The Qwillery

Please welcome Leigh Evans to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Trouble with Fate was published on December 24, 2012 in the US and will be published on January 3, 2013 in the UK.





TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

Leigh:  Thank you! Can I tell you a very short story?

Flash back a couple of years, and there I was, sniffling into my sleeve because @LeighEvans001 had less than 20 twitter followers. Then one day The Qwillery took a chance on me, and you know what? That started the ball rolling—other people started following me. I’ve had fond feelings for The Qwillery ever since. Which makes me all kinds of happy to be here as your guest.

TQ:  Wow! It's been a pleasure following you!


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Leigh:  I have an ugly callus on the side of my left foot because I have the bad habit of sitting with one foot tucked under me while I write. There’s no hope of breaking me of it.


TQ:  Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Leigh:  My list of favourites is near endless, and very diverse, as I read cross-genres. But whenever I sit down in front of the keyboard, I slip into the manuscript praying:

-- Dear Goddess in the big blue sky—please—for just for this morning, can you help me make my prose flow like the passages found inside one of Patrick Rothfuss’ s books?
-- Hey, Karma, I’ll be good today. Promise. So about this afternoon…I need my characters to read as real as the vampires and shape-shifters in Charlaine Harris’s Sookieverse…
--Helloooo, guardian angel. Wake up. I need you. What do you say that tonight is the night? I want my world building skills to evolve into something as complex and solid as Jim Butcher’s multi-layered realms.

Which basically means that every day I’m looking at a whole bunch of disappointment, but damn, I keep trying.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Leigh:  Bit of both. Long before I type the heading, “Chapter One”, I do at least a month on character profiles and world building. Then I create a story outline, which is a near waste of time because I never really follow it. But that being said, I start each book cognizant of one goal—either what I want Hedi to learn, or how Hedi is going to foul up. The rest of the story? It either comes to me in the shower or during revisions. Gad, the revisions…


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Leigh:  Two words: action sequences. Why, oh why, do I write them? And why, once in the scene, do I feel compelled to use a whole cast of characters? I know that’s going to be a headache. And seriously? What’s with the size of those sequences? Why can’t they be short and sweet? I know writing a full chapter with magic and bullets flying is never going to be easy. But do I listen to myself? No. And that’s a shame, because I’d save a fortune on Tums if only I was content to write, ”bang, bang, you’re dead.”


TQ:  Describe The Trouble with Fate (Mystwalker 1) in 140 characters or less.

Leigh:  Hedi Peacock, a half-Fae/half-Were barista, must steal an amulet from the neck of the one wolf she swore she'd kill if she ever met again.


TQ:  What inspired you to write The Trouble with Fate?

Leigh:  I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy and hero-journey novels. The ones that interest me most feature a main character who begins the series thinking they are neither kick-ass or hero-inclined.

Enter Hedi Peacock. One confused 22 year-old on the cusp of learning who she really is.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Trouble with Fate?

Leigh:  I have to admit the truth on this one. After I screwed up on one tiny detail about the Asrai (according to folklore, they’re aquatic fairies), I took a long, thoughtful look at the concept of basing my worlds on existing myths.

Totally ruined my manicure. I must have spent a full afternoon, alternately clicking on Google links and filing my nails.

Whoa, I thought. Getting it right will be a helluva a lot of work.

I put down the nail file, and decided from that day on whatever I wrote was going to be pulled from my own brain—created just to suit my needs. Because doing that was easier, and if I messed up no one was going to jab an accusing finger at some page in a reference book.

That being said, I’m older than dirt. A whole bunch of stuff has seeped into my brain during my life time. So what you get is a bit of this, and a lot of that. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how well I did with it:-)


TQ:  What is the oddest bit of information that you came across in your research?

Leigh:  Asrais like water… Huh. That messes up the whole hates-water rule.


TQ:  Tell us something about The Trouble with Fate that is not in the book description.

Leigh:  One character that earns a lot of fan love is Merry, a sentient being imprisoned in a hunk of amber that Hedi wears around her neck. Merry’s all attitude. She knows exactly what she wants, and she’s willing to put herself (and Hedi) on the line to do it.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Leigh:  Hands down, in terms of motivation, the easiest character to write is Merry.

I guess the hardest character was Lou. She didn’t start out that way. I didn’t realize how twisted she was until the end of the first draft, and once I realized what was hidden in the murk of her personality....well, I found it very difficult to work on any scene she was in.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in The Trouble with Fate?

Leigh:  My agent decided to represent me when she got halfway through the book—she cried reading the courtyard scene. So that’s probably one of the strongest. But you know what? I had the most fun writing the love scene. Mostly because it’s not your usual romp in the sheets.


TQ:  What's next?

Leigh:  I’m busier than a girl with small bailer and boat with a large leak. This week, copy edits are due for the second book in the series, THE THING ABOUT WERES. Meanwhile, I’m trying to hurry toward the end of the first draft for the third book in the series. That book doesn’t have a name yet—mostly because with me, the story is very much in flux until I hit the period on the last page.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Leigh:  The pleasure is all mine.




The Mystwalker Series

The Trouble with Fate
Mystwalker 1
St. Martin's Paperbacks, December 24, 2012
Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 368 pages

My name is Hedi Peacock and I have a secret. I’m not human, and I have the pointy Fae ears and Were inner-bitch to prove it. As fairy tales go, my childhood was damn near perfect, all fur and magic until a werewolf killed my father and the Fae executed my mother. I’ve never forgiven either side. Especially Robson Trowbridge. He was a part-time werewolf, a full-time bastard, and the first and only boy I ever loved. That is, until he became the prime suspect in my father’s death…

Today I’m a half-breed barista working at a fancy coffee house, living with my loopy Aunt Lou and a temperamental amulet named Merry, and wondering where in the world I’m going in life. A pretty normal existence, considering. But when a pack of Weres decides to kidnap my aunt and force me to steal another amulet, the only one who can help me is the last person I ever thought I’d turn to: Robson Trowbridge. And he’s as annoyingly beautiful as I remember. That’s the trouble with fate: Sometimes it barks. Other times it bites. And the rest of the time it just breaks your heart. Again…

The Trouble with Fate (UK)
Mystwalker 1
Tor, January 3, 2013
Paperback and eBook, 464 pages

SHE’S HALF FAE AND ALL TROUBLE

WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW MIGHT KILL HER: Hedi looks normal. Yet that’s taken effort. Her fellow Starbucks baristas don't see her pointed ears, fae amulet or her dark past, and normal is hard for a half-fae, half-werewolf on the run. Hedi’s life changed ten years ago, when her parents were murdered by unknown assassins. She’s been in hiding with her loopy aunt Lou since, as whatever they wanted she’s determined they won’t get it.

Things change when wolves capture Lou, forcing Hedi to steal to free her – for if she can offer up a fae amulet like her own they may trade. But it belongs to a rogue werewolf named Robson Trowbridge, who betrayed Hedi on the night of her greatest need. Over forty-eight hours, Hedi will face the weres of Creemore, discover the extent of her fae powers and possibly break her own heart in the process.

The Thing About Weres
Mystwalker 2
St. Martin's Paperbacks, July 30, 2013
Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 464 pages

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

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

I AM WERE, HEAR ME ROAR.

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

About Leigh

Leigh was born in Montreal, Quebec but now lives in Southern Ontario with her husband. She’s raised two kids, mothered three dogs, and herded a few cats. Other than that, her life was fairly routine until she hit the age of 50. Some women get tattoos. Leigh decided to write a book. A little tardy, but then again, her Mum always said she was a late bloomer.





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The Giveaway

THE RULES

What:  One commenter will win a US Mass Market Paperback copy of The Trouble with Fate (Mystwalker 1) from The Qwillery.

How:   Answer The Qwillery's Question:  


Please remember - if you don't answer the questions your entry will not be counted.

You may receive additional entries by:

1)   Being a Follower of The Qwillery.

2)   Mentioning the giveaway on Facebook and/or Twitter. Even if you mention the giveaway on both, you will get only one additional entry. You get only one additional entry even if you mention the giveaway on Facebook and/or Twitter multiple times.

There are a total of 3 entries you may receive: Comment (1 entry), Follower (+1 entry) and Facebook and/or Twitter (+ 1 entry).  This is subject to change again in the future for future giveaways.

Please leave links for Facebook or Twitter mentions. You MUST leave a way to contact you.

Who and When:  The contest is open to all humans on the planet earth with a mailing address. Contest ends at 11:59pm US Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 9, 2013. Void where prohibited by law. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 years old or older to enter.

Please welcome Alexa Egan to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Alexa's debut novel, Demon's Curse  (The Imnada Brotherhood 1) will be published on December 26, 2012. Awaken the Curse, an e-novella prequel, was published on November 20, 2012. You may read Alexa's Guest Blog - Writing Bass-Akwards - here.




TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

Alexa:  Thank you so much for inviting me as part of your debut author challenge. I’m incredibly excited to take part.


