Interview with fantasy author J.D. Horn

Author J. D. Horn is here with me today and we’re chatting about his new sci-fi fantasy, The King of Bones and Ashes (Witches of New Orleans).

Bio:

J.D. Horn, the highly praised and bestselling author of the Witching Savannah series, now debuts a new contemporary fantasy series, Witches of New Orleans. A world traveler and student of French and Russian literature, Horn also has an MBA in international business and formerly held a career as a financial analyst before turning his talent to crafting chilling stories and unforgettable characters. His novels have received global attention and have been translated in more than half a dozen languages. Originally from Tennessee, he currently splits his time between Central Oregon, San Francisco and Palm Springs with his spouse, Rich.

Welcome, J.D. Please tell us about your current release.

My favorite tagline sums up the story to a T: “Desperate witches, old sins, decadence, and murder.”

The King of Bones and Ashes walks the line between dark fantasy and horror. Not quite urban fantasy, even though it features paranormal events taking place in a real setting. Where most urban fantasy would rely on romance, The King of Bones and Ashes turns to examining familial relationships—what builds a strong family, and betrayals which break down the sense of family. This isn’t to say that I have anything against the use of romance—quite the opposite. It’s only that for whatever reason, I tend return to the theme of family. (And, truth be told, I’m not very good at writing romance.)

The King of Bones and Ashes is an ensemble piece, with three main POV characters, written in close third person. I don’t think it’s an “easy” read, but I hope most readers enjoy it. (You’re never going to please everyone.)

What inspired you to write this book?

I’d been contemplating expanding my Witching Savannah series, by focusing on the down-at-the-heel Duvall family of New Orleans—the Taylors’ cousins introduced in The Line—but that didn’t feel like the right story to tell. I strive to ground my fantasy in the real world, and New Orleans bears too many scars, many of them recent. The question rose in my mind that if the magic of fantasy existed in our world, why wouldn’t witches have prevented the devastation of Hurricane Katrina?  The answer that came to me was that they would have, if they were strong enough to do so. From that I arrived at the premise that magic itself could be dying, and magic’s impending demise might drive witches desperate to maintain their status to commit atrocities. And then I had the image of a young girl watching from an upper floor window as the only world she’d known was washed away. That girl became Alice Marin.

Excerpt from The King of Bones and Ashes:

Despite never having breached this space, Alice knew this forlorn corner was where her father had hidden away everything belonging to their mother—at least everything he hadn’t burned. She’d heard Luc and her father fight over the rightful ownership of what was left of their mother’s possessions.

“Behind here,” Luc said, and Hugo helped him push aside a stack of unlabeled cardboard boxes, a whiff of perfume rising from them. Their mother had left before Alice could walk, and memory, that fickle thing, had betrayed her—she wouldn’t even know what her mother had looked like if not for that single image of the Marin family. And yet, this ghost of the once heady fragrance of sweet olive and gardenia came close to conjuring her mother’s face.

Luc paused, seeming to have caught their mother’s scent as well. But then his face hardened, and he whipped away a sheet that lay over a dozen or so canvases, exposing paintings Alice somehow knew to be her mother’s work.

She would have liked to look more closely at each, but Luc flipped through them, slapping one against the other, taking no care to protect their mother’s art. Alice caught a flash of what looked like an unfinished portrait of her grandfather, then Luc discovered the painting he’d been searching for, pulling it out from the others and turning it so she could have a better look. It was of Daniel, all right. The same cap. The same ginger hair poking out from beneath it. The same sweet but sad look in his eyes.

“Our Daniel believes himself to be a ghost, the unsettled spirit of a young Irishman who died during the construction of the New Basin Canal. But Daniel isn’t a ghost. There never was a Daniel.” Luc paused, maybe to give his revelation time to sink in, or maybe just to see if she’d flinch. She didn’t. Luc seemed satisfied with her reaction. “He’s a magic trick,” he carried on, “a servitor spirit our parents conjured up to look after Hugo and me—so they didn’t have to. Nicholas thought they had more important business to attend to, and mother, well, she did whatever he told her to do, like it or not. Until the day she stopped . . .” Luc’s voice trailed off.

They stood for a few moments in total silence. “Mother,” Hugo said, nodding to confirm Luc’s story, “painted this to help Father visualize Daniel. She didn’t want to. Father made her do it.”

