The Qwillery

TQ:  Welcome again to The Qwillery. The eBook of the third and final novel in The Mysterium Chronicles, The Darkest Lord, was published on February 26th. First (and not most important) where is my T-shirt?

Seriously, what are your feelings on completing the Trilogy?

JH:

Seriously, the question is whether you want an Avery Lives t-shirt:













Or, a Mysterium University sweatshirt:



And, we mean that.

Seriously, which one?

Actually, we’d love to send you both, since you were the inspiration for them.

As for your secondary question, the overall feelings we have at finishing the trilogy is giddy relief marked by bouts of exuberant joy. This probably explains why the first thing we did is to make t-shirts and sweatshirts. We wanted to be able to celebrate with our readers (in a tangible way) the end of Avery’s story.

And, for readers of your blog, we want to extend an offer that if they graduate from Mysterium University (by reading and reviewing each of the three novels) they can get one of those snazzy sweatshirts or t-shirts (reader’s choice) sent to them by Jack himself.

[TQ's Note: No t-shirts or sweatshirts were harmed in the making of this interview.]



TQ:  Please explain to our readers how your collaboration works. Are you plotters, pantsers or hybrids?

JH:  Definitely a hybrid. Having two authors means some planning is essential, otherwise we would have the impossible task of sorting through multiple versions of text every step of the way. Having said that, we find that our carefully crafted outlines typically survive three chapters before breaking down under the strain of our collaboration. What happens, and we see this as a boon rather than a problem, is that we get stuck on some section of text, and then get on the phone together and suddenly the story takes about a dozen twists and turns. Figuring out how to take those creative moments and weave them into the story and the story around them is a challenge, but ultimately the best part of working together.



TQ:  Describe The Mysterium Chronicles using only 5 words.

JH:  Pratchett sends Potter to graduate school. Hmm… that was six. Can we have a bonus word?



TQ:  In The Mysterium Chronicles, was there a character who surprised you? Which character was the most difficult to write?

JH:  Sam surprised us the most. He was originally going to be a bit of a joke character. The silly, downtrodden and bemused sidekick. However, as the story progressed we discovered that the sidekick character is often the most human. As the novels have gone along his role has increased, and, not to give anything away, that culminates in The Darkest Lord.

The most difficult character was Avery. Hands down. We went into these stories wanting to poke very gentle fun at the often black and white nature of epic fantasy novels. To do that we knew we would need a character that lived in the many hues of gray between good and evil. Even though we love the guy, striking that balance in Avery was a never-ending source of writing stress.



TQ:  The Darker Lord (Book 2) took place 4 months after Avery returned to Mysterium. How soon after The Darker Lord does The Darkest Lord take place? And does time really matter where wizards are concerned?

JH:  About another six months to a year after The Darker Lord. We really wanted to pace these novels so they occurred in quick succession, but where enough time would have passed that some consequences from the previous books would have had time to accumulate.

As for whether time has meaning, we will only say that given the situation Avery finds himself in at the opening of The Darkest Lord every day counts!



TQ:  Which question about The Darkest Lord do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

JH:  We think the question we would love someone to ask is: “Does Avery actually live?” However, we only like this question because then we could raise an eyebrow, and answer, “Do any of us actually live?” Or something equally enigmatic and infuriating.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Darkest Lord.

JH:

This first just because it’s true:

“Semi-liches don’t get sore, Sam,” Drake said with exaggerated gravity. “They get evil.”


And this second because we love opening lines:

My name is Avery, and I wish I weren’t the Dark Lord.

It was a fervent wish. One that I repeated daily, but with no effect, because I was the Dark Lord, and the fact that I was—alongside a number of other regrettable life choices—probably explains why I was lying in a coffin listening to a voice, dry as death, calmly reciting my latest crimes against the multiverse.



TQ:  What was (each of) your soundtrack for The Darkest Lord?

John:  I found an all Beatles channel and that was it. John, Paul, George and Ringo were my constant companions during this novel.

Harry:  I listened to a mix of classic rock and Doctor Who theme music.



TQ:  Total number of Easter Eggs in all 3 novels?

JH:  Aha! You think you can trick us into giving such crucial information away? We cannot be fooled so easily. In fact, to celebrate the upcoming launch of the paperback (April 2) we are asking people to point to their favorite Easter eggs and will have a bit of an Easter egg hunt? Not to pimp our website too much, but… if you check in at www.jackheckel.com over the next week we will be providing further details. (Prizes will be available!)



TQ:  Is there any chance that you may visit Mysterium and the subworlds again? Perhaps Eldrin's Trelari RPG wargame or Moregoth's Guide to Dress?

JH  Definitely. Of course, there are a lot of side stories we would love to explore, like Moregoth’s origin story, or a narrative written from Eldrin’s point of view. Beyond that, we’ve been thinking about a joke book from the demi-lich Gray, or Harold’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Mages? But our favorite concept is a daily calendar of inspirational quotes from Moregoth: “Today remember to embrace life… wrap your fingers around its throat and choke it to death.” Honestly, an RPG supplement or a Trelari wargame isn’t out of the question.



TQ:  What are you working on next? (collectively or individually).

JH  Collectively we are going to return to Prince Charming. We have been wanting to write a third Charming Tales novel for some time. Individually, John is working on a novel based on the fairytale, The Seven Ravens, and Harry is revising a series of superhero novels, along with a fantasy project or two. Look for further details on all future projects on www.jackheckel.com.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us again at The Qwillery.

The Darkest Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 3
Harper Voyager Impulse, February 26, 2019
     eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, April 2, 2019
     Mass Market Paperback, 528 pages

In the epic conclusion to Jack Heckel’s whimsical fantasy series, Dark Lord Avery Stewart must join the Company of the Fellowship in a frenzied war against Moregoth and the corrupt forces of Mysterium. . . and destroy the magical artifact fueling the interworld chaos

In The Darker Lord, Avery Stewart learned a terrible truth about Mysterium: the home of his beloved university and the reality-center of the multiverse is not the world he thought it was. The true Mysterians, innately endowed with the power to manipulate reality, were displaced eons ago by the subworlders with whom they shared their magical teachings, and written out of the reality pattern of their own world. For years they have lived in exile in the subworld of Trelari, shielded from the Mysterian pursuit led by Moregoth and the Sealers. That is, until Valdara, the warrior queen of Trelari, reopened the subworld to the rest of the multiverse and challenged the Mysterium to a final showdown.

One year later, a violent war of worlds drags on, and Avery can’t help feeling that all of this is his fault.

But the good news (if you can call it that) is that Avery might hold the key—literally, a key—to ending the suffering and saving Trelari. For Avery possesses the Reality Key, a magical artifact with the power to bend reality to one’s will, often to the immediate detriment of entire worlds. . . and, if it falls into the hands of the Mysterian forces, much more. To protect his friends, save Trelari, and bring order to Mysterium, Avery will need to do the unthinkable: travel to the heart of Mysterium, destroy the Key, and rewrite Mysterium’s reality pattern to restore balance to the multiverse, once and for all.

The Dark Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 1, 2016
     eBook, 464 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 27, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 464 pages

In this hilarious parody of epic fantasy, a young man travels into a dark and magical world, where dwarves, elves, and sorcerers dwell, to restore the balance between good and evil

After spending years as an undercover, evil wizard in the enchanted world of Trelari, Avery hangs up the cloak he wore as the Dark Lord and returns to his studies at Mysterium University.

On the day of his homecoming, Avery drunkenly confides in a beautiful stranger, telling her everything about his travels. When Avery awakens, hungover and confused, he discovers that his worst nightmare has come true: the mysterious girl has gone to Trelari to rule as a Dark Queen.

Avery must travel back to the bewitched land and liberate the magical creatures . . . but in order to do so, he has to join forces with the very people who fought him as the Dark Lord.

The Darker Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 2
Harper Voyager Impulse, July 24, 2018
     eBook, 464 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 4, 2018
     Mass Market Paperback, 464 pages

The second novel of Jack Heckel’s Mysterium series, The Darker Lord follows beleaguered former Dark Lord Avery Stewart as he is forced to take up his cloak and his Imp once again and travel the doors between realms in order to keep the fabric of the universe intact. More or less intact, anyway.

In The Dark Lord, Avery had an epiphany about the Mysterium. Only now he can’t remember what it was, no matter how much coffee he drinks or how many times he reads the novel published from his notes. What he does know is that he has become the most famous mage in the multiverse, and no one is happy with him. His fellow mages are upset at his rapid promotion, Dawn and Eldrin are tired of him spending his days on their couch watching bad TV, and Harold the Imp won’t talk to him.

Luckily, things can always get worse. And they do when the Administration’s enforcer, Moregoth, arrives at the first lecture of the semester to apprehend two of Avery’s new students for undoubtedly sinister reasons. In a fit of foolishness and heroism, Avery defies the university and flees with his friends into subworld. There, he reunites with his former allies from Trelari and thus begins a frantic race through the multiverse to escape Moregoth.