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Alexa:  Oh wow, I really wish I could say something great like I do all my writing in the bath amid the light of a thousand candles. Or I only write during the full moon or in months with an “R” in their name. Those would be quirks worth sharing. Unfortunately, the most quirky thing about me is the HUGE cup of coffee (or two) I need before I can sit down at my desk and the pens and notepads I have stashed all over my house and in my car for the moment inspiration strikes. Although, this time of year, I do bring my laptop down out of my office to write curled on the couch in front of the woodstove. It’s not candlelight, but it’s cozy.


TQ:  Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Alexa:  I could wax poetic for hours about my favorite writers from Jane Austen to Lois McMaster Bujold. I grew up a huge SF/F fan devouring McCaffrey, Lackey, Norton, Kay, and Vinge to name a few. But interspersed in there were tons of historicals from writers like Dunnett, Gabaldon, Cornwell, and Penman. And of course romance of any subgenre. I love Julia Quinn and Kristin Higgins, Karen Marie Moning and Hester Browne. I always come away thinking, “boy I want to write like that when I grow up.” Right now, I’m reading CS Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series…actually it would be more accurate to say gobbling. They’re fabulous!

I think every author I read influences my writing to some degree, and since I read across such a wide spectrum of genres, all of those influences jumbled together turned into my mash-up of paranormal-historical romance that became the Imnada Brotherhood and DEMON’S CURSE.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Alexa:  A definite pantser. When I begin a book, I have a bare bones premise and two characters I vaguely understand. The act of writing is what stirs my imagination, so outlining for me is completely useless. I don’t know my characters until they come alive on the page and the story I end up with is the story they tell. I just follow along behind with my laptop madly typing.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Alexa:  Definitely that following along madly typing thing we just talked about. It’s a challenge every time, especially when midway through the book my characters decide to take a detour and I have to grit my teeth and rewrite the first two hundred pages. I also need to relearn with every book that the story will only come when I surrender to that inevitable route change. When I struggle to keep to the path I set at the beginning, the words grind to a halt and the whiny panic and self-doubt begins.


TQ:  Describe Demon's Curse in 140 characters or less.

Alexa:  A star on the Covent Garden stage and one of the mysterious race of shapeshifting Imnada join forces to find a killer and break a curse.


TQ:  What inspired you to write Demon's Curse?

Alexa:  Don’t laugh, but my very first thought when coming up with the series was ‘why not have aliens in the regency?’. Needless to say, my agent was skeptical about little green men hanging with the beau monde. So I tweaked the idea a bit, added an Arthurian twist, two warring magical races, threw in a battle-toughened group of shapeshifting ex-soldiers, and…oh yeah…a really nasty curse.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Demon's Curse?

Alexa:  I spend most of my time making sure the Regency details are accurate. My office is floor to ceiling bookshelves and probably one-third of that space is devoted to information on the time period when my books are set; everything from military maps and travel guides to sources on food, architecture, fashion, and social mores of the era. For Mac and Bianca’s story, I spent a lot of time researching the theatre in general and Covent Garden in particular, including floor plans and biographies of actresses of the day.


TQ:  Tell us something about Demon's Curse that is not in the book description.

Alexa:  When writing the book, my inspiration for Mac Flannery came from a photo I found of Chris Evans (Captain America). Whether it was the pose or the expression on his face or just his extreme yumminess…I don’t know…but he became Mac, the shapechanger soldier who finds himself caught between duty to his race and the human woman he comes to love.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Alexa:  I always enjoy my secondary characters best. They seem to jump off the page with little effort on my part. Actually, I tend to have to put them on leashes to keep them from taking the story over. And in DEMON’S CURSE, there were lots of those types of characters to choose from. Lady Deane tried to hijack the book, especially in the early drafts when she was channeling Tallulah Bankhead. Mac’s smart-ass best friend David St. Leger tried horning in from time to time. And then there’s the mysterious Badb. My cp’s are dying to hear her story.

Mac was the hardest to write because he derived completely from my imagination. I had no built-in reader knowledge to fall back on. I had to explain everything about his character and his world and do it without sounding like an encyclopedia entry.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Demon's Curse?

Alexa:  I love the prologue when we witness the devastating attack that triggered the curse. Mac and the other shifters have been taught to hide what they are at all costs, but in following the laws of their clan, they’re struck down by a curse and end up outcasts from the very society they killed to protect. The whole scene rolled off my pen effortlessly from start to finish and really summed up the personalities and motivations of the four main characters.


TQ:  What's next?

Alexa:  The second book, SHADOW’S CURSE is complete and due out in the fall of 2013. Captain David St. Leger is trapped into helping a beautiful necromancer flee north to her family, but his good deed sets an Imnada assassin, a Fey-blood gang lord, and a carnival knife thrower on his tail. If he survives, he might discover a way to break the curse. If he dies, he might find true love.

I’m also working on a novella which will come out about a month prior to Shadows where we find out how Sebastian Commin, the Earl of Deane wooed and won the heart of London actress Sarah Hayes.

And AWAKEN THE CURSE, the novella that began the series is still available for a mere 99 cents anywhere e-books are sold.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Alexa:  Thank you for having me. I want to wish everyone a magical and memorable holiday. I hope to hear from lots of you in the coming year, letting me know what you thought of my Regency shifters.




About The Imnada Brotherhood

Demon's Curse
The Imnada Brotherhood 1
Pocket Books, December 26, 2012
Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

She holds the key . . .

One of the mythical race of shape-shifting Imnada and a member of an elite military unit, Captain Mac Flannery suffers under a ruthless curse. As the result of a savage massacre on the eve of Waterloo, he and the men he served with are forced to live the hours of darkness trapped as their animal aspects. Now one of them has been murdered, and Mac suspects the existence of the Imnada may finally have been discovered. His only link to unearthing the truth—Bianca Parrino, the beautiful actress whom every man desires.

. . . to his forbidden desires

Forging a new life for herself after escaping the clutches of her abusive husband, Bianca is again drawn into violence when a dear friend is brutally murdered and she becomes a suspect. Forced to place her trust and her life in Mac’s hands as they flee a determined killer, Bianca cannot deny she is falling for the mysterious soldier. But will his dark secrets tear them asunder? Or will love be the key to breaking even the cruelest of spells?

Awaken the Curse
The Imnada Brotherhood
Pocket Star, November 20, 2012
eBook, 100 pages

One very passionate and very scandalous kiss separated university student James Farraday and professor’s daughter Katherine Lacey. Now five years later, James, the new Lord Duncallan, receives an unexpected summons from Kate’s father begging him to come to Wales. When James arrives, he finds Professor Lacey has vanished while studying a mysterious ancient obelisk and everyone blames the nightwalkers; sinister creatures said to haunt the surrounding remote Welsh mountains. Do these legends point to the existence of the Imnada; a race of shape-shifters said to have died off a thousand years ago? Or is the professor’s disappearance the result of a very human villain? James and Kate are determined to find out the truth, knowing it may be the only way to find her father.

Even as they work to unravel the mystery, they find that they’re not the only ones interested in the obelisk and the lost race of Imnada. Treasure hunter Gilles d’Espe believes the ancient dolmen is the focal point of the shape-shifters’ power and would do anything to lay his hands on the last of four silver disks he needs to unlock the dolmen. A disk that hangs around the neck of James Farraday. While Cade, a local villager, is determined to refute both the claims of nightwalker sightings and the power of the dolmen as superstitious nonsense.

James and Kate soon find themselves fighting for their lives. Yet every hour they spend together makes it harder to lay aside the bitterness of the past and a very new and very real temptation…

About Alexa

Alexa Egan lives in Maryland with a husband who’s waiting impatiently for her fame and fortune to support them in a new and lavish lifestyle, three children for whom she serves as chauffeur, cook, nurse, social secretary, banker, and maid (not necessarily in that order), one cat … and twenty-seven fish. You can find her at www.AlexaEgan.com, friend her at www.Facebook.com/AlexaEganBooks or follow her at www.Twitter.com/AlexaEganBooks.




THE GIVEAWAY

THE RULES

What:  One commenter will win a Mass Market Paperback copy of Demon's Curse (The Imnada Brotherhood 1) from The Qwillery.

How:   Answer The Qwillery's Question: 


Please remember - if you don't answer the questions your entry will not be counted.

You may receive additional entries by:

1)   Being a Follower of The Qwillery.

2)   Mentioning the giveaway on Facebook and/or Twitter. Even if you mention the giveaway on both, you will get only one additional entry. You get only one additional entry even if you mention the giveaway on Facebook and/or Twitter multiple times.

There are a total of 3 entries you may receive: Comment (1 entry), Follower (+1 entry) and Facebook and/or Twitter (+ 1 entry).  This is subject to change again in the future for future giveaways.

Please leave links for Facebook or Twitter mentions. You MUST leave a way to contact you.

Who and When:  The contest is open to all humans on the planet earth with a mailing address. Contest ends at 11:59pm US Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 2, 2013. Void where prohibited by law. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 years old or older to enter.

Please welcome Trey Garrison to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Trey's debut novel, The Spear of Destiny, will be published in 3 e-parts starting in December 2012. A print version will follow. You may read Trey's Guest Blog - On zombies, Nazis, robots and cowboys: Writing the book was the easy part - here.