Luc looked up from the painting. “That’s the first step, you see.” His voice sounded scratchy now. “You give a servitor form, one that suggests the traits you’d like it to have, and then you imbue—you know what I mean by ‘imbue’?” She shook her head, so he offered a different word. “You fill it with a sense of self. That’s the glue that helps keep the entity intact. It works best if you give the servitor a tragic past, an injustice it can fixate on. Saddling your creation with a dark secret or two, something it’s ashamed of, something it’s afraid you’ll learn, doesn’t hurt either.” Luc’s light brightened, and he held the painting up, offering her a final look at it.

Alice studied the portrait, her mouth open, her heart pounding. Though she wanted to deny it, it all made sense. Whenever she asked Daniel what his childhood had been like, he couldn’t remember the simplest things. Nothing. Not even if he’d gone to school. If he’d liked candy. If he’d had friends. He could rattle off some memories, mostly historical events, but the stories he told were always the same. Word for word. It was like he’d been given a list of facts to memorize. Facts that would fit what he believed to be true about himself, but nothing to show he’d actually had a life before joining their family.

Alice could feel that the Chanticleer Coven’s magic was, at least for now, nearly exhausted, probably only enough left to ensure them safe passage out of the city. That Daniel still held together at all was testament to how deeply he believed the lie of his own existence.

“Nicholas would’ve probably let him fade away by now,” Luc said, “but then you came along. And mother left . . .” He slid the painting back in with the others and then flung the sheet back over them. He was rough when handling the paintings, acting as if they meant nothing to him. But if he didn’t care about them at all, Alice realized, he wouldn’t have bothered to offer even this flimsy protection.

He turned back toward her and Hugo, fixing her with his gaze. “You see, that’s who our father is. This is what he does. He builds people up. Programs them to his liking, and when they stop being of use, he tosses them away without giving them another thought. Eventually you’ll be one of the ones he throws away.” His eyes shifted to Hugo. 
“You both will.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

Right now, I’m writing The Final Days of Magic, the follow-up to The King of Bones and Ashes and The Book of the Unwinding (out June 2018).

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Honestly, six, going on seven published novels later, I still struggle with this. For some reason the word “writer” carries an emotional charge for me, and brings up all types of issues around self-worth. I like to consider myself a storyteller. “Storyteller” takes off some of the pressure, and shuts my inner critic up long enough that I can write.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

Yes, I do. My schedule shifts as I go along. When I first start a project, I’m working mostly during the day—just like if I were still in an office job. As I get closer to a deadline, then I may end up working all hours. Hmmm—just like if I were still in an office job.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I talk, sometimes aloud, to my characters, asking them of input.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a writer/storyteller.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I think I’m breaking some interesting new ground with this new series. I hope readers will find something fresh, challenging, and entertaining in it.

Links:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon

Thanks for joining me today, J.D.!

Interview with writer Stephanie Vanderslice

Writer Stephanie Vanderslice is sitting under the spotlight today. She’s chatting with me about her new creative non-fiction, The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life.

Bio:

Stephanie Vanderslice's was born in Queens, NY in 1967 and grew up there and in the suburbs of Albany. Her essays have appeared in Mothers in All But Name, Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in their 40's and many others. In addition to The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life, she has also published Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? 10th Anniversary edition (co-edited with Rebecca Manery) with Bloomsbury. Other books include Rethinking Creative Writing and Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates (with Kelly Ritter). Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Arkansas Writer's MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, she also writes novels and has published creative nonfiction, fiction, and creative criticism in such venues as Ploughshares Online, Easy Street and others. Her column, The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life appears regularly in the Huffington Post. 

Please tell us about your current release.

The desire to create, to write, to fulfill our artistic dreams is a powerful human need. Yet the number of people who make a living solely by their pen is actually quite small. What does that mean for the rest of us, the self-described writing geeks, who are passionate about writing and who still want to sustain successful literary lives? What does it really mean to find time to build a rewarding writing life while pursuing a career, being a partner or raising a family, in the distracted, time-deprived, 21st-century? In The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life, based on her Huffington Post blog of the same name, Stephanie Vanderslice shares the secrets and tools to developing a successful, rewarding writing practice in a way that inspires the reader to persevere through the inevitable lows and even the highs of a literary life, so that anyone can pursue the path to realizing their artistic dreams.

