Interview with sci-fi novelist Lynn Steigleder

Novelist Lynn Steigleder has stopped by today to chat a little bit about his new sci-fi fantasy, Terminal Core.

Welcome, Lynn. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Virginia. I spent most of my young adult life as a supervisor in the field of construction and fabrication. When my department was outsourced within two months of my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, I realized the need to transition into a new career path.

During a fishing trip, my son suggested I consider writing as a career having enjoyed short stories I had written in years past. I agreed to the challenge and my first novel, Rising Tide, was accepted for publication. I have continued to work on the Rising Tide series. Eden’s Wake is the second book and Deadly Reign the third in the series published by Christopher Mathews Publishing. My fourth offering, Terminal Core is a stand-alone sci-fi/fantasy hybrid. There are two more novels in the draft stage close to completion. Number four in the Rising Tide series and another stand-alone hybrid.

Please tell us about your current release.

Aon, a solid core planet made from the priceless and most dense element in the galaxy (caladium) is under silent attack. Plans are made by off-worlders to dissolve the unbreakable core using crude oil obtained from 19th century earth. Once the oil is refined, the byproduct, gasoline will soften the caladium, allowing it to be collected. Separate alliances unwittingly come together in the dead city of Baine. Their objective; preserve the planet. The core is fashioned from living beings, these indestructible creatures prepare to defend their domain. Disregarding all else, the would-be thieves continue to process the pilfered caladium. Once the coalition melds into a solid force, a battle for life and world begin.

What inspired you to write this book?

I have enjoyed Science Fiction and action adventure since I was a young boy. The old movies with stop motion animation were amazing in their day, but left a lot to be desired after go-motion hit the silver screen in 1993 with Jurassic Park. Everything I read pertained to Science Fiction or one of its sub-genres. I guess that pretty much set the stage for subject matter when I began writing. As far as Terminal Core, there is no particular reason for penning this novel other than an idea popped into my head and the story evolved into what it is as I wrote.

Excerpt from Terminal Core:

CLAY STEPPED UP onto the raised walkway.

"I hate this place," he mumbled, patting his sidearm. He grabbed the door handle and prepared to enter.

Clay was a bounty hunter. His latest skip (if you want to call him that since Clay had spent the better part of two years chasing empty leads) was Sal Ricky—a career criminal with a taste for refined women, as he would consume certain body parts of his victims after performing whatever atrocities piqued his fancy.

Clay stood tall, six foot five. He almost always wore black, except for his blue jeans. He felt it more intimidating.

He stepped into the brothel. A dozen pair of eyes turned his way. Clay removed his sidearm from its holster.

"I'm looking for Sal Ricky," he announced. After a slight pause, he repeated the phrase. "I said, I'm looking for Sal Ricky."

"If you want me, all you gotta do is ask," came a smug response. The voice emanated from a dark corner. In it stood a six-foot tall figure. Instead of legs, it sported four eight-foot-long appendages. These members would shoot forward landing on the ground and allow the rest of the body to move over them like treads on a tank. He could move surprisingly fast when necessary.

"So?" Sal Ricky asked. "What can I do for you?"

Clay moved closer toward the corner and cocked his weapon.

"Don't play stupid, you ball of snot." He raised his free hand and pointed a finger. "I've been looking for you for almost two years now." Clay cocked the second hammer on his handgun. "This time you're all mine."

Sal Ricky was a hydrak. He lived up to his name, constantly oozing fluid and leaving a trail similar to that of a slug when he moved.

"Ya think so." The creature lit a cigarette with two human-like hands. The hydrak inhaled deeply, burning up half the smoke in one drag.

"Better men have tried," he said, finishing his cigarette with a second drag and dropping it into a puddle of slime; the butt hissed as the glowing ashes died.

Clay tightened his grip.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I get just as much for you dead as alive." Clay smiled out of one corner of his mouth. "It makes no difference to me."

Sal Ricky crossed his arms which were anything but human. They were muscular with a lizard-like texture and a green color to match. His lower half was bulbous and horizontal to the ground, turning vertical at mid-thorax until it formed his head.

"Don't you tire of the same old clichés?" Sal Ricky snickered. "Easy way, hard way, alive or dead, blah, blah, blah. After two years, you should know I do nothing the easy way." His head was square with a round circle on each side. Sal Ricky could spin his neck three hundred and sixty degrees if need be. He had a set of eyes at the upper portion of each circle. One side contained an orifice with which he spoke and took in nourishment. One big tuft of green hair sprang from the center of his scalp, climbed vertically, about a foot, and then flopped over on all sides.