The first part, Black Sun Reich, is out on December 18, 2012.






TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery.

Trey:  Thank you. It’s a great site and I love the dedication you bring. I love your mission and the fact that you give debut novelists a platform.


TQ:  Writing quirks! What are some of yours?

Trey:  When I’m writing, I don’t read other fiction. I ended up with a stack of books I’m still working through.

This manuscript took six months – January 2010 through the end of June, and about 75 percent of the time my Chihuahua, Harley, was sitting on my lap while I wrote.

I have a man-cave office full of all my favorite sports and comics paraphernalia, as well as action figures and posters that relate to the manuscript. But I almost never write in there. I write in a lounger in the den.

I end up buying props and things that are in the book. I bought a model of the airplane I based the Raposa on, as well as a vintage Flying Tigers patch and blood chit that I had sewn on a bomber jacket. I don’t know if it helped, but it was just something I felt compelled to do.

I also have a stack of 3x5 index cards bound with a rubber band. I have it with me all the time. I take down notes, lines of dialog that occur to me, or even scenes I want to flesh out later.


TQ:   Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Trey:  The list is long. In terms of thrillers, humor and science fiction, I’m a big fan of Robert Heinlein, James P. Hogan, Poul Anderson, Harry Turtledove, S.M. Stirling, F. Paul Wilson, L. Neil Smith, Ayn Rand, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Greg Rucka, Mike Resnick, Vernor Vinge, Robert Anton Wilson, John Kennedy Toole, George R.R. Martin, George Mann, John Ringo, Christopher Buckley, and Brad Thor. (I know, it’s all over the place.) Of course there’s the grandfathers, Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury.

I really like how Vernor Vinge’s primary heroes resolve their conflicts not necessarily with who has the biggest gun, but using ideas, free trade and smarts. Likewise is the case with Poul Anderson’s technic series, with Nicholas Van Rijn as a merchant hero. In fact, one of my characters is a salute to Old Nick.

Finally, even though this book is based on some of the classic tropes of pulp adventure, I like turning what the reader expects on its ear. An example from another medium would be how Joss Whedon wrote my favorite TV series “Firefly.”


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Trey:  I tried making a detailed outline of the plot, and overall I generally stuck to it, but at least for me a story is a living entity that takes on its own life as it unfolds. A lot of the storyline flowed naturally from what I was writing, so the outline became more of a suggestion than a hard guide.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Trey:  Getting started on a daily basis. Once I get started it’s easy but resolving to actually start each day is a hurdle.

The thing is, no one told me that writing the manuscript was the easy part for a first time novelist. The real hard work began trying to get an agent to give me a read. I actually knew the man who ultimately became my agent, David Hale Smith, before I started all this. We’d even worked together on a few non-fiction projects. But selling him on investing his time in my novel was still an uphill battle. Of course, he’s a great agent because he’s so discriminating, and his initial notes really helped me upgrade my manuscript to a much higher level than it started.

Likewise my editor at Harper Collins, Will Hinton, really pushed me hard, and where the novel is strongest it likely is where he had the biggest influence. It was hard work, but well worth it. It’s a much better story than my first draft.


TQ:  Describe The Spear of Destiny in 140 characters or less.

Trey:  It’s an alternate history adventure series with elements of dieselpunk and unapologetic, old-fashioned fun. And it’s got Nazis, zombies, robots and cowboys.


TQ:  What inspired you to write The Spear of Destiny?

Trey:  I love the intensity of stuff like the Bourne movie series, but when you’re done you feel like you’ve been through a wringer. I remembered how I felt when I was a kid seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, and how I came out of the theater excited and ready to take on my own adventure. I wanted to recapture that kind of fun in a story, and have a hero who was realistic but still imbued with the old-fashioned virtues that predate the rise of the anti-hero. He may not always live up to those virtues, but he certainly strives to.

I guess the bigger picture was that I love writing, but after almost 20 years writing for newspapers and magazines, I was ready to get away from non-fiction and make my mark. This isn’t serious literature and I have no pretensions about writing the Great American Novel – it’s just what I hope is a fun adventure yarn.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Spear of Destiny?

Trey:  I think readers are actually more forgiving of anachronisms in historical fiction than in alternate history fiction. You have to create a world that is plausible and consistent. I always was fascinated by the 1920s and the prosperity it saw, like they saw in Hong Kong under John Cowperthwaite. It was a time of great societal revolution and changing mores owing to the automobile and other technology and social causes. It was a time of individuality and individual rights grew for everyone, but at the same time you saw the horrible, statist idea of prohibition.

I immersed myself in the advertising, the music, the fashion, and the journalism of the era. It might be a throwaway description, but I wanted to have the characters dressed in the right kind of clothes, using the right lingo, and employing the technology of the time – although of course being an alternate history I had plenty of room to play around.

I included a large number of real historical figures as both supporting characters and antagonists, so I had to research a lot about each of them. I also had to speculate on what the Third Reich might have been like had the Beer Hall Putsch been successful, which allowed me to keep the story in the 1920s but still have the Nazis as the adversaries.

Some of the social commentary about how the cowboy way was the first truly multicultural push comes directly from real history. The cowboy skills needed were so in demand no rancher cared whether his hands were white, black or Hispanic. And one of my primary characters is a gay man. In the 1920s, homosexuality wasn’t the big deal it is today. The top box office draw of the time was William Haines, who was openly gay and living with his boyfriend. No one cared. (If anything, I hope people understand that my use of old terms that were common then but offensive now is simply going for verisimilitude – Negro for black people and “pansy clubs” for the gay bars of the time, for example. I trust the readers to get it.)

I really enjoyed exploring the Roma culture. They’re a fascinating people that usually get badly treated by writers. Learning their mythologies, philosophies and lifestyle was a gas. I get where they’re coming from.

The one thing I dislike about the majority of alternate history is that almost invariably the writers bring things around to status quo ante – the South is victorious but ultimately succumbs to reunification, America eventually gets free of British rule by the 20th Century after missing their chance in 1776, and so on. I say let it ride. Let’s look at a really different world without some divine sense of fate bringing things around to how the real world is.

Overall, alternative history is like jazz, I guess. You have to know the rules and the fundamentals before you can riff on anything. You have to have plausible reasons that history went this way instead of that. You have to know these people to speculate how they would have been if things had been different.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Trey:  I always had a fear of writing fiction because ultimately every character is an extension of the writer, to one degree or another. I didn’t want people to think I was as screwed up in the head as some of the worst villains in my story. I disturbed myself with some of the scenes involving the telepathic sadist Der Schadel, which I think is ultimately a good sign since that was the purpose and the intent of the character. I wanted to establish early on that the stakes were high. While this was at heart a fun adventure, writing his scenes was emotionally taxing.

The doctor, Kurt von Deitel, is the reader’s avatar into this alternate history. Through his eyes you get a sense of how different this world is, without boring exposition. He’s also the anchor to reality in scenes with the primary hero, who is larger than life in many ways. Rucker is the kind of man I strive to be, but the doctor is a more realistic extension of my own frustrations and insecurities. Writing Deitel was a blast because of this, and because he brings a certain dour sense of humor and an amusing, nebbish sense of persecution to the story.

Otto Skorzeny was fun too, as he was a mirror image of Fox Rucker, a very charismatic and honorable soldier even though he was on the wrong side. The real Skorzeny was larger than life. A supporting character, Charlie Almond, is my nod to one of my favorite characters, Charlie Allnut from “The African Queen.”


TQ:   Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in The Spear of Destiny?

Trey:  I think all the scenes with dialogue, action and argument between Fox Rucker and Deitel were my favorites. They’re so very different and they don’t get along much, and that conflict makes it compelling and opens the door to a lot of the humor. In a way, the doctor is the primary hero of the story because undergoes the most dramatic metamorphosis of any character, growing far beyond what he starts as. Rucker is the catalyst for that change.


TQ:  What's next?

Trey:  Holy cow, I have to write a sequel. It’s part of a two-book deal. It’s actually something I look forward to because I love the world and the characters I created for the first book, and I want to explore more of that world in the second book. I hope readers enjoy this other world as much as I enjoyed creating it. I hope this is received well enough for an ongoing series.


TQ:   Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Trey:  I really appreciate the time you take to do this. I think all us first timers really enjoy the opportunity and exposure you give. Thank you for inviting me into the fold.

TQ:  My pleasure!




The Spear of Destiny

Black Sun Reich
The Spear of Destiny: Part One
HarperVoyager, December 18, 2012
eBook, 100 pages

Black Sun Reich: Part One of three in The Spear of Destiny, the first novel in a new steampunk, horror, alternate history, action-adventure series set in a 1920s where the Nazis have begun their subjugation of the world using the occult, advanced science, and a holy relic with awesome powers.

And don't miss the other parts of this serialized novel—Part Two: Death's Head Legion and Part Three: Shadows Will Fall.

Trey Garrison recaptures the unapologetic adventure, wonder, and excitement of the classic pulp fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, blending elements of steampunk with deeply researched historical fiction and a good dose of humor. The novel also explores major philosophical and moral issues relevant to our contemporary world: the trade-off between security and liberty, the morality of preemptive war, and what fundamentally separates good from evil.