What inspired you to write this book?

In 2011, after blogging for about 4 years on my own about the writing life, I had the opportunity to publish in the Huffington Post. I conversed with readers directly about issues in my writing life that way, the instant feedback I got, and decided to expand the column into a whole book.

Excerpt from The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life:

Chapter 1, Making the Commitment:

“You don’t always choose writing. Sometimes writing chooses you. Sometimes it grabs you by the lapels, gets in your face, and keeps you awake at night, assuring you won’t rest until you get your thoughts down, somehow. Sometimes it just feels like a constant malaise, a low-grade depression, like you’re forgetting something, leaving something behind, by not writing. Sometimes it feels like a slow build-up of thoughts and words until it feels as if your head, or your heart, might burst.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m revising the middle novel of a triptych set in Queens, NY, where I was born and spent a great deal of time growing up. Beautiful, Terrible Things ranges from 1904-2004, following a family’s fortunes from the General Slocum Steamship fire in New York Harbor in 1904, through World War II, 9/11 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and then it’s on to 1970’s-80’s Queens and a young woman making sense of life, family and love with a closeted gay father during the AIDS crisis in the yet-untitled last book. I’m also working on another memoir, Dear Madeleine: Letters to the Daughter I Never Had, about growing up female at the end of the 20^th century.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

You know, I’ve never not considered myself a writer; I’ve written since I was very young. As I write in the book, I had a teacher in high school, Kevin McCann, who really validated my writing ambitions and that certainly made me feel like a writer. But I’ve written compulsively whether I felt anointed as a writer or not. Writing is just something I have to do; it’s how I make sense of the world.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I don’t write full-time, which is a challenge, but I am fortunate in that my other job is teaching creative writing in college, so that when I’m not writing I’m at least thinking and talking about it. If you do it right, teaching college writing is still time consuming, though, like any other full-time job, so I am always working to fit my writing in. I try to find an hour or two a day during the week, before I go to work, sometimes more if I am working at home that day. I work a great deal on the weekends and at night to keep up with my teaching and writing. And I write solidly through the summers. I also have a family, so it’s a constant struggle for balance. Fortunately, my husband is also a writer, so we’re always trying to balance together. I write about finding that balance a great deal in the book, about what works for me.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I don’t know that it’s that unusual, but I have to have coffee or some kind of warm drink when I’m writing. It’s non-negotiable, a ritual. It helps if I have my dogs around; they’re quiet and unconditionally accepting and cuddly. I write more and more exclusively on the computer—typing is actually a very tactile experience for me and puts me in the zone. I just got a manual keyboard for Christmas (thanks, Mom!) I am so excited about. Before I moved to typing, I wrote exclusively with a ballpoint pen. I hate writing in pencil—hate, hate, hate it, and don’t like felt tip much better. I need to feel my words glide across the page. Stone paper is my new favorite thing for that—have you ever written on stone paper? It’s amazing, the texture—but it’s super-expensive. A stone paper journal starts at $12-13, so I’m not going to lay in a stock of that any time soon, but one journal, maybe. Writing on it is like nothing you’ve ever felt.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I’ve always written but I didn’t think writing was something people did as a job when I was very young. First, I wanted to be a paleontologist—I was obsessed with dinosaurs, rocks, and fossils, not unlike a lot of kids. I dreamed of finding a fossil in my backyard—(when I moved to Arkansas years later and discovered masses of actual fossils on the Buffalo River, I thought I was in heaven). Then I became obsessed with dolphins and I wanted to be an oceanographer like Jacques Cousteau—I had this beautiful book my parents had given me about Cousteau and his ship, the Calypso that I loved to page through. I can still visualize the illustrations and photos. Somewhere after that, as a pre-teen, I figured out that books, which I had always loved, really were written by actual people—at that point I never looked back. I knew that whatever I did, I would always write and that the more closely I could align my day job to writing, the better.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

If you want to write, there’s nothing stopping you. You don’t have to wait for permission. Just begin!

Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon

Thank you for joining me today!

Interview with novelist Dusk Peterson

Today’s special guest is Dusk Peterson and we’re chatting with about Dusk’s new alternate history novel, Sweet Blood (The Eternal Dungeon, Volume 5).

