From artists and authors to RPG line developers, Flames Rising specializes in bringing you interviews with professionals from all aspects of the fiction, gaming industry and beyond. Our mission has been to interview both creative professionals that are top names within the entire entertainment industry, as well as and up-and-coming people to watch for as they embark on their horror-ific career. We invite you to read these interviews to learn more about these talented folk, and are happy to entertain suggestions for new people to interview.

Elaine Cunningham – Author (September ’08)
Matt Forbeck – Author (August ’08)
Z. A. Recht – Author (August ’08)
Jess Hartley – Author & Game Designer (August ’08)
Tad Stones – Screenwriter (August ’08)
Judd Karlman – Game Designer (August ’08)
Jeff VanderMeer – Author (July ’08)
David Drake – Author (July ’08)
Andy Looney – Game Designer (July ’08)
James Lowder – Editor “Worlds of Their Own” (June ’08)
Chuck Wendig – Hunter Developer (June ’08)
Ed Wetterman & Preston DuBose – Game Designers (May ’08)
Tad Williams – Author (April ’08)
Yasmine Galenorn – Author (March ’08)
Paul S. Kemp – Author (March ’08)
Martin Klimes & Aaron Acevedo – Game Developer & Artist (February ’08)
Ralan Conley – Author & Freelance Guru (February ’08)
Nathan Tucker – Author (February ’08)
Eddy Webb – Developer & Game Designer (September ’07)
Rich Thomas – Artist & Creative Director (August ’07)
James Lowder – Author & Editor (October ’06)
Joseph Vargo Artist & Musician (September ’06)
Laurell K. Hamilton – Author (June ’06)
R.A. Salvatore – Author (May ’06)
Brett M. Bernstein (May ’06)
E.E. Knight (May ’06)
Cathy Wilkins – Artist (March ’06)
Joseph Nassise – Author (March ’06)
Jonathan Ridd – Game Designer (February ’06)
Scott Glancy – Author & Publisher (February ’06)
Jennifer Rodgers – Artist (January ’06)
Dominic St. Charles – Musician (December ’05)
Caitlin R. Kiernan – Author (December ’05)
Kelley Armstrong – Author (November ’05)
Malcolm Craig – Game Designer (October ’05)
Amber Benson – Actress & Author (October ’05)
Gavin Goszka – Musician (October ’05)
Christopher Golden – Author (September ’05)
Patrick Younts – Freelance Writer (September ’05)
Aaron Dembski-Bowden – Freelance Writer & Game Designer (September ’05)
Clash Bowley – Game Designer (September ’05)
Michael Tresca – Freelance Writer (June ’05)
Krister M. Michl – Freelance Writer (June ’05)
Elizabeth McCoy – Editor & Developer (May ’05)
Greg Stolze – Author & Game Designer (March ’05)
Wil Upchurch – Freelance Writer & Game Designer (February ’05)
Keith Senkowski – Artist & Game Designer (February ’05)
Shane Coppage – Artist (January ’05)
C.J. Carella – Game Designer (January ’05)
Stuart Renton – Game Designer (January ’05)
Derek Stoelting – Freelance Writer (January ’05)
Richard Lee Byers – Author (December ’04)
Ken Meyer Jr. – Artist (December ’04)
Andrew Bates – Artist & Managing Editor (December ’04)
Melissa Uran – Artist (December ’04)
Veronica V. Jones – Artist (December ’04)
Scott Mitchell – game Designer (December ’04)
Michelle Lyons Author & Editor (November ’04)
Justin Achilli – Author & Developer (November ’04)
Toren Atkinson -Artist & Musician (November ’04)
Talon Dunning – Artist (October ’04)
C.A. Suleiman Author & Developer (September ’04)
Ron Edwards – Game Designer(July ’04)
Shane Hensley – Game Designer(July ’04)
Jason L Blair – Author & Game Designer (June ’04)
Monte Cook – Author & Game Designer (June ’04)
Micah Skaritka – Game Designer & Musician (May ’04)
Robert Baxter – Freelance Writer (May ’04)
Richard E. Dansky – Author (May ’04)
Stefan Petrucha – Author (May ’04)
Kraig Blackwelder – Author (May ’04)
Matt Forbeck – Author & Game Designer (May ’04)
Bruce Baugh – Author (May ’04)
Sam Chupp – Author (April ’04)
Dav Harnish – Author (March ’04)
Pat Loboyko – Artist (March ’04)
Fred Hooper – Artist (March ’04)
Heather Grove – Author (March ’04)
John Tynes – Author (March ’04)
M. Alexander Jurkat – Editor (January ’04)
Sarah Roark – Author (January ’04)
Mark Bruno – game Designer (December ’03)
Echo Chernik – Artist (December ’03)
Jackob Klunder – Freelance Writer (December ’03)
Ann Koi – Artist (December ’03)
Matt McFarland – Author & Developer (December ’03)
Robert McLaughlin – Game Designer (December ’03)
Lucien Soulban – Author (December ’03)
R. K. Post – Artist (December ’03)
Ari Marmell – Author (December ’03)

For more information about interviews on Flames Rising, please feel free to e-mail flamesrising01@yahoo.com.

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In the sands of Thuvia, the atheist Salim Ghadafar must find the stolen soul of a murdered merchant. His search for souls extends throughout the planes and tests his strength to the breaking point. Death’s Heretic by James L. Sutter is a grand tour of the Outer Planes… a tour that balances large-scale awe and wonder with intimate character development.

Indeed, Death’s Heretic is more than “a book about tracking down kidnapped souls and killing monsters.” It’s a novel shot through with mystery, mayhem, and romping good adventure, sure, but it also asks some weighty questions… while killing monsters.

“If we really understood immortality,” asks Sutter, “would we still want it?”

There’s more, of course. What are the power dynamics of faith? The true nature of honor? Of heroism? What lurks within the complexities of human ambivalence? The resulting novel blends intimate knowledge of the Pathfinder setting with compelling characters and a plot that packs the energy of a Byzantine naphtha bomb.

Sutter is an editor, writer, game designer, and vagabond musician. His creator-owned stories have appeared Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, and Black Gate. He edited the anthology Before They Were Giants for the Planet Stories line. Perhaps most pertinent our conversation below is the fact that Sutter worked on the team that created the Pathfinder Campaign Setting before becoming the Pathfinder Fiction Editor. In other words, he knows Golarion inside and out… which can be both a blessing and a curse.

Below, Sutter and I talk about writing, editing, and playing “symphonic European fantasy metal” in Golarion.

How did you come to write a Pathfinder Tales novel?

As one of the architects of the Pathfinder campaign setting, I’ve had a wonderful chance to help steer the world into its current form. Yet as Paizo’s Fiction Editor, I thought I’d never write a Pathfinder Tales novel–it felt too weird to assign myself a book. That changed one day when Paizo Publisher Erik Mona walked past with a short story we’d published in one of the Kingmaker Adventure Path volumes. There was no name on it, but he really enjoyed it and thought I should give the author a novel. I informed him that in fact I had written the story, and he said, “Okay, then you should write a novel.” When I raised my concerns about nepotism, he pointed out that he was my boss, and that he was in fact telling me to write a novel. At which point I saluted gratefully and got to work.

What’s the coolest thing about the Pathfinder world that isn’t in Death’s Heretic or one of your short stories?

Aw, geez. I know a lot of people give the “it’s like choosing children” answer, but I’ve been working on the Pathfinder campaign setting for as long as there’s been a Pathfinder campaign setting, so I really am pretty close to it. Sometimes too close. But as for a part that fascinates me and doesn’t show up anywhere in my fiction (yet), I’d have to go with the solar system surrounding Golarion (the planet that the setting focuses on).

I love science fiction just as much as fantasy, and multiple planets allow you a ton of flexibility for different levels of technology, interesting real-world astronomical phenomena, and strangeness on an even grander scale than you can achieve on a single planet. I’ve had the honor of setting most of the ground work for Golarion’s solar system, so it’s very near and dear to my heart.

Where does a novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, event, somewhere else altogether? Where’d Death’s Heretic start? And how’d you develop the novel from there?

Since Death’s Heretic is my first novel, I can really only speak to that one. For most of the short stories I write, they start with either a “what if?” idea–often with regards to the setting, as I’m a huge fan of world-building–or a single scene, which I then have to build a story to justify. For Death’s Heretic, it started as a collision of two things:

1) The realization that the Outer Planes (places like Heaven and Hell and the weirder portions of the afterlife) are the coolest part of our setting, and that I needed a reason to go there.

2) The question of how you deal with atheism in a fantasy world where the gods are objectively real.

Once those came together, I found Salim starting to take shape, along with the kernel of the plot that would drive the book.

What makes Salim tick?

Salim is a big ol’ cauldron of contradictions and self-loathing. He’s a staunch atheist–one who doesn’t deny the gods’ existence, but rather sees worship as a form of indentured servitude, and thus offensive to his independent sensibilities. At the same time, through a series of bad decisions, he’s wound up working for the goddess of death as a problem-solver, going into places where the formal church perhaps couldn’t and getting things done. He’s an honorable man, but a stiff one, and not too good at making friends. He’s also a total badass who specializes in killing undead things. He was very much inspired by folks like Spawn, Constantine, Batman, and Deckard from Blade Runner.

Strange as it may sound for a book about tracking down kidnapped souls and killing monsters, for me this book is primarily about Salim and his emotional development (or lack thereof). He’s a really conflicted character, and the slow revelation of why he is the way he is really feels like the heart of the story to me. So I can’t really talk too much about what he learns without spoilers.

One thing he did teach me, though, is how tricky it is to divorce your narrative voice from that of your character when you’re partially in his head. In Death’s Heretic, a powerful merchant purchases a magical immortality elixir, but is killed before he can drink it, and the killers steal his soul from the afterlife, offering to ransom it back in exchange for the elixir. Salim is brought in to recover the soul and sort things out, only to discover that he’s been saddled with the merchant’s stubborn and aristocratic daughter, who demands to come with him and help run the show. The conflict between Salim and the girl (Neila) is one of the primary driving forces of the book, but I don’t switch point of view–you only ever really hear Salim’s thoughts on the subject. Trying to balance his irritation at the girl (and disdain for wealthy nobles in general) with the fact that she might be more competent than he originally gives her credit for was a hard line to walk–it was Salim’s voice carrying the show, but I still needed to show Neila as more than just a collection of Salim’s own prejudices, especially if I wanted his opinion to change over the course of the novel. And let me tell you, Salim is not someone who changes his worldview lightly.

I cut you off earlier… Once Salim started taking shape in the writing process, then what?

Then, out of nowhere, I suddenly had the first line of the first chapter and the few last lines of the epilogue, which told me precisely where I wanted things to start and end. That was a true stroke of luck–those parts are always the hardest, and to get them first was a huge relief. After that it was just filling in the blanks.

For Death’s Heretic, I was very careful to go through exactly the steps I put other Pathfinder Tales authors through, and I’m glad I did so. I outlined the whole thing chapter-by-chapter, which gave me a road map that kept me constantly moving forward instead of running down blind alleys. It also gave me something to show to Paizo Publisher Erik Mona, who played my usual editor role during the process, and made sure that what I came up with was actually cool. Then it was just writing, writing, writing.

So Erik Mona edited your novel?

Erik took on a lot of line editing and most of the gatekeeper/Jiminy Cricket roles. (“Sutter, are you sure you want to do _____?”). He did a great job pointing out continuity traps and story issues. Christopher Paul Carey, one of Paizo’s other editors and a novelist himself, also did quite a bit of line editing, and had some really valuable advice. Several other folks around the office also offered tips on the outline and took proofing passes of the final version before it shipped.

Did the editor James L. Sutter ever get in the way of the writer James L. Sutter?

Not this time, but only because I’ve learned how to throttle him into submission. You can’t edit while you write–you just can’t. I know so many people that hamstring themselves by reading over what they’ve just written and tinkering in the moment. I used to be one of them, and I did all sorts of things to break the habit: I’d write with my eyes closed, write in the dark, or turn my chair 90 degrees from the keyboard so I couldn’t see the screen. (Why I didn’t think to just turn off the monitor, I’ll never know–it was hardly ergonomic.) There were a lot of typos in those days, but the words got out there. Now I’m used to writing enough that I can keep to my golden rule: unless you’ve been away for a long time, don’t read more than the last few paragraphs you wrote. There’ll be plenty of time to edit once the story’s done, but while you’re writing, write. Until your story has a full draft, complete with a beginning, middle, and end, it doesn’t matter how good it is. I think we all have too many half-finished stories in our drawers to waste time editing incomplete manuscripts.

Write while your blood’s still up. Edit when it’s cooled.

You mentioned earlier that you’re a “huge fan of world-building.” How much did you get to do in Death’s Heretic?

Quite a bit! That’s part luck and part strategy: the luck part is that I already work on Paizo’s design staff, so world-building for the Pathfinder campaign setting has been part of my day job for the past five years now. The strategy part is that I specifically sought out areas that hadn’t been detailed extensively, and thus needed a bit of filling in. The main city in which things take place, Lamasara, was more or less mine to build as I saw fit, as were several of the extraplanar locations–places like the fey realm called the First World. There were also a number of places that had been sketched out, but not really seen–getting to take locations I’ve always been interested in and then have my characters walk through them was extremely fun. And a little harrowing–after all, anything I didn’t invent was created by my immensely talented friends and coworkers. And if I screwed it up, they know where I live.

Were there ever times when your vast knowledge of the Pathfinder world got in the way of the writing?

Oh god, yes. Just coming up with an idea for a novel took forever. Living in the Pathfinder campaign setting as a profession, I found that I could easily list fifty things that are ripe for a story–but how do you choose? Fortunately, my love of the Outer Planes eventually decided that issue for me–I knew which planes I wanted to visit even before I knew what the mystery was going to be, or who was behind it. But once I got rolling, the knowledge of the setting was a tremendous asset. With tie-in fiction, readers want to see the world–it’s why they bought a tie-in book rather than an independent fantasy novel. The more a Pathfinder story can feel like it grew organically out of the setting, the better.

Where do you find the Pathfinder Tales writers?

All over the place! In dumpsters behind the 7-Eleven! Stuck between couch cushions!

Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I really do try to cast my nets wide. Even in just the handful of books and stories we’ve published so far, I’ve been able to bring in both game industry tie-in veterans like Dave Gross, Elaine Cunningham, and Robin D. Laws as well as folks from the greater science fiction and fantasy community like Liane Merciel (The River King’s Road), Howard Andrew Jones (Desert of Souls and Black Gate), and Hugo Award-winner Tim Pratt. I really believe that tie-in fiction has as much to offer as independent work, and that it’s important to make our books good standalone novels–the fact that they’re tied into the world should be a bonus, not a crutch. My favorite way to find authors (and this has happened several times) is to contact or be contacted by an excellent author who says “Hey, I’ve been running a Pathfinder game for my friends, and I really love your world!” When an author already knows and enjoys the material, everything flows so much easier–there’s less of a learning curve, and the collaboration’s more fun.

It’s like when you go to a show to see two bands you love, and they cover each other’s stuff or team up on a song for a grand finale. That sort of free-spirited collaboration, born out of mutual admiration, epitomizes shared world fiction at its best.

What do each of the Pathfinder novelists do well? Or, put differently, if the Pathfinder Tales’ novelist formed a band, what genre would they play and who would play which instrument?

I’ll try to keep this short, because they all have a ton of strengths: Dave Gross has an absolute mastery of the rakish hero and snappy detective-story dialogue–his Radovan is still my favorite Pathfinder Tales character. Elaine Cunningham has an excellent sense of place and heritage, drawing on real-world myths and fables. Howard Andrew Jones has speed and flow–his book is just as long as the others, but you’d never know because he whips you through so quickly with his old-fashioned, sword-swinging feats of derring-do. Robin Laws has the ability to paint a huge cast of characters in a few strokes and make them all interesting. Matt Hughes has a great eye for world-building, Liane Merciel innately understands the emotional tone of Pathfinder, and Tim Pratt can make you love even the bad-guy characters, and make you laugh without losing the dramatic tension.

And me? The book’s only been out a few months, but I’m looking forward to people’s responses so I can find out…

And to be literal for a moment–I’ve actually done a lot of gigging with various bands, in particular a hardcore metal band called Shadow at Morning, and I know several of the other PF Tales authors are musicians, so I’m gonna field this one straight on. I’d say we’d play symphonic European fantasy metal. Elaine’s classically trained, so she’d be the operatic singer. I believe Howard plays guitar, so he can take that. I’m not sure how much Dave knows about stringed instruments, so I’ll put him on bass. (Hey, I’m a bassist, too–there are many amazing bassist out there, but there are even more bands where the bassist is whichever guitarist is the least proficient.) Robin would be drums, because he’s rock-steady all the time, and all that veteran game designer math in his head probably makes him good with time signatures. And I’d be the screamer frontman, both because I’m probably the only one in the group who actually likes screaming music, and because I’m the editor for the line. And editors, much like screamers, aren’t really good for much without some seriously talented artists to give them something to work with.

Where do you plan to visit next in the world of Pathfinder?