The North American continent is made up of several rival nations, and a Cold War is building among them. The Nazis rose to power a decade ago. People travel by airship, and powerful organizations calculate with Babbage's Difference Engine. The Nazis have hatched a plot to raise a legion of undead soldiers.

Enter Sean Fox Rucker and Jesus D'Anconia Lago, two Great War veterans and freelance pilots who are pulled into the quest. They are joined by a brash Greek merchant, a brilliant Jewish cowboy, and the woman who once broke Rucker's heart. This ragtag band of reluctant, bickering, swashbuckling heroes is soon locked in a globe-spanning race against Nazi occultists, clockwork assassins, and a darkly charismatic commando. In a world where science and the supernatural coexist, and the monsters of legend are as real as the necromancers who summon them from murky realms, our heroes alone stand before the rising shadows. But all their efforts may not be enough.

The Spear of Destiny, Parts Two and Three:








About Trey

     Trey Garrison has been a newspaperman, a magazine writer, and a soldier of misfortune. Trey’s secret identity is working as a mild-mannered journalist, editor, humorist, consultant, and part-time sybarite. Maybe the best word to describe him is racontrepreneur. Currently he is director of communications for a foundation based in Dallas that promotes free market solutions and free enterprise.
      Trey’s work has appeared in a number of publications, often with his consent and sometimes with his knowledge. He’s been a contributor and editor for D Magazine — considered among the best city magazines in the United States — and for Reason magazine, the national magazine that promotes free minds and free markets. Trey has been a special contributor for The Dallas Morning News and a field reporter for The Land Report.
     He’s a master in the kitchen, great at the gun range, and decent at Kung Fu. He lives in Texas. This is his first novel.
     His blog is www.treygarrison.com and you can pre-order THE SPEAR OF DESTINY here: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Black-Sun-Reich-Trey-Garrison?isbn=9780062261250&HCHP=TB_Black+Sun+Reich

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Please welcome Cecy Robson to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews and The Weird Girls Blog Tour!  Sealed With A Curse (The Weird Girls 1) will be published on December 31st. The Weird Girls (an eNovella) was published on December 4th.  You may read Cecy's Guest Blog - Bedtime Tales - here






TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

Cecy:  Hello, Sally. Thank you for having me!


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Cecy:  That would be acting out my action scenes. My husband has walked in on me throwing myself on the floor more than once. He once helped me work out a scene where my protagonist, Celia, impales a vampire with a fence post. My husband really got into playing the role of the vampire.


TQ:  Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Cecy:  I have a non-sexual crush on Harry Dresden, therefore Jim Butcher is one of my favs. I love Mercy Thompson’s trials and tribulations―Patricia Briggs really knows how to write beautiful pain. I also just started reading Karen Marie Moning. The woman is amazing. My greatest influence comes from my love of the Urban Fantasy genre.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Cecy:  I used to be a panster. The problem was my over-active imagination kicked into high gear and I’d forget all about the important things like the plot. ; )


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Cecy:  Probably finding the time and quiet. I currently work as a labor nurse and I’m also a mother of three busy children.


TQ:  Describe Sealed with a Curse in 140 characters or less.

Cecy:  One backfired curse. Four unique sisters. The supernatural world is about to get body-slammed.


TQ:  What inspired you to write Sealed with a Curse?

Cecy:  Heh, heh, heh. My editor at Penguin, Jhanteigh Kupihea. When my agent submitted the original WEIRD GIRLS novel, she felt too much happened and suggested I take the first three chapters and make that my new book one. That novel turned into SEALED WITH A CURSE.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Sealed with a Curse?

Cecy:  I had to learn a great deal about Lake Tahoe region since I’ve never been there―the weather, environment, area restaurants, and tourist attractions. It sounds like a beautiful area.


TQ:  Tell us something about Sealed with a Curse that is not in the book description.

Cecy:  The girls are half Latina, half Caucasian, and the cast is multi-cultural.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Cecy:  Celia is the easiest because I’ve written almost four and a half books about her―so I’ve been in her “head” the most. Gemini, my Japanese werewolf, is probably the hardest since he’s the strong silent type and his creator tends to be a yapper.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Sealed with a Curse?

Cecy:  I think I have to say when the girls get a strong dose of what’s happening and finally decide to get involved. It’s a beautiful / sad / tense moment with just them that highlights their fears and love for each other.


TQ:  What's next?

Cecy:  A CURSED EMBRACE releases on July 2nd, followed by CURSED BY DESTINY in January 2014. I’m rewriting A CURSED BLOODLINE, Celia’s fourth novel. If the series does well, I’m hoping WEIRD GIRLS, Book 5, will be Taran’s book. I’ve also just written a proposal for my OLD ERTH series, a high fantasy category romance my agent will be shopping soon.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Cecy:  Thank you, Sally. You’re always so gracious.





About The Weird Girls

Sealed with a Curse
The Weird Girls 1
Signet Eclipse, December 31, 2012
Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 368 pages

Celia Wird and her three sisters are just like other 20-something girls—with one tiny exception: they're products of a backfired curse that has given each of them unique powers that make them, well, weird…

The Wird sisters are content to avoid the local vampires, werebeasts, and witches of the Lake Tahoe region—until one of them blows up a vampire in self-defense. Everyone knows vampires aren't aggressive, and killing one is punishable by death. But soon more bloodlust-fueled attacks occur, and the community wonders: are the vampires of Tahoe cursed with a plague?

Celia reluctantly agrees to help Misha, the handsome leader of an infected vampire family. But Aric, the head of the werewolf pack determined to destroy Misha's family to keep the region safe, warns Celia to stay out of the fight. Caught between two hot alphas, Celia must find a way to please everyone, save everyone, and oh yeah, not lose her heart to the wrong guy—or die a miserable death. Because now that the evil behind the plague knows who Celia is, it’s coming for her and her sisters. This Wird girl has never had it so tough.

The Weird Girls
Signet Eclipse, December 4, 2012
eNovella

Celia Wird and her three sisters are just like other 20-something girls—with one tiny exception: they're products of a backfired curse that has given each of them unique powers that make them, well, a little weird…

The Wird sisters are different from every race on earth—human and supernatural. When human society is no longer an option for them, they move in among the resident vampires, werebeasts, and witches of the Lake Tahoe region. Could this be the true home they’ve longed for? Um, not quite. After the sisters accidentally strip a witch of her powers in a bar brawl, they soon realize the mistake will cost them. Because to take on a witch means to take on her coven. And losing the battle isn’t an option.

Includes a preview of the first full-length novel in the Weird Girls series, Sealed with a Curse—as well as introductions to the Weird World, and a letter from the author.

About Cecy

Cecy (pronounced Sessy) Robson is an author with Penguin's SIGNET ECLIPSE. She attributes her passion for story-telling back to the rough New Jersey neighborhood she was raised in. As a child, she was rarely allowed to leave the safety of her house and passed her time fantasizing about flying, fairies, and things that go bump in the night. Her dad unwittingly encouraged Cecy's creativity by kissing her goodnight wearing vampire fangs. Gifted and cursed with an overactive imagination, she began writing her Urban Fantasy Romance Series, Weird Girls, in May 2009. THE WEIRD GIRLS: A Novella, debuts December 4, 2012 followed by SEALED WITH A CURSE, December 31, 2012, and A CURSED EMBRACE, July 2, 2013.

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Please welcome Melissa F. Olson to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Guest Blogs. Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard 1) was published on October 30, 2012.








It’s easy, when writing about vampires, werewolves, and witches, to find yourself committing literary teleportation. As a culture we’ve been consuming entertainment about these creatures for hundreds of years: we’ve seen the movies, we’ve read the books, we’ve bought the delicious marshmallowy cereal. The rules of supernatural mythology are always going to be a bit flexible – some werewolves transform only at the full moon, for example, while others can do it whenever they want – but there is definitely a well-established archetype, an impression, that we all carry for each creature, and it’s so easy to just insert that guy into your work. Bam! Dracula Cullen is teleported into my new book. Easy peasy.

When I began writing my urban fantasy novel, Dead Spots, I realized that the real challenge isn’t just building a world – it’s escaping the archetype. It’s hard enough to write an original, believable, three-dimensional human character. How do you turn such well-known monsters into realistic people who became monsters? This has all been done so many times, in so many ways: how can I, as a twenty-first century writer, possibly turn out something that hasn’t been done a thousand times by people who are better and more experienced? It’s really very daunting.

The plan that I came up with was this: go back to basics. As I began writing Dead Spots, I sat down and asked myself what felt like a very silly question: If I were a 200-year-old vampire, what would I want? I know, I know – it sounds so rudimentary it’s stupid. But it’s actually a pretty tough question, because entertainment has been so saturated with vampires, that we’ve gotten pretty far away from a basic literary element like motivation.

So let’s stop and think. We all dream of doing things in our lifetimes, but we always consider what we can do within a human lifetime. If you don’t die or even age anymore, what happens when you’ve crossed off everything on your bucket list? You’ve learned languages, traveled (sunlight permitting), acquired riches, read books, secured a blood supply, etc. Then what? What exactly do you want to do with your eternity? Wait around for the next season of Dexter?