But as Avery’s amnesia begins to fade, he realizes his loss of memory is no accident, that he is caught in a conspiracy as terrifying as Mysterium University’s Student Records Building—and that his friends might not all be on his side.

About Jack Heckel

Harry Heckel

John Peck

Jack Heckel’s life is an open book. Actually, it’s the book you are in all hope holding right now (and if you are not holding it, he would like to tell you it can be purchased from any of your finest purveyors of the written word). Beyond that, Jack aspires to be either a witty, urbane world traveler who lives on his vintage yacht, The Clever Double Entendre, or a geographically illiterate professor of literature who spends his nonwriting time restoring an eighteenth-century lighthouse off a remote part of the Vermont coastline. Whatever you want to believe of him, he is without doubt the author of The Dark Lord. More than anything, Jack lives for his readers. Despite whatever Jack may claim, in reality, Jack Heckel is the pen name for John Peck and Harry Heckel.

Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @JackHeckel

Fantasy stories, and particularly epic fantasy stories, seem always to spawn not a single book, but a series of them. In the end, as with all things in epic fantasy, you can probably blame Tolkien for the fact that no one seems to be able to tell a fantasy story in a single go. And the problem only seems to be growing. While Tolkien was satisfied with three volumes, with the not insignificant proviso that each volume is actually divided into two books, modern authors often stretch their stories far beyond three, and in some cases into double digits. The Saga of Fire and Ice is at five, with at least two more on the way, while The Wheel of Time series clocks it at a whopping 14 mega-books, not counting the Prologue, which is itself an entire separate book. In fact, in many cases the role of any individual epic fantasy novel seems to be setting up the next fantasy novel in the series.

So, when we decided to write a comedic take on the epic fantasy genre a trilogy seemed inevitable. In fact, for The Mysterium Chronicles there being three novels is one of the jokes. Let’s face it, we did title them The Dark Lord, The Darker Lord and The Darkest Lord after all. But in committing ourselves (tongue-in-cheek) to a trilogy we didn’t really know what we were getting into. It turns out it’s a lot harder to tell a continuous and coherent story that spans three volumes and over thousand pages than it might sound.

The problem we ran into, and which is obviously not unique to us, is how to maintain tension in each book when your audience knows there is more to come. This issue is particularly pronounced in the dread SECOND book, which is inevitably a bridge between the table setting first novel and the climactic third. Some authors—cough, cough, George R.R. Martin—solve this problem by being “unpredictable”. But, when you’re writing for comedic effect, indiscriminately killing off characters isn’t really an option.

Instead, we decided to address the issue head on by having the characters openly discuss the possibility that they were in trilogy and what that would mean. What we found in “going meta” is that once you let the audience in on the joke that there will be another book after this one and another one after that you can have a great deal of fun with what might have otherwise been a narrative drag. Early in The Darker Lord we have our protagonist ex-graduate student/magus, Avery Stewart, address what must be the most important point for anyone that finds themselves trapped in a fantasy trilogy:

I wanted to argue, but had to admit that everything that had happened since my return to Mysterium pointed to a number of unfinished story lines. I wrapped my arms around my body trying to ward of the cold and grasped for something positive to say. “Well, I suppose the good news is that even in a worst case scenario we are thirty-three percent through the narrative and no one important has died … yet.”

                                                                               -The Darker Lord

Well said.

The Darkest Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 3
Harper Voyager Impulse, February 26, 2019
     eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, April 2, 2019
     Mass Market Paperback, 528 pages

In the epic conclusion to Jack Heckel’s whimsical fantasy series, Dark Lord Avery Stewart must join the Company of the Fellowship in a frenzied war against Moregoth and the corrupt forces of Mysterium. . . and destroy the magical artifact fueling the interworld chaos

In The Darker Lord, Avery Stewart learned a terrible truth about Mysterium: the home of his beloved university and the reality-center of the multiverse is not the world he thought it was. The true Mysterians, innately endowed with the power to manipulate reality, were displaced eons ago by the subworlders with whom they shared their magical teachings, and written out of the reality pattern of their own world. For years they have lived in exile in the subworld of Trelari, shielded from the Mysterian pursuit led by Moregoth and the Sealers. That is, until Valdara, the warrior queen of Trelari, reopened the subworld to the rest of the multiverse and challenged the Mysterium to a final showdown.

One year later, a violent war of worlds drags on, and Avery can’t help feeling that all of this is his fault.

But the good news (if you can call it that) is that Avery might hold the key—literally, a key—to ending the suffering and saving Trelari. For Avery possesses the Reality Key, a magical artifact with the power to bend reality to one’s will, often to the immediate detriment of entire worlds. . . and, if it falls into the hands of the Mysterian forces, much more. To protect his friends, save Trelari, and bring order to Mysterium, Avery will need to do the unthinkable: travel to the heart of Mysterium, destroy the Key, and rewrite Mysterium’s reality pattern to restore balance to the multiverse, once and for all.

The Dark Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 1, 2016
     eBook, 464 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 27, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 464 pages

In this hilarious parody of epic fantasy, a young man travels into a dark and magical world, where dwarves, elves, and sorcerers dwell, to restore the balance between good and evil

After spending years as an undercover, evil wizard in the enchanted world of Trelari, Avery hangs up the cloak he wore as the Dark Lord and returns to his studies at Mysterium University.

On the day of his homecoming, Avery drunkenly confides in a beautiful stranger, telling her everything about his travels. When Avery awakens, hungover and confused, he discovers that his worst nightmare has come true: the mysterious girl has gone to Trelari to rule as a Dark Queen.

Avery must travel back to the bewitched land and liberate the magical creatures . . . but in order to do so, he has to join forces with the very people who fought him as the Dark Lord.

The Darker Lord
The Mysterium Chronicles 2
Harper Voyager Impulse, July 24, 2018
     eBook, 464 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 4, 2018
     Mass Market Paperback, 464 pages

The second novel of Jack Heckel’s Mysterium series, The Darker Lord follows beleaguered former Dark Lord Avery Stewart as he is forced to take up his cloak and his Imp once again and travel the doors between realms in order to keep the fabric of the universe intact. More or less intact, anyway.

In The Dark Lord, Avery had an epiphany about the Mysterium. Only now he can’t remember what it was, no matter how much coffee he drinks or how many times he reads the novel published from his notes. What he does know is that he has become the most famous mage in the multiverse, and no one is happy with him. His fellow mages are upset at his rapid promotion, Dawn and Eldrin are tired of him spending his days on their couch watching bad TV, and Harold the Imp won’t talk to him.

Luckily, things can always get worse. And they do when the Administration’s enforcer, Moregoth, arrives at the first lecture of the semester to apprehend two of Avery’s new students for undoubtedly sinister reasons. In a fit of foolishness and heroism, Avery defies the university and flees with his friends into subworld. There, he reunites with his former allies from Trelari and thus begins a frantic race through the multiverse to escape Moregoth.

But as Avery’s amnesia begins to fade, he realizes his loss of memory is no accident, that he is caught in a conspiracy as terrifying as Mysterium University’s Student Records Building—and that his friends might not all be on his side.

About Jack

Jack Heckel’s life is an open book. Actually, it’s the book you are in all hope holding right now (and if you are not holding it, he would like to tell you it can be purchased from any of your finest purveyors of the written word). He is the author of the Charming Tales series and The Dark Lord. Beyond that, Jack aspires to be either a witty, urbane, world traveler who lives on his vintage yacht, The Clever Double Entendre, or a geographically illiterate professor of literature who spends his non-writing time restoring an 18th century lighthouse off a remote part of the Vermont coastline. More than anything, Jack lives for his readers.

Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @JackHeckel

TQ:  Welcome back to The Qwillery. Your new novel, Steadfast (Birth of Saints 3), was published on December 5th. How does it feel to see the end of the trilogy published?

Michelle:  I admit at first it was a giant relief. That was back in June when the deadline was days away and I was still polishing. It was the closest I ever came to not being done by a deadline. There was a lot of pressure then. Now that another milestone has come and gone with the release date, I’m feeling rather nostalgic. If you spend three years working on anything, day after day, there’s bound to be some regret when it ends. I’m going through a grieving period before I can really connect to another story. I think every writer faces that to some degree, even if it’s just putting your head into a different world and different characters.



TQ:  Has your writing process changed (or not) from when you wrote Grudging (Birth of Saints 1) to Steadfast?

Michelle:  There’s more confidence now. A little less editing and revising. I have more trust that what I produce is worthwhile. But my process is pretty much the same. Write in the morning before work. Do a short read through to edit before I add new words. Never plan more than three chapters ahead. I’m not big on outlining or making plans. I’d rather wing the writing process. I didn’t have the ending thought out for Steadfast until more than halfway through writing the draft. I’m still a fly by the seat of my pants writer. Which is kind of interesting because if I don’t know the ending, the characters can’t broadcast it either.



TQ:  What do you wish that you knew about book publishing when Grudging came out that you know now?