The next thing of mine to hit the streets will be Distant Worlds in February, which is a Pathfinder campaign setting sourcebook which details the worlds of Golarion’s solar system. I’m a huge science fiction fan, and got the chance to lay most of the groundwork for the other planets in the setting several years ago, so it was a joy to get to take an in-depth look at all of them, including some of the weird cultures that live there and the way both magic and real-world science have shaped everything. I wrote a blog post for SF Signal recently that discussed using science to help design settings, and much of that same aesthetic is reflected in Golarion’s own solar system.

After that, I’ve written one of the adventures for the upcoming Shattered Star Adventure Path, set in the anarchic city of Kaer Maga (which I designed in the book City of Strangers), and after that… well, it seems right now like a Death’s Heretic sequel might be a possibility. If that pans out, I’d really love to take Salim to Heaven and the other good-aligned planes of our multiverse, and see how he gets along with the generally righteous zealots one might find there. And I won’t deny that there’s something delightful about the idea of taking him to Kaer Maga and letting him meet some familiar faces in that warren of thieves and outcasts… But such ideas are still only just formed, and anything could happen!

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief?

If you want to be a professional writer, you need to write things and try to sell them, and continue to do both until such point as someone takes notice. That can take days or decades, but if you ignore either aspect, you’ll never get there. I know a lot of folks with great ideas who spend forever trying to psych themselves up to write, or constantly tweaking their outlines or manuscripts, or making excuses for why they’re not ready yet. The truth is that, much like the old adage about parenting, no one is ever truly ready. You just do the best you can, and hope that nobody notices the fact that you’re faking it. If someone enjoys your stuff–congratulations! As far as that reader is concerned, you’re the real deal.

The other big thing is to not let yourself get overwhelmed. Don’t think about the 100,000 words you have left to write–outline those chapters, but when it’s time to write, just focus on the chapter or scene you’re in. Then move on to the next one. Write as much as you can, even when it’s a slog, but also forgive yourself if you need to reduce your output. (For instance, I know that I write less in the summer, when everyone wants to go play outside.) Whether you’re writing a lot or a little, the important thing is to never stop, to constantly keep chipping away at that boulder. Once you stop, it’s hard to start again. But as long as you’re moving forward, you’ll get there.

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

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Today, FlamesRising.com sits down with author extraordinaire Laura Anne Gilman to talk about Miles To Go / Promises to Keep: a Cosa Nostradamus Kickstarter which ends on Saturday, May 5th.

Let’s listen to Laura as she dives into what the Cosa Nostradamus series is all about and why she’s pursuing new stories on Kickstarter.

Tell us about the Cosa Nostradamus series. What’s happened so far?

Oh dear. Covering, what, ten novels and six stories so far? That’s a lot to ‘splain… so let me sum up.

Magic is real, and tied to electricity (as determined by Founder Ben Franklin and his kite-and-key thing). Therefore, rather than magic dying in the modern world, it’s actually gotten stronger, since it’s easier to access.

In this world, there are Nulls, Talents (magic using humans, and the fatae – the non-human members). Talents and the fatae make up the Cosa Nostradamus, which is worldwide, but most organized in the New World, where immigration patterns forced them all to mingle. The Cosa Nostradamus novels focus on the community in New York City, with forays outside (and, briefly, to the Old World).

There are two arcs, within the series.

The first six books, the Retrievers arc, focused on The Wren. Genevieve Valere is a Talent with a particular quirk to her magic, one that makes her fade from people’s awareness (almost the opposite of charisma). She has turned this into a very successful career as a thief. In the first book, STAYING DEAD, we are introduced to Wren and her business partner, Sergei, and Wren’s best friend, a fatae named PB, as they try to retrieve a stolen item, get rid of a restless ghost, and deal with some secrets Sergei had in his closet, that, in the next five books, nearly get them killed, and NYC destroyed, several times over. Y’see, Sergei, before he got tangled up with Wren, worked for an organization called the Silence, whose main goal was to bring Talents (and all magic) under Null control. They’ll do anything to achieve that, including manipulating humans AND fatae into a race war…

Wren wants nothing to do with any of it. Her philosophy is “don’t get involved.” But, she discovers, she can’t walk away from things she knows are wrong…and she won’t let her city, human and otherwise, be go down in flames. Even if the fight ends up destroying her, and Sergei – and their evolving relationship – as well.

The books are caper novels, really: each one, in addition to the on-going arc of the Silence, features one of Wren’s jobs, and whatever you think will go wrong, will, and only fast-thinking, fast-talking and a bit of magic lets our heroes slip through. But everything has a cost, and even when you win, you lose a little, too.

The books are, in order: STAYING DEAD, CURSE THE DARK, BRING IT ON, BURNING BRIDGES, FREE FALL, BLOOD FROM STONE.

Published after, but occurring more-or-less in tandem, are the PSI novels. In the Retriever series, I introduce Bonnie Torres, who is a PUP – a Private, Unaffiliated, Paranormal Investigator, a totally new organization determined to bring some order, if not law, to magical crimes (they investigate and prove whodunnit, they have no power to actually punish…technically). In HARD MAGIC, I tell the story of how 20-something Bonnie is recruited, along with the rest of the team, and force the Cosa Nostradamus to accept them, mainly by solving cases that otherwise would have been shrugged off or ignored. They’re making it up as they go, driven by a determination to make a difference – and more than a little bit of ego. Bonnie Torres is the POV character, moving from slightly spoiled, raw college grad to a seasoned investigator as they try to make the world a little safer for people otherwise at the mercy of strong Talents – even when it runs them up against the Council, the “political movers and shakers” of the Cosa Nostradamus, and the fatae community, which doesn’t trust them a bit.

Each book is also a crime investigation, ranging from insurance fraud to murder, all with a magical origin or perp.

The books are, in order, HARD MAGIC, PACK OF LIES, TRICKS OF THE TRADE, DRAGON JUSTICE (August 2012).

There’s romance in this series, too: Bonnie and her boss, Benjamin Venec, are caught in a magical “Merge” that wants them to produce magic-strong babies. Neither one of them has any interest in being told what to do by magic, fate or genetic, so part of their evolution is learning to have a relationship THEY want, on THEIR terms (I was very deliberately riffing on the ‘destined love” trope, as seen by modern, career-focused characters).

The Sylvan Investigations stories, which I’m Kickstarting, take on an entirely different aspect of the world – seeing the Cosa Nostradamus from a POV character who is not a magic-user, and not-human. But he’s part of this world, and the “real” (Null) world, too, and has to straddle a whole bunch of dividing lines, while trying to be true to his nature, whatever that actually is. And oh yeah, not get killed, which – when you’re a PI specializing in missing-under-magical-circumstances people – can get difficult!

2. Why are you using Kickstarter to fund the next book in the series?

Originally, I was under contract to do two more Cosa Nostradamus novels, featuring Danny Hendrickson, a fatae character described above, who had appeared throughout the first ten books, but never gotten a chance to be front and center. But Luna (my publisher) came to me and said, basically: “Ten is enough. Can you do something else?” So, instead, I came up with a project for them that I love a lot (a geek girl, a homicidal pony, an unsexy werewolf, malicious elves, and internet dating).

But, I felt like I was breaking my promise to Danny, not telling his stories. And I thought about taking them elsewhere, and I talked it over with my agent, and I decided to go directly to the reader rather than adding another publisher (I’m already under contract with two houses, one for fantasy, one for mystery).

As for why Kickstarter, rather than the more “traditional” self-publishing? I love all my stories, but the Kickstarter projects are special: they’re between me and the readers, directly, and their energy and enthusiam feeds into my writing, so we’re actually creating this as a partnership. The potential financial rewards are smaller, but there are emotional satisfactions, too.

So, if enough people want to read these stories, I get to tell them. Everyone wins. I’m fortunate in that I get to write things I love for a traditional publisher AND have opportunities like this, too.

3. What does this series mean to you?

This is where I started. STAYING DEAD was the first original novel I wrote (after short fiction and media tie-ins) that I felt was good enough to send out, that my agent really got behind. And this was in 2001-2002, when, for the most part, urban fantasy was “dead.” But these characters, and this world – it spoke to me, my love of capers and mysteries, and my need for magic to have a definable, logical root in the real world, my desire to tell a story where the goal wasn’t to win a kingdom or save the world, but get through every day a little better than the one before, and if that made you a hero – or a villain – then so be it.

In fact, I really like the fact that, to a lot of people in this world, my characters ARE the villains, the ones who are upsetting a perfectly nice way of life, challenging the status quo and/or preventing others from challenging the status quo… I believe that black and white are both dangerous extremes, and most of the interesting stuff happens in the shades between. The Cosa Nostradamus is ALL about those shades. Even my three main characters (Wren of the Retrievers, Bonnie of the PSI, and now Danny of Sylvan Investigations) are all shades apart from each other, and often in opposition or aid on a changeable basis. Having the multiple arcs within the universe has allowed me to play with that, and to play them off each other.

And people have played along, for ten books – and now, if the Kickstarter succeeds, for two more. That means I did it right, that I tapped into something real, and made it live for other folk. That means… everything. That means joy. Seriously: why else do we write, but to sweep other people into our worlds? And to spend – so far – a decade doing that? Oh yeah. Joy.

Intrigued by the Cosa Nostradamus? Visit the Miles To Go / Promises to Keep: a Cosa Nostradamus Kickstarter to pledge for new stories.

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Get this book at Kickstarter.com

Chuck Wendig has been a mainstay of White Wolf Publishing for years, and one of their most popular authors. Having successfully branched out into non-World of Darkness fiction, Chuck continues to develop a strong following for his longer-form prose. Recently, Chuck and Evil Hat Productions announced a series of novels based on Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century RPG. Chuck will be authoring a trilogy of short novels, the first of which, Dinocalypse Now, is being released soon. Chuck and I recently spent some time chatting about this new series.

What influenced you in writing this novel? Were there particular characters, events or places that helped you frame your ideas for this story?

The majority of the influence I needed was right in Spirit Of The Century. The rest I dug up out of research, really. Though, I will say that the love triangle between Sally, Jet and Mack is one of those things I think we’ve all seen or been a part of in some way or another. Easy to stick a shovel in the loam of real life and unearth some truth for fiction.

Had you played Spirit of the Century prior to your involvement with the novels?

I had, though not often. And not in a while, regrettably — with a wee tiny human running around the house for the last 3/4 of a year, it’s hard to find the people or the time to game.

How difficult is it to write fiction based on an RPG setting?

Not hard if you love the setting. And the Spirit Of The Century setting is very unobtrusive — it’s not thick with canon or Byzantine with a billion details you can forget or get wrong. It’s light and easy and fun, which was my approach to writing the novel.

The chapters in Dinocalypse Now are each quite short; was this an attempt to emulate the style of the pulps or did it just work out that way? Did you spend time researching pulps and serials from the 1930s?

It’s both in an attempt to emulate the pulps and serials — which, yes, were a lot shorter in order to maintain attention — and also an effort to keep it fast-moving, snappy, engaging. A book like that is built on some pretty crazy concepts (psychic dinosaurs! ape dictators! dread zeppelins!) and if you stay too long with those concepts I fear it could collapse under its own delicious awesomeness. Plus, on a personal level, I prefer to write leaner and meaner. Authors are in a fight for people’s time and in certain stories it pays to get in and get out without bogging the reader down.

You have to be pleased with the response to the Kickstarter program for this series; if you had your choice, would you have used Kickstarter at all to fund this project?

Well, honestly it wasn’t my choice — not that I wouldn’t have done it, but Evil Hat is the publisher that commissioned me, the penmonkey, to write the book. Fred Hicks is a Master Genius who knows his way around a fanbase and a business plan, so all that (wisely) fell and falls to him.

Were you given a story framework to build on, or were you working the whole story up from scratch?

I worked up a three-act structure and passed it to Fred, and we bounced it back and forth. It was a fairly quick process, honestly, and a lot of fun. I was not given any particular directive other than the two-word title of “Dinocalypse Now.”

What other projects do you have in the works right now?

Well, Blackbirds releases from Angry Robot on April 24th — it’s about a girl who can see how people are going to die just by touching them, putting her as the pivot point between fate and free will. It’s grim stuff, but also funny, at the same time. Then I just completed another Kickstarter, carrying forward my teenage detective-slash-vigilante, Atlanta Burns, in BAIT DOG and a second as-yet-unnamed novel.

What are you reading for fun these days?

I just finished Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, which was a delightful read — great escapist fiction that further escapes from the tired tropes of modern fantasy.

Interview by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Interview with Hunter: the Vigil Developer, Chuck Wendig

Welcome back to Golarion–the world of Krunzle the Quick, Isiem the wizard, and Alaeron the seeker of forbidden knowledge. Here you’ll find lands such as Cheliax, Numeria, Druma, and Nidel where greed, secrecy, and savagery await heroes and readers alike.

Below, the authors of three forthcoming Pathfinder Tales novels discuss how they came to the world of Golarion and what stories they found there.

Behold, Matthew Hughes (www.archonate.com) who writes science fiction, crime, and media-tie novels as Matthew Hughes, Matt Hughes, and Hugh Matthews. He is best known for his Archonate tales, including Template in the Planet Stories line, and his recent Hell and Black trilogy. His Pathfinder Tales novel Song of the Serpent is due out in 2012.

And, behold Liane Merciel (lianemerciel.com) who is the author of The River Kings’ Road and Heaven’s Needle both a part of the Ithelas series. Her Pathfinder Tales novel Nightglass is due out in 2012.

And lastly, behold poet and Hugo-winning fiction writer Tim Pratt (timpratt.org) who writes under his name and as T. A. Pratt. He is the author of such books as Briarpatch, Blood Engines, and the forthcoming Forgotten Realms novel Venom in her Veins. His Pathfinder Tales novel City of the Fallen Sky is due out in 2012.

And now, gird yourself for the next installment of the Flamesrising series on the Pathfinder Tales!

What drew you to the world of Pathfinder? And how did you come to write a Pathfinder novel?

Liane Merciel: Golarion is just a really fun world. It is impossible to read two pages of the Inner Sea World Guide without being overwhelmed by hooks and mysteries and tantalizing possibilities, all sketched out juuuuust enough to capture your imagination and not let go. Every classic conflict of fantasy is represented somewhere in its pages, and countless new ones besides. You can’t look at this sandbox without wanting to play inside.

Tim Pratt: I played a lot of D&D in high school, and my group pretty quickly moved on from the established settings and pre-made dungeons to our own homebrew campaign world. Being something of a cross-genre aficionado, I combined a lot of disparate elements into that world — high fantasy mixed with bits of Spelljammer science fiction, gothic horror a la Ravenloft, thri-kreen mantis people with clockwork prosthetic limbs, “artifacts” appropriated from comic books of the ’90s (give a lich the equivalent of the Infinity Gauntlet from the Marvel Comics universe, and you’ve got yourself a pretty badass villain), homemade psionic powers that were more like mutant superhero abilities — if it was fun, we did it. What appeals to me most about the Pathfinder universe is the fact that it has a similar inclusiveness (with, er, fewer ideas swiped wholesale from comic books) — you can tell traditional dungeon crawl stories, or you can have guys fighting killer mechanical men from outer space in Numeria, or you can have pirates sailing on the edges of an endless hurricane, or guys kicked to death by the vicious chicken-footed hut of Baba Yaga, or men becoming gods. The wild mix of the arcane, the folkloric, the mythic, the horrific, and the science-fictional, and the potential tonal range from true tragedy to slapstick comedy (or both in the same story — gnomes, anyone?) is intoxicating. You can really tell any kind of story you want in the Pathfinder universe, as long as it has some awesome fantastic element. That appeals to me.

Matt Hughes: I was in the bar at World Fantasy Convention in Calgary and got talking with Erik Mona, who’d read my Archonate novels and wanted to know if I had one he could publish. It happened that I had a space opera called Template that had been published in a limited edition by a small press in the UK. I gave it to him and he bought it.

A year or so later, Erik asked me if I’d like to write a tie-in novel set in the Pathfinder universe. I said, “Sure.” At that point, I knew nothing about Pathfinder other than it was a role-playing game that, like D&D, bases its rules of magic on the ideas of Jack Vance, whom I revere.

I talked it over with Erik and James Sutter, and we decided that a picaresque tale about a traveling thief in the rich land of Druma offered possibilities. I sat down and wrote it.

Tim Pratt: As for how I came to write a Pathfinder novel (mine is called City of the Fallen Sky) — I heard they were looking for authors, and had my agent get in touch, and talked with James Sutter (who became my editor) about the sorts of ideas I had. We settled on one we both loved, and away we went!

Liane Merciel: As for how I got hooked in: Pierce Watters, the Planet Stories editor, read and reviewed my first novel, The River Kings’ Road. (He liked it. Yay!) I wrote a little intro blurb to go with the review, and in the course of that blurb it came out that I had a gaming background. The Paizo team, upon learning that, asked whether I would be interested in trying my hand at Pathfinder fiction — to which the answer was an immediate “HELL YEAH!”

What’s the coolest thing about your Pathfinder novel? What element could only happen in the world of Pathfinder?

Matt Hughes: The characters. I’ve got a conniving thief, an ex-mine slave who’s read a lot of books, an exceptional young troll, a completely hairless but charismatic dwarf, and plenty more. Plus a lot of snappy dialogue.