I have to tell you, that one simple question made me consider vampires differently. In other books and movies, the vampires seem to want power and blood. World domination, maybe. But when you really think about it, doesn’t world domination seem kind of…exhausting? Not to mention overexposed. Vampires are a parasitic species, after all. They’re predators who have evolved to hide in the shadows and take what they need. And for all their power, they’re also very, very vulnerable. It doesn’t matter how old or how many you are – you have to die, or at least sleep, during the day. There will always be that weakness, and it just doesn’t fit with a dictator/puppetmaster kind of lifestyle.

So I made the decision that my main vampire, Dashiell, wasn’t interested in ruling the world, or starting a human blood farm, or finding a cure, or any of that other nonsense. Like most vampires in my book, he has a great emptiness inside him, because when you’ve lost everyone and everything from your human life, you can’t help but lose some of your humanity, too. But in my world, that’s not the same thing as not having a soul—or a calling. Dashiell is the most powerful vampire in Los Angeles, and he has some old-fashioned ideas about power and responsibility. He makes it his mission to protect all of the weaker vampires in the city. That’s what he wants. But I didn’t figure that out until I sat down, held very still, and started asking stupid questions.

Once I had the vampire, it got easier. In my world, all three factions of the supernatural have a leader, and all three leaders are committed, above anything else, to taking care of their people. And I’d like to think that helps to –for lack of a better word – humanize them a little. Whenever I find myself picturing a shadowy, good-looking guy sneaking around in the dark with his fangs out, or a slobbering, uncontrollable wolf-monster, or a Disney-style wicked witch, I stop what I’m doing and think about the character’s actual, reality-based motivation.

After all…supernatural creatures are people, too.






About Dead Spots

Dead Spots
Scarlett Bernard 1
47North, October 30, 2012
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 293 pages

Scarlett Bernard knows about personal space: step within ten feet of her, and any supernatural spells or demonic forces are instantly defused—vampires and werewolves become human again, and witches can’t get out so much as a “hocus pocus.” This special skill makes her a null and very valuable to Los Angeles’s three most powerful magical communities, who utilize her ability to scrub crime scenes clean of all traces of the paranormal to keep humanity, and the LAPD, in the dark.

But one night Scarlett’s late arrival to a grisly murder scene reveals her agenda and ends with LAPD’s Jesse Cruz tracking her down to strike a deal: he’ll keep quiet about the undead underworld if she helps solve the case. Their pact doesn’t sit well with Dash, the city’s chief bloodsucker, who fears his whole vampire empire is at stake. And when clues start to point to Scarlett, it’ll take more than her unique powers to catch the real killer and clear her name.

About Melissa

Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and studied film and literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. So…culture shock. Never one for beer or cheese, anyway, Melissa came to love her new city, especially the climate, the movie-watching opportunities, and the food, pretty much in that order. After graduation, and a brief stint bouncing around the Hollywood Studio System, Melissa proved too broke for LA and moved to glorious Madison, WI, where she eventually acquired a master’s degree from UW-Milwaukee, a husband, a mortgage, two kids, and two comically oversized dogs, not at all in that order. She loves Madison and it’s proximity to her family, but still dreams of the food in LA. Literally. There are dreams.

Her work has been published in the Daily Trojan, the Chippewa Falls Herald Telegram, The International Journal of Comic Art, The La Crosse Tribune, U-Wire, Women on Writing.com, and the upcoming compilation The Universal Vampire. She has also presented or been on panels at the Midwest Popular Culture/American Culture Conference, the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Conference, and OdysseyCon 2012.

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Please welcome Nancy Northcott to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Renegade (The Protectors 1) was published on November 6th (eBook) and will be published on December 18th in Trade Paperback.



TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery.

Nancy:  Thanks, Sally. I’m delighted to be here!


TQ:  Writing quirks! What are some of yours?

Nancy:  I write in spurts. I do a lot of planning in my head and then can usually turn out a fair number of pages at a sitting. Then I plan some more, then write some more, and so on.

I’m a night owl. I like to write late at night when the house is quiet.

When I get stuck on a plot point, I sometimes play Tetris on our old Nintendo 64 console while my subconscious works out the problem.


TQ:   Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Nancy:  There are so many authors on my keeper shelves that it’s tough to single out just a few.

Georgette Heyer made Regency England come alive for me. Even though her books would be G-rated, the people and their conflicts are clearly depicted. Kathleen Woodiwiss’s Shanna showed me hotter side to the genre and remains one of my favorite books. Ruark and Shanna ride an emotional roller coaster through the story.

J.R.R. Tolkien set the standard for sweeping plots, big stakes, and fantasy worldbuilding. So does Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Vorkosigan series takes up a lot of my shelf space. Bujold doesn’t incorporate a lot of romance, but the relationships she does build are wonderful.

I hope I’ve learned something from each of these authors.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Nancy:  I’m a plotter with a heavy dose of pantser improvisation. I like to have a road map, but I’m open to appealing detours.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Staying within the confines of a particular genre or subgenre has always been difficult for me, so I’m glad to see genre lines starting to blur a bit. Renegade is a primarily a romance, but it has a lot of action and detailed fantasy worldbuilding.


TQ:  Describe Renegade (The Protectors 1) in 140 characters or less.

Nancy:  Contemporary paranormal romantic suspense with a lot of action and wrenching emotion.


TQ:  What inspired you to write Renegade?

Nancy:  The idea probably came from a lot of different places. I’ve loved comic books and superheroes since grade school, and mages are much like superheroes. I’ve always enjoyed action and adventure, which drew me to epic fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, and thrillers. The loner hero battling to see justice done has always held a lot of appeal for me, and the hero of Renegade, Griffin Dare is in that tradition.

Such heroes need allies, so I gave him some in the best fantasy and comic book tradition. The secrecy of the mages was also inspired by comic book super-heroes and their secret identities.

A romance hero, of course, needs a heroine, but I like stories that put the hero and heroine at odds. I didn’t want them to be immediate, natural allies, so he’s a fugitive and she is the sheriff of the southeastern mages.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Renegade?

Nancy:  To build the world, I read Wicca, folklore, and New Age materials and talked to people who’re interested in those fields. I talked to artists about Griff’s painting skills and to a Latin professor about the mages’ use of Latin imperatives. I also had help with arming and transporting the mages. For medical questions, I turned to some friends who are doctors and to the two nurses who blog with me.

To find out about southern Georgia and the Okefenokee Swamp, I used the internet, which meant making some things vague. I’m willing to trust long-distance research only so much. When I finally saw the swamp, in May, I fell in love with the beauty of it. I brought a lot of ideas back with me.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Nancy:  The easiest character was Val. Because she’s the shire reeve, the mage equivalent of a sheriff, she’s initially very rule-oriented, and I tend to be that way, too. The opening scene in the book, which is hers, is the first one that appeared in my head.

The hardest character was the villain. I won’t use the name because I don’t want to spoil the plot. It’s difficult for me to create a character who’s doing something I see as so very wrong and yet find a way for the character to consider it a good thing. I think it’s important that every character consider his or her actions not only justifiable but necessary.


TQ:   Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Renegade?

Nancy:  Hmm. I have several favorites. One of them is the last scene in Chapter 3. It’s a fight scene, which is always a fun thing to write, with an important aftermath.

I like the character introductions in Chapter 4. That’s also our first look at the town of Wayfarer, and I enjoyed creating that community.


TQ:  What's next?

Nancy:  I’m doing revisions on Protector, a novella scheduled for March 2013. Its title plays off the series title, The Protectors, and I think of it as Protectors 1.5. It’s about a wildland firefighter and a helicopter pilot, both mages, who almost got together three years ago but think it’s maybe for the best they didn’t. They believe they’ve put their attraction behind them until they meet again while fighting a wildfire.

The second book in the series, Guardian, is scheduled for May 2013. I’m finishing those revisions now. It features Stefan Harper from Renegade and the FBI agent he once hoped to marry. They meet again when he’s called in to consult on a murder case she’s working. The attraction between them has persisted, to their mutual dismay, but the secrets and fears that drove them apart before still stand in their way.

I just returned from a research trip to the Okefenokee Swamp and am looking at ways to build the series from here. I have six, maybe seven, books planned, but there’s always the chance there will be more.

Thank you for having me as a guest at the Qwillery!

TQ:  My pleasure!




About Renegade

Renegade
The Protectors 1
Grand Central Publishing , November 6, 2012 (eBook)
December 18, 2012 (Trade Paperback)
Trade Paperback and eBook, 384 pages

SHE FOLLOWS THE RULES

As the Collegium council's top sheriff of the southeastern United States, Valeria Banning doesn't just take her job seriously, she takes it personally. So when a notorious traitor wanted by the authorities suddenly risks his life to save hers, she has to wonder why.

HE BREAKS EVERY ONE OF THEM

As a mage, Griffin is sworn to protect innocents from dark magic, which is how he finds himself fighting side by side with the beautiful Valeria Banning. But when the council finds out the two have been working together, they're both left running for their lives-from the law, the threat of a ghoul takeover, and a possible Collegium mole.