Michelle:  I have to go with how much harder marketing and promotion is than the actual writing. I mean you hear that all the time from published writers, but it doesn’t really resonate until you’re in that situation. It’s painful to have to ask for reviews or to ask for people to buy your book. I think most of us have been trained since childhood not to be that way, not to ask for help for ourselves or to push our own agenda. Maybe that’s a female thing, or maybe it’s just me.



TQ:  Which character in the Birth of Saints trilogy surprised you the most? Who has been the hardest character to write and why?

Michelle:  Some of the minor characters really surprised me. As I said earlier I’m a pantser and I don’t really outline or plan. Sometimes I throw in what feels like a minor character, and all of a sudden, they end up with their own point of view. Father Telo was such a character. He was supposed to be in a few scenes to counsel a major character, Alcalde Julian, and I just couldn’t shake him. Father Telo grew to have his own agenda and his own mission to assassinate the Northern leader and he just took on a life of his own, becoming a major thread in Faithful and Steadfast.

The fact that he was a priest made him perhaps my hardest character to write. He was just outside of my experience and the whole write-what-you-know ideal. Father Telo is just so different from me. He had no romance interest. He’s more religious. He’s a male. I had to do a lot more research to write him than any other of my six point-of-view characters.



TQ:  Tell us something about Steadfast that is not found in the book description.

Michelle:  There’s very much an element of women in a male society coming into their own. A subplot of the series is about the male leader of the city—Julian—being forced out due to some mistakes, and the women coming forward to vote in record numbers and installing his wife—Beatriz—as the new elected official—and not just for one city-state, but for two. And then there’s the whole character arc of the husband and wife learning to deal with the power shift in their relationship. I’m afraid there’s a fire in my heart over the whole “She Persisted” situation in the real world and that carried over to my writing.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in the Birth of Saints trilogy?

Michelle:  As I mentioned in the last question there’s the whole women as a segment of society coming into their own. But there’s also a theme of kindness. Let’s not be like the people oppressing us. Let’s choose kindness. Let’s choose tolerance. Let’s care for the suffering of the people being suppressed and see the value in everyone. There’s been too much hate in national policy lately. And I’m really feeling that need to respect all people these days. You see this even more in Steadfast where we finally see the Northern side of this clash of cultures.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Steadfast.

Michelle:  This is a quote from a speech by Beatriz to her people: “The Northerners are a people of violence and bloodshed. They took our city—my child—our children. I would not have us be like them. I would have us show them the meaning of kindness.”

And here is Claire trying to convince the Women of the Song to help her against the Northern god. You can guess from her speech that it doesn’t go too well: “The god’s power wiped a squad of soldiers out in the blink of an eye. This is not a joke. We need to be marching out of our swamp to help stop more killing. Even a ‘snit of a girl’ can see that. But unfortunately, that girl is talking to a bunch of old hens, clucking around instead of acting! Stupid and worthless! If we all die, it will be your fault!”



TQ:  What's next?

Michelle:  So far what’s next is being lazy. I’ve taken a few months off from writing to just allow myself the free time to splurge on binge watching Netflix. Or to read. My writing heart is still connected to the characters from Birth of Saints and so I’m waiting for a little distance to turn my brain to new characters. Mostly. As I’m going through my writing vacation, I’m also slowly completing chapters for an almost finished rewrite of an epic fantasy I envisioned years ago. Old familiar characters given a new life, but not something completely new. When that’s done then I’ll look toward something totally original.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Michelle:  Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s been great fun!

Steadfast
Birth of Saints 3
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 5, 2017
     eBook, 560 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, January 9, 2018
     Mass Market Paperback, 560 pages

The final novel in Michelle Hauck's Birth of Saints trilogy, Steadfast follows Grudging and Faithful in telling the fateful story of Claire and Ramiro and their battle against a god that hungers for blood.

When the Northerners invaded, the ciudades-estado knew they faced a powerful army. But what they didn’t expect was the deadly magic that was also brought to the desert: the white-robed priests with their lethal Diviners, and the evil god, Dal. Cities have burned, armies have been decimated, and entire populaces have been sacrificed in the Sun God’s name, and it looks as if nothing can prevent the devastation.

But there are still those with hope.

Claire, a Woman of the Song, has already brought considerable magic of her own to fight the Children of Dal, and Ramiro, a soldier who has forsaken his vows to Colina Hermosa’s cavalry in order to stand by her side, has killed and bled for their cause. Separated after the last battle, they move forward with the hope that the saints will hear their prayers, their families will be saved, and that they’ll see each other once more.

A stirring conclusion to the Birth of Saints series, Ramiro and Claire’s journey finds completion in a battle between evil and love.

Grudging
Birth of Saints 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 17, 2015
     eBook, 432 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 22, 2015
     Mass Market Paperback, 432 pages

A lyrical tale of honor and magic, Grudging is the opening salvo of Michelle Hauck's the Book of Saints trilogy that combines the grace of Ellen Kushner's Swordpoint with the esprit de corps of Django Wexler's Shadow Campaign series.

A world of chivalry and witchcraft…

and the invaders who would destroy everything

The north has invaded, bringing a cruel religion and no mercy. The ciudades-estados who have stood in their way have been razed to nothing, and now the horde is before the gates of Colina Hermosa…demanding blood.

On a mission of desperation, a small group escapes the besieged city in search of the one thing that might stem the tide of Northerners: the witches of the southern swamps.
The Women of the Song.

But when tragedy strikes their negotiations, all that is left is a single untried knight and a witch who has never given voice to her power. And time is running out.

Faithful
Birth of Saints 2
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 15, 2016
     eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 27, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages

Following Grudging--and with a mix of Terry Goodkind and Bernard Cornwall--religion, witchcraft, and chivalry war in Faithful, the exciting next chapter in Michelle Hauck's Birth of Saints series!

A world of Fear and death…and those trying to save it.

Colina Hermosa has burned to the ground. The Northern invaders continue their assault on the ciudades-estados. Terror has taken hold, and those that should be allies betray each other in hopes of their own survival. As the realities of this devastating and unprovoked war settles in, what can they do to fight back?

On a mission of hope, an unlikely group sets out to find a teacher for Claire, and a new weapon to use against the Northerners and their swelling army.

What they find instead is an old woman.

But she’s not a random crone—she’s Claire’s grandmother. She’s also a Woman of the Song, and her music is both strong and horrible. And while Claire has already seen the power of her own Song, she is scared of her inability to control it, having seen how her magic has brought evil to the world, killing without reason or remorse. To preserve a life of honor and light, Ramiro and Claire will need to convince the old woman to teach them a way so that the power of the Song can be used for good. Otherwise, they’ll just be destroyers themselves, no better than the Northerners and their false god, Dal. With the annihilation their enemy has planned, though, they may not have a choice.

A tale of fear and tragedy, hope and redemption, Faithful is the harrowing second entry in the Birth of Saints trilogy.

About Michelle

Michelle Hauck lives in the bustling metropolis of northern Indiana with her hubby and two teenagers. Two papillons help balance out the teenage drama. Besides working with special needs children by day, she writes all sorts of fantasy, giving her imagination free range. A book worm, she passes up the darker vices in favor of chocolate and looks for any excuse to reward herself. She is the author of the YA epic fantasy Kindar's Cure, as well as the short story “Frost and Fog,” which is included in the anthology Summer's Double Edge.

Website  ~  Twitter @Michelle4Laughs  ~  Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Ash:  Thank you for having me! I’ve always loved reading, and writing gradually became an extension of that. I wrote my first novel at nineteen, and I was hooked.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Ash:  When I first tried my hand at long-form fiction, I was a pure pantser—I had ideas and general thoughts about scenes, but I felt my way along. With time, I’ve become a plotter. I may not map out every moment in the story before I begin, but I like to have more than a notion of where I’m headed and how I’m getting there. If nothing else, plotting helps me memorialize ideas for scenes I may not write for months, and it’s always nice to go back to your notes and have one of those, “Oh yeah, right,” moments when you think you’re stuck.

Of course, there’s always room for improvisation in writing, and characters tend to surprise you. Once you get to know your cast, some of those carefully plotted chapters begin to unravel. I’ve found that while you can try to force a plot upon characters, it seldom ends well.



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

Ash:  Finding enough time! I’m the sort of person who needs to stay at it daily—I get antsy when I’m away for too long, and the story starts to become stagnant in my mind. But responsibilities don’t disappear just because I’d like to spend some quality time with my computer, which can lead to a lot of odd-hours work and a touch of guilt every time I turn on the television.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Ash:  I’ve always had a fondness for the fantastic. Fairy tales, mythology, folklore, urban legends, science fiction, horror, and fantasy have long been staples of my bookshelves.



TQ:  Describe Stranger Magics in 140 characters or less.

Ash:  A lovelorn half-fae bookseller, his amoral brother, a smartass wizard, and an ersatz knight race to save magic and the world. We may be doomed.