Only in Pathfinder? The attempt to reinvigorate dwarves and revive their former greatness that’s a subplot of the story.

Tim Pratt: My favorite thing in the book is the relics of the Silver Mount. I love the glimpses I was able to give of Numeria, the “savage land of super-science,” where the landscape is littered by the remnants of the Silver Mount, which is (maybe) a crashed spaceship or cross-dimensional vessel — certainly, it’s alien, and full of strange things. My novel isn’t set in Numeria, but my main character spent some time there, and I got to do a couple of flashbacks about how he acquired his relics from the Silver Mount, which all have… unusual properties. And, when combined, those relics are even more unusual.

As for “Only in Pathfinder” — a savage barbarian from the North, pursuing my hero while armed with an arsenal of what can best be described as looted and re-purposed alien technology? That’s not something you’re going to find in every campaign setting.

Liane Merciel: Cool, cool. Hmm. I am not cool. Like, profoundly not cool. So probably the sole cool thing about my book is that Paizo let me use their world — specifically, the ancient, shadow-cursed nation of Nidal for the first part, and the harsh wind-carved deserts of western Cheliax for the second part. Both countries are haunted by shadows, literally and figuratively: Nidal as a result of the bargain that its desperate ancestors struck with a cruel god for survival, and western Cheliax by the black-winged strix, a savage and savagely threatened people fighting to hold their homelands against human incursions.

Both those things, of course, could only exist (and therefore happen) in the world of Pathfinder. And they were (and are!) a lot of fun to play around with.

Who is the protagonist of your novel and what makes him or her tick?

Matt Hughes: Krunzle the Quick. Greed.

Tim Pratt: His name is Alaeron. He’s an alchemist, and artificer, and a seeker after forbidden knowledge. Essentially he’s driven by insatiable curiosity about how the world works, and he wants to know *all* the secrets. This tends to get him into trouble, especially as he has no qualms about breaking into sacred tombs, or the libraries of wealthy and powerful men, or any other place he thinks he might find something interesting.

Liane Merciel: My protagonist is a Nidalese wizard named Isiem. In the beginning of the story, he’s just a child taken from his village and plunged into Nidal’s greatest city, Pangolais, where he is expected to master shadow magic. In Pangolais he is mainly concerned with surviving school, as work-study programs in Nidal are pretty unforgiving. Making a mistake will literally cost you an arm and a leg.

And that experience essentially makes him who he is: a cautious person who relies on diplomacy as his weapon of choice, eschews direct confrontations, and is willing to deal with some truly unsavory characters to accomplish his goals. He isn’t much of a standard adventurer-hero… but he’s seen the horror that his homeland became, and the desire to prevent that from happening again is what drives Isiem’s idealism.

And what challenge must your protagonist face—internally and externally?

Liane Merciel: Trying to stay alive, mainly. Trying to stop other people from doing so, occasionally.

I’m a simple person. I like to threaten my characters with death. A lot of death.

Matt Hughes: Externally: the intelligent bronze snake fastened around his neck that chokes him if he doesn’t do what he’s told; the magic boots that pull his feet where the boots want to go; robbers on the road; being enslaved to dig for gold; the sorcerer who is determined to learn his secrets — and that’s just the opening chapters. After that, thing really get difficult.

Internally: greed. And the affronts to his self-esteem that everyone keeps handing him.

Tim Pratt: Alaeron steals some relics from the Silver Mount in Numeria because he wants to study them, and a vicious assassin is sent by the Technic League to bring back the relics… and Alaeron. My hero flees, and ends up as part of an expedition to explore the legendary Ruins of Kho, the devastated remnants of a flying city that crashed millennia ago. All while pursued by the aforementioned ruthless assassin. As for internally, he has to confront the question of whether or not knowledge is worth all the mayhem caused by his relentless quest for answers. And while Alaeron would never agree that there are some things “mankind was not meant to know,” he might eventually have to conclude that there are some things mankind is better off *not* knowing.

Oh, and he falls in love with a beautiful ranger who has a tendency to tell lies whenever it suits her, so that leads to some difficulties, too.

What’s next for you?

Matt Hughes: I have a novel coming out from Angry Robot Books (under my real name, Matthew Hughes). Costume Not Included continues the story of Chesney Arnstruther, the high-functioning-autistic insurance actuary who (in The Damned Busters) accidentally caused Hell to go on strike and came out of it as a comic-book-style crimefighter with a reluctant demon as his sidekick. The new book brings in the historical Jesus.

Also, I’ve recently sold a story about an unlucky thief who falls under the power of a minor deity from the forgotten past. It will appear next year in a cross-genre anthology called Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Liane Merciel: Writing-wise, I don’t know. I don’t have any stories churning desperately in my head and begging to get out. Truth be told, I’ve been shifting my focus away from fiction for a while now; I’ve gotten involved in shelter dog rescue and rehabilitation, and that tends to preoccupy my attention these days. It’s supremely rewarding work, but it takes a lot out of you.

So if the inspiration strikes, I’ll go back to writing, and if not, I’ll stick with helping the furry foster mutts to live in civilization.

Tim Pratt: I have another roleplaying game novel coming out, from Wizards of the Coast, in the Forgotten Realms setting, called Venom In Her Veins. It’s about snakes, dungeons, kidnappings, difficult families, and lunatic kidnappers. In terms of original fiction, I’m serializing an urban fantasy novel online, the latest in my series about sorcerer Marla Mason. It’s called Grim Tides, and has been updated at the rate of one chapter per week starting on January 2.

http://marlamason.net/grimtides/

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief for aspiring novelists?

Liane Merciel: Write for yourself, because you love it. There is little external validation to be had in fiction, and it won’t make you happy if you aren’t already. Enjoy the work for its own sake.

Matt Hughes: You start with a character and a situation. Out of the characters’ needs/desires comes the story. Out of the story comes the plot. Plot is what happens. Story is what it all means.

But first, master English grammar and syntax.

Tim Pratt: Writing’s a lonesome business. Try to have fun.

Liane Merciel: Butt in chair. Fingers on keyboard. And get off the Internet!

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Related posts:

1. Victories, Setbacks, and Character-shading Moments: Robin D. Laws on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
2. Bloody-Handed Heroes: Howard Andrew Jones on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
3. From Selfless Warrior to Sinister Magician: Dave Gross on Writing Pathfinder Tales Novels, Part 2

The Worldwound weeps. The living tower looms overhead. The demon Yath and his minions spread throughout the southern kingdoms. Trying times call for unlikely heroes. In The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws, the charismatic con-man Gad pulls together a band of roguish adventurers— caustic Jerisa, gentle Tiberio, haunted Calliard, pragmatic Vitta, and the mad fire magician Hendregan–to head north to face Yath and make the world safe for thieves and miscreants once again.

Heroic fantasy, mystery, horror, comedy, and dashes of swashbuckling romance… Laws wraps it all around a heist. Yes, dear reader, The Worldwound Gambit is a heist novel and it is glorious!

“If you read the book and find only a diverting fusion of disparate genres, I have done my job,” said Laws. “Heist tales let us indulge in the romance of competence, to delight in reversal and obstacles overcome with aplomb. If you find other matters tucked away below that surface, about the price of victory, the toll of leadership on the led, the limits of stoicism, or an exploration of tyranny’s lure on the weak-minded, well, you can tell yourself that you’ve stolen a little extra from the experience.”

Laws, game designer and writer, lives in Canada. His contributions to the gaming industry are vast and varied. He’s worked on such RPGs as Over the Edge (with Jonathan Tweet), Feng Shui, Hero Wars, Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game, and many editions of Dungeons & Dragons. He worked on the 4e Dungeon Master’s Guide II, wrote Robin’s Laws of Good GameMastering, and challenged gamers to re-think narrative arcs in Hamlit’s Hits Points.

Over the years, Laws has written in a variety of shared universes, including City of Heroes, Warhammer Fantasy, and now Pathfinder. With The Worldwound Gambit takes us to Golarion and throughout the journey we are, indeed, in the hands of a master storyteller.

What drew you to the world of Pathfinder? And how’d you come to write a Pathfinder novel?

The element of Golarion (setting for the Pathfinder game as well as its novel line) that most appeals to me as a writer is the clear inspiration it draws from the American school of sword and sorcery fantasy. It has to have elves and dwarves and halflings and so on, because it’s a world created for a D&D offshoot. But given that constraint, Erik Mona and the rest of the Paizo design team have pushed it as far as they can toward the blood and thunder of Robert E. Howard and the elegant wit of Fritz Leiber. Its homage to pulp forebears allows for a punchier, harder-hitting approach to the thrilling escapism readers expect from a novel set in a roleplaying world. Those writer’s fantasy stories, set as they might have been in an ancient world of magic and adventure, unfold with a pulse-pounding urgency. For someone interested in stripping fantasy of its comfy faux-archaism, Golarion provides the perfect fit.

My first Pathfinder fiction piece is the novella “Plague of Light”, originally serialized in the Serpent’s Skull adventure path, and now available in handy epub edition. It’s set in the Mwangi Expanse, Golarion’s jungle setting. The goal with that was to present its pseudo-African heroes not as foreign characters seen through the eyes of European-ish protagonists, but fully dimensional people who drive the narrative, and through whose point of view we experience the proceedings. It features a disparate group of adventurers who reluctantly reunite to transport a terrible gift to an angry godling. This led Paizo fiction honcho James Sutter to see me as the guy who can write about D&D-style adventuring bands. He asked me for a fiction pitch with a different set of characters, which became the blend of heist and swords & sorcery you see in The Worldwound Gambit.

What’s the coolest thing about your Pathfinder novel?

I am pleased with its immediacy, its style-forward prose, and the tonal blend between the lightness of the heist genre and its horror elements. The marks for this particular heist are demons, and part of the challenge of the book was to maintain them, and their environment, as genuinely frightening and nasty. It was essential that they not come across as absurd or comical.

What element could only happen in the world of Pathfinder?

Key to the action of the book is the Worldwound, a portion of the world being corrupted and devoured by a hole connecting Golarion to the Abyss, the otherworldly realm where demons come from. The geography of this half-material, half-chaotic realm—and a living tower that sprouts from it—propels the premise of the story. The book’s lead character, Gad, decides that the present demonic invasion of his home, the neighboring land of Mendev, makes it unacceptably hard to work as a con artist. So he gathers a team to engineer an operation to steal the item that anchors the tower in this realm, returning his homeland to the manageable level of disorder thieves prefer.

And how’d you develop the novel from there?

Heist stories require airtight plotting, careful set-up, and a touch of misdirection. After creating a suitably fun and varied cast of characters, I outlined first in diagram form. Using the beat analysis symbols and system I describe in my non-fiction book Hamlet’s Hit Points, and the Campaign Cartographer mapping software, I created a visual representation of each major moment, from dramatic scenes to the various set-ups and payoffs required by the heist plot. This enabled me to ensure that each member of the large cast got his or her share of victories, setbacks, and character-shading moments. From this I wrote a prose outline so James and company could see what I was planning to do.

What makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling fantasy protagonist in particular?

Character is action—a protagonist must do things in pursuit of a goal. We as readers must hope for the character’s success and fear the consequences of failure. With the exception of experimental fiction, this is a storytelling universal.

The fantasy bit comes in after you have a character who somehow reflects the human experience, however stylized or idealized your presentation. The tropes and trappings of the genre are an outer layer. They appeal to a reader’s prior investment in the genre, dishing out an ever-shifting mix of evocative detail, novelty, and pleasing familiarity.

Most fantasy stories are procedurals, tales in which the hero pursues an external, practical goal. The heroes face problems and solve them. They way they solve them draws on these genre tropes—so Hendregan the fire magician solves problems by setting things on fire, whereas the master locksmith Vitta solves problems with her burglary kit. The creation of episodes within the story is often a matter of inventing obstacles for each character to overcome, using their distinctive, fantasy-flavored specialties.

What unique challenges does the world of Pathfinder demand of your characters? And of you as a character-builder?

Golarion was created as a vessel for any kind of fantasy adventure, particularly of the pulpy variety, so it doesn’t so much create challenges as solve them for you.

There remain the core challenges of gaming tie-in fiction.

For example, the reader coming at the fiction from the game side wants you to portray the character abilities, spells, magic items, monsters and so on to match their portrayal in the game. But at the same time they don’t want scenes to be too obviously reminiscent of game play, because that disrupts the essential illusion of fiction.

You also have to be careful in any tie-in piece to present the absolute minimum amount of exposition the reader, who may not know the game at all, needs to follow the action. In other words, you have to serve the specific story at hand, and let the world in general take care of itself. Knowing how much background information is desirable, and where it goes, is much of the trick of this sort of work. Hence the vast diagram of set-ups and payoffs.

There’s a big cast of interesting characters in your novel. Which ones are you most fond of, and which one are you most like?

The author can’t play favorites, especially with a big cast, and must find something resonant in all of them. Gad is who we all want to be—smooth, confident, silver-tongued, insouciant in the face of danger. I feel for the knife-woman Jerisa, who struggles to check her impulses and often fails. And for the bard and demon-hunter Calliard, who makes a self-destructive sacrifice for the good of the mission. I admire Tiberio’s conscience and soulfulness, and relate to Vitta’s position as the voice of reason within the group. Hendregan is fun to write, both as a comic madman, and the scarier presence underneath the veneer—embodying the novel’s balance between lightness and horror.

Fortunately, I can’t claim to much resemble any of these people. I get to sit in a temperature-controlled office making stuff up and typing it into a computer file instead of going out in a dangerous world seeking unlawful and life-threatening trouble.

What’s next for you?

On the Pathfinder fiction front, “Treasure of Far Thallai”, a serialized novella of piratical derring-do, will appear in the upcoming Skull & Shackle adventure path series, slated for mid-March 2012.

Also, I just turned in the manuscript for an as-yet-unannounced Pathfinder Tales novel, of which I am only authorized to say that it takes place in the city of Magnimar, and features a new group of characters.

There Goes My Dream Job, the second collection of my webcomic, The Birds, is out soon from Pelgrane Press.

And my new game Hillfolk has now gone into outside playtest; it creates a new play dynamic by taking the basic building blocks of dramatic interaction from older narrative forms and applying them to the roleplaying form. That’s the first iteration of the DramaSystem rules set.

Any words of encouragement, caution, or mischief for aspiring novelists out there?

If you can see yourself doing anything other than writing for a living (novels or otherwise), do that instead.

I say this because getting published requires tremendous persistence and discipline. If you’re smart and determined enough to do it, you could apply those qualities to a field that makes a lot more money than writing.

Even writers you think of as successful probably struggle to get by.

If none of the above discourages you, you should accordingly train yourself to live well on a relatively modest income. Learn to cook. Live somewhere that doesn’t require car ownership. Ask yourself how much you really want to have kids.

Marry someone with a highly-paid, secure job. For my American friends, marry someone with health insurance.

Also, avoid the passive voice, minimize instances of the past perfect tense, and, wherever you can, replace the verbs “is” and “was” with action verbs. And your sentences could likely stand shortening.

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Related posts:

1. Playing Symphonic Fantasy Metal in Golarion: James L. Sutter on Writing Pathfinder Fiction
2. Bloody-Handed Heroes: Howard Andrew Jones on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
3. Beyond Her Goals: Elaine Cunningham on Writing a Pathfinder Novel

In Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones, the half-elf Elyana and her companions must race across the ravaged land of Galt, scale the Five Kings Mountains, and scour the Vale of Shadows for the cure that will save the cursed Lord Stelan.

Prepare yourself, for Plague of Shadows, dear reader, is fast-paced, sword-and-sorcery at its best.

“Friendship and loyalty lie at the heart of Plague of Shadows,” said Jones. “In whom can you really place your trust, and what does friendship really mean? Not that I’m ever on a soapbox about it. But loyalties, choices, and friendship drive the plot.”

In the short form or long, Jones has been praised frequently for his lightning quick pacing and irresistible plotting—pacing that does not sacrifice character development but depends upon it. Indeed, as Jones says below, “plot is character.”

Writer, editor, and RPG gamer, Jones is the Managing Editor of Black Gate magazine and the editor of eight volumes of Harold Lamb’s historical fiction for the University of Nebraska Press.

For the last ten years or so, Jones has been writing about Dabir and Asim, a guardsman and a scholar living in the 8th century Abbasid caliphate (Baghdad). Last year, the Dabir and Asim stories were collected in The Waters of Eternity (recently made available in e-book format). The duo also appear in the historical fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls, and the forthcoming sequel, both from Thomas Dunne Books. Seek them out. You will be rewarded handsomely.

Below, Jones and I talk about swashbuckling action, unlimited budgets, and bloody-handed heroes.

What drew you to the world of Pathfinder? And how’d you come to write a Pathfinder novel?

I was the Managing Editor of Black Gate magazine for years, and one of the duties I most relished was being in charge of game reviews. I could have, and maybe should have, handed that duty off to someone else, but I love role-playing games, and ended up reading a lot of modules, supplements, and campaign guides. Paizo’s were among the best, and I became friendly with both Erik Mona and James Sutter, in part because I so respected their work, and in part because they’re nice guys who share some similar reading interests with me. When James learned that I’d signed on with St. Martin’s to write an Arabian fantasy series, he asked if I’d be interested in writing for Pathfinder, and so I jumped at the chance.