About Nancy

Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman. Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy and YA romance. A sucker for fast action and wrenching emotion, Nancy combines the romance and high stakes she loves in her new contemporary mage series.

Married since 1987, she considers herself lucky to have found a man doesn’t mind carrying home a suitcase full of research books. Nancy and her husband have one son, a bossy dog, and a house full of books.


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Please welcome A.J. Colucci to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Colony, A.J.'s debut, is published today. Happy Publication Day to A.J.! You may read A.J.'s Guest Blog - Truth is Stranger than Fiction - here.






TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery.

A.J.:  Thanks for inviting me, Sally.


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

A.J.:  Probably the way I take notes. I’ve got pads and pencils stashed all over my house and in my car. Ideas strike me at the oddest moments and I often get up late at night and start scribbling in the dark. About half of every book is written in longhand. I don’t know why but there’s something about putting pen to paper that makes the writing deeper, more visceral.


TQ:  Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

A.J.:  I started reading mysteries as a kid, Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and books by Agatha Christie. I’d go nuts trying to solve the mystery before the end. Later, I was really drawn to science and horror and read a lot of King and Crichton. Those books, and novels like Jaws, gave me a sense of what is truly frightening; real-life monsters. A lot of my favorite thriller authors today are people I’ve gotten to know at conferences; James Rollins, Steve Berry, Paul McEuen, Mark Alpert. I’ve met some amazing writers.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

A.J.:  I just finished a 100-page outline of my new book, so I’m definitely going with plotter! I like to know what works in the story and what doesn’t before I start writing, so I can make all necessary changes and not waste time rewriting a novel. The Colony took five years and probably 80 rewrites, and I won’t do that again. Some authors don’t like to know what’s going to happen next, but I think the real excitement comes from bringing the story to life and developing the characters. With an outline, I rarely get writers block.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

A.J.:  Having to stop. I try to sit down at my computer early in the morning when the kids go off to school and work until they get home. But sometimes life gets in the way and I have to grab an hour of writing here and an hour there, which can be frustrating. It takes me at least twenty minutes to get in the zone, where the words come easily and I’m not aware of anything but the story.


TQ:  Describe The Colony in 140 characters or less.

I think Publishers Weekly summed it up well. “New York City comes under attack from a vicious new species of ant in Colucci's exciting thriller debut…Michael Crichton fans will hope that this is but the first of many such outings from the author's pen.” Okay, it’s a little longer, but what a nice review.


TQ:  What inspired you to write The Colony?

A.J.:  I was watching a Discovery Channel special on killer ants. In the opening scene, army ants swarm a campsite and you can hear a baby screaming from the tent. Of course, the baby was saved, but the program got creepier by the minute. Towards the end, an organized mob of African driver ants plowed over a field killing everything in sight, including the farmers chicken, and I was sold.


TQ:  What sorts of research did you do for The Colony? What is one of the oddest things that you found?

A.J.:  I write about scientific subjects I initially know nothing about, so it’s a challenge. Fortunately I’m a research junkie and don’t mind spending one thousand hours studying things like ant morphology, pheromones and swarm intelligence. One of the oddest discoveries I made was the social parasitism of the slave-maker ant. Once the queen mates, she will fake her own death to entice ants from other colonies to drag her to their nest. Once inside, she’ll kill their queen and roll around in her scent, fooling the other ants taking over the colony. She’ll start laying her own eggs and as her soldiers mature, they emerge to attack other nests, tearing ants apart limb-by-limb and scurrying off with thousands of eggs to be made into new slaves.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

A.J.:  Paul was the easiest. I like dual-natured characters at war with themselves. He’s super-intelligent, yet he’s not adept at basic life skills. He has a huge ego, but his confidence plummets when the ants take over the city. He goes through a lot of personal growth, and I think it’s this transcendence that makes him interesting. Kendra was more difficult. I had to fight the urge to make her an invincible super-hero. It was important to me that she was realistic, as a scientist and a human being.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in The Colony?

A.J.:  Towards the end, Kendra becomes trapped in an air duct with a swarm of angry ants on her trail. She’s painfully claustrophobic like me, and I had to image how it felt to go through that experience. I remembered having an MRI scan years ago and I panicked. My heart was racing and I got dizzy. The doctor actually had to let me out without the scan. Just writing that scene gave me a small anxiety attack.


TQ:  What's next?

A.J.:  I’m going to continue giving nature a voice. I’m intrigued by the idea that other creatures might have intelligence we’ve ignore, simply because we measure intelligence on a human scale. My next book is another science thriller that also deals with nature gone awry. But it’s scarier, darker. It even gives me the creeps.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

A.J.:  Thank you too.




About The Colony

The Colony
Thomas Dunne Books, November 13, 2012
Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages

A series of gruesome attacks have been sweeping New York City. A teacher in Harlem and two sanitation workers on Wall Street are found dead, their swollen bodies nearly dissolved from the inside out. The predator is a deadly supercolony of ants--an army of one trillion soldiers with razor-sharp claws that pierce skin like paper and stinging venom that liquefies its prey.

The desperate mayor turns to the greatest ant expert in the world, Paul O’Keefe, a Pulitzer Prize–winning scientist in an Armani suit. But Paul is baffled by the ants. They are twice the size of any normal ant and have no recognizable DNA. They’re vicious in the field yet docile in the hand. Paul calls on the one person he knows can help destroy the colony, his ex-wife Kendra Hart, a spirited entomologist studying fire ants in the New Mexico desert. Kendra is taken to a secret underground bunker in New York City, where she finds herself working side by side with her brilliant but arrogant ex-husband and a high-ranking military officer hell-bent on stopping the insects with a nuclear bomb.

When the ants launch an all-out attack, Paul and Kendra hit the dangerous, panic-stricken streets of New York, searching for a coveted queen. It’s a race to unlock the secrets of an indestructible new species, before the president nukes Manhattan.

A.J. Colucci's debut novel is a terrifying mix of classic Michael Crichton and Stephen King. A thriller with the highest stakes and the most fascinating science, The Colony does for ants what Jaws did for sharks.

About A.J.

A. J. COLUCCI was born in the Bronx and raised in Larchmont, a suburb outside of New York City. She spent 15 years as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and writer for corporate America. Today she is a full-time author and science geek who spends much of her free time reading stacks of novels, surfing the internet for the latest in technology, or clicking between the Science Channel, PBS Nova, Discovery and National Geographic. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two daughters and a couple of zazzy cats. THE COLONY is her first published novel. Visit her online at ajcolucci.com.

Please welcome Christopher L. Bennett to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Only Superhuman, Christopher's first original novel, was published on October 16, 2012.




TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

CLB:  Thank you!


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

CLB:  I’m not sure. A lot of my quirks seem to be pretty common with writers, like procrastinating too much, or doing some of my best thinking when I go for walks or get a change of scenery. But one thing I’ve realized about myself is that it’s hard for me to write about something unless I have at least a rough understanding of how and why it could happen. I have to believe it could work, at least by the rules of the fictional reality it’s in, and that means figuring out how it works. I just have a very analytical mind. That’s why I tend so much to the hard end of the science fiction spectrum, and why worldbuilding is my favorite part of the creative process.


TQ:  Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

CLB:  I grew up reading mostly the hard-SF giants like Asimov, Clarke, and Niven. In more recent years I’ve been influenced by the new wave of hard-SF space opera authors like Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan. But Star Trek has always been one of my main influences, and I follow its lead in a lot of ways, like taking an optimistic view of the future, striving to be inclusive and embrace diversity, promoting positive principles and values, and so on. Star Trek/fantasy novelist Diane Duane has been an influence as well; the format of Only Superhuman with its periodic flashback chapters was inspired by Duane’s Trek novels The Romulan Way (with Peter Morwood) and Spock’s World. And when I got the opportunity to pitch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine story ideas to producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe in 1996, I didn’t sell anything but I learned a lot from him about putting character first in my writing.

Another creator who influenced my approach to characterization in this book was Chuck Jones. No kidding. His insightful writing about the classic characters he perfected such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and what made them work as characters, was an influence on writing Emerald Blair. I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that villains are more interesting than heroes, that they always get the best lines. Who gets better lines, Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd? I wanted Emerald to be a hero like Jones’s version of Bugs: quick-witted, always on top of the situation, able to confound foes with humor and the unexpected, but fierce and relentless in defense of the innocent. Although she turned out being a lot like Spider-Man as well, since that comic heroism is combined with a tragic backstory and a strong drive for atonement.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

CLB:  If by “pantser” you mean writing by the seat of my pants, I’d say I’m a mix of both. I generally do a lot of work building the world and the story outline in advance, but I’m very open to finding new things along the way, and some of my favorite moments in my writing have been spontaneous discoveries. On the other hand, not long ago I tried writing my second original spec novel with little guidance from an outline—that is, I’d done a rough outline but rethought a lot of things and tried to go right to manuscript without working up a revised outline first—and I ended up with an unfocused mess that led me in the wrong direction. It wasn’t until I went back and worked out a clearer plot outline that I was able to get it to work to my satisfaction. So I guess I’m a plotter on the large scale but more spontaneous on the detail level.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

CLB:  Just getting started. I tend to follow Newton’s First Law. Once I’m in motion, once I get some momentum going, writing can come very easily—indeed, sometimes it’s hard to stop—but it can be very difficult to get myself into that groove in the first place, and it’s often a long, slow slog uphill until I reach the point where it really begins to flow.