TQ:  Tell us something about Stranger Magics that is not found in the book description.

Ash:  Wizard is an ungendered term in the story, and my wizard protagonist is a talented young woman who’s peeved that she’s been unjustly prevented from using much of her power. But that may be about to change…



TQ:  What inspired you to write Stranger Magics? What appeals to you about writing Urban Fantasy? What do you think is the continuing appeal of stories about the fae?

Ash:  There are so many current interpretations of the fae, ranging from benevolent (or at least benign) to malicious, making them fairly malleable for story purposes. But even when they look like us, they remain something other, which I think is a large part of their appeal.

As for Stranger Magics, it began as a bit of rumination: take an ancient being with extraordinary power, mostly human sensibilities, and a strong aversion to iron, plop him down in the modern world, and what would he do with himself? The rest of the story and its setting gradually came forth.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  I revisited the folk and fairy tales I knew, looked into the mythology surrounding the older interpretations of fae creatures, dusted off my Shakespeare, and used all of that as a jumping-off point. On a more nuts-and-bolts note, once into the story, I spent considerable time on Google Maps, trying to plot routes (sometimes from nonexistent places!) and keep a plausible timeline. Juggling multiple time zones can be tricky.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  The cover design is by Alicia Tatone, and I love how it turned out. An old book is featured heavily in the story, and…nope, no spoilers!



TQ:  In Stranger Magics who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Ash:  Toula, the wizard, was probably the easiest character for me to write. She seemed to appear fully formed—blue-tipped hair, attitude, and all. Robin, a faerie, was less forthcoming, but since he’s at best an annoyance to every other character in the story, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he was sometimes difficult to pin down.



TQ:  Which question about Stranger Magics do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Ash:  “This is your first novel, right?”

Published novel? Absolutely. But as I mentioned, I wrote my first novel back in college. It was a 270,000-word doozy, a great learning experience for me but unpublishable at the time. That realization came as a disappointment back then, but in retrospect, I’m glad that novel wasn’t “The One.” After all, writing is like any other skill: it takes work and plenty of practice, and your first attempt will probably not be your best product. By my count, and depending on whether I choose to remember an unfortunate cycle of short stories, Stranger Magics is my thirteenth novel-length work.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Stranger Magics.

Ash:  Sure thing. Robin to Colin, in a moment of brotherly…well, tolerance:

He stood, took a long last draw, then stubbed the cigarillo out and threw it toward the street. “You’re a high lord of Faerie,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “Try to act like it. Right now—and I’m quite serious about this—you’re embarrassing me.”

TQ:  What's next?

Ash:  While nothing is set in stone yet, I’d love to continue the story begun in Stranger Magics. We’ll see!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Ash:  Thank you!

Stranger Magics
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 21, 2017
eBook, 400 pages

No one holds a grudge quite like a faerie . . .

All Colin Leffee wants is to be left alone: to run his used bookstore in peace, and to quietly drink himself to sleep every night in an attempt to drown out the memories of eight-hundred-plus years of existence.

Unfortunately, when a sullen teenage changeling is flung out of Faerie and onto his doorstep, the long-suffering, wayward son of Titania knows his dreams of solitude are dust. Colin—or Lord Coileán, as he is known to the Faerie court—must track down Meggy, the love of his life, and figure out how her child ended up in Titania’s clutches to begin with.

But with family, it’s never simple. He finds Meggy, only to see her yanked into Faerie—and the doors between the realms slammed and locked behind her. Now, it’s not just her life& at stake . . . but the fate of magic itself.

Always the loner, Colin reluctantly joins forces with an intensely stubborn wizard, a young priest-in-training who fancies himself a knight, and his half brother Robin (the last most definitely not by choice) on a quest to reopen the doors and restore the balance between the realms. And with exiled queen Mab plotting in the shadows to take Titania’s throne, and the wizards of the governing Arcanum hiding their own agenda, Colin can’t be sure whom to trust—or whether he’ll live long enough to see the mission through.

About Ash

Photograph courtesy of Art Meripol

When not writing fiction, ASH FITZSIMMONS is an appellate attorney and an unrepentant car singer. Visit her at www.ashfitzsimmons.com.














Facebook

Have you ever wished you could enter another world through a magic wardrobe, or take a stargate to a parallel dimension? If so, my friend, you’re a fan of the portal fantasy. This is a loose term for science fiction and fantasy stories that connect one world – often Earth, but not always – to another time, place, or dimension. The portal that does the connecting might be of magical, technological, or natural origin. No matter the type, the concept of a portal fantasy is easily defined: someone goes through a thing and ends up somewhere else.

If this concept sounds familiar, that’s because portal fantasy has pervaded literature for decades. Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky (1955) offers a classic take on the idea. The main character, Rod Walker, is a high school student who dreams of becoming a professional colonist. The final test of his advanced survival course is a brutal challenge: to stay alive for several days on a hostile planet. Students reach the planet by way of a “Ramsbotham portal” – a man-made teleportation device that promptly malfunctions, stranding Rod and the other students on an uninhabited world.

Not all portal stories take the reader to hostile worlds, however. In C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the children depart wartime England for a fantastical world where the beavers can talk and they get to rule as monarchs (the children, not the beavers). Having sold more than 100 million copies in 47 languages, Narnia is probably the work that most readers think of when they hear portal fantasy.

In the last few years, however, some in the publishing world have grumbled that the portal fantasy fad might be over. Done with. Absolutely cannot sell. Some have gone so far as to proclaim that the portal fantasy is dead.

This is a falsehood. Portal fantasy is alive and well in the publishing world. To prove this, I went to Twitter and asked people to share their favorite portal fantasies published in the last couple of years. The responses overwhelmed my feed, and demonstrated just how diverse and vibrant the portal fantasy subgenre has become. Take a look at these recent examples, and you’ll see that we’re well beyond wardrobes, now.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
In this series, there are four parallel versions of London: Red London, where magic is revered, White London, where people fight to control magic and monarchy both, Grey London, where no magic exists at all, and Black London, the forbidden realm no one speaks of. The main character is a rare breed of magician who travels between them as a sort of diplomat, until he unwittingly stumbles upon a dangerous artifact from Black London that must be returned there.

Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan
Ellis Rogers is just a regular guy who, upon learning that he has a terminal illness, decides to try out the time machine he’s built in his garage. If it works, he might find more than just a cure for his illness: he might find paradise. But first, he’ll have to survive the Hollow World that lies between.

Thief of Lies by Brenda Drake
Don’t you hate it when you finally work up the nerve to talk to that hot guy in the library, only to have him disappear? That’s what happened to Gia Kearns. When she examines the strange book about world libraries that he abandoned, it transports her to a library in Paris. And summons a demonic hound that pursues them until the hit guy and his friends – who are actually magical knights charged with protecting humanity – show up to rescue them. And that’s just the beginning of this adventure.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
I love the synopsis to this book: “Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.”

Nancy tumbled through such a gateway once, but now she’s back. It changed her, but the other children under Miss West’s care understand. They’ve had similar experiences, and each of them searches for a way back to their own fantasy world.

An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows
Saffron Coulter’s dreads going to school every day, where a boy harasses her without mercy. When a stranger shows her a moment of kindness, Saffron follows her and stumbles through a hole in reality. She finds herself trapped in a magical realm on the brink of civil war. She falls in with the wrong faction and must flee to the dubious safety of another country, and it’s still better than a day at high school.

Gateway to Fourline by Pam Brondos
College student Natalie Barns takes a job at a costume shop because she needs tuition money, and in spite of her reservations about a weirdo co-worker. When she stumbles through the strange door in the back of the shop, she finds (of course) a magical world on the other side. But unlike the children in Narnia, she’s not granted royalty status or special abilities. All she knows how to do is run. In a world filled with deadly magic and decaying monsters, she’ll be doing quite a lot of that.

The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley
In the world of this book, magic is governed by the rise and fall of celestial bodies. At their peak, certain forms of magic are strong enough to create a portal to other realms (none of them Earth). Whether it’s frozen tundra where very little can survive, or a tropical clime where semi-sentient plants can kill, each realm is uniquely complex. Now, a dark chaotic star’s rise will bring all of these worlds together, and only one can survive.

The Island Deception
Gateways to Alissia 2
Harper Voyager Impulse, April 11, 2017
eBook, 352 pages

Continuing the exciting adventures from The Rogue Retrieval, The Island Deception blends fun and mystery into a brilliant new portal fantasy from Dan Koboldt.

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. But what happens after you step through a portal to another world, well…

For stage magician Quinn Bradley, he thought his time in Alissia was over. He’d done his job for the mysterious company CASE Global Enterprises, and now his name is finally on the marquee of one of the biggest Vegas casinos. And yet, for all the accolades, he definitely feels something is missing. He can create the most amazing illusions on Earth, but he’s also tasted true power. Real magic.

He misses it.

Luckily—or not—CASE Global is not done with him, and they want him to go back. The first time, he was tasked with finding a missing researcher. Now, though, he has another task:

Help take Richard Holt down.