Where does a novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, event, somewhere else altogether? Where’d Plague of Shadows start?

Character, definitely. If I don’t have a character, I don’t have a plot. I agree with my friend Chris Hocking [author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus] who says that plot is character, in a lot of ways, especially in adventure fiction. Plague of Shadows started with the conception of a haunted, driven protagonist. I wanted more of a gritty sword-and-sorcery feel than a high magic feel, and so I wanted a character that could play to those sensibilities. Once I had Elyana, I realized I wanted to be able to address both the backstory and the present and interweave them by threatening something she used to value. And I also wanted to play with some standard conceptions about adventure fiction. I started out with what I thought would feel like a linear plot, but at the one third to halfway mark I threw in wrenches that popped the story into a different track. I had a lot of fun with that.

What makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling fantasy protagonist in particular?

I think a protagonist has to fascinate. We don’t necessarily have to be rooting for them – although I hope that readers will be rooting for Elyana and her companions – but they have to hold our interest. Robert E. Howard wrote an immense number of stories that don’t get nearly as much mention, among them some sterling historicals. One of his historical story cycles is centered around this bloody-handed reaver named Cormac Fitzgeoffrey. He’s not a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination, but in the third – and best, even though it’s unfinished – Fitzgeoffrey story, the character is so interesting to watch in action a reader’s basically on the edge of the seat waiting to see what will happen.

And I think it’s important to say that a writer will try to make the fates and outcomes of all the important characters interesting to the reader. The character should have to face difficult choices, and carry the reader forward to fascinating places.

What unique challenges does the world of Pathfinder demand of your characters? And of you as a character-builder?

When writing a Pathfinder novel you’re allowed a great deal of freedom at the same time that you’re constrained by geographic conventions and the established rules of the setting. You can either approach that as a constricting limit, or as a knowable boundary; a vibrant playground to which you’ve been loaned the keys. The first way lies madness. The second way gives you the freedom to explore the world of Golarion on its own terms.

Personally I’m not that interested in elves or dwarves because they have been written about so much already, so it’s probably ironic that I chose an elf as my central character. But she’s one of the forlorn, raised by humans, which means that she’s apart from both races, and that enables me to portray both human and elven society as an alien environment for her. That’s a lot of fun for me. As I start work on the second book, I’m spending more time from the viewpoint of Elyana’s friend Drelm, the half-orc warrior. Elyana, despite her occasional rashness, tends to over analyze things. And Drelm doesn’t think enough, and misses details. But for all that he’s a warrior-born, in some ways he’s a little more patient than Elyana, and, despite the many prejudices he’s faced, a little more comfortable in his own skin. I’m really enjoying the different perspectives they’re bringing to the developing story.

Both of your recent novels—each set in a different world—hearken back to the glory days of pulp fantasy without feeling derivative. Who are your influences and what did they teach you?

Well, I usually mention Harold Lamb, Robert E. Howard, and Leigh Brackett as my main influences, because they’re my very favorites. But I would remiss if I didn’t mention Roger Zelazny (especially the first Amber series) and Fritz Leiber, and Catherine Moore and C.S. Forrester… and there are scores of others. I am unapologetic about my love for adventure stories. I think we need stories of heroes. I don’t think we can exist on a diet of hero stories alone, but my own reading habits certainly prefer them over most other kinds of fiction.

My favorite writers have compelling characters and a driving plot, and never take you anywhere that’s not interesting to see. I strive always to emulate them. Let’s face it, as a writer, you have an unlimited budget. In a few sentences you can conjure an image that would take set designers or computer animators hundreds of thousands of dollars to create for the screen. If you can do that, why would you ever want to place any important scene in a dull location?

Both Plague of Shadows and The Desert of Souls are adventure stories full of swashbuckling action. Desert is set in a version of the real world of the 8th century, one where 1001 Nights style magic and creatures are real (though extremely rare). So the magic and monsters aren’t as pervasive as they are in Golarion, which means that when they do pop up, they’re even more startling to those who encounter them. Certainly I strive create the same kind of sense of wonder in both books. Writing a historical is similar in some ways to writing in a shared world setting like Golarion, because if you don’t get the details right, someone’s going to notice!

What are you working on these days?

Right now I’m putting the finishing touches on my next Arabian fantasy novel The Bones of the Old Ones, another standalone featuring the brilliant scholar Dabir and his friend Captain Asim getting swept up into things man was not meant to know. Their stories are a little like Sindbad crossed with Indiana Jones, with a bit of Sherlock Holmes and Watson thrown in as well.

I’m also a few chapters into the next Paizo novel. It has three viewpoint characters this time, though it’s still third person limited. Readers of the first book will already be familiar with Elyana and Drelm, but might be interested to know that there’s a new character, a black-powder marksman (markswoman?) in the thick of the adventure. I plan on drafting a few Elyana and Drelm short stories in the next year, and I have two more Dabir and Asim Arabian fantasy novels to write. So I’ll be busy, and happy, for a long while to come.

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief for aspiring novelists out there?

If you really can’t live without being a writer, then stick with it. You have to be stubbornly committed to getting things finished, but open at the same time to change and to criticism. Pay close attention to the writers who came before you and open up their plots and their paragraphs to learn what makes them tick. Find your own voice. And have fun. If you’re not having fun writing it, who’s going to have fun reading it?

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Related posts:

1. Playing Symphonic Fantasy Metal in Golarion: James L. Sutter on Writing Pathfinder Fiction
2. Victories, Setbacks, and Character-shading Moments: Robin D. Laws on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
3. Beyond Her Goals: Elaine Cunningham on Writing a Pathfinder Novel

The Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham and Dave Gross tells the story of Declan, a magical mapmaker, and Ellasif, a diminutive barbarian from the Lands of the Linnorm Kinds.

“Some people are born knowing what they’re meant to be,” said Cunningham. “Ellasif is one of them, and from a very early age she was determined to become a fighter despite her apparent physical limitations.”

Together, Declan and Ellasif search for a missing child and in the process discover a lot about what it means to be a hero.

A veteran of shared world settings, Cunningham has written extensively in the Forgotten Realms. Her Realms work includes the Songs and Swords pentalogy, Starlight and Shadows trilogy, and the Counselors and Kings trilogy, as well as Evermeet: Island of Elves and City of Splendors: a Novel of Waterdeep (with Ed Greenwood). Her Realms stories were collected in The Best of the Realms, Book III: The Stories of Elaine Cunningham. She contributed Dark Journey to the New Jedi Order series set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Much of Cunningham’s backlist has been released in e-book format, including her creator-owned Changeling Detective Agency novels Shadows in the Darkness and Shadows in Starlight. Her new e-original series, Tales of Sevrin, follow the adventures of Fox Winterborn and his companions through a clockwork world of sorcery, secrets, and suspicion.

It is a grand time, indeed, to be a fan of Elaine Cunningham’s fiction!

Below, Cunningham and I talk about Golarion, unusual magic, and the nature of heroism.

What drew you to the world of Pathfinder? And how’d you come to write a Pathfinder novel?

Oddly enough, I was first drawn to Pathfinder by the idea of writing serial fiction. Not long before, I’d outlined a six-part novella for a project that I decided not to pursue, but I liked the format and the narrative scope of a 30,000-word story. So I was already thinking in these terms when James Sutter approached me with the idea of writing a story for the Pathfinder Journal feature of the Legacy of Fire adventure path. The result was Dark Tapestry, a novella about a kick-ass, half-elf druid, a water witch in the desert land of Osirion. I had fun writing Channa Ti’s story and I liked working with the folks at Paizo, so when I heard they were planning a fiction line I pitched several story ideas.

What’s the coolest thing about Winter Witch?

Declan has an unusual magical ability, something that comes from the sorcery in his bloodline rather than his training in wizardry. This particular bit of magic lies outside of the Pathfinder game rules, but the editors decided it fit well enough to include.

And what’s the coolest thing about the world of Pathfinder that does not appear in your novel?

The notion of a country settled by retired heroes. I love this idea, not only because it offers so many possibilities, but because I’ve not run across this concept in any other game setting.

Where does a novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, event, somewhere else altogether? Where’d Winter Witch start? And how’d you develop the novel from there?

Different novels start in different places. Sometimes it’s an idea, or the juxtaposition of ideas. Two unrelated facts in the Old Gray Boxed Set–King Zaor of Evermeet died around the same time as an elven settlement in distant Evereska was reinforced—got me thinking about possible cause-and-effect scenarios. The result was Elfshadow, my first novel.

For Winter Witch, I suppose that setting was the first step. I pitched story ideas set in various corners of Golarion, but given my Slavic ancestry, I was particularly interested in the elements of Slavic folklore that went into the land of Irrisen.

Did you and Dave Gross already know each other before you collaborated on Winter Witch?

I met Dave at Gen Con about 14 years ago, but we’d worked together before that. He was the editor of Dragon Magazine and Star Wars Gamer during the years I was writing short stories for both publications. Dave stepped in to finish the novel when I was unable to do so, so it wasn’t something we’d planned from the beginning. I was very happy to have him on the project, though. Dave’s a very good writer.

What makes Ellasif tick? What does she learn about herself by the end of the novel and what did she teach you by the end of writing the novel?

Ellasif was accustomed to overcoming obstacles and achieving what she set out to do, and she’d come to believe that she could do anything she set her mind to. To people of formidable will and drive, it can come as a shock to realize that sometimes you . . . can’t. Accepting help from others doesn’t come easily to people like Ellasif. More importantly, she needed to learn that her goals aren’t the only things to consider. She needed to learn to relinquish control and let other people choose their own paths.

How does the interaction between Ellasif and Declan develop their individual characters? What spin do you put on the buddy fantasy?

Dave put it very well when he observed that in this story, Declan is the maiden who needs rescuing. That’s a bit ironic, since Declan desperately wants to be a hero. He takes care of his childhood friend and her daughter, and he drops everything to rescue an apparent maiden in distress. When he and Ellasif start their journey together, Declan really doesn’t have a clue. Ellasif is the backbone and the muscle of their duo, but the power dynamic shifts toward a new balance as Declan begins to accept his magical abilities, and Ellasif begins to understand and respect them.

All in all, what is the (or one of the) central question(s) at the heart of Winter Witch?

The nature of heroism is an underlying question in many fantasy stories, and this story focuses primarily on the “rescue” aspect of heroism. If you’re a hero, you save people. That’s the accepted definition. But Winter Witch questions that assumption on several different levels.

What’s next for you? Any plans to return to the world of Pathfinder?

I’m currently writing Word of Honor, the third book in the Thorn Trilogy. This is the introduction to Tales of Sevrin, a direct-to-ebook series of short fantasy novels. The first two, Honor Among Thieves and Honor Bound, are available online.

As for Pathfinder, I’d like to write a short story that picks up after “The Illusionist,” a short story published on the Paizo site as Web Fiction. I liked the interaction between the two characters—Bonali Kwazeel, a serious and somewhat naïve student from the Mwangi expanse, and Jamang Kira, the smarmy, strutting little villain-in-training who outwits him. It seems to me that a rematch is in order.

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief for aspiring novelists out there?

Take risks, be flexible, create characters you care about and put them in the sort of stories you want to read, and never, ever miss a deadline. If you don’t take risks, your stories will be predictable. If you aren’t flexible, working with editors will result in frustration and writing in a shared-world setting will make you batshit crazy. If you don’t love your characters and enjoy spending time with them, why should anyone else? And if you miss deadlines, nothing else matters.

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Related posts:

1. Victories, Setbacks, and Character-shading Moments: Robin D. Laws on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
2. Bloody-Handed Heroes: Howard Andrew Jones on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
3. From Selfless Warrior to Sinister Magician: Dave Gross on Writing Pathfinder Tales Novels, Part 2

Welcome to part two of our talk with Dave Gross. If you missed part one, you may want to go check out Part One first.

Dave Gross continues the adventures of half-elven Pathfinder Varian Jeggare and his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan in Master of Devils. This time the oddly paired duo travel to the exotic land of Tian Xia, and Gross layers the storyline with a third narrative.

“Master of Devils is more about being trapped in a situation anathema to your desires,” said Gross. “What will it take to make you give up your pride or even your life?”

Below, Gross and I pick up our discussion of writing in general and writing Pathfinder Tales novels in particular with such topics as world-building, wuxia, and a little drake named Skywing.

How much building did you do in the mountains of Ustalav in Prince of Wolves? What were they like before you got there, and how did you develop them?

One of the things that most appealed to me about Ustalav is that it had a rich outline of history, locations, and characters, but not an overwhelming amount of detail. Much of what’s cool about the mountains came straight from a line or two in the Campaign Setting: I didn’t invent the Sczarni, but I did imagine that a group of them were werewolves with a connection to Radovan’s ancestor. I didn’t come up with the Monastery of the Veil or the true nature of its monks, nor did I create any new characters back at court in Caliphas, although I did imagine their appearances and personalities. I didn’t invent the Cathedral of Pharasma, but I did make up the water ritual Jeggare witnesses. I certainly didn’t create Desna or Pharasma, but I imagined gestures and phrases used by their worshippers. I created Willowmourn and its inhabitants, but not Count Galdana. And I created the village of freaks, which Wes Schneider later named Ruwido in the excellent expansion of the setting, Rule of Fear.

Can you talk a little more about the village of freaks, creating it, etc. And in what ways did Wes Schneider expand on it?

While brainstorming Prince of Wolves, I had images of Universal, Hammer, and other early 20th Century horror films in mind. Tod Browning’s Freaks was definitely my inspiration for the village, both visually and with its message of bigotry against these folks who are afflicted by the poisonous magic of the nearby magic. In those villagers, Radovan has to face his own hypocrisy in resenting discrimination leveled at him but still treating others the same way.

While Wes’ Rule of Fear expands Ustalav considerably, it includes only a few lines about Ruwido—enough for a GM to expand on it for a game. What’s even cooler is that Wes passed Prince of Wolves to all the designers of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, asking them to include something from the novel in their adventures. I loved seeing how they interpreted elements from the Sczarni werewolves to a brief description of creatures seen only at a distance.

How about Tian Xia? Was it worth all those miles of travel to get there? What did you find there? What did you leave behind?

The choice to set the next book in Tian Xia came late in the drawing-board stage. James Sutter and I discussed where the boys might go after Prince of Wolves, but we were having trouble coming up with a location and a story that worked together. At some point one of us realized that the Jade Regent Adventure Path would be published at the same time as the new novel. I adore Asian fiction, especially kung fu movies (actually, a wide variety of Asian action and fantasy movies which I lump together under the familiar term “kung fu movies”). Once Erik gave his blessing, I wrote an outline based in Golarion’s equivalent of China, since the Adventure Path features Minkai, which is like Japan.

One of the earliest decisions was that the novel would draw inspiration from film instead of literature. Not only are more readers likely to be familiar with the tropes of kung fu movies, but I believe those movies represent the fantasy RPG experience better than any others. Seriously! Where else do you see a prologue in which a man catches his wife with her lover, only to have his legs blown off by magic missiles? You’ve got swordsmen, witches, magic swords, haunted forests, trapped dungeons, goblins, walking dead, flying steeds, animal spirits, sorcerers, even the occasional dragon. You can watch some of these films while following along in a classic D&D module.

Another advantage of seeing Tian Xia through the filter of kung fu movies is that it’s a broad lens. With two protagonists, I knew I wanted to show two different kinds of story: a brutal revenge actioner for Radovan, and a fish-out-of-water intrigue for Jeggare. I also wanted to show the really crazy high-fantasy aspect of kung fu movies, but it didn’t really fit the “reality” of either character. That’s where the third protagonist came in. The hope was to end up with one story with three wildly different paths to the finish.

Can you talk some about the third protagonist here?

I played coy about it when the book was first released, but it’s not much of a secret anymore. The third protagonist is Arnisant, an Ustalavic wolfhound (imagine a cross between an Irish wolfhound and a Great Dane) whom Jeggare adopts during the events of Prince of Wolves. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be interested in an animal as a POV character in what are otherwise fairly low-magic adventures, but Tian Xia includes big fantasy elements like the kami spirits. It seemed incongruous to have magical creatures interacting with Radovan or Jeggare, but a heroic dog fit perfectly.

I was nervous about introducing a dog’s-eye view. Happily, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, with a startling number of readers claiming Arnisant is their new favorite character. While the next book doesn’t include his point of view—those who’ve read Master of Devils can suss out why that was a one-time thing—he’s still one of the boys. I don’t anticipate it now, but it’s conceivable that I’d one day tell another story from his perspective.

In Master of Devils, you explore religion, especially in the warrior monastery. In what ways do religious dichotomies fuel the central conflicts of Master of Devils?

I was less interested in religion than in the different perceptions of heroism or virtue. Some characters think of themselves as heroes, when those who suffer at their hands would consider them villains. In wuxia fiction, “hero” is a term that can describe anything from a selfless warrior to a sinister magician. It applies more to someone’s personal power than to whether he’s good or evil, although many of the bloodiest revenge stories are highly moral in depicting the senselessness of slaughter.