TQ:  Describe Only Superhuman in 140 characters or less.

CLB:  Oh, I’m no good at giving brief descriptions of the book. Let’s see… “Hard-SF superhero adventure as tough, smart, sexy Emerald Blair struggles to keep the peace in the wild & wooly Asteroid Belt.”


TQ:  Tell us something about Only Superhuman that is not in the book description.

CLB:  I think that in the emphasis on the book’s plausible, hard-SF approach to superheroics, one thing that hasn’t been played up is that there’s also a fair amount of spoof and gentle satire. Approaching a subject plausibly means not just proposing a way it might actually work, but acknowledging the problems and absurd consequences that could arise from it. After all, there’s no shortage of absurdity and silliness in real life. So I poke fun at a lot of things. For everything that I portray as a potentially positive tool or source of power, whether transhumanism or central government or the celebrity the Troubleshooters cultivate or the sexuality that Emerald and other characters embrace, I also try to acknowledge the downsides and excesses, and often that means highlighting the absurdities. I particularly enjoyed poking fun at the media and pop culture of Emry’s era, putting in throwaway references to cheesy shows like Annie Minute and the Time Trippers (imagine a cross between Josie and the Pussycats, the Power Rangers, and Mr. Peabody) and future genre fads like “curry Westerns,” which are analogous to spaghetti Westerns but made in Bollywood. I also liked taking digs at some of the overhyped cliches of the transhumanist genre, like the Singularity and brain downloading.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Only Superhuman?

CLB:  Oh, all sorts of things. Some of the big stuff would include research into the asteroid belt, the physics of orbital habitats, genetic engineering, bionics, and the like. Gerard K. O’Neill’s seminal book The High Frontier was a valuable reference for the design and function of space habitats. I read a lot of articles in science magazines and sites about prospective interplanetary drives, including such things as the beam and tether propulsion systems seen in the novel. There’s a cool site called Atomic Rockets at http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php which has a lot of valuable information about plausible spaceship design and technology. A lot of the stuff in the book about the distinct geology and orbits of the various asteroids, and how that affects their cultures, economies, and the like, was added to the novel after the public hoopla about dwarf planets in 2006 got me interested in learning more about Ceres, Vesta, and the other asteroids. It really enriched the worldbuilding and helped the novel come into focus. I used the Celestia space simulator program to work out navigation and distances in the Asteroid Belt, and some folks on the Celestia forum put together add-on files with many more asteroids at my request, so I’m very grateful to them.

But really, I’ve been working on this for so long that I drew on research and input from all over. Some of the character input came from friends, mainly a college friend whose own childbirth experience informed the flashback scene to Emerald’s birth.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

CLB:  The easiest may have been Hanuman Kwan, the Neogaian engineered with monkeylike traits. I couldn’t resist the private joke of imagining Roddy McDowall in the role, and with that voice and persona in mind, the character pretty much wrote himself. (Yes, I know, apes aren’t monkeys, but I still couldn’t resist.) Although writing Emerald herself comes pretty easily because I’ve lived with her in my head for so many years, and because she and similar characters I’ve written are, to an extent, the other side of my own personality—what I imagine I might be without my fears and inhibitions. (Yes, that’s right—my wish-fulfillment version of myself is a hot woman. Make of that what you will. I guess that, having grown up bullied by boys and only shown kindness by female students and teachers, I’ve always gravitated more toward women as role models and inspirations. Yet I’m also very attracted to women, so I make those characters very sexy too. I guess I’m engaged in some inside-out and outside-in wish fulfillment at the same time.)

The hardest? Maybe Zephyr, Emry’s sentient ship. I always had him as part of the concept, but it was only fairly late in the process that I realized I hadn’t really fleshed him out as a character or given him any nuance, and it was a challenge to work out the backstory, worldview, and motivations for a disembodied artificial intelligence. Fortunately I’d already done some worldbuilding about human-AI relations for an unsold story set at an earlier point in the same universe, so I was able to build on that.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Only Superhuman?

CLB:  I don’t know if “favorite” is the word, but one scene that stands out for me was the flashback to the death of Emerald’s mother. Since I lost my own mother when I was young, this was naturally very personal for me, and I wrote it in a visceral, stream-of-consciousness way, just letting the feelings overwhelm me and writing whatever came out. I cried for maybe half an hour after I finished it. It’s probably the one scene I never altered even slightly from the first draft, since I didn’t want to compromise the emotional honesty and rawness of it.

The scene that introduces Koyama Hikari, her practice combat with Emry in Chapter 2, is one that I feel turned out particularly well, with some nice character-building, in particular a certain shocking revelation about Kari’s past—although I do wonder if that might’ve been stronger if I’d held off revealing it a bit longer. The Pellucidar scene was a lot of fun to write, an action set piece that let me go wild with the goofier aspects of the Troubleshooters’ world, and I love its punch line. Anything written from Bast’s point of view was a lot of fun for me as a cat-lover. And everything with Sally Knox was a hoot.


TQ:  What's next?

CLB:  I’m working on an exciting new Star Trek project, an Enterprise sequel called Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures. The previous Enterprise novels covered the Romulan War and ended with the founding of the Federation; now I’m picking up a year or so later and examining the early days of the Federation, its growing pains as it tried to define its identity and goals, as this union forged in war tried to find its role in peacetime and deal with other powers that felt threatened by its existence. It’s a great opportunity, because it’s a period of Star Trek history that’s almost never been explored before, except in one book that came out shortly before Enterprise and was then thoroughly contradicted by it. So it’s this wide open space that’s begging to be filled in, and that gives me a lot of freedom to tell new stories. It’s due out in July 2013.

I’ve also completed a spec novel that I’ve begun shopping to agents (I’m currently unrepresented). It’s set in the same universe as Only Superhuman, but a couple of generations later and on an interstellar stage. It expands on my first published story, “Aggravated Vehicular Genocide” from the November 1998 Analog, and moves forward from those events into an epic adventure on a cosmic scale.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

CLB:  Thanks for having me!




About Only Superhuman

Only Superhuman
Tor Book, October 16, 2012
Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages

2107 AD: A generation ago, Earth and the cislunar colonies banned genetic and cybernetic modifications. But out in the Asteroid Belt, anything goes. Dozens of flourishing space habitats are spawning exotic new societies and strange new varieties of humans. It’s a volatile situation that threatens the peace and stability of the entire solar system.

Emerald Blair is a Troubleshooter. Inspired by the classic superhero comics of the twentieth century, she’s joined with other mods to try to police the unruly Asteroid Belt. But her loyalties are tested when she finds herself torn between rival factions of superhumans with very different agendas. Emerald wants to put her special abilities to good use, but what do you do when you can’t tell the heroes from the villains?

Only Superhuman is a rollicking hard-SF adventure set in a complex and fascinating future.

About Christopher

Christopher L. Bennett has had multiple works of short fiction published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact as well as the online magazines DayBreak and Alternative Coordinates, and has written critically acclaimed science-fiction tie-in novels novels including Star Trek: Ex Machina, Star Trek: Titan -- Orion's Hounds, Star Trek: The Next Generation -- The Buried Age, two Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations novels, X-Men: Watchers on the Walls, and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder, all of them with a hard science slant. Only Superhuman is his first original novel. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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What:  One commenter will win a copy of Only Superhuman from The Qwillery.

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Who and When:  The contest is open to all humans on the planet earth with a mailing address. Contest ends at 11:59pm US Eastern Time on Saturday, November 10, 2012. Void where prohibited by law. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 years old or older to enter.

Please welcome Lee Collins to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Lee's debut, The Dead of Winter, is published today in the US and Canada and on November 1st in the United Kingdom. Happy Publication Day to Lee!




TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

Lee:  Happy to be here!


TQ:   What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Lee:  For me, writing isn’t best when done while isolated from all stimuli. I need distractions to work at peak efficiency. Nothing too large (I don’t write best in the middle of a riot, for example), but I find I have much more difficulty getting a day’s worth of writing done without my girlfriend watching a show or playing a game in the same room.


