one scene at the end where Aslan (the Jesus-esque character) tells one of the people, “All the good things you did in the name of the bad god went to my credit, and all the bad things done in my name went to the credit of the bad god.” Basically, it made me realize that the name—God, Yahweh, Allah, the universe, Gaia, and so on—doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the intention, action, and outcome.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

It set the bar high for me to write amazing characters!

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.


Child of the Night Guild (Queen of Thieves Book 1)

It’s the introduction to the Queen of Thieves series, and the beginning of journeys that will span 10 full-length novels.

You can find Andy here.

 

I am, first and foremost, a storyteller and an artist–words are my palette. Fantasy is my genre of choice, and I love to explore the darker side of human nature through the filter of fantasy heroes, villains, and everything in between. I’m also a freelance writer, a book lover, and a guy who just loves to meet new people and spend hours talking about my fascination for the worlds I encounter in the pages of fantasy novels.

Fantasy provides us with an escape, a way to forget about our mundane problems and step into worlds where anything is possible. It transcends age, gender, religion, race, or lifestyle–it is our way of believing what cannot be, delving into the unknowable, and discovering hidden truths about ourselves and our world in a brand new way. Fiction at its very best!

 

 

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: #amwriting, #author, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, writing

One Book Interview #49 – Jesse Teller (Author)

January 29, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

A lover of dark fantasy. A rule-breaker. A writer.

But who better to introduce Author #49 than Author #49 himself.

“All my work is about hope. There are virtues in this world worth fighting for, things we can’t do without. I hope to inspire honor and vigilance. I hope to raise an awareness of innocence and its worth.”

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Missouri, the US – Jesse Teller.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

I’m gonna alter this question. I’m gonna say one book everyone should read if they like fantasy or plan on writing fantasy, and that is The Bloody Crown of Conan by Robert E. Howard. I just, I strongly believe that if you’re writing high fantasy you have to have a working knowledge of this book. Howard was the best. He wrote in the 1920s, and he was the original creator of Conan the Cimmerian. I learned about him in a literature class I took in college where we studied the story The Tower of the Elephant. All people who are thinking about getting into the fantasy genre should start there

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

We’ve already displayed that I’m a rulebreaker, so I’m gonna alter this question, too. I’m gonna go with the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. He was dark and twisted and insane and beautiful. He wrote some of the most horrifying stories that have ever been written by anyone, yet his work is so pristine that it is still studied in public high schools. State school curriculum is willing to say, “Yes, we know he married his 14-year-old cousin. Yes, we know he wrote a story about rats eating a person alive, but look at this prose.”

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

First I need to extend an apology. I’m sorry if you’re reading this, Mrs. Learmann. Please forgive me. My answer to this would be Wuthering Heights. English classic, dense prose, but it hits all the markers. Revenge, tragic love, innocence and darkness, it hits all the markers. I read it in high school. In doing that, I did just enough to pass, barely seeing the book for what it was. But I came back to it years later, as an adult. And if you haven’t read this book, it crosses genres. Writing does this thing where it likes to classify genres. So, it says, “This book is fantasy. This book is sci-fi. This book is romance.” But the one that pisses me off the most is, “This book is classic literature.” It’s like saying, “This book is good. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash.” High forms of art and low forms of art, classic literature being above everything else, in such a way that it makes us rebel against anything called classic literature. This book Wuthering Heights is a thriller. To call it anything else is to force a top hat on it. If you have not read this book, run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Favorite book that I’ve ever written is called Legends of the Exiles. It’s a complicated book. You have to really want it. It’s the story of four women. It’s a romance, it’s a tragedy, it’s high fantasy and action. Each story of each woman is a novella of its own. Their ages are designated by a timeline that runs through the whole book. Each novella could be read on its own, but when you read them all together, one will answer questions brought up by the others. One will expand the telling of a scene shared by a different novella. It’s a complicated book. It’s a book written for an advanced reader. I have to publish the rest of the trilogy I started in October. Those are my publications for 2018. But, when that trilogy is done I will be publishing Legends of the Exiles. So look for it April 15, 2019.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Paradise Lost. It’s not a book, it’s actually an epic poem. For this one, I have to thank Mrs. Learmann. There’s a scene where the angels rebelling against God have lost the war and have been tossed into Hell. They built a castle for themselves called Pandemonium, and in the throne room they have a huge meeting, all the demons and devils. They start planning out their next move. Moloch is a massive warrior and he wants to charge Heaven again, wants to lead all the demons back into war. Belial, another arch devil, wants to go apologize to God and beg and scrape. Satan is whispering in Beelzebub’s ear, and gets him to speak for him. Beelzebub speaks of revenge. He speaks of corrupting God’s favorite child, Adam, destroying the thing God loves most. When I was reading this, I was thinking about destiny. I was thinking about freedom of choice, or whether our lives are handed down by mandate. Here are a collection of demons, damned and imprisoned, and yet they still have freedom of choice to plot out their next move. It gave me an understanding that we can’t blame the choices we make on the people in our lives, or the gods or demons we choose to worship. And at any point, we can turn it all around, or we could burn it all to the ground.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