Bio:
Honored in the Rainbow Awards, Dusk Peterson writes historical speculative fiction with diverse characters: historical fantasy, alternate history, and retrofuture science fiction. Friendship, romantic friendship, and romance often occur in the stories.

Dusk Peterson also runs Historicalfic: Historical Research for Fiction Writers (historicalfic.com). A resident of Maryland, Mx. Peterson lives with an apprentice and several thousand books.

Please tell us about your current release.
I've just brought out Sweet Blood, the final volume in my Eternal Dungeon series, which is set in an alternative version of America that was settled in ancient times. As a result, ancient and medieval customs linger. The series is set in a royal dungeon that has gradually developed more humane methods of questioning prisoners. But younger prison-workers are now rebelling against the notion that torture should ever be used to question prisoners. In this climactic volume, the dungeon is torn apart by civil war, with lovers fighting against lovers, and friends turning against friends. The war becomes not merely a struggle to find a peaceful settlement over the issue of torture, but also a struggle to mend relationships.

Excerpt from Sweet Blood:
"Seven violations of the Code, Mr. Smith," said the Codifier. "Eight, if we count my own. All that our transgressions prove is that this dungeon desperately needs the Code and desperately needs leaders who are willing to take on the burden of punishing violations of the Code. If you and I were to resign today, who would take our places? Weldon Chapman, a man who barely escaped death for his own violation of the Code? Elsdon Taylor, who defied your orders to such a degree that his own senior night guard – a man of exemplary behavior until that time – took it into his head to loan his dagger to a mentally ill prisoner?"

Layle's fists clenched, his automatic reaction to any attack on his love-mate. "Sir, I am to blame for Mr. Taylor's refusal to rack his prisoner. I did not sufficiently impress upon him—"

"Mr. Smith, I am not trying to apportion blame here. Mr. Taylor is a junior Seeker and has been working in the dungeon for only five years; it is natural for him to make mistakes. I am simply pointing out that there is currently no man in this dungeon who holds the qualities of leadership necessary to take over your position or mine during this crisis, should either of us resign or even receive temporary suspension from our duties."

The Codifier carefully closed the Code of Seeking. Without looking Layle's way, he said, "It is the judgment of our Queen that we should remain at our posts, as we are needed here to deal with this crisis. It is also her judgment that we should continue our policy of requiring strict adherence to the Code. If any Seeker or guard violates the Code deliberately in the future, they will undergo discipline, just as Mr. Boyd did . . . but they will do so under my supervision of your actions."

He was silent for a long while. He knew, from the heaviness in his chest, that he had hoped for a different outcome. Resignation from his post, temporary suspension from his duties, a retraction of the policy of disciplining any guard or Seeker who violated the Code in even the smallest way . . . Any of these changes would have relieved him of the pain of continuing to fight the junior members of the dungeon who opposed his policy – of continuing to fight Elsdon over matters that his love-mate could never fully understand, because he had never been a senior Seeker . . . and never would be, if he continued to defy the High Seeker.

Oh, Mercy and Hell. He would gladly allow himself to be flayed for eternity if he could thereby escape the responsibility of disciplining Elsdon for any future violations of the Code.

He could feel the Codifier's eye upon him. He forced himself to speak the words he knew must be spoken: "I am the Queen's servant."

The Codifier slid the Code of Seeking into his desk drawer and rose to his feet. "If you were not, Mr. Smith, I would not have approved your appointment as High Seeker. Now let us put aside all thoughts of our own guilt and find a way to bring this dungeon back into order."

What inspired you to write this book?
When I started the series, I hadn't planned to overturn the characters' belief system; I was merely exploring how, even amidst evil, there can be people who strive to improve matters. The core of the series storyline has been the love that developed between the head of the dungeon (Layle Smith) and a former prisoner of his. But as time went on, I began to see how the differing views these two men held on how to treat prisoners would strain their relationship and begin to create a wider battle in the dungeon between two ideologies.

When coming up with ideas for stories, I usually start with characters in a tense situation. But since I write historical speculative fiction, history inserts itself at a certain point. This period I'm writing about in the Eternal Dungeon series, the 1880s, happens to be when reformists were fighting for changes in American society, both in labor and in prisons. So that fit neatly with what was occurring to my characters.