TQ:   Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Lee:  I grew up reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Frank Peretti, then moved on to Orson Scott Card, Terry Goodkind, and George R.R. Martin in high school. All of them had a say in how I learned to write, from the pace and structure of storytelling to the construction of sentences. Tolkien, Lewis, and Martin are still writers I read frequently, but I’ve recently added a lot of Stephen King (who was a forbidden author in my childhood), some Ursula K. le Guin and Connie Willis, and a smattering of newer writers like Paolo Bacigalupi and Saladin Ahmed to the mix.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Lee:  I approach a novel like I approach planning a cross-country flight: get a good idea of where you want to end up, file a flight plan with the proper authorities, and let the wind blow you around a bit. If something stops working or catches fire, reevaluate where you want to land. Similarly, I get a good synopsis of the plot together but am open to emergency landings if need be. I don’t actually outline, though; too much work.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Lee:  Coming up with ideas that I think would make good novels. I have no shortage of scenarios, characters, or worlds that seem interesting to me, but very few weather the months-long cogitation crucible required for me to seriously consider devoting that much time to them. I don’t like the idea of just starting a novel to see if it can sustain itself; I want to be reasonably sure it can hold together before I put a single word down. As a result, I don’t have a lot of half-finished novels lying around, but I don’t have an abundance of ideas I feel confident in pursuing, either.


TQ:  Describe The Dead of Winter in 140 characters or less.

Lee:  Old West bounty hunter Cora Oglesby must face her past if she is to overcome the unholy creatures lurking in the mines of Leadville.


TQ:  What inspired you to write The Dead of Winter?

Lee:  The character of Cora Oglesby was the spark. She began life as a Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning witch hunter in 2008, evolving into an Old West bounty hunter when I wrote her into a short story for a Western horror anthology Morpheus Tales was preparing. Sadly, the anthology never came together (although the story appeared as a regular feature in Morpheus Tales IX), but the character continued to grow in my imagination until I worked out a novel-length world for her to inhabit.


TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Dead of Winter?

Lee:  I picked up a few books about frontier living and cowboy humor to get a feel for both the environment and characters that would surround Cora. Serendipity struck when I learned of Marten Duggan, who served as marshal of Leadville from 1878–1882; suddenly, I had a way to boost the historicity of the book while still having a critical role filled. I also had to do quite a bit of reading on how the different firearms of the period functioned, from calibers and loading to dates of manufacture for certain models.


TQ:  What is the oddest bit of information that you came across in your research?

Lee:  Apparently, Oscar Wilde stopped by Leadville during a tour of the United States and proclaimed that a sign begging saloon patrons not to shoot the pianist was “the only rational method of art criticism” he had ever come across. That factoid was just too good to leave out.


TQ:  Tell us something about The Dead of Winter that is not in the book description.

Lee:  Cora Oglesby’s original name was Miriam. Her name came to me as “Mad Madam Mim” when she first popped into my head, and that’s how I thought of her for three years. Her name changed to (the possibly more historically accurate) Cora when I signed with Angry Robot. They requested the name change so as not to cause confusion between my books and the fantastic protagonist Miriam Black of Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds. Still, the name Miriam occasionally pops into my head when I think of the character.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Lee:  The Catholic priest Father Baez was the easiest for me to write. I based him on a colleague of mine at the university who is one of the kindest, quietest people I have ever met. Writing the scenes with this character was as simple as imagining how the real-life inspiration would handle a person like Cora Oglesby. On the other hand, my biggest challenge was Fodor Glava, the main antagonist. He’s a classic narcissistic villain, but I didn’t want him to become a cartoonish exaggeration of the trope. I tried to incorporate some development to explain why he views the world as he does.


TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in The Dead of Winter?

Lee:  The scene on the train when Cora first meets traveling Englishman James Townsend has always been a favorite of mine. It captures both Cora and Ben’s relationship as well as how she handles the strangers she meets in her travels.


TQ:  What's next?

Lee:  I’m currently working on research and a synopsis for a third book in the series, but I also have a science fantasy story set in Soviet Russia that is demanding more and more of my head space.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Lee:  The pleasure was all mine!




About The Dead of Winter

The Dead of Winter
Angry Robot, October 30, 2012 (US/Can)
Mass Market Paperback and eBook
November 1, 2012 (UK)

Cora and her husband hunt things – things that shouldn’t exist.

When the marshal of Leadville, Colorado, comes across a pair of mysterious deaths, he turns to Cora to find the creature responsible. But if Cora is to overcome the unnatural tide threatening to consume the small town, she must first confront her own tragic past as well as her present.

A stunning supernatural novel that will be quickly joined by a very welcome sequel, She Returns From War, in February 2013.

File Under: Dark Fantasy [ Winter Chill | Small Town Blues | Dead Reckoning | Sharp Shooter ]

About Lee

Lee Collins has spent his entire life in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he generally prefers to stay indoors reading and playing video games. As a child, he never realized that he could create video games for a living, so he chose to study creative writing at Colorado State University. Upon graduation, he worked as an editorial intern for a local magazine before securing a desk job with his alma mater.

Lee’s short fiction has appeared in Ensorcelled and Morpheus Tales, the latter of which awarded him second place in a flash fiction contest. In 2009, a friend challenged him to participate in National Novel Writing Month, and the resulting manuscript became his debut novel, The Dead of Winter. It will be published in 2012, and the sequel She Returns From War arrives in 2013.

In his spare minutes between writing and shepherding graduate students at his day job, Lee still indulges in his oldest passions: books and video games. He and his girlfriend live in Colorado with their imaginary corgi Fubsy Bumble. You can track him down online via Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. 

Please welcome Chris Pauls and Matt Solomon to The Qwillery as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Deck Z: The Titanic was published on October 3, 2012.




TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery!

Chris:  Thanks for having us, and the scones are delicious.


TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Matt:  For Chris, I’d say it’s his obsessive attention to detail. We spent hours poring over Titanic deck plans—3D models, mechanical blueprints, top- and side-view cutaways—all to make sure we were as close to spot-on accurate as possible regarding the path our protagonists took while fleeing undead passengers.

Chris:  For Matt, I’ll note his ability to channel characters that are far removed from his own personality. He can trot out a child or mother’s POV with equal ease, and still serve up stuff closer to home no problem. Also, he does not drink coffee.


TQ:   Who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you feel has influenced your writing?

Chris:  I especially enjoy John Steinbeck, Alan Moore, Raymond Chandler, and Hunter Thompson. They have all had an impact on the style I’m after.

Matt:  I’ll take Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, and Haruki Murakami – though I’m not sure you’d see any of their influences here.


TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Matt:  Definitely a plotter. In Deck Z, we followed the actual history of Titanic events as closely as possible—to the minute, in some cases. That made detailed timelines necessary to make sure our fictional plot points joined with actual events at just the right times. In writing, as in life, we do very little pantsing.


TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Chris:  Making sure to realize everything a particular sequence has to offer as it relates to place, plot and character within the whole story.


TQ:   Describe Deck Z in 140 characters or less.

When a scientist discovers a plague that turns victims into monsters, he steals the only sample and makes for America aboard Titanic.


TQ:  What inspired you to write Deck Z?

Chris:  Matt and I were both looking to work on something outside of humor, which we both had been doing a long time for places like The Onion. This was a high-concept idea that was a challenge not to make funny but instead try to realize as a legit piece of horror.


TQ:   What sort of research did you do for Deck Z?

Matt:  We did extensive research on the ship itself—its passengers and crew, the particulars of the ship’s layout and design, the class segregation, and the historical world in which our story is set. There are amazing online forums devoted to Titanic minutiae and they became a go-to resource when we needed answers to questions like “Where was the third-class linen closet located?” Because our story turns on a mutated version of the plague, we also had to dig deep to learn about disease transmission and treatment.


TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? Hardest and why?

Chris:  I’d say J. Bruce Ismay was probably the easiest because his role in the Titanic disaster is so widely understood to be that of a near-villain. Our character of “The Agent” was the most difficult for me, because he’s cut from whole cloth and has a complicated, serious backstory that motivates his ruthlessness.


TQ:   Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Deck Z?

Matt:  One of my favorite scenes is when our lead character, trying to steal away on the Titanic, meets a know-it-all kid on the dock who helps him with his escape. With all the mayhem aboard the ship, the humorous human moments were the ones I enjoyed most.


TQ:  What's next?

Chris:  We’re at work on a big story set in Richland Center, a sleepy town in Southwest Wisconsin. We’re excited about it.


TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Chris:  It has been our pleasure. I’m still blown away that you churn your own butter.

Matt:  Chris never goes on about my butter this way.




About Deck Z: The Titanic

Chronicle Books, October 3, 2012
Trade Paperback and eBook, 222 pages

Imagine being trapped aboard the doomed Titanic on an icy Atlantic. . . with the walking dead. This fast-paced thriller reimagines the historical events of the fateful Titanic voyage through the lens of zombie mayhem. Captain Edward Smith and his inner circle desperately try to contain a weaponized zombie virus smuggled on board with the 2,200 passengers sailing to New York. Faced with an exploding population of lumbering, flesh-hungry undead, Smith’s team is forced into bloody hand-to-hand combat down the narrow halls of the huge steamer. In its few short days at sea, the majestic Titanic turns into a Victorian bloodbath, steaming at top speed toward a cold, blue iceberg. A creepy, tense pageturner, Deck Z will thrill zombie fans and Titanic buffs alike.

About Chris and Matt  

Chris Pauls and Matt Solomon are regular contributors to popular websites and national publications. They live in Wisconsin. 

Chris Pauls (l) and Matt Solomon (r)

Chris' Twitter
Matt's Twitter
Deck Z on Facebook