I’m gonna say George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. When I was first learning how to write a book, I was all over the place, swinging wild, one point of view for two or three paragraphs, then switch to another, then yet another, then back to the sixth. It was a disaster. So, my first book had over 15 point of view characters. It was unreadable. Then Martin came in, showed me precision point of view, and showed me that there was no topic too tragic, no scene too horrible to be included in dark fantasy. He anointed me a dark fantasy writer, and gave his blessing for all the most diabolical acts and horrible scenes I could imagine.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

Start with Legends of Perilisc. It’s short, 170 pages. It’s a short story collection that will acquaint the reader with the creation of the world, the creation of the races, and the rise from the darkest ages. It’ll also show my writing style and ability. It’s a short commitment that will prepare you to read more.

You can find Jesse here.

Jesse Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between man and woman, to studying the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller uses his stories and settings to study real-world themes and issues.

 

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Filed Under: English, Interviews Tagged With: #amwriting, #author, #dystopian, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, #thriller, writing

One Book Interview #48 – A.M. Justice (Author)

January 20, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

I’m flattered to have another award winning author on the One Book Interview this week.

As well as writing, author 48 also describes herself as a diver, stargazer and once and future dancer with more than a passing knowledge of medicine.

Not only that, her interview includes a simple, yet effective piece of advice for any aspiring author: cut the fat, add some muscle.

(I assume she means literally not literally.)

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Brooklyn, NY – Amanda Justice.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

This question is impossible to answer, because “should” implies a prescriptive approach like, everyone “should” take vitamins. We should all eat right and exercise, and we should all read (or see) at least five of Shakespeare’s plays and at least one book by each major author of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. But I’m disinclined to define the “eating right” menu here, because I haven’t read any Thomas Wolfe or Thomas Pynchon myself, and I found Hemingway and Dostoyevsky a real slog.

Wait, oh, did you mean, should read…for enjoyment? Again, I’m not going to name a book or an author because my ice cream may be your broccoli. I happen to like broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, but the point is, I could name Pride and Prejudice or Lempriere’s Dictionary or Lord of the Rings or Wizard of Earthsea, but there’s no way to tell whether the reader of this advice would enjoy and value those books as I have.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

If there’s an Earthsea Cycle bound as a single volume available somewhere, I’ll take that. Ursula Le Guin is my literary idol and the worldview she presents in her Earthsea stories resonates very closely with my own, so this series would be a great comfort while I’m living off my Martian potato crop.  If it must be a single novel, I’d want something hefty and dense to keep me occupied. I’d also want a complete story in one book, so I wasn’t longing to find out what happened next. So in that case, I might choose Le Guin’s Always Coming Home or Lawrence Norfolk’s Lempriere’s Dictionary.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Last year during one of the virtual fantasy conventions for authors and readers, I picked up a book by E.P. Clarke called The Midnight Land, which sounded mildly interesting as a historical fantasy set in pre-Christian Russia. Turned out, I loved this book, which followed a princess with magical empathic abilities that her associates think make her weak but which turn out to make her powerful in a really terrifying way, once she learns how to use them. Clark also explores how a matriarchal society might work in some really interesting ways.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