That difference in perspective seemed a good way to frame my flawed protagonists. Radovan in particular worries about the effect of his violence on his soul. There was a time when he refused to kill, yet after escaping the life of a street criminal, he finds himself in situations where he kills to protect himself and Jeggare—sometimes in cold blood as a preventative measure.

One thing that Radovan and Jeggare have in common is the goddess Desna. Like most deities, she has different aspects. To Radovan, Desna is Lady Luck, while to Count Jeggare she is the Tender of Dreams. The warriors and monks of Tien Xia are more likely to worship Irori, who represents enlightenment and self-perfection. Through the events of the novel, Radovan and Jeggare might pick up a little of the former, but they are both still far from the latter.

What was the best part about collaborating with Elaine Cunningham on Winter Witch?

Helping with Winter Witch was a great pleasure because I’ve long admired Elaine’s work and like her personally. Time pressure prevented us from making it a true collaboration. I was able to check in with her a few times about plot points, but mostly I began writing from her outline and early chapters. Our editor sent me some thorough notes with which I revised the outline before continuing. Also, a sourcebook on Irrisen had been published since Elaine first outlined the novel, so I included more details from its setting.

If we’d started out working together, we’d certainly have done it differently. Elaine likes to say that one day we’ll collaborate on a story on purpose. I’ll be all for that.

Most of the benefits of our collaboration were to my benefit. As a fan of Elaine’s work, I welcomed the opportunity to match my style to hers. I like to think that it worked, since none of the dozen or so readers who guessed without a hint could identify where the division lay. Still, there are definitely places where, if you know Elaine and me, or if you know our writing, you can tell where I made a decision she wouldn’t have done.

One day Elaine asked me which protagonist, Declan or Ellasif, was my favorite. She had in mind that we should write a story, each taking one character’s POV. Unfortunately, I think we both have the same favorite character … although my real favorite is probably the little drake Skywing.

What is it about Skywing?

He’s fierce and loyal, and he’s a drake of few words, so when he does or says something, it stands out. While I like to make my human (and semi-human) characters flawed, whenever I’m dealing with an animal or a monstrous creature—like the kami in Master of Devils—I feel a certain license to make the characters broader. The comical ones are funnier, the spooky ones scarier, and the brave ones bolder. In that sense, Skywing and Arnisant are the most heroic figures I’ve written.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on a new Radovan & Jeggare novel. I’ll spill the details when they’re ready at frabjousdave.blogspot.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter (frabjousdave).

Sometime soon my story “Walker” will appear in Stoneskin Press’s Shotguns v. Cthulhu anthology, edited by my fellow Pathfinder Tales author Robin D. Laws. I can’t wait to see the stories from the other contributors. They’re all action-oriented tales of cosmic horror.

Adamant Entertainment has recently published a Tales of the Far West anthology. My contribution is a story called “Crippled Avengers,” which kung fu fans will recognize as the original name of a movie re-titled to appear as if it were a sequel. (It wasn’t.) It’s an unabashed homage in a steampunk version of the wuxia world.

Speaking of wuxia, where should I start? What are a dozen must see films and why?

Ask me the same question in a month, and my answers will be different. Many of these aren’t purely wuxia but fantasy movies with wuxia elements. In no particular order and with an emphasis on movies useful to gamers:

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin: Classic revenge drama that defined the “training sequence”

The Bride with White Hair I: Moody, sexy, magical tragedy with monstrous villains

A Chinese Ghost Story I: Comic romance with fantastic monsters and magic

Deadful Melody: A security agent vs. vengeful magicians

Detective Dee: Chinese Sherlock Holmes, only 10 times more fun

Hero: My favorite of Zhang Yimou’s art-house wuxia tragedies, beautiful fight scenes and great acting

Holy Flame of the Martial World: Crazy, wacky, goofy … yet strangely perfect as an example of a game session on film

Mr. Vampire I: An occasionally scary and always hilarious comedy with evocative magic and thrilling fights

Musa: A Korean escape drama evocative of a Kurosawa epic, no magic but great fights and characters

Reign of Assassins: A pitch-perfect blend of the best of wuxia: strong heroine, tragic setup, fabulous wire-work, excellent actors

The Water Margin: A great if overwhelming introduction to the original wuxia novels; no magic, but a huge cast of characters and an emphasis on brotherhood and loyalty

Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain: An often comic, often spooky exploration of a giant “dungeon” complete with an epic-level (if absurd) climax

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief for the aspiring novelists out there?

Write because you love writing, not because you love the idea of being a writer. Write every day. Keep writing even when it sucks, because revision is where the magic often happens. Don’t be afraid to delete words, sentences, paragraphs, or whole chapters—but practice writing a solid outline so that happens less often. Read your work aloud with a red pen in hand, and find friends who can be usefully critical. It’s okay to keep one cheerleader for morale, but dump anyone whose feedback is negative without being helpful. Return the favor by critiquing your friends’ work; you can learn as much by giving thoughtful notes as by receiving them.

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

No related posts.

Recently White Wolf launched a Kickstarter project for the V20 Companion, which is a supplement to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. This is the first Kickstarter project for White Wolf and it looks like the V20 Companion is going to be a very cool book. We wanted to know a little more about it and posted an open call to fans to submit their questions.

We’ve compiled the submitted questions and added a few of our own. Rich Thomas and Justin Achilli have taken the time to answer them for us here.

Can be taken as an indication that White Wolf will (assuming this book is successful) be embracing the Kickstarter project model for other products and lines?

RT: An indication? No. Is it possible that the reaction to this experiment will inform decisions for how we bring books to the fans? Absolutely.

JA: I think it really depends, title by title. There’s actually a lot of work that goes into setting up and managing a Kickstarter project, and every week spent putting together the Kickstarter interface is a week spent not writing or illustrating a book.

Is development going to be in many ways open and gathering feedback from fans as V20 was?

RT: In the future or in general? We’ve really liked the way the Open Dev process works and certainly the Classic World of Darkness books will continue to use it, but I don’t think every single book will- at least for now.

JA: That’s the plan! I actually want more engagement with the players than I’ve been able to devote my attention to over the past three months or so.

RT: Well, you did move from France and start a new job and all that during that time period. But yeah, It’s a great way to create our products and our preference, but some books might have less interaction during their creation than others.

How are Rich, Justin and the others going to celebrate when the kickstarter project goes WAY over goal, which is a point it should reach by the time the next article is published?

RT: I’ll be really glad when it reaches goal, but don’t forget that means I’ll be scrambling to get the book to the printer then. But I will be really glad we could find a way to get a Deluxe edition out to the fans- that’s a great feeling. So I’m thinking I’ll find a local bar that makes a Sazerac and enjoy a fine cocktail.

JA: I’ll probably flip a rollercoaster into the street and wrestle thirty cobras and then maybe have a cocktail or a High Life. Something pretty sedate.

RT: Ladies and gentlemen: Justin Achilli!

How has developing and writing supplements for RPGs changed in the last 20 years? Is it easier getting an RPG book published now as opposed to then?

JA: I think the ability to publish an RPG has become much more accessible, but the actual making of games is just as difficult. On the plus side, communication between the designer and the players or playtesters is much easier to facilitate, so I think better games are coming out, and faster, and much more focused toward the exact end the designer wants to evoke.

RT: I think Justin is pointing out that the creative process is still all about doing your best work- the people part of that doesn’t change, just the tools. And with those tools it’s really easy to get a book out for sale- but who are you reaching and how many folks is really a new frontier. That’s where venues like Kickstarter really enable projects to get noticed.

I’m more curious about how long a book this is going to be. I’d hate to pledge $50 for a deluxe edition of a 50-page splatbook…

RT: Somewhere near 80 pages. Hard to pin it down until we actually add in all the extra pages for credits alone! Having read it, there’s a lot of info and ideas there- Justin doesn’t write to fill space, so the text is tight. This is a Companion volume to V20, not V20 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s not 500 + pages but I think you’ll find there’s a lot in there to enjoy.

What can you tell us about the “terrifying locations” covered in this book?

JA: This was actually one of the triumphs of the Open Dev process. Originally, this was supposed to be a short chapter, but the player response was so overwhelmingly positive, and we had so much, “Ooh! Awesome! Now do [location x]!” that we budgeted more word count for the chapter. As to specific locations, I don’t want to spill the beans, but you can see a few of them on the V20 Companion blog site.

RT: Oh come on, how about an exclusive for the Flames Rising gang?

JA: Okay, let me see what I can wrestle from the text docs.

Gamla Stan (Stockholm, Sweden)

For too long, the Ventrue and Toreador Princes of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ignored the Anarch threat, attributing the rising violence to refugee Kindred fleeing from the Baba Yaga in Russia and the incomprehensible Finns. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the eminent Kindred of the region hoped the troublesome Anarchs would just go away so that they could resume their nights of bloody luxury. Sweden, in particular had, in the words of a Sabbat provocateur, “an Anarch problem.”

The Anarch presence in Stockholm doubled during the late 1990s and then doubled again within another 10 years. Stockholm — with a population only large enough to sustain perhaps 20 vampires in comparatively safe Masquerade — swelled its Kindred ranks to over a hundred.

Eventually, the Scandinavian Anarchs realized what power they had in numbers and threw down the Prince’s Praxis. For over a year, the Anarch Movement held sway in Stockholm, deposing the Prince claiming the old town of Gamla Stan as its center of resistance against elder oppression.

The Camarilla quietly nursed its wounds after the embarrassing loss. Ivory Tower Kindred stole into the secret tombs of the elder Ventrue beneath Riddarholm Church, waiting for the right moment to topple the nascent Anarch caucus. Promising forgiveness for past transgressions, the Camarilla also offered a “fresh start” in Stockholm for Kindred exiled from other domains, provided they upheld the Traditions and rooted out the Anarchs. A contingent of Brunhilde’s valkyries even approached the city, though they broke off negotiations with the besieged Anarchs, rather than plunge the city into Masquerade-threatening bloodshed. It worked, to an extent.

Tonight, Praxis lies in a dangerous detente between Camarilla stalwarts and the relentless Anarchs. Compounding issues is the worry that the Anarchs have granted an amnesty to the Methuselah Louhi, an ancient terror from Finland whose knowledge of Thaumaturgy challenges Tremere supremacy in that Discipline. If the Scandinavian Anarchs truly have such a potent ally hidden among them, something dire is surely in the domain’s future.

Who else is working on the book and what are they writing? What about artists?

JA: I wrote the whole thing from the ground up. One of my great joys in working on V20 has been the chance to get back into some directed writing again, as opposed to the open-ended material that keeps me busy most of the time.

RT: For art, we have Christopher Shy, Ken Meyer, Jr, Vince Locke, Michael Gaydos, and Mark Jackson doing the Caitiff two-page spread piece. We also have an evocative cover by illustration legend Steven Stahlberg of a Tzimisce feeding within the Cathedral of Flesh, but that won’t be on the Deluxe version as that will be bound in the same material as V20 (although the piece might be in there somewhere). I’ll also be hand selecting more of the finest classic illustrations from our many Masquerade books through the years as I did in V20 itself.

What are the benefits of using Kickstarter for the limited edition?

JA: The gambling aspect of publishing goes away. We print exactly as many as we need to get them to the players who want them, and we don’t have to eat costs on print overrun, warehousing, or returns. We can also ship directly to the people who buy the book, so the books get into the players’ hands faster than they would using the traditional distribution model.

RT: Certainly faster than some of our efforts previously. For me, the social network aspect of the KS community can’t be overstated. People point at the money (and Justin covers that part) but you really need to look at what that represents. Folks are excited to be involved, to be in communication with the creators- this is wonderful.

What kind of time-frame will there be between the end of the Kickstarter and the delivery of the books?

RT: We’ll need to use KS to determine the number of books we need, place that order with our printer and then wait until they get the black leather material shipped to them before the books can print. A couple of weeks from then to get the books to our new shipper, and then the books can roll out. 2-3 months at a guess.

What can you tell us about the annotated PDF?

JA: As yet, we don’t have a plan for it, but I imagine it would take the form of a post-mortem, into which we can describe the process, append art sketches, talk about how the finished project changed from the initial outline, and I can put in creepy pictures of Rich doing that weird thing he does with his antlers.

RT: Always with the antlers. It’s not like I mention your urine-filled boots every time we talk. Actually, I always try to mention that.

…and on that note, to find out more about the V20 Companion and the project visit Kickstarter.com.

Related posts:

1. Into the Crimson Light, Ken Meyer Jr.’s dramatic macabre art
2. What do you want to know about the V20 Companion?

A “half-breed” protagonist past his prime and his hellspawn bodyguard must find a missing Pathfinder before it is too late. Sczarni, werewolves, and a very weird witch woman… With Prince of Wolves the first novel in the Pathfinder Tales Line, Dave Gross captures the pulpy grandeur of Golarion without burying the characters under mountains of world-building.

“In Prince of Wolves,” said Gross, “one big question is, How can you find something you never lost? It’s about searching for the wrong thing, or realizing that you had it all along. It’s also about finding the unexpected.”

As Dave Gross says below, Prince of Wolves blends on “one part mystery, one part horror, two parts action, and a dash of romance.” All of Gross’ novels, whether set in Golarion or The Forgotten Realms, are proof-positive that the whole equals more than the sum of its parts.

This is Gross at his finest. And that’s saying a lot.

Readers familiar with Gross’ work may remember The Sundered Arms written as T. H. Lain, his novel about the iconic dwarven fighter, Tordek. Much of Gross’ earlier fiction has been set in the Forgotten Realms. His stories have appeared in Realms of Magic, Realms of Mystery, and Realms of the Dragons. His novella “Thirty Days” in The Halls of Stormweather, and Black Wolf and Lord of Stormweather are all set in the merchant nation of Sembia.

There’s a reason the folks at Paizo launched the Pathfinder Tales line of novel with Dave Gross. And it takes less than a page of Prince of Wolves to figure out that reason. Gross returns to Golarion with Winter Witch (co-authored with Elaine Cunningham) and Master of Devils, living up to the promises of that first novel.

Over the course of this two-part interview, Gross and I will talk about everything from adventure to wuxia, with a few stops in between.

What drew you to the world of Pathfinder? And how’d you come to write a Pathfinder novel?

A few years ago I’d been spending most of my gaming time in front of a computer, so I had a yen to get back into a tabletop RPG. At a monthly pub meeting of Edmonton gamers, I spotted someone showing off her copies of the first couple of Pathfinder Adventure Paths. I knew my old comrades at Paizo had been publishing the books, but I had no idea how gorgeous they were. Once I read a few, I was hooked on the quality of the adventures, which reminded me of my favorite scenarios from Dungeon. The focus on plot and character in addition to great locations was a huge attraction. I started picking them up and eventually ran a 4e version of Rise of the Runelords. My group has since transitioned to the Pathfinder rules, and we’re playing Jade Regent.

One of the things I love about settings like Golarion is that while many of its locations are versions of real-world nations, there’s plenty of room for pulp-fantasy creations like Numeria, Nex, the Worldwound, and Alkenstar. I like these “cocktail settings,” which combine lots of different ingredients. While you could write a pure homage to The Three Musketeers in Galt or one to Universal horror movies in Ustalav, I think it’s more fun to mix one part mystery, one part horror, two parts action, and a dash of romance, for example.

So I was already a fan when I ran into Erik Mona at the World Fantasy Convention. Erik mentioned that Paizo was thinking of starting a fantasy novel line. He put me in touch with Fiction Editor James Sutter, but the launch of Pathfinder Tales was still a couple of years away. Thus, James asked me to pitch a story for the Pathfinder Journal that appears in the Adventure Paths. The pitch he liked best became “Hell’s Pawns,” the first Radovan and the count story. He liked that one well enough to ask me to propose ideas featuring the same characters for one of the first Pathfinder Tales novels.

What’s the coolest thing about your Pathfinder novel(s)?

At the same time as they protect the continuity of Golarion, the Paizo editors give their authors some freedom to extrapolate. For example, when I envisioned Count Jeggare as someone who knew plenty about magic but couldn’t actually cast a spell, they were receptive to the idea of the riffle scrolls that eventually let him overcome that handicap.

Likewise, Radovan is “different from other boys.” He’s not just a hellspawn—someone whose ancestry includes a cross between humans and a fiend—but a unique specimen for reasons hinted at in the novels.

The ability to build on existing systems of magic in Golarion is a huge appeal to a writer who’d like to surprise readers who’ve seen it all before. The key is to make sure any new concept fits the logic of the world so the editors can tell you yes instead of no.

Where does a novel usually start for you—image, plot, character, event, somewhere else altogether?

Usually the first seed of an idea comes from a crisis within one of the characters. Then I sketch out a plot involving an external reflection of that problem. At the start of Prince of Wolves, Count Jeggare realizes he’s been slipping in his role as a venture-captain, which is a big part of his self-image. To make amends, he goes in search of one of his missing agents.