It’s impossible to be in Vegas and not be a gambler. And while Quinn might not like his odds—a wyvern nearly ate him the last time he was in Alissia—if he plays his cards right, he might be able to aid his friends.

He also might learn how to use real magic himself.

The Rogue Retrieval
Gateways to Alissia 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, January 19, 2016
     eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, March 1, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 416 pages

In the tradition of Terry Brooks' Landover series, Piers Anthony Xanth books, and Terry Pratchett's Discword novels, scientist and blogger Dan Koboldt weaves wonder, humor, and heart into his debut novel, The Rogue Retrieval.

Sleight of hand…in another land

Stage magician Quinn Bradley has one dream: to headline his own show on the Vegas Strip. And with talent scouts in the audience wowed by his latest performance, he knows he’s about to make the big-time.

What he doesn’t expect is an offer to go on a quest to a place where magic is all too real.

That's how he finds himself in Alissia, a world connected to ours by a secret portal owned by a powerful corporation. He’s after an employee who has gone rogue, and that’s the least of his problems. Alissia has true magicians…and the penalty for impersonating one is death. In a world where even a twelve-year-old could beat Quinn in a swordfight, it's only a matter of time until the tricks up his sleeves run out.

About Dan

Dan Koboldt is a genetics researcher and sci-fi/fantasy author from the Midwest. His novel The Rogue Retrieval – about a Vegas magician who infiltrates a medieval world – was published by Harper Voyager in 2016. You can find him on Twitter (@DanKoboldt) and on his website at dankoboldt.com.

Give Yourself Some Room: Some tips for writing a book series
By Henry V. O’Neil


I just finished writing the final novel in my military science fiction Sim War series, and it seemed like a good time to review the experience. It didn’t take long to see that I’d learned a great deal about writing a series, and I thought I’d share some of those tips with you.

When I started brainstorming the first book, Glory Main, I knew I wanted to write several sequels. I’ve been writing for some time, and so I’ve met a wide variety of readers, authors, and editors who’ve provided their own advice and wisdom. One of the common themes about beginning a series was to start small. The idea is to give yourself, your storyline, your setting, and your characters room to grow. I took that to heart, and it paid off.

Before I continue, this is only advice—not a rule. There are plenty of excellent stories (post-apocalyptic fiction immediately springs to mind) that start with the literary equivalent of an atomic blast. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (minor spoiler alert) begins with the destruction of the Earth, proving that a brilliant piece of fiction can literally begin with the end of the world.

With that said, there are many advantages to leaving yourself some room when you’re beginning a series:

1. You’re less likely to paint yourself into a corner right from the start. When writing fiction, there’s always the danger that our made-up story contains boundaries we didn’t notice at first. While that’s tough enough in a book that hasn’t been released yet, it can be a major problem in a series. Discovering you’ve boxed yourself in while writing a draft merely entails a lot of rewriting, but learning you’ve done it in the already-released first books of a series can be a death blow. While starting small doesn’t guarantee this won’t happen, it certainly improves your odds.
2. It gives your characters room for change, growth, and the chance to surprise even you. Regardless of the timeframe of your series, the characters are likely to experience challenges, mishaps, and successes. How they respond to these situations reveals a lot about them, while also advancing the plot. These events provide excellent opportunities for growth and change in the character experiencing them—so let them surprise you. Presenting the characters in their final forms at the beginning of the story can rob the reader of watching them grow, and cheat you of the chance to develop the character later, in ways you may not have anticipated.
3. Your readers get to experience suspense, and to anticipate major developments. When you’re telling a story, it’s important to keep your audience’s interest. Presenting a knotty puzzle, a difficult quest, a bitter conflict, or a looming disaster can really pull your readers in—if only to see how it turns out. If the characters engage them, and the stakes for those characters are high enough, you can generate a genuine feeling of suspense. Don’t drag the story out, but don’t be in too big a hurry to solve the puzzle or resolve the conflict.
4. You create the time and the space to take advantage of a different idea. Ideally, the brainstorming process never ends. Even if you began with a fully-developed concept of how the storyline will proceed, the mechanics of writing the series will often cause the tale to diverge from that original course. New and exciting ideas present themselves as the writing progresses, and it’s nice to realize you have the leeway to explore them.

So now that we’ve reviewed the advantages of leaving yourself some room, how might you go about doing it?

1. Reveal only as much as you have to. There’s plenty of information to hand out in the first books of a series, so there’s no need to overdo it. Getting more specific than necessary can paint you into the aforementioned corner. The first book in my Sim War series, Glory Main, features four strangers marooned on a barren planet with no water, food, weapons, or any idea where they are. I wanted to write a true tale of survival, but this minimalist approach also helped me concentrate on the story. I certainly had to introduce the circumstances (a decades-long space war against an enemy that resembles humans so closely that they’re called the Sims) and the backstory for the main character (a politician’s son who volunteered for the war as an act of rebellion) but I didn’t go far beyond that. It wasn’t needed for the storyline, and it kept the tale focused on the very real issues of finding water, food, shelter, and a way off the planet.
2. Provide enough action to keep the story interesting, but consider holding off on the really huge developments. This is a tough one. Your readers want to find out what happens, or get to the giant fight they believe is coming, and they’re only going to wait so long. Make the wait interesting by including smaller, believable conflicts and resolutions on the way to the really big moments. In the Sim War series I didn’t exactly follow this advice, largely because one of the early books moved toward a titanic battle sequence in a way that was organic and enjoyable. It helped that the enormous confrontation did very little to answer the deeper questions about the war, and the fallout of the battle greatly advanced the main character’s development.
3. Expand the scope of the story naturally. No matter how hard you try to keep it simple, your tale’s complexity will increase as you write more books. So don’t be in a rush to resolve the major conflicts—you’ll reach them soon enough. My series presented a war set far in the future, with faster-than-light travel delivering space armadas to different solar systems, so it had plenty of big issues: Why are we fighting the Sims? Why isn’t somebody winning this thing? Is this war ever going to end? Questions like those will get asked many times, but definitively answered only once. It’s all part of the puzzle, and how that puzzle gets solved should be a ride the readers will enjoy.
4. Be ready to adjust. One of the biggest pleasures I get from writing is the discovery of a plot twist or story development that I didn’t see coming. I usually write from some sort of outline, but I’m always ready to dump that plan as soon as the tale diverges from it. This can happen in a lot of fun and interesting ways: A minor character turns into a major player, and the tale needs to make room for him or her. The story keeps heading in a different direction, until I finally go along with it. A throwaway line of dialogue provides the inspiration for what amounts to a complete—and better—rewrite.

Don’t rob yourself of these chances and opportunities. Start small. Leave room for growth. Be open to a different idea. Tell the story.

Glory Main
The Sim War: Book One
Harper Voyager Impulse, July 29, 2014
      eBook, 320 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 2, 2014
      Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages

We are closer to the Sims than we think …

For decades, mankind has been locked in a war with an alien enemy that resembles the human race so closely they are known as the Sims. Both sides battle for control of habitable planets across the galaxies—often at any cost.

Lieutenant Jander Mortas is fresh out of officer training and new to the war zone but eager to prove himself. There's just one problem: disaster strikes while he's traveling to his first assignment. He wakes to find himself marooned on a planet that appears deserted, with the only other survivors: a psychoanalyst, a conscientious objector, and a bitter veteran of a brutal slave-scout detachment. As the group struggles to reach safety on a nearby base, Glory Main, they discover a Sim colony—which could mean their salvation, or their demise.

Thrown together, they must fight the harsh elements, an ever-present enemy, and possibly each other.

Orphan Brigade
The Sim War: Book Two
Harper Voyager Impulse, January 6, 2015
      eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, February 17, 2015
      Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages

The action-packed sequel to Glory Main

Life has not been easy for Lieutenant Jander Mortas since making it to the Glory Main headquarters—with a telepathic alien entity in tow. After turning down his powerful father's offer of a desk job as an ambassador, Jander is heading back to the war zone. After joining an emergency reaction force of combat veterans known as the Orphans, Jander must work hard to get his platoon in shape for the next deployment—while learning the ropes himself. Because disaster soon strikes, and the Orphan Brigade is shipped out to Fractus, a harsh planet invaded by the enemy—the Sims.

Meanwhile, Jander's sister, Ayliss, is on a mission of her own: to uncover a scandal that would bring an end to her father's dubious reign as Chairman of the Emergency Senate. But Olech Mortas is hiding even more than his children could ever know …

Dire Steps
The Sim War: Book Three
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 29, 2015
      eBook, 304 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 10, 2015
      Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages

The third installment in the action-packed Sim War series

The Step, a faster-than-light method of travel, is humanity's greatest advantage in its interstellar war with the Sims. Olech Mortas, Chairman of the Emergency Senate, believes the Step could be used to contact an alien entity that might tip the scales in the conflict. And he's willing to risk his life to prove it.