What exciting story are you working on next?
By February, I hope to have the first story out in a new series. Here's the blurb of the first story:

o—o—o

A young woman and a young man in a different time and place from each other are about to encounter the same problem, which will change their lives.

Joktan is in trouble. Pursued by an unknown enemy, he must flee for safety . . . where? When his rash prayer transports him to a deceptively quiet town, he must make sense of the tremendous transformation he has undergone.

Persis has spent nearly all her life on the Internet. A chatterbox online, she just can't seem to connect with people face-to-face. She had hoped that moving to a small town would give her a life beyond the screen, but she seems doomed to live alone forever.

Then she rounds a corner and finds herself facing a swordsman. . . .

Set in the author's hometown next to the Chesapeake Bay, this novelette (miniature novel) is the first tale in Swordsman in a Small Town, a diverse fantasy romance series about travel between small towns in parallel worlds.

o—o—o

Essentially, what happened was that I had a fantasy series called The Three Lands, and I found myself wondering what would happen if a character from that world ended up in my hometown. It's a premise I've been playing around with in my head for decades – the idea of someone from an earlier fantasy culture having to cope with modern life. In this case, I added in a small town, a slowly growing romance, and the fact that my hero looks Middle Eastern, and I had my series.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
In the loosest sense, I was a writer from the moment I began telling stories as a small child. That was something every kid I knew did; we would play out the stories.

I began writing down my stories when I was eight. By the time I was nine, I was toying with the idea of choosing writing as a career. To my supreme good fortune, when I was ten or eleven I read Jacqueline Jackson's Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail: A Book about Writing Among Other Things. That book not only provided lots of helpful practical advice on being a writer; it also listed lots of reasons why one would want to be a writer.

From the moment I read Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail, I was a committed professional. I wouldn't begin writing fiction at a professional level for another twenty years or so, but I was fully committed to writing as much as possible and doing everything else I needed to become a published author.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I learned how to find time to write during the quarter century that I was a full-time writer. For a couple of years there, I was bringing out an e-book every week – mainly reissues, but still, with a workload like that, you learn to be disciplined, which was a lesson I badly needed.

These days I work on my writing for an hour or so before breakfast: research, composing, editing, or layout. During meals I either do light editing or I read fiction, which is part of the creative process for me. On Sundays, I prepare my social media posts for the week, and I issue and announce my latest stories: online serializations or e-books. That's my official schedule, but I must admit I cheat a bit: I often find ways to nudge in a bit more writing-related time. (I'm squeezing in these interview replies between dinner and bedtime.)

My new day job – other than taking care of housework for me and my disabled apprentice, which is an important part of my day – is running a business called Historicalfic: Historical Research for Fiction Writers. I'd like to be a helping hand to authors who need assistance with their historical research. I've been doing historical research for thirty years now, not only as a novelist, but also as a journalist and history writer.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
My Muse is enamored with foreshadowing. My Muse does this by "backshadowing" – grabbing onto old, trivial references and making them important. For example, in Sweet Blood I was bringing in a new character. My Muse said, "Hey, remember three volumes back, when you mentioned a soldier in passing? And wait, couldn't this guy also be the soldier who briefly appears in the very first story of the series, which you wrote back in 2002?"

I once tried to show a fellow writer, through colored type, where my Muse inserted foreshadows into a story I'd written. The story ended up looking as though colored confetti had been thrown upon it.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
From age nine onwards, a writer. It wasn't a strange choice. My father is a literary historian and printing historian; my mother was an amateur reporter and poet. They met while writing for their college newspaper.

My parents were always very supportive of me becoming a writer, both in terms of emotional support and in terms of practical support. My father taught me how to do layout; my mother bought me my first thesaurus. Little things like that made all the difference.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I enjoy diversity in fiction – both my fiction and other people's fiction. I have a tags page at my website for the diversities of character in my own stories. At my author accounts at Twitter and Facebook, I link to articles about diversity in fiction.

(At my researcher accounts at Twitter and Facebook, I link to articles about historical research and writing historical novels.)

Links:
Author links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Goodreads | Wattpad | Archive of Our Own

Researcher links: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Thanks for being here today, Dusk!