Prince of Wolves was an unusual case, because in some ways it was an extension of the events of “Hell’s Pawns.” The novella ended on an ambiguous note. It could have gone in several directions—Radovan or the count by himself, or the two of them remaining in Cheliax to deal with the fallout of their first story—but the process of choosing a setting for the novel cinched the deal. Once I realized I could set it in Ustalav, Golarion’s spooky version of Eastern Europe, location became almost as important as the plot. I knew Radovan’s family had come from Ustalav, home to the Sczarni, werewolves, and the Whispering Tyrant. Once I’d chosen the location, I soon figured out his part of the story.

Can you expand on “location became almost as important as the plot” a bit more?

Where you choose to tell a story makes a big difference not only in genre but also in how the characters’ external conflicts mirror their internal struggles. A setting like Ustalav offers great metaphors for moral uncertainty, self-doubt, and fear of everything from the unknown to your neighbors. Of course, in a fantasy world, some metaphors are less metaphorical than others.

What makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling fantasy protagonist in particular?

A hero should be both relatable yet set apart from the community. Both of my protagonists are half-breeds, although there’s a world of difference between Count Jeggare, who was made the legitimate heir to a vast fortune, and Radovan, who was sold into slavery as a child. Their personalities also set them apart, as do their past vocations. Jeggare’s investigations gather a lot of dangerous information that his peers might not trust him with, and Radovan never really embraced gang life and eventually bought his way out by taking the kind of job he had always refused before. To say more of that would spoil a story I hope to write one day.

As for their roles as fantasy protagonists, each has a mystery rooted in magic: Why can’t Jeggare cast spells like an ordinary wizard? And why does this devil take over Radovan’s body when he’s set on fire? Each novel reveals a portion of the answer even though neither issue has (yet) driven the main plot.

What benefits were there in using alternating first person narration? What were the draw-backs?

Initially I planned to write “Hell’s Pawns” from alternating points of view, using Radovan to show events among the servants and the gangsters, while Varian interacted with the upper class and authorities. When Radovan’s voice came to me, he sounded a lot like a hard-boiled detective. Liking that tone, and feeling there wasn’t enough room to do it justice in half the space of the novella, I stuck with the single point of view.

For the novel, I had had more room, but the question was whether to change the narrative to third-person. I wrote the first few chapters both ways while I was working out Jeggare’s voice. I even considered keeping Radovan’s chapters in first-person and writing Jeggare’s in third, but that was too screwy. Eventually I found a first-person voice for Jeggare.

The benefit of writing in first-person is that the cleverer readers—which includes most of them—can see where both Radovan and Jeggare are unreliable reporters. Each sees the same event in different ways, and each has his own blind spots. Comparing them, you get to decide for yourself where the truth lies and what their different versions of the story say about the heroes.

The only drawback I’ve encountered is that a few readers find alternating first-person narrative jarring, and for them we’ll include character names at the top of each chapter in the next novel.

What unique challenges does the world of Pathfinder demand of your characters? And of you as a character-builder?

When I took poetry classes, I was that nerd who eschewed free verse in favor of sonnets and the crazy stuff like villanelles and sestinas. In the same way, writing in a world that already has rules for how magic works is comparable to writing closed-form poetry. It also poses a temptation to break the rules on occasion, but the guardians of Golarion appreciate an occasional off-rhyme.

Another way to look at it is that Pathfinder stories are fictional historical fiction. That is, the history and geography already exist, but Tales authors use that research material to build a story around new characters. The existing lore is more often a help than a hindrance, but even when it creates a challenge it can be inspirational. For instance, I originally pitched Radovan as a half-orc, but that didn’t fit the setting of Cheliax as well as a hellspawn did. That change helped define his background, which became one of the key elements of his character.

One of the great things about both of your Pathfinder novels is mood and atmosphere. For lack of a more graceful way to ask this… how do you do that? What’s the secret to setting the mood and writing such vivid descriptions?

Maybe it’s that I write about places that appeal to me; I’m a big nerd for the genres in which I write. When I originally pitched “Hell’s Pawns,” the plot came from an outline I’d written years earlier involving a criminal conspiracy. I had a yen to do something with a Holmes-like detective and his version of Watson. On the other hand, I’d been watching a lot of film noir in the weeks before I revised the outline. Those elements, combined with the first-person narration of the Pathfinder Journal stories, caused Radovan’s voice to become less Watson and more Philip Marlowe. I liked what that tilt did to both the characters and to the atmosphere, so I ran with it.

For Prince of Wolves, I drew on memories of the Universal and Hammer horror movies I loved as a child, as well as on more recent films that evoke similar feelings. So I had In the Company of Wolves and Brotherhood of the Wolf in mind as much as I did Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. I meant to do “research” by re-watching those movies and others like them, but there was no time to spare on that short deadline.

I had more time for Master of Devils, so I made a project of the research. I’ve long been a fan of kung fu, or wuxia, films, so I challenged myself to watch or re-watch 100 kung fu movies before finishing the novel. In reality, I was barely over 80 before I finished the manuscript, but I kept going until I added well over 100 to the list.

Every time I wrote an action scene, I could hear the clash of those chromium swords. And I always saw the night scenes in misty blue light, as if they’d been lit in a Tsui Hark fantasy. And when I think of the important Tien characters from the book, I see the faces of Maggie Cheung, Gordon Liu, and Jackie Chan.

In what ways do the interactions between Varian Jeggare and Radovan develop the individual characters? What new spin do you put on the Buddy Fantasy?

While I had an odd-couple vibe in mind, I haven’t been conscious of subverting it. I try to avoid pastiche like, say, having Jeggare play the violin late at night like Holmes, or making Radovan a slob like Oscar Madison.

I also try to keep in mind is that each of them is the hero of his own story. Part of my plan is to have at least two stories happening at once, each more important to one of the boys, until they come together by the end. Also, making one a noble and the other a street crook was a means to put each character in touch with a different stratus of society and to let the reader see the same situation from different perspectives.

Radovan is easier to like. He’s smart but not educated, tough but not invulnerable. Even though he’s done some bloody deeds, James Sutter describes him as “loveable.” Jeggare is less cuddly. His flaws are harder to forgive, especially in a character who enjoys the advantages of education and wealth. He’s accustomed to the privileges of class, so he has rarely been taken to task for his bad behavior. Each of the boys has had opportunities to learn from the other, but we don’t always change our ways the first time we realize we’re on the wrong path. Sometimes it takes a lot of course correction, and that can make for a long and sometimes rocky relationship.

I prefer flawed protagonists to ideal heroes. I like characters that don’t always make the right choice and don’t always win. Their victories are all the sweeter because they aren’t guaranteed.

To be continued…

Interview bu Jeremy L. C. Jones

Related posts:

1. Matt Hughes, Liane Merciel, and Tim Pratt Discuss Their Forthcoming Pathfinder Tales Novels
2. Victories, Setbacks, and Character-shading Moments: Robin D. Laws on Writing a Pathfinder Tales Novel
3. Beyond Her Goals: Elaine Cunningham on Writing a Pathfinder Novel

Yesterday, White Wolf publishing launched a Kickstarter project for the V20 Companion, which is a supplement to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

Twenty-one years ago, Vampire: the Masquerade hit the tabletop RPG market like a black-clad bolt from Hell itself and changed the way games were played forever. It wasn’t just about playing a game; VtM changed people’s lives and defined a lifestyle. Last year, White Wolf created a deluxe 20th Anniversary Edition to celebrate all that Vampire: the Masquerade has meant to its creators and its fans and the response was astounding. It was clear to us that the players want more classic VtM, so we began work on the V20 Companion.

About the V20 Companion:

Developed and written by legendary VtM designer Justin Achilli, in constant communication with players using the same Open Development process we used with V20, this volume of new material examines additional topics such as Titles within vampiric society, the effect of technology on modern Kindred, terrifying locations around the world, and the clanless Caitiff.

We’d already planned that the V20 Companion would be sold in PDF and Print on Demand formats, but then we began to hear that folks wanted the book in a deluxe format to match V20: embossed black leather cover, silver gilt-edged pages, a red silk bookmark, and of course, beautiful full-color interior pages. After talking it over, Justin and I realized that Kickstarter was the perfect way to make that deluxe dream a reality.

- by Rich Thomas via Kickstarter.com.

The Flames Rising crew wants to know more…We think you do, too.

What do you want to know about the V20 Companion? What about the Kickstarter project? Ask your uestions in the comments below. Then, on Monday, February 20th, we’ll compile the best of the bunch and send them over to Rich and Justin.

We’ll post the compiled interview here at Flames Rising once they’ve had the chance to spill some secrets…

Related posts:

1. V20 Companion Interview with Rich Thomas and Justin Achilli
2. Into the Crimson Light, Ken Meyer Jr.’s dramatic macabre art
3. Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Ann. Edition Now in Print and More [Updated]

Jeremy L. C. Jones recently had the chance to talk to Monica Valentinelli about her role as editor of HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, the collection of ghost stories that we published late last year.

Bullet-riddled Etherometers, EMF detectors, tasers, and inconclusive footage of the spooky sort… Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, edited by Monica Valentinelli, features original stories by Alex Bledsoe, Richard Dansky, Jess Hartley, Jason Sizemore, Chuck Wendig, and six other writers. While there are plenty of ghosts, poltergeists, and the supernatural unknown, the stories in Haunted focus, primarily, on the ghost hunters, chasers, or investigators.

Appropriately enough, the collection kicks off with an overview of ghost hunting (and the culture surrounding it) written by veteran hunter, Jaeson K. Jrakman, who describes the collection as containing “spine-tingling stories of phantom horrors lurking in the shadows of long-forgotten abandonments.”

In her editor’s afterword, Valentinelli aptly compares reading the anthology to “meandering into a haunted mansion,” each story a new thrill, a new corpse or growing puddle of blood.

Monica Valentinelli is a writer and game designer who has worked with Eden Studios, Abstract Nova Entertainment, and White Wolf Publishing, among others. She’s written non-fiction for Apex Magazine and Green Ronin Publishing. She writes regular columns for Geek’s Dream Girl and the How to Write Shop.

Her fiction ranges from short stories to novellas. Publications have appeared (or will appear) in Tales of the Seven Dogs, White Wolf Quarterly, Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas, Daily Bites of Flesh: 365 Days of Flash Fiction, The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1, Apexology: Science Fiction and Fantasy, and New Hero Anthology (forthcoming). Valentinelli’s e-book, The Queen of Crows, is available from DriveThruFiction.com now.

This winter and fall, respectively, Valentinelli edited Slices of Fate: The Collected Works of Eddy Webb and Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, both from FR Press.

Below, Valentinelli and I talk about editing, ghosts, and what scares her most.

What do you enjoy about editing?

I like to edit from time to time because it forces me to exercise a different part of my brain than I normally would. When I’m writing, I’m down in the trenches trying to meet a set of guidelines or my own expectations for what that story or game should be. When I’m editing, the opposite is the case. Editing reinforces my ability to empathize with people who edit all day, all the time. It’s not easy to comment on someone else’s work.

What sort of editor are you–hands on, hands off, something else all together?

It depends on the project and how it’s set up from the beginning. Some projects require me to be hands on if there are time constraints or strict guidelines that have to be followed. Other times? The onus is on the writer to fit whatever guidelines are on the page. If at all possible, I would prefer to be hands off because I’d rather be a cheerleader than an ogre.

On the page or screen, what sort of ghost story scares you the most?

In recent memory, the scariest ghost stories are the fatalistic tales where there is no chance to “save” the ghost and send them on or the more open-ended constructs where that experience can never end. There are some fantastic films from the Far East that highlight the non-redemptive ghost. Ju-On, Kairo, Dark Water. Most of these have been remade for an American audience and they still hold their appeal for me because the stories are more focused on dealing with the horror than rescuing a spirit.

Are ghosts real?

I’ve had many strange experiences in my life that I can’t rationally explain. This helps me sleep at night because it means there’s another mystery left to explore. My world holds much wonder in it. Is it possible that ghosts exist? Yes. After all, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Am I certain without a cliché shadow of a doubt? No.

How did Haunted come about?

Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror was the brainchild of the publisher Matt M. McElroy. He wanted to do an anthology that was more focused on the people hunting ghosts than the monsters themselves.

Was it open submission or by invitation?

Matt decided to do an invitation only for the anthology because he had a select group of authors in mind he knew would do a fantastic job.

What strategy did you use to organize the stories?

I read them out loud and balanced them based on theme, literary structure, and setting. “What’s the Frequency, Francis?” which was written by Alex Bledsoe opens the anthology because it shifts from present to the distant past and back to the present again. My goal was to keep readers turning the page and to make that happen I wanted the stories to flow from one to the other. Where the story took place was just as important as how it was written.

For example, two stories, “We Need Johnny” by Chuck Wendig and “After Life” Nancy O. Green were written in a more experimental fashion. I decided to put the less-experimental story first to help transition the reader and then followed up with a story by Jason L Blair called “It Happened In The Woods At Night,” which he penned in a three-act structure.

Were there any pleasant surprises in terms of connections between stories?

I was surprised to see that the majority (if not all) of these stories are tried and true Americana. While there are a few tales that introduce the question of mistaken identity (e.g. Is this entity really a ghost?) the majority of the ghost’s origins are Western and all the stories take place in the continental United States.

Have you ever been ghost hunting?

Don’t need to. They usually find me.

How did you meet Jaeson K. Jrakman?

I first met Jaeson at a small convention in Milwaukee several years back where he was giving a talk on ghost hunting. As luck would have it, I sent him a lead on a case someone else had alerted me to. Jaeson is a very rational person. That’s one of the reasons why I think he’s a good representation of a serious ghost hunter who wants to prove ghosts exist using science.

What’s next for you? As an editor? As a writer? As a designer?

Not so much as an editor, but as a line developer — which, in my opinion, employs a very similar skillset to what an editor does. And… that hasn’t been announced yet, so never you mind there.

As a writer? I’ve got a few short stories brewing and I’ll be gearing up for the release of Redwing’s Gambit, a science fiction novella for the Bulldogs! RPG. As a designer, Strange, Dead Love, a paranormal romance sourcebook for Vampire: the Requiem recently debuted and I’m also working on [redacted] for White Wolf, too.

There’s always another story to tell and another setting to explore. It keeps me out of trouble!

Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror and other FR press titles are available now at DriveThruFiction.com.

Related posts:

1. Haunted Reviews and an Award!
2. Haunted: Black Friday Special Offer!
3. New Chapters Available Now at Monica Valentinelli’s Violet War Website!

One of the best things about my role at DriveThruComics.com is working with an amazing group of authors and artists that are producing some awesome comics. One of our publishers has a universe shattering series going on now and I recently had the chance to talk to Artifacts series author/architect Ron Marz about it. This interview was originally crafted for the DriveThruComics Newsletter, so I wanted to do things a little differently. I did some “crowd-sourcing” for questions from folks reading the series. I added those suggestions to my questions and fired them off to Ron.

Artifacts was originally a limited series that involves the bearers of 13 mythological items such as the Witchblade and The Darkness. Recently it was announced that Artifacts will continue past issue 13 and the affects on the Top Cow Universe will be lasting. Here Ron tells us a bit more about the series…

If you had to rank the 13 bearers from most to least favorite for you, how would it go?

Well, I don’t really think of them in terms of “favorites,” I think of them in terms of the story possibilities inherent in each. My favorites would include the Witchblade, the Darkness and the Angelus, as well as the Spear of Destiny.

How difficult is it to balance air time for signature characters in this story?

It’s always a juggling act to make sure that everyone gets their fair share of screen time. Every character is somebody’s favorite, so you want to be sure that each one gets a moment in the spotlight. But I have to balance that against making sure there’s a spine running through the entire story. In the case of Artifacts, the spine is Sara, Jackie and Hope, so their story is what we keep coming back to. It very much began with them and it will definitely end with them.

How is the crossover-event impacting the storytelling going on in the individual comic lines?

We’ve tried to make sure the monthly books like Witchblade and Darkness can be read independently. I never like storylines that put a gun to the readers’ heads and force them to buy a bunch of different series. If you just want to read Artifacts, you can do that and the story will make sense. If you just want to read Witchblade or Darkness or Magdalena, those will make sense individually as well. But by the end of the whole thing, all the series will reflect what’s happened in Artifacts.

Are readers who follow several series getting more of the goods than the folks just following Artifacts?

I hope so. We approached this so that you didn’t have to read multiple titles, but if you do read across a few series, the experience will be a little richer and you’ll pick up on some details. We wanted to reward those reading multiple titles, but not penalize anyone who isn’t.

How does Artifacts work as an introduction for new readers to the Top Cow Universe?

I tried to write the first few issues to be as new-reader friendly as possible, within the context of doing a multi-character series that explores the mythology of the Top Cow Universe. So while there’s a lot going on, I never want the audience to feel like they’ve walked in during the middle of a movie. Everything you need to know should be contained within the pages of the story. No visits to Wikipedia necessary.

What can you tell us about the artists working on Artifacts?

The plan was always to have multiple artists on the series, so we split it up in the way that made the most story sense, which is to follow the traditional three-act structure. Michael Broussard, Whilce Portacio and Jeremy Haun all bring something different to the table, and I tried to play to each artist’s strengths. And then Dale Keown is drawing issue #13, and I honestly have to say it’s one of the most beautiful issues I’ve ever been involved with. Starting with issue #14, Stjepan Seijic and I will be the regular team on the book.