Olech's son, Lieutenant Jander Mortas, has recently survived his first battle as part of the elite Orphan Brigade. The Orphans' new mission is to investigate suspicious Sim activity on the jungle planet Verdur—but what they discover there is far worse than anything they could have imagined.

Meanwhile, Jander's sister Ayliss has gone to the war zone as the governor of a new colony made up of discharged veterans. Ayliss soon realizes that she and the colonists stand in the way of both the Sim enemy and a sinister mining corporation with powerful allies.

All three members of the Mortas family are about to step into dire situations.

CHOP Line
The Sim War: Book Four
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 29, 2016
      eBook, 384 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, December 27, 2016
      Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages

THE FOURTH INSTALLMENT IN THE GRIPPING SIM WAR SERIES

Things are looking grim for the human Alliance against the Sims. A revolution on Celestia is draining the war zone of badly needed troops, and Alliance Chairwoman Reena Mortas is being blamed for the debacle. Her husband and predecessor, Chairman Olech Mortas, remains missing in the faster-than-light mode of travel known as the Step.


Jander and Ayliss Mortas are putting their lives on the line against the Sims, he with the hardcore Orphan Brigade, and she with the elite, all-female Banshees. But when the mysterious alien shapeshifter from Jander’s past reappears, he is sent on a secret mission that could possibly allow humanity to finally communicate with the Sims—and end the war.


Meanwhile, Reena’s attempts to find her missing husband are yielding surprising revelations from inside the Step that could answer two of humanity’s greatest questions. Who gave us the Step? What is making the Sims? In the penultimate book of the Sim War series, the truth of these hidden space entities begins to emerge.

Live Echoes
The Sim War: Book Five
Harper Voyager Impulse, February 28, 2017
      eBook, 384 pages

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION TO THE SIM WAR SERIES

There’s new hope for resolution of the decades-long war against the Sims: the discovery of Omega, a mysterious planet far from the fighting. Reena Mortas, the embattled leader of the human alliance, is betting everything that Omega could unlock the mystery of what’s creating the Sims.

Meanwhile, her husband and predecessor, the missing-and-believed-dead Olech Mortas, has made contact with the aliens who gave mankind the faster-than-light mode of travel known as the Step. Existing in a different realm, Olech is re-living the most important decisions of his life—while trying to explain human contradiction to a being that looks just like him, known only as Mirror.

Olech’s children, Jander and Ayliss, are still embroiled in the war. Jander has rejoined the Orphan Brigade on the mineral-rich planet Celestia, where he comes to believe what many of the Orphans feel: they’re supporting the wrong side. Ayliss, fighting in the all-female Banshees, is soon thrown into the losing war against the Sims, not knowing that every Banshee in the Human Defense Force is slated for an all-out assault on Omega that could win the war—or get them all killed.

Live Echoes is the gripping end to the Sim War series, and finally answers its central question: Where did the Sims come from, and why are they bent on humanity’s destruction?

About Henry

Henry V. O’Neil is the name under which award-winning mystery and horror novelist Vincent H. O’Neil releases his science fiction work. A graduate of West Point, he served for nine years in the US Army infantry both stateside and overseas. His five-book Sim War series (Glory Main, Orphan Brigade, Dire Steps, CHOP Line, and Live Echoes) is available from Harper Voyager. His website is www.vincenthoneil.com.

Woodwalker
Harper Voyager Impulse, May 17, 2016
     eBook, 336 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, June 14 , 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages

“What on earth would I gain from that?” I asked him. “Risk my own neck by violating my banishment just to leave you? The sentence placed on me if I return is execution. If I’m entering the mountains again, I’d damn well better get something out of it.”

Exiled from the Silverwood and the people she loves, Mae has few illusions about ever returning to her home. But when she comes across three out-of-place strangers in her wanderings, she finds herself contemplating the unthinkable: risking death to help a deposed queen regain her throne.

And if anyone can help Mona Alastaire of Lumen Lake, it is a former Woodwalker—a ranger whose very being is intimately tied to the woods they are sworn to protect. Mae was once one of the best, and despite the potential of every tree limb to become the gibbet she’s hung from, she not only feels a duty to aide Mona and her brothers, but also to walk beneath her beloved trees once more.

A grand quest in the tradition of great epic fantasies, filled with adventure and the sharp wit—and tongue—of a unique hero, Woodwalker is the perfect novel to start your own journey into the realm of magical fiction.

Ashes to Fire
Woodwalker 2
Harper Voyager Impulse, January 31, 2017
eBook, 336 pages

“You are a country.”

Those words have been the guiding force behind Queen Mona’s every move since she was a little girl—the idea that all her actions and desires were, first and foremost, decided based on what was best for Lumen Lake. It had kept her alive after the Alcoran invasion, it had driven her to retake her country, and now it is the steely resolve she needs to finally confront the despotic Seventh King, Celeno.

But when her diplomatic mission finds herself on the run through the swamps of Cyprien—accompanied by the unlikeliest group of companions—Mona discovers that while she is her country, she is also someone who has been sheltered by principles and bound by past mistakes. Now she must struggle to reshape her view of the world and face intimate new truths—not only for the good of her country, but for herself, as well.

A desperate journey to secure peace, and an even greater journey to discover herself, Ashes to Fire is the captivating and adventurous follow-up to Emily B. Martin’s Woodwalker—once more with cover art by the author herself!

The Results

Jack Heckel is the penname for the writing team of John Peck and Harry Heckel, two friends who were college roommates, who have now become novelists. Here’s how we started.

One day, John was telling Harry about an idea that kept rattling around in his head about Prince Charming, and what would happen if he never managed to save the princess or slay the dragon. Think of the pathos of this hero who never gets to be a hero!

However, like a two-man game of telephone, Harry’s brain transformed the concept from a tragedy into a comedy. How funny would it be to tell the story of a Prince Charming who was an abject failure? How insufferable would a man be if he had always imagined himself destined to be a great hero? What about the princess? Wouldn’t she be a little miffed to miss out on her “prince charming” moment?

So, in our Charming Tales novels, humor became the platform to explore the characters and worlds of fairytale and add depth to the two-dimensional characters of the original stories. As an added bonus, we had a blast doing it. When you can get the seven dwarves to argue about the proper way to pluralize the word “dwarf,” or the three bears to wonder whether an “irony” would be delicious, it’s a good time.

So, that was how we began, but when it came time to write a new series, we turned to another of our loves: epic fantasy. How would we have fun with a genre that can be quite serious…even seriously profound:

It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass. - J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

The answer was, of course, to poke a little gentle fun at the tropes. So, drawing inspiration from the great fantasy satirist, Terry Pratchett, as well as other authors such as Robert Asprin and William Goldman, we set out in The Dark Lord to explore those deep thoughts and ideas so beloved by fantasy authors — what is the nature of good and evil, how do oppressors justify oppressing the oppressed, why are elves so damn good looking — and to do so with tongue firmly planted in cheek. That’s why we chose to write about a “dark lord” named Avery who, when not tyrannizing worlds, lives in a dorm room in the worst housing on Mysterium University’s campus. Plus, we enjoyed mixing in our university experiences.

Fantasy novels can be profound, but they can also be profoundly funny. It brings to mind a favorite quote, which also happens to be one of Terry Pratchett’s favorite quotes, from G. K. Chesterton, another serious humorist, “Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.”

Did we mention that we spent a year with a broken door knob in our dorm room and were too scared of getting billed to call maintenance?

In The Dark Lord, we force our protagonist, Avery Stewart, to confront fantasy tropes. He has to delve into dungeons, survive gelatinous polygons and endure debates about marching order on his quest for a magical artifact to defeat the new Dark Queen. More importantly, he has to hope that his fellow adventurers don’t discover that he was the Dark Lord. Oh, and if he messes up, not only might the world of Trelari be destroyed, but he definitely won’t get out of grad school.

If mixing fun and fantasy sounds enjoyable to you, please pick up The Dark Lord. We had a great time writing it and we’d love to share. You can also find us at www.jackheckel.com.

The Dark Lord
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 1, 2016
eBook, 464 pages

In this hilarious parody of epic fantasy, a young man travels into a dark and magical world, where dwarves, elves, and sorcerers dwell, to restore the balance between good and evil

After spending years as an undercover, evil wizard in the enchanted world of Trelari, Avery hangs up the cloak he wore as the Dark Lord and returns to his studies at Mysterium University.

On the day of his homecoming, Avery drunkenly confides in a beautiful stranger, telling her everything about his travels. When Avery awakens, hungover and confused, he discovers that his worst nightmare has come true: the mysterious girl has gone to Trelari to rule as a Dark Queen.

Avery must travel back to the bewitched land and liberate the magical creatures . . . but in order to do so, he has to join forces with the very people who fought him as the Dark Lord.