A Wizard’s Forge is my only full-length novel currently available for sale, so I have to say that one. However, I do love this book. It’s a rewrite of a previously published book called Blade of Amber, which had some flaws and which I was never fully proud of. I got some good advice from a writer friend and cut a lot of fat and added muscle to the original story, and now I am really pleased with how it turned out. I wrote a blog post on why I decided to rewrite this story instead of moving on to something new, which people can find here.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

This is almost too easy: The Return of the King had a huge influence on me, because it’s about small people who no one thinks are capable and yet who do tremendous deeds. As a 12-year-old girl reading that book for the first time, I naturally latched onto Eowyn’s story, who achieves the impossible because she’s a woman, not in spite of it.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I am a professional writer and editor, and this book was the foundation of my training as both. In fact, I think this is a book everyone should read.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

A Wizard’s Forge is the first volume in the Woern Saga; I hope to have the sequel out within the year. Forge is available from all major online retail outlets, from Thompson Shore, or you can get a signed paperback by ordering it from my website.

You can find Amanda here.

 

A. M. Justice is an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy, a freelance science writer, and an amateur astronomer, scuba diver, and once and future tango dancer. She currently lives in Brooklyn with a husband, a daughter, and two cats.

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: #amwriting, #author, #dystopian, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, writing

One Book Interview #47 – David J. West (Author)

January 15, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

Not only does author 47 write books, he is also an award-winning poet.

And he collects swords.

(Isn’t there an expression about the pen being mightier than the . . . can’t remember . . . it’s on the tip of my tongue.)

Good people of the Internet, writing out of  Utah, the USA – David J. West.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Hobbit. I just read it again this holiday and the nuances and wisdom continued really hit me once again. I read it cover to cover back in 7th grade and loved it and as far as I’m concerned it really stands up. The movies are trash by comparison, they ignore the subtle nuance and depth provided by the characters, their very motivation and soul. Really, give it a reread.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

This is really hard, and I mean really hard, how do I fit in all those joys, all that wisdom and entertainment, the laughter and the tears? I would agonize endlessly if I really had to do it.
But if I just guess one right off the top of my head in the heer and now, I’ll go with The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. High School english made me hate the classics, I had no room or time for things where every little bit was overanalyzed and taken apart to find the “deep meaning” by a bitter old man. I wish I knew then what I know now, so that I could have enjoyed reading all those years ago. School crushed my love of reading for almost ten years. In any case, I decided I would give the classics a shot again and picked up a different Hemingway book and was truly surprised at how much I got into it. I’m a big fan, now.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

It’s always the next thing, whatever I am working on is what I like to think is the best thing I’ve ever written.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Definitely the work of Robert E. Howard. As much as I have loved a million different books, nothing fired me up to write like his yarns have.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

That’s a tough one. I really respect everything I’ve come across of Steven Pressfield. He has so many great tips about craft and such, I can’t recommend his War of Art and Turning Pro enough, but again those works are just a facet of the greater jewel. I have also learned a lot from Larry Correia, Dave Butler, Chris Fox, Bryan Cohen, Lindsay Buroker, Andrea Pearson, Orson Scott Card, Michael Moorcock, Lester Dent, Poul Anderson, L. Sprauge DeCamp, Karl Edward Wagner, and Hunter S. Thompson.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

At this point, I’d say BRUTAL.

You can find David here.

David J. West is the author of Heroes of the Fallen, Weird Tales of Horror, and The Mad Song. He has an affinity for history, action-adventure, fantasy, westerns and pulp fiction horror blended with a sharp knife and served in a dirty glass—he writes what he knows.

He received 1st place when he was seven for writing a short story about a pack of wolves that outsmarted and devoured a hunter and his dog. Some children and parents may have been traumatized. He has never looked back.

His writing has since been praised in Meridian Magazine, Timpanogos Times, Hell Notes, and Amazing Stories Magazine which said his writing was “a solid collection of weird fiction.” David’s short stories have been published in the Lovecraft eZine, UGEEK, Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Iron Bound, Monsters & Mormons, Artifacts & Relics, Space Eldritch 1 and 2, Redneck Eldritch and many more.

 

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Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: #amwriting, #author, #dystopian, #fantasy, #grimdark, #onebookinterview, #thriller, western, writing

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