What can readers expect from the ongoing Artifacts series?

Issue #13 definitely brings the initial storyline to a close. There’s very much a new status quo by the end of it. Starting with issue #14, we’ll be exploring that new status quo. You’ll see Jackie Estacado, you’ll see Sara Pezzini and the focus character for at least the first few arcs will be Tom Judge. Artifacts as an ongoing series gives us a much bigger canvas to work with. We’ll be doing much bigger, more epic-style stories, but without losing the character-driven nature of what we do.

The Artifacts and other Top Cow Universe series are available now at DriveThruComics.com.

Related posts:

1. Artifacts Issue 1 Comic Review
2. Preview of Top Cow Production’s Artifacts No. 1

Streets of Bedlam is a pen-and-paper roleplaying game in which you play characters with histories, who’ve done bad things, who may do a few more, but who have a code they stick to, fuzzy though it may be, that guides them through life and allows them to make a difference. Everybody in this town wants something but your characters are aiming higher than most and maybe, just maybe, they’ll do some good. At the very least, maybe they’ll stop some bad from happening.

Written and designed by critically-acclaimed game writer Jason L Blair, the man behind Little Fears, Streets of Bedlam will be built around the award-winning Savage Worlds ruleset published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

In this interview I ask Jason for details about the inspirations he drew from and the characters that you play in Streets of Bedlam.

What is this game about?

Ultimately, Streets of Bedlam is about desperation. It’s about what people do when they’re backed into a corner, how they fight their way out, how they overcome the impulse to sin in a world where everything is permitted (at least implicitly). It’s about crime and corruption.

It’s also about big dudes ramming their fists through some punk’s face, and S&M vigilantes who keep the citizens safe from scumbags.

What were your sources of inspiration?

Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novels, definitely. The Boondock Saints films, Pulp Fiction, Miller’s Crossing, the Max Payne video games, every film noir I’ve ever seen. I’m pulling from a lot but not to make this a kitchen sink-setting. I’m editing to make sure things are cohesive.

What makes it a good fit for Savage Worlds?

Looking through what was available, I didn’t see anything like Streets of Bedlam available for Savage Worlds. That, and my personal affection for the system, pushed me to see what I could do with the Savage Worlds system to make it fit an ultraviolent neo-noir setting.

The two came together very well. I like Savage Worlds’ level of abstraction, the quick and easy flow of gameplay. Also, the system is very inspiring so it’s easy to write for. I love it.

One big thing though was finding ways to inject more story-focused bits into Savage Worlds, which was designed around combat. I wanted a system that could handle a street fight or highway shoot-out easily but also a system perfect for interrogation, following a trail of clues, and other detective/crime-focused systems. Savage Worlds Deluxe touches on those systems and Streets of Bedlam adds to them.

What types of characters will be in this game?

This is a neo-noir crime setting about people who do bad things. What makes the player characters different from the bad guys is the PCs do bad things for good reasons. Well, at least with good intentions.

You play criminals, ex-criminals, cops, ex-cops, ex-cops who are currently criminals. You play those marginalized by society: veterans who come home only good at war; streetwalkers who have to do whatever they can to survive; people who have been thrown out and have to carve their own way. But you also play people in power, people honestly trying to do good even if they work for a corrupt and unjust system.

Are there any heroes in this setting?

Absolutely, though they’re not your typical heroes. I’m hesitant to use the term “anti-hero” but those trying to do good in Streets of Bedlam are far from Boy Scouts. Everybody in Streets of Bedlam has a past, some darker than others, and part of the drama comes from overcoming that past.

The way I like to explain it is, the good guys and bad guys have different goals but use a lot of the same methods.

What can you tell us about the new character types?

The archetypes each explore some facet of crime and/or corruption. You have Monsters who are just brutal justice-getting machines. These are the guys who walk through doors and a storm of bullets to get their man or rescue a child from the clutches of her heinous kidnapper. Vigilantes patrol the streets, watching out for murderers, rapists, muggers, and all the other scum who prey on the innocent. Dogfaces are fixers, know-it-alls, who are go-tos if you need to find out about deals going down or some two-bit jagoff who just made bail and is walking free on the streets. You can play as cops, private dicks, reporters, anyone who is sets out on a trail to unearth corruption and expose the city’s dark underbelly.

What can you tell us about Four-Story Drop?

Four-Story Drop is the first supplement for Streets of Bedlam and it’ll include four standalone episodes that groups can use to get up and running through the setting right away. They’ll be structured similar to the Campfire Tales supplements for Little Fears Nightmare Edition. Each will be broken into scenes and will include all the major NPCs for that story.

Now that the Kickstarter is funded, why should people back this project?

Exclusives! Everyone who pledges gets thanked in the corebook and those who pledge $5 or more get turned into NPCs as well. I have a whole city to populate!

Backers at certain levels can influence future episodes, get turned into a major player in the world, get character archetypes exclusive to Kickstarter pledges, get some free dice, and more.

If the Kickstarter continues to do well, I have ideas for more backer exclusives as well so the more funds that are raised, the more things get unlocked.

Where can people find out more?

I have the basics up on the Kickstarter page along with ways gamers can secure their own copies of Streets of Bedlam, get some exclusive goods, and even help shape the world. They can also check out StreetsOfBedlam.com for updates, previews, and more as we get closer to the April 2012 release date.

Related posts:

1. Streets of Bedlam: One Day Left, New Milestone, Soundtrack?
2. Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption Kickstarter

Author and game designer Matt Forbeck recently announced the 12 for ’12 project, in which he will attempt to write a short novel every month in 2012. We think Matt might have gone just a little crazy, but we’re also pretty sure Matt can actually pull this off…so Jeremy LC Jones had a little chat with Matt about the project.

Um, Matt, what are you thinking?

I’m thinking I want to write and I want to self-publish. I’m thrilled with my current publisher, Angry Robot, but there are some projects I’d like to do that wouldn’t work with them. That’s what 12 for ’12 is all about.

I’m a fast writer, so technically I should be able to handle writing 12 novels in a year, especially if they’re shorter ones like these. I’m shooting for 50,000 words each, which is what anyone participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this month is shooting for. That’s still 600,000 words of fiction in a year, but I’m pretty sure I can manage it.

I also can’t afford to take a flying leap on this and not feed my five kids while I’m writing these books for a year, so I’m going to set up a series of Kickstarter projects to line up pre-orders for ebooks and hardcovers for the line. The first one is up already and runs through the month of November.

What excites you about doing 12 novels in 12 months?

There’s the sheer, insane challenge of it, of course. Just standing up and saying I’m going to do it garners a lot of attention. It feels like I just stepped up onto a stage and said, “Hey, folks! You’re going to want to watch this!”

I also like the idea of getting a lot of material out there for people to read as fast as I can. I don’t plan on sacrificing quality for speed though. Most of my novels get excellent reviews, and I’ve been quietly writing them quickly the entire time.

At the end of the year, I want to be able to look back and say, “I did that.” And then I want people to be able to enjoy those books forever.

In what ways does the short novel appeal to you as a reader? As a writers?

As a writer it’s great to be able to get into the story, tell it, and get out. Most novels used to be shorter, but the publishing industry has been pushing for longer books for decades now, knowing that some readers judge the books and the price they’re willing to pay for them based not on the quality of the story but on the page count.

Ebooks turn that all on its ear. As a reader, when I purchase an ebook, I don’t care if it’s an epic doorstop or a tauter work. I just want a good read. I actually prefer my ebooks to be shorter. It means I can read more stories in the limited time I have.

How much pre-planning will you do for each novel?

I’ll have a full outline prepared for each book before I start. I’ve done that with every novel I’ve written, and it does wonders for keeping me on track. It also cuts down on the chances I’ll have to throw out chunks of the novel because I didn’t know where I was going with it.

Will this be a series or standalones? Will you have recurring characters?

I’m planning on having at least three trilogies out of this set. The fourth set of books might be a trilogy too, or it might be three standalones instead.

Which genres are you going to write in?

The first trilogy is based on my Brave New World tabletop roleplaying game that Pinnacle and AEG published back in 1999 and 2000. That’s a dystopian setting in which superheroes exist but have been outlawed for decades, unless they work for the federal government. The US has been under martial law that entire time, and the heroes are trying to set things right and restore justice to the American people.

The second trilogy takes place in a setting I call Shotguns & Sorcery, a kind of fantasy noir. I’ve written a couple shorter pieces in it already, and I’m itching to take it for a stretch with some longer works.

How will this impact your regular writing work? How’re you going to balance this with everything else?

I’m still going to be writing the Magic: The Gathering comic for IDW, and I have a couple of world-building projects I’m working on for other people that will take me through the end of this year and into the next. While all this writing will take a good chunk of my time, it shouldn’t swallow all of it.

Keep in mind that writing is my full-time job. That means I don’t have to worry about a day job getting in my way. This is my day job.

Do you have any advice for writing clean prose quickly?

Have a strong outline and characters you believe in before you start. This makes everything easier. Also, don’t pause to revise while you’re writing. Sprint toward the end as fast as you can. You can always polish your prose later.

What’re you going to do with all these manuscripts when you’re done with them?

I’m planning to publish them as ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks. Part of each Kickstarter I’ll run for the project will be the chance to grab them in extremely limited hardcover editions too. I’d also be happy to shop the print rights around, but I want to make sure I can get these into the hands of readers fast too.

Any parting words?

Be sure to stop by my Kickstarter page for the first trilogy for more details about it and the entire 12 for ’12 project. If you don’t think I can manage this, that’s fine. I want you to dare me to give it my best shot. Thanks for your support!

No related posts.

Escape from Zombie City (A One Way Out Novel) by Ray Wallace has been released in Trade Paperback (the eBook is coming soon!) by The Zombie Feed Press, an imprint of Apex Publications. Below in an interview with Ray by The Zombie Feed.

The Zombie Feed: Who is your biggest literary influence, and why?

Ray Wallace: That’s a tough one. There are so many. But if I was forced to choose just one then I guess I’d have to go with Clive Barker. The Books of Blood are still some of the best horror collections ever written. I’ve always loved the way he merges the beautiful with the grotesque. And his ability to describe utterly fantastic worlds and creatures is truly awesome at times. Whenever I read one of his stories it makes me want to sit down at the computer immediately and start writing.

Have you always enjoyed the zombie sub-genre or did you just recently amble into it? Why do you think people are crazy about zombies?

I’ve been a fan of zombie movies/books/comics for quite a while now. Besides the Romero films, two of my favorite horror movies have to be The Return of the Living Dead and Reanimator. I was really into collecting the Deadworld comics when they were out. And I still consider Philip Nutman’s Wet Work and the Book of the Dead collections, edited by Skipp and Spector, to be some of the best contributions to the zombie literary sub-genre.

I think that if you’re into horror at all then you have to be a fan of zombies. Especially the concept of the undead taking over the world. It’s pretty much the ultimate horror concept: global pandemic, cannibalism, post-apocalypse survival, and a very grim and disturbing concept of an afterlife. What’s not to enjoy?

Escape from Zombie City is a modern day ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book. Why go in this direction, instead of penning a ‘regular’ novel? What inspired you to write EFZC?

I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid. And it’s always been in the back of my mind that I wanted to write one some day. When that day arrived, the concept of putting the reader in the midst of a zombie outbreak just seemed like a natural fit, a “no brainer” if you will.

EFZC is pretty fast-paced. What do you think is more scary: slow moving or fast moving zombies?

I think slow moving zombies are creepier but the fast moving ones are scarier. The odds of surviving a 28 Days Later scenario for any length of time seem as though they would have to be much lower than that presented in, say, Night of the Living Dead. With Escape From Zombie City, I thought it would be cool to include both types of creatures, try and up the scare factor a bit.

I think fans of zombie and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books will greatly enjoy EFZC, even if they don’t particularly like one or the other. Any plans to write another in the same format?

Definitely. I’ve got plenty of ideas for further One Way Out novels. And as much fun as EFZC was to write, I look forward to the next one.

One day, after being dead and buried, your corpse is reanimated. Would you hope to retain some recollection of your former life or just enjoy going on a brain-eating rampage like your fellow undead brethrens?

I think the latter scenario would be preferable. Once you’ve been transformed into a hideous monster, it would just be too painful to remember the normal, healthy individual you once were. Better to just go with the flow and enjoy that brain-eating rampage as much as you can.

Escape from Zombie City is available now at Amazon.com in Softcover Paperback or Kindle formats.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Author Mark Allan Gunnells
2. From Zombie Celebrity to Author: An Interview with Amanda Feral
3. Zombie Week: Interview With Author David Moody

The Darkest Parts of the Forest: W. Scott Poole on Monsters in America

Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and Haunting by W. Scott Poole is that long-awaited book we knew was out there, somewhere, lurking in the darkened woods of the great Unwritten, waiting to leap out and reveal terrible truths about us all.

Both a masterpiece of scholarship and a heartfelt homage to the horror genre, Monsters in America “tell[s] a story about the dark side of American history, through its monsters.”

“I took this opportunity to use the films I love as primary sources,” said Poole, “and to chase down urban legends and think about where these bad dreams come from.”

Where bad dreams come from, indeed!

In Monsters in America, we encounter a history of America and of the American psyche that is far more terrifying than we ever imagined.

This is us, folks, plain but far from simple.

For those of us who call ourselves American, Monsters in America is our history–web-like, violent, and always lurking in the corner of our eye—up to no good, blood on its hands, hellfire in its eyes.

From aliens to zombies, Poole goes into it all. He examines Americans’ love-hate relationship with witches and the wilderness, sea monsters and slavery, the Civil War and serial killers, paranoia and the atomic bomb. Monsters in America is as compelling as it is comprehensive without being over-burdened with academic jargon or objectivity.

A self-professed “lifelong horror nerd”, as well as an associate professor of history at the College of Charleston, Poole is the author of six books, including Satan in America: The Devil We Know and Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry. He also writes about popular culture, history, and religion for such sites at Popmatters.com and Religiondispatches.org.

Poole is no stuffy academic. The writing in Monsters in America is smooth and clean and precise, like a scalpel in the hands of a loved one.

The table of content of Monsters in America suggests a linear sprint through 400+ years of American history. Don’t be fooled. Poole masterfully slides around on the silken edge of the draglines and spokes of the spider web of the past, pulling and tugging and drawing taut meaning in the darkness.

Read this book. It will make you want to sing songs of the monsters that prey upon you, just as each page sings the song of our collective past.

“So, without further ado,” writes Poole in homage to his beloved Crypt Keeper, “let us bring on the night.”

So, first things first: Are monsters real?

Absolutely.

I do not like the language of metaphor when talking the monstrous. Look, there are lots of books out there that talk about monsters as metaphors of this or that cultural crisis or anxiety. I agree that they function in that way but I also take my monsters more seriously.

Monsters are hardwired into the American experience. It matters that Frankenstein became immensely popular at a time when medical experimentation on racial minorities had become a frightening reality in American history. It matters that the science fiction genre, and sightings of flying saucers, became common during the early Cold War when American became deeply conscious of the possibility of invasion and subversion. And the all too real serial killer stalked our popular culture at a time when we were debating questions of identity, sexuality and the meaning of violence.

Now, I’m no Fortean and certainly not a ghost hunter. I think those hobbies can also end up failing to take the monster as seriously as it wants us too. But I’m also not okay with talking abstractly about the horrific when I think its part of the cultural DNA of historical experience.

In Monster in America, you resist defining monster. So, um, care to say what a monster isn’t?

If it makes you feel safe and secure, its not a monster.

When I encountered Shock Theatre in around 1976, 1977, I spent long Saturday afternoons watching the Universal Studios cycle of monster stories. I will never forget watching the Mummy, becoming convinced that by watching it I had somehow transgressed and fallen under the Mummy’s curse and then being certain that the sudden, violent thunderstorm that hit us that afternoon was somehow part of this dark and evil magic working its will on me.

I think this helped shape my view that the monster is not safe, the monster offers no stability, the monster will not make our sleep better. This does not mean they are evil…but they are always terrible, in the Old Testament sense of the term.

If it makes things feel pleasant or gives you warm fuzzies, then it’s not the monster (I’m looking at you Stephanie Meyer).

What scares you?

Ha! I love it when I get this question. It always sounds like “what scares scary things.”

Honestly, as much as I love, and I mean freaking love, watching and reading horror, it just doesn’t give me the kind of “there is something standing behind me” fear it used to. Minor frissons, no major freak-outs.

If I want some real terror, I read some Thomas Ligotti, an author that combines what’s most frightening in Lovecraft with what is most unsettling in Kafka. Or I just read Kafka. My favorite writer, William S. Burroughs, is no horror writer but there are horrific and fantastic elements in his work that do it for me beyond what even my hero Wes Craven can pull off.

And honestly, I’m mostly scared by life. I’m scared my wife or my parents or my dogs will get sick. I’m scared we’ll keep dehumanizing the poor and marginalized while claiming that corporations are people. Other people scare the hell out of me. These things are the darkest parts of the forest where the monsters hide.

I’m really afraid of drowning, by the way.