About Jack

Jack Heckel’s life is an open book. Actually, it’s the book you are in all hope holding right now (and if you are not holding it, he would like to tell you it can be purchased from any of your finest purveyors of the written word). He is the author of the Charming Tales series and The Dark Lord. Beyond that, Jack aspires to be either a witty, urbane, world traveler who lives on his vintage yacht, The Clever Double Entendre, or a geographically illiterate professor of literature who spends his non-writing time restoring an 18th century lighthouse off a remote part of the Vermont coastline. More than anything, Jack lives for his readers.

Website

A Fairy-Tale Ending
Charming Tales Volumes 1 and 2
Harper Voyager Impulse August 25, 2015
     eBook, 496 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, October 13, 2015
     Mass Market Paperback, 496 pages

Collected for the first time, A Fairy-tale Ending comprises two volumes of Jack Heckel's Charming Tales: Once Upon a Rhyme and Happily Never After

Prince Charming had one destiny: to slay the dragon and save the princess. Both have been achieved, except there's a problem: Charming had nothing to do with either. A farmer named Will Pickett succeeded where royalty had failed—and this simply will not stand.

Thus begins an epic adventure that has Prince Charming and Will Pickett vying with each other for the throne by challenging trolls, outwitting scoundrels, and facing all manner of fairy-tale creatures. All the while a dark sorcery envelops Castle White, and Will's sister Liz and her friend Lady Rapunzel uncover a threat to the kingdom. The fate of Royaume hangs in the balance as Charming tries to salvage his reputation, and the clock is ticking…

Also available as individual eBooks:

The Pitchfork of Destiny
Charming Tales Volume 3
Harper Voyager Impulse April 5, 2016
     eBook, 400 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse May 17, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 400 pages

Life in the Kingdom of Royaume has been happily ever for King William Pickett and his fiancée, Lady Rapunzel. But when Volthraxus, the Great Dragon of the North, returns looking for the love of his life, the Great Wyrm of the South, it becomes clear that some fairy tales never end.

After Volthraxus discovers his love was slain by the newly crowned king, he seeks his revenge by kidnapping Rapunzel. Once again, Will teams up with Edward Charming, the only man in all the kingdom with the skill, ego, and dashing good looks to fight a dragon. Our heroes’ fates depend on finding a weapon re-forged in dragon blood—the Pitchfork of Destiny.

But as the two set off after the dragon, Charming’s bride, Lady Elizabeth, falls into the clutches of a mysterious sorcerer known as the Dracomancer, who has his own plans for Royaume.

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. You've written over a dozen novels for young adults. Of the Abyss, the first novel in the Mancer Trilogy, is your first adult fantasy. What are the biggest differences for you between writing fantasy for young adults and adults?

Amelia:  To start, coming of age is a major themes of most young adult novels. The individual stories in my YA series are all different, but at the heart of most is the question of, “Who am I?” What does it mean to grow up? How do you balance taking responsibility, asserting your independence and individuality, and still needing the support and protection you’ve had since childhood?

In my adult novels, I have more freedom. One fun part of writing Of the Abyss is that all of my main characters start as established adults, two of which are highly-respected in their fields. They’re at the point in their lives where they can look to the future and say, “Yes, I’m on the path I chose and that is my future.” It all goes to hell of course (fairly literally), the way real life often does, and the characters certainly need to grow and discover and reevaluate… but it’s a very different perspective, and it’s not the central theme of the story.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Amelia:  I'm absolutely a pantser. I'll make a handful of notes before I start writing, but when I start a new book, I rarely have more than a kernel of an idea, and I'm quick to add new things or throw out earlier ideas if I think something new will work better.

Of the Abyss had one page of notes before National Novel Writing Month in 2006. At the start of the month I intended for it to be a 50 thousand word throw-away project- a fun vacation from the series I was in the middle of at the time- responding to a friend's challenge to write a gay erotica story with no particular plot. I failed the challenge; I became too invested in developing my characters and discovering their story, so by the end of the month I had 50,000 words, my main characters hadn't yet hooked up, and I was typing "Part Two" instead of "The End." What was meant to be a silly story turned into an epic trilogy that included my favorite books of all those I had written. Later I looked back at my pre-NaNo notes and realized they were almost unrecognizable as the series of books that actually emerged.



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

Amelia:  I would have to say the middle third of a first draft, because that’s when a book is most likely to die on the table. There are other parts that are hard or unpleasant, including portions of the editing process, but that middle third is the make-or-break moment for a novel.

The first part of a first draft is easiest for me. I love scene-building, meeting the characters and starting the ball rolling. This is when I get to explore the world and learn about it; I love to build geography, culture, religion, trade, and even popular food of an area. When I revise I often end up reworking a lot of this, because in my rough drafts I "pants" it and let myself run and explore as much as I want.

The beginning is also where I get to introduce the big issues. What is the plot? How do my characters feel about these problems, whatever they are? This part, and their first reactions, is always fun and the easiest part of writing a book.

Then I hit the second third of the book. Characters have moved past immediate reactions, first plans may have failed or caused additional complications, wacky hijinks have begun and I need to figure out how to get from there to the end. This is the point where, because I'm a pantser, half of my books just stop and fizzle. This is the point where I either decide, "yes, I have an idea and it's strong enough to see me through" or "wow, this idea is boring me and I'm not going to keep going." Books in the second group go into a folder I consider my file graveyard.

To refer again to Of the Abyss, this was the point when Hansa (one of my main characters) has escaped being convicted of practicing sorcery and sentenced to death, and has gone home. His fiancée comes running up to him... and, as a writer, I stop and go, "now what?" If all goes well for Hansa and Ruby, it's "happily ever after," which is boring and would end up in the graveyard. Sometimes problems, as a writer, are a seeming lack of problems! In some books the characters dig in their heels and need a reason to get involved, and in other books they're so overwhelmed they (and I) can't see a way out. That's what makes this part so hard - as author, I often need to solve a problem I've set up to appear impossible, or discover a problem the character hasn't realized exists.

Not-really-a-spoiler: Hansa realizes his problems are just beginning.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Amelia:  Everything influences my writing.

I know that seems like a glib answer, but I don’t know any other way to respond. When we get to the questions below about inspiration and fantasy and research, I think you’ll see what I mean.



TQ:  Describe Of the Abyss in 140 characters or less.

Amelia:  Asking me to be brief- my kryptonite! Okay, here goes…

To escape execution, they must travel to the Abyss- a realm of hedonism, violence and grief- and reevaluate all they once knew about sorcery, love, evil, and even death

(This answer took me longer than any other answer in this interview! Yes, I had to cut out the period to get to 140...)



TQ:  Tell us something about Of the Abyss that is not found in the book description.

Amelia:  Though Of the Abyss focuses only on Kavet, that small country is a tiny piece of a much wider world called Castra. We don’t see much of that larger world in Abyss because, since the revolution sixty years ago, Kavet has become an isolationist backwater that participates little in trade or international culture.

One or the odd little facts that differentiates Castra from Earth is a scarcity of iron. Iron is strictly regulated by the Osei, dragon-like creatures who dominate the seas, because it is one of the few materials that can harm them. This makes the value of something like a steel sword (such as Hansa carries as a guard in the 126) a significant symbol of status. The purchase of an iron plow blade is a major investment, which inevitably affects industries like farming. This is one of those little facts that I love to discover, research and consider in depth while barely mentioning in the text because few readers actually care about the intricate nature of smelting iron into farm equipment (and none of my point of view characters are overly affected by it in this particular story).



TQ:  What inspired you to write Of the Abyss? What appeals to you about writing Fantasy?

Amelia:  I've already said what my original "inspiration" was, so I'll address how the silly, throwaway story I intended turned into something much bigger and became an entire world I've fallen in love with.

Part of my original “decision,” in the original notes I didn’t stick with, was that this wouldn't be a quest story. I put my characters on an island country, made it winter so all the ports were closed, and said, “There! You’re stuck now!” So instead, they traveled to hell.

The Abyss isn’t really hell, though; that’s just the easiest descriptor to give it. Living mortals tend to describe the Abyss and the Numen as the infernal realm and the divine realm, domains of evil and good, but they’re actually both fairly amoral. Their inspiration came not from traditional Judeo-Christian views of Heaven and Hell, but instead came from Freudian theories about the id, ego and superego.

The Abyssi aren’t devils set out to torment people; they’re just entirely id. They're focused entirely on their own immediate needs and pleasures. The Numini on the other hand are entirely superego, so they are only able to see and understand the world in absolutes and imperatives. The Numini consider themselves the supreme, loving and righteous guardians of humanity... but, like the Abyssi, they don't fully understand human needs or desires, or the complex range of full mortal emotion (in this model, humans represent the ego).

I was also influenced by the song "Imagine," though I'll admit I heard it in an ominous way instead of the optimistic one I’m sure was intended. "Imagine there's no heaven... [and] no hell," and we'll all be able to live in peace, is the heart of the philosophy of the Quinacridone. Followers of the Quinacridone (Quin) believe that dwelling too much on the future or past, or especially dwelling on the Other realms, is a dangerous, slippery slope to destruction. The belief isn’t entirely destructive in itself (it’s based partly on concepts of mindfulness, which I respect and try to adhere to in my own life) but since the Quin make up most of the population in the purely democratic Kavet, their beliefs guide policy, which in this case results in an aggressive, institutionalized ignorance where most people are taught, “Let your leaders decide what’s right and wrong, don’t question, and don’t think too much about it, and you’ll be safe.”

Finally, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that real-world politics and religion played a huge role in inspiring this book, during its first draft and even more so during its revisions. I graduated high school a few months before 9/11, which means I feel like my entire adult life has been set against a backdrop of rising tensions and increasing religious bigotry. The Patriot Act, and other “security” measures since (and they just keep coming up), was a major inspiration for Citizens Initiative 126, which decreed that sorcery of any kind was punishable by death and established the guard force responsible for enforcing that law.

I’m also a queer woman living in the first state to legalize gay marriage, back in 2004-- which means we were also the first state to see the vicious backlash as people tried to ban it again. I started to become actively involved in politics and civil rights in early college, and this too shows in Of the Abyss, both in terms of how sexuality is viewed in Kavet and what rights, responsibilities and freedoms the characters in Kavet have-- or lack, often in the name of “security,” or because in a pure democracy the majority’s beliefs decide the law for all.

That was a long-winded answer. In short, a lot of things inspired the Mancer trilogy, which is part of why it couldn’t stay a simple NaNo, and evolved into a tapestry I’ve loved working with for the past decade.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Of the Abyss?

Amelia:  Developing the world for Of the Abyss took a great deal of research, the majority of which I completed between the conclusion of the first draft and a completely rewritten second draft. Much of the research went into little things that aren't obvious in the final draft, like establishing the economy, ecology and international position of the country of Kavet.

I chose a lot of real-world analogs on which I could base my decisions. For example, Kavet has approximately the same climate as the state of Maine, which influences what they can farm, what kind of weather they expect or fear, and of course the seasons where shipping trade can or can't happen. In deciding how far or how fast an individual can travel via sea, I decided the naval technology would be roughly analogous to late 18th century, which influenced how difficult it is to go anywhere or ship goods. Some things didn’t have direct equivalents because they are intrinsically different from our world, like the iron scarcity. I needed to learn a great deal about iron and the evolution of its use in our world to consider how this would have changed Kavet.

One of the stranger, obsessive bits of research I did was about ducks. In Mancer 2, one of my main characters was a duck farmer. I famously spent nine hours researching ducks for what eventually became ONE PARAGRAPH in the entire trilogy. I must have ranted about it a great deal, and made a great many duck jokes, because my long-time readers and close friends still make duck and bird jokes about my writing.



TQ:  In Of the Abyss who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Amelia:  The easiest character to write was Alizarin. Rin is a prince of the third level of the Abyss (a demon), which means he is beautiful, sensual, and has the capacity for incredible destruction. As an Abyssi, he literally has no concept of shame or guilt. He evolves throughout the book, gaining more depth as his understanding grows, but every time he was on stage I enjoyed writing him.

The hardest character to write was Naples, an Abyssumancer (a sorcerer whose power comes from the Abyss) we meet in the second half of the book. I don’t want to write spoilers, but Naples is in a very difficult, complex situation, and the actions he takes as a result are morally beyond gray (they get pretty black). It was hard to write him in a way where he remained understandable and not just irredeemable.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Of the Abyss?

Amelia:  This came up earlier when I talked about the inspiration for this book, but I’ll reiterate and rephrase here: I included social issues in Of the Abyss because I couldn’t leave them out. I’m a rabble-raising beyond-progressive gay Jewish woman with disabilities with a day job as a special education teacher. I am too constantly in the middle of or otherwise aware of too many social issues for me to ever create a fantasy world without them.

We live in a flawed world, and all we can do is try our best to improve it, day by day. In that way, my characters are exactly like us all.



TQ:  Which question about Of the Abyss do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Amelia:  I was having trouble with this question, so I discussed it with my writing group and the barista at Starbucks (which is where my writing group meets) and they suggested, “Have you tried being less thorough?”

The hardest question here to answer was the one asking for 140 characters! I love this series and I love talking about it. It’s hardest to be brief!



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Of the Abyss.

Amelia: 

It was a place of glistening black sand, venomous beasts, creeping vermin, and of course the Abyssi—those perfect, beautiful predators who ruled the infernal realm by fang and claw.

(The description of the Abyss and the Abyssi playing and plotting within at the start of the book was actually one of the last pieces of the book to write.)

He looked up at her with a gaze gone flat and ugly, with no hint inside it of the boy she had once known. “The power gets hungry,” he said, utterly unapologetic.

(This entire scene with Baryte was also a later-version addition, which is odd considering how important it became in the trilogy as a whole. When I went to revise and rewrite for the first time, I realized that Hansa and Cadmia are supposed to be high ranked and respected in their field but we never saw them actually doing their jobs. I also wanted to bring in some pieces of the larger overarching plot, which weren’t developed early in the first draft, since I didn’t know about them yet at the time)

"You taste uncomfortable, and a little angry," Alizarin pronounced. "But you also taste of power. A little dusty, cold like the Numini, but still power."

"Okay. I'm awake," Xaz snapped. "What did you want?"

"I don't remember," he said.

(As I mentioned, I loved writing Alizarin. His interactions with Dioxazine were especially fun. She’s used to dealing with Numini, and simply doesn’t know how to handle an Abyssi. He’s equally at a loss with her.)



TQ:  What's next?

Amelia:  Well, Of the Abyss is the first in a trilogy. I believe we’re aiming for a book each year, with Of the Divine coming out in 2017 and Of the Mortal Realm in 2018.

Divine goes back in time about sixty years, to the time of Kavet’s revolution, when the royal house was deposed. It isn’t a prequel, though; I think it’s more accurate to describe it as a companion. Either way, it provides the next puzzle piece readers need to unravel mysteries that come up in the first book, and sets the stage for the third book. Last, Of the Mortal Realm picks up where Abyss leaves off, and sees the story through to the end.

I’m currently editing both Divine and Mortal. I also, always, have other projects going, ranging from more work in this world (though not in Kavet) to futuristic Earth sci-fi.

My NaNoWriMo novel this year takes place several thousand miles away from Kavet, at the border of warring Silmat and Ilbian, and is inspired by a strange combination of Mulan and… and I have no idea, actually, but I think it’s going to be fun. Between the recent controversies over trans rights and my own experiences with friends who have recently come out or transitioned, gender has been on my mind a lot, so that’s going to be on the list of topics I explore this year as well.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Amelia:  You’re welcome- Thank you for inviting me!

Of the Abyss
Mancer Trilogy 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 27, 2016
      eBook, 400 pages
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 1, 2016
      Mass Market Paperback, 496 pages

After decades of strife, peace has finally been achieved in Kavet—but at a dark cost.  Sorcery is outlawed, and anyone convicted of consorting with the beings of the other realms—the Abyssi and the Numini—is put to death. The only people who can even discuss such topics legally are the scholars of the Order of the Napthol, who give counsel when questions regarding the supernatural planes arise.

Hansa Viridian, a captain in the elite guard unit tasked with protecting Kavet from sorcery, has always led a respectable life. But when he is implicated in a sorcerer’s crimes, the only way to avoid execution is to turn to the Abyss for help—specifically, to a half-Abyssi man he’s sworn he hates, but whose physical attraction he cannot deny.

Hansa is only the first victim in a plot that eventually drags him, a sorcerer named Xaz, and a Sister of the Napthol named Cadmia into the depths of the Abyss, where their only hope of escape is to complete an infernal task that might cost them their lives.

About Amelia

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was 13 years old. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, all ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror List Selection; Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry; and Wyvernhail.

Website  ~  Twitter @AtwaterRhodes  ~  Facebook

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Of the Abyss
Mancer Trilogy 1
Harper Voyager Impulse, September 27, 2016
      eBook, 400 pages
Harper Voyage Impulse, November 1, 2016
     Mass Market Paperback, 469 pages

After decades of strife, peace has finally been achieved in Kavet—but at a dark cost.  Sorcery is outlawed, and anyone convicted of consorting with the beings of the other realms—the Abyssi and the Numini—is put to death. The only people who can even discuss such topics legally are the scholars of the Order of the Napthol, who give counsel when questions regarding the supernatural planes arise.

Hansa Viridian, a captain in the elite guard unit tasked with protecting Kavet from sorcery, has always led a respectable life. But when he is implicated in a sorcerer’s crimes, the only way to avoid execution is to turn to the Abyss for help—specifically, to a half-Abyssi man he’s sworn he hates, but whose physical attraction he cannot deny. 

Hansa is only the first victim in a plot that eventually drags him, a sorcerer named Xaz, and a Sister of the Napthol named Cadmia into the depths of the Abyss, where their only hope of escape is to complete an infernal task that might cost them their lives.