Where did Monsters in America start?

It started in my love of the genre and, in fact, I hope horror fans see it as a kind of valentine to these films and the world of freaks that surrounds them.

I want historians to read the book. I need horror people to read it.

On the scholarly side, this is really the first study of the American monster by an American historian and its a pretty weird book in some respects. A look at the endorsements alone shows that early readers and admirers of the book include not only scholars you might expect to be reading a new work of history but also horror novelists like Jonathan Maberry.

I also have to say that the idea to write this was born out of my research on a previous book called Satan in America, where I examined the cultural history of the Devil. I came across a fascinating account of sea serpent sightings in early 19th century Massachusetts that led me to researching a whole public conversation about sea monsters in 19th century America.

What exactly do you mean in the book when you say that “history issues threats as much as it inspires reflection”?

We had one bookstore on the tour that had to back out because they were counting on some support from a local library. The library said no after somebody there took a look at the book and complained about the combination of “bad language” and “controversial ideas that we don’t want to deal with the fallout from.”

History is about a confrontation with the sources of our life and lifestyle. Why do I see monsters at every moment of the American experiment? Its because the past is boneyard and we’ve built what we’ve got on top of it.

History tends to make on the list of “things that most made me want to put a pencil through my eye in school.’ Or simply described as boring. How do you make the drama of human experience boring? You tell a story of consensus instead of conflict and that’s what my textbooks do. And too many of the teachers who use them.

Monsters and their narratives of horror don’t allow you to do that.

Are there monsters you had to leave out of the book?

This is a book full to the brim with all kinds of creatures of the night, from sea serpents to serial killers. So I didn’t leave much out. There are monsters I want to spend more time with. I’m actually working on a project about the 1950s horror host Vampira in relation to the Cold War and post-WWII notions of gender.

Were I writing right now, I probably would also spend some more time on the idea of disease vectors, viruses and contagion in general as one of our new posthuman monsters. I’ve decided it was pretty boneheaded of me to connect 28 Days Later with the zombie genre instead of our growing fears of superflus and nature taking its vengeance on us.

If American history or America were a monster, what would it look like? What would its excesses be?

Something Lovecraftian. Too big, too many eyes, tentacled. And its excess would be hunger, it would be the Thing that could not stop consuming. Some of the darkest parts of our history are all about expansion triumphing over ethics.

And, like a Lovecraftian monster, apocalyptic. The dirty little secret, that squichy Thing hiding over there in the corner, is that our current lifestyle is utterly unsustainable. Why do we love the zombie apocalypse? We are laughing on our way to the gallows.

You dedicated Monsters in America to your goddaughter. What do you hope she learns from it when she is old enough to read it? What do you hope her mother will get from it now?

Niamh Carmichael is a deeply imaginative, book-loving, intellectually curious four year old that rules the world around her. She is also going through a phase of being afraid of monsters (much to my chagrin).

I worry a little that she’ll wonder at first why I dedicated such a macabre, and in some respects gloomy, book to her. I hope by then she’ll be used to her macabre and gloomy godfather. After that though I hope she’ll see it as a way to help her understand the world and its monsters. I hope it will help her see that monsters are sometimes your friends. Though never comfortable ones.

She may be my age before it means anything to her beyond, “Oh yeah, its cool he dedicated a book for me.” You can’t predict these things.

Her mom is a classicist and one of the smartest people I know in the world. The idea that anything I write could teach her something is laughable.

If the folks at Baylor University Press and you publicity team were in a monster flick, which characters would they be?

Oh God, this is may be the best question ever asked of an author in the history of the world.

I love my press, gotta say (authors don’t always love their presses…I haven’t always loved mine) so I would make the movie one of my favs, Nightmare on Elm Street. Associate Director of the Press, Nicole Smith Murphy would be Nancy. I wouldn’t give any monster a chance against that final girl. My publicist from Dechant-Hughes, Kelly Hughes would obviously be the alcoholic mom who…Ok, I’m totally kidding. She would be the Van Helsing figure, wisely guiding our heroes…if Nightmare had one of those. Billy Collins, social media guru? I peg him as the young Johnny Depp (don’t be too excited Billy, Depp’s character bites it).

Oh, and Freddy Krueger? Obviously editor –in-chief Carey Newman. Both because I like Freddy a lot and because I suspect Carey might come back as a supernatural killer. Also, I bet he owns that sweater.

Finish the sentence: “If not for Stars War…”

“…I might never have found the latch to the door to the fantastic”

Ah, here we go, the chance to yet again show myself the melodramatic Star Wars fan. But it’s a serious question because that space fable joined with my growing interest in the monsters of the 1930s to suggest a whole universe of the fantastic. The Cantina scene still feels to me like a revelatory moment. Like some veil between worlds suddenly becoming thin.

I’d add that I could finish that sentence in two other ways “I wouldn’t have all these awesome action figures” and “I might have had better, earlier luck with girls.” Well, maybe I can’t blame the latter on the Wars really.

So if this book had a soundtrack, what tracks would be on it?

Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits. This is the soundtrack the book was written to so it makes sense to read it with the same.

I actually say in the first chapter that most historical works aim to be a highly structured Bach concerto but that history itself is the Sex Pistols, yawping at you angrily like Johnny Rotten. It’s important to remember that when trying to make sense of historical knowledge in general.

What are you watching these days?

I thought I was done with “found footage” (or at least weary of it) until I saw the Norwegian indie Trollhunter. Not as dark as the genre sometimes is but still great fun. I haven’t seen it yet but am excited about The Last Circus. Sounds like Pan’s Labyrinth meets Grindhouse.

Reading?

Been into Theodore Roszak recently. His bizarre novels Flicker and The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein reimagine gothic horror in mind-bending ways.

I’m also reading Scott Snyder’s Severed series and loving it. I’m a big Snyder fan and pretty into the dark currents in American history he taps for his stories. I loved American Vampire.

I’m a regular reader of Kirkman’s Walking Dead. And, yeah, I’m excited about the second season of the AMC series but so is everybody else in the world so who cares.

Any parting words of advice, wisdom, or caution for fellow monster fans out there?

I guess I would say this: take your monsters seriously. Maybe you just want to be left alone with your popcorn and your movie, but you know you love your monsters more than that. How do they intersect with politics, religion, your view of society? Why do you love them so much and what does that mean?

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Monsters in America is available at Amazon.com. For more information visit MonstersinAmerica.com.

Related posts:

1. Supernatural: Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons Review
2. Magnetic Monsters Review
3. Cloverfield…monsters and movies.

Flames Rising is pleased to present you with a special interview, just in time for Sweetest Day! Earlier, we asked you to help us come up with interview questions for White Wolf Publishing developers Russell Bailey and Eddy Webb. We’re happy to share their responses as they dive into your burning questions about Strange, Dead Love, the new paranormal romance sourcebook for Vampire: the Requiem that debuts in early December. Thanks to everyone who commented and shared their thoughts on this sourcebook. The questions below were pulled from your feedback!

White Wolf Developer Interview about Strange, Dead Love

1 ) What are the inspirations behind Strange, Dead Love? Were you also influenced by television and film?

Russell Bailey: Our inspirations were primarily literary – we looked more at what you find in the fantasy section at Barnes & Noble than anything on TV. However, Dark Shadows gets a brief but very deep nod.

2 ) The concept of mimetic desire, coined by Rene Girard, seems very apropro for vampires in love. Did this theory influence this book?

Eddy Webb: Honestly, neither Russell nor I knew anything about Rene Girard until we got this question. So it wasn’t a conscious influence (although it’s possible we might have been thinking about things that this theory touches on).

3 ) Is Strange, Dead Love a book geared primarily for women? What will other types of players get out of this?

RB: There are a lot of female World of Darkness gamers, a lot of whom are romance fans, and this book’s for them. That said, I don’t think the appeal of paranormal romance is restricted to women. You don’t get a genre this big without a diverse audience, and male gamers who want to tell romantic stories will find lots to love in this book.

EW: I completely agree — I dislike the idea that a book has to be “just for women” or “just for men.” Statistically, there are a lot of women who read paranormal romance, and there were a lot of women (four, in fact) who worked on this book. That doesn’t make it a “book for chicks,” however.

4 ) Will the book cover how vampires can feel love and how that’s different from humans?

RB: For purposes of this book, I think we can assume that most Kindred experienced enough love during life to be able to recall it in death. As for Requiem in general, vampiric emotions may be echoes, but you listen to echoes real hard when you can’t hear the original sound. Vampires are capable of being driven by emotions, even though those emotions repeat the ones they had in life.

5 ) What kinds of relationships are possible in Strange, Dead Love? Mortals and vampires? Vampires and vampires? Vampires and supernatural creatures?

RB: The emphasis is primarily on romance between Kindred, and romance between Kindred and mortals. We wanted to keep a strong focus on Vampire, rather than do World of Darkness: Romance. That said, there’s a little bit about romance between vampires and werewolves.

6 ) Some paranormal romances touch on obsessed vampires who in love as a human. Will they be able to bring their dead lover back? Force an Embrace on them?

RB: We don’t talk about post-mortem Embraces specifically. However, we deal with the idea of giving up everything for love, and how that can end tragically. We also have a scenario that involves a reincarnated lover.

7 ) Will there be mechanics that prohibit clans or covenants from mating? An example would be what you did in Forsaken Chronicler’s Guide with the Uratha.

EW: Not for specific clans or covenants, although we do touch on a potential Fourth Tradition of “You Shall Not Embrace For Love,” and the political and emotional conflict that comes from that.

8 ) Can Kindred have or create half-mortal children?

EW: We didn’t touch on this, because we really wanted the focus to be on the romantic elements, not making a family. In straight-up Requiem I don’t believe this is possible, but with some of the shards we present, who can say?

9) What happens when a vampire breeds against all odds? Will multiple aftershocks be explored?

EW: Depending on which props and themes and world shards the group decides to explore with this book, that is certainly something that might be explored. However, as previously mentioned, Kindred procreation isn’t something we explicitly explore.

10 ) What inspired the project and why is White Wolf publishing this book?

RB: This is a book I’ve wanted to do for years. Simply put, I enjoy paranormal romance. I also wanted to do a different kind of Vampire book. Most of the time, we take a subject and talk about how it plays out in the World of Darkness. In this book, we take the World of Darkness and talk about how it plays out in a specific genre. I also got a chance to step away from my usual focus on vampire relationships as exploitative, and look at them in terms of other kinds of dysfunction.

It was a really fun and different way to work, and it makes for a really fun and different book.

11 ) What is sex to a vampire? Is it just foreplay for a Kiss?

EW: That’s how I’ve always seen it. Vampire can have sex, and Requiem vampire can even enjoy sex, but it’s nothing compared to the Kiss.

12 ) Will you cover how Kindred with low Humanity can love either in the text or with new mechanics?

RB: As I said above, we’ve downplayed the exploitative nature of vampiric relationships in this book in favor of somewhat more two-sided dysfunction. Instead of being about broken people, like most Vampire books, it’s about people so swept up in the experience of another person that they make questionable decisions, and feel good doing it. Next book after this, though, we’re back to horrible lizard-brain boyfriends.

13 ) How does the age of a vampire in Requiem factor into intimacy? Is there a difference between a centuries-old Kindred and one that’s only been around for a few decades?

EW: We didn’t get into that, because I don’t think it is a factor in most romantic fiction. Stories in which the centuries-old vampire suddenly falls in love with a mortal are common, and drawing a line in the sand one way or another seemed to rule out a lot of potential story opportunities.

14 ) Will Strange, Dead Love reinforce the Requiem setting and explore its bleak tone? Or, because it’s romance, will it depart from the World of Darkness?

RB: Actual, loving relationships involving vampires are definitely possible – even in the regular Vampire line. The difference is that in most books, we’d be covering the downsides of true love, the way love can make you more of a monster. There are a couple of stories in the clan books that get into that. You’ve got “Witches, Kisses and Bombs” in Savage and Macabre, the story in The Beast that Haunts the Blood about the girl in the locked room, the relationship between Ayesha and Cat in Kiss of the Succubus, and others.

I wouldn’t call it a reversal, but it’s definitely a wholly different approach.

EW: And to be fair, this book is specifically about providing different experiences that are not quite like Requiem. These are world shards, each with a slightly different take on Requiem, similar to what we did in World of Darkness: Mirrors. It’s still a Requiem book, and Russell and I had a lot of talks to make sure that it didn’t become a generic book about vampires in love, but due to the nature of the product, it’s going to feel a bit different from other Requiem books.

15 ) How deeply are the consequences of a vampire-and-mortal relationship explored?

RB: In Strange, Dead Love, we focus more on the explosive potential of love. We talk about the kind of big drama that erupts when people defy Kindred culture and the very idea of damnation in order to have a chance at love. Some of those relationships will end well, some of them badly. The uncertainty of whether a relationship will create bliss or disaster is at the center of the book.

16 ) What can we expect to see for new mechanics? Alternate rules on blood bonds, vinculums, blood sympathy? What about neonate summonings and Vitae orgasms?

EW: There are a few rules hacks in the book, but we don’t spend a lot of time on them. Relationships are complex, messy things (especially the kinds of relationships we explore in this book), and you can’t boil them down to a roll where you achieve orgasm after five successes. We do devote a fair amount of space to Storytellers, though, and give them some mechanical support to help them portray this kind of material more effectively.

17 ) Can ghouls and vampires love? Will there be coverage of what happens between the two?

RB: Unfortunately, I didn’t have space for ghouls. I adore ghoul characters, though, and I think we’ve given them short shrift in Requiem as a whole. As we do new books, I’m definitely looking for places where we can explore ghouls as people. Sexy, broken people.

Related posts:

1. Behind the Romance of Strange, Dead Love
2. Strange Dead Love Now Available For Vampire: the Requiem!
3. Help Us Interview White Wolf for Strange, Dead Love

Many Flames Rising readers may recognize Brea Grant from her role as Daphne on the popular television show Heroes. Did you know that the multi-talented Brea also writes comics? I recently had the chance to talk comics and acting with her for the site. We talked about her upcoming comic-related projects as a comic book writer and her new role as Cassie Hack in the upcoming Hack/Slash motion comic series.

What can you tell us about your upcoming role as Cassie Hack?

I will be the voice and sort of the face of Cassie in the new animated comic. We’re using animation, rotoscoping, green screen, all sorts of stuff to make it super cool and fantastic. So it’ll technically be my face but a lot of animation as well.

What are you most looking forward to in portraying a character like Cassie?

I love Cassie because she’s independent and smart with a dark edge to her. She’s a loner and is dedicated to her work. I love women like that because I feel like I’m that way to a certain extent (although I don’t kill serial killers).

Had you read any of the Hack/Slash series before signing on the this project?

Yep. I think I’ve read most of them. I love Hack/Slash. It’s one of the first comics I always tell people to read if they’re just getting into comics because it’s accessible as well as sexy and cool. I even dressed up as Cassie last Halloween and sent the photos to Tim Seeley via twitter. Of course, they ended up all over the Internet…but I guess that’s to be expected.

There are tons of zombie comics currently on the market, what makes We Will Bury You stand out?

For WWBY, we (I write with my brother Zane) wanted to focus on heroes that weren’t your typical protagonists. WWBY follows two women, a thief and a prostitute, who must use their street smarts to stay alive, instead connections, guns, or training. It’s also set in the 1920s so if you’ve never seen a zombie in a top hat, now’s the time.

What sorts of research went into the writing for the series?

A lot actually. I read a lot about Coney Island because Issue 3 took place there entirely and I had never been there. I looked at that and at Tod Browning’s Freaks because we introduce some carnival folks as well in that issue. Other than that, I have a background in history so I mostly relied on that. There were some things I was unsure of like what kind of phones or tea kettles they might have, but for the most part, I knew what was happening politically and economically at that time and I included that.

The Suicide Girls comic is rather different from We Will Bury You, what can you tell us about it?

SG follows a group of underground vigilantes fighting against a corporate religious technocult. It’s sci-fi/fantasy/insanity. It was a very different world from writing WWBY because it’s a franchise and a lot of people had their hands in creating it and shaping the outcome. WWBY was pretty much just me, Zane, and our artist, Kyle Strahm.

Did you work on Heroes affect your comic writing in any way?

I think my acting affects my writing and vice versa. I definitely think a lot more like a character than a writer and sometimes have to step back to look at the whole story. But I think it means I inherently explore character more.

Working on Heroes affects a lot of stuff I do because it was one of the first projects I did and it means people associate me with sci-fi and comics for better or for worse. It works well for me though because I love comics and I love sci-fi and genre movies. It’s a world I don’t mind being associated with.

What comics are you currently reading?

I just finished the last trade of Chew. It’s pretty much my favorite thing on the market. I keep up with X-Factor and Hack/Slash. I just finished Witch, which is a graphic novel by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett. I liked that a lot. I’m still making my way through my post-SDCC purchases, but I was pretty good this year about not going overboard.

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I’d like to thank Brea for taking the time to chat with me about her work. Want to check out some of the awesome comic book titles or her roles on Hack/Slash and Dexter? Find out more about Brea Grant’s work at her site BreaGrant.com.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to Teren Oddo terenoddo.com for the photo.

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