"Have it your way," Clay said.

Just then, two dark humanoid figures appeared on either side of the slug. The first figure made a move and then slipped on his boss' excretions, landing flat on his back.

Clay rolled to his right behind a steel column and fired one barrel, removing most of the second figure's head. The first man, still floundering in the goo, was an easy take out.

Sal Ricky moved toward Clay knocking him to the floor as he passed by.

Clay moved to one knee and steadied himself. He would have but one shot.

Sal Ricky could easily burst through the wall, and that's what he had a mind to do, Clay surmised. He made sure both hammers were cocked. Cocking them was one thing; firing both at the same time was something you didn't do unless you had to.

Clay took a deep breath and pulled both triggers.

What exciting story are you working on next?

A thriving world is sent spiraling into the depths of degradation along with its inhabitants. Dalon Con along with several like-minded factions attempt to bring Burrus Plax back to normality. The twentieth century type world has but three cities. Two are dead on the surface and the third nearly gone. Time travel brought by the odobi play a part in the destruction and recovery of Burrus Plax. Whether the former or latter will be determined by the temporal vortex. Deadly exotic creatures abound making every step the ones primed to save this world make the potential to be their last. 

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I’m not sure at this point I consider myself a writer. I feel a certain measure of success comes with the title.

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 write full-time. I have a caregiver/personal assistant who types and tries to keep me straight, which is a job in and of itself. We usually start around 8:30 a.m. each week day and complete our day around 6:30 p.m. The first half of the day is devoted to marketing. I also post a weekly blog, a monthly newsletter and an occasional short story. The second portion of the day is devoted to the current manuscript I am writing.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I make no preparations before I begin a new manuscript. I grab an idea and fly by the seat of my pants. In this way the novel tends to write itself.

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

A paleontologist

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I write because I love to write. If I take a day or two off I find myself jonesing to get back at it. There is no offensive language or sexual situations in any of my novels; however, when you have to dispose of demons and vice versa the violence can get a little intense. In addition, the majority of my writing could also be classified as action adventure. I tend to pack my books with action and very little down time.

Links:

Website | Goodreads | Amazon | Twitter | Facebook

Thanks for being here today, Lynn!

Interview with novelist Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey

Author Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey is with me today and we’re talking about her new WWII historical, The Fortress.

During her virtual book tour, Madeleine will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:

Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey was born in the French Alps, moved to the United States twenty-five years later, and currently lives in the mountains of Virginia with her husband, two daughters, and Mikko.

Welcome, Madeleine. Please share a little bit about your current release.

It is a fiction take on the Resistance in the Vercors, a World War Two story told from the perspective of common people, whose characters and emotions create the sense of time and space that brings history to life. One of them, Alix, is thrust into the world of La Résistance after her father’s death, and learns that there are no choices ahead of her that don’t mean life or death. As her country braces for the seismic shock of D-day, Alix faces unrelenting violence, unforeseen possibilities, and a dangerous leader named Marc. Marc is a complicated man fighting many inner demons, who doesn’t not like to share control, and especially not with an eighteen year-old girl. The story feeds on biographical elements and the political swamp that is France right before D-Day, an environment I know inside-out, and which I think contributes to make the tale a true Historical.

What inspired you to write this book?

My own family history. Three of my uncles were condemned to death for collaborating with the Vichy government, a puppet of the Nazis. Their sentences were eventually commuted to national disgrace, and ten years of forced labor—thanks to my father, who had fought with honor during the war and was able to litigate a lighter sentence with the subsequent political swamp of the liberation. My uncles had to leave the area to avoid being murdered, but we stayed. It would be too long to explain the kind of resentment and mistrust that centuries of hardship and war can breed in a small community, but to summarize the situation, we were the children of traitors to the nation, born on the wrong side of glory. I grew up a collaborator’s daughter, a hard legacy to overcome in a community mauled by four years of occupation and violence, and seventy years later, my last name remains associated with the destruction of the C2 Maquis in Malleval. Yet the whole experience had a strangely strengthening effect on me. It gave me roots, a documented past, an inheritance of sorts, that made me want to understand what tears a nation apart, what makes people turn against their country, their neighbors, and themselves sometimes.

Here is the part where Alix and Marc, the two protagonists who drive the tension in the story, decide that a fight is better than the relationship they cannot have.

“Is that mint?” Marc asked. “At home, we mix it up with heather and those little blue flowers. I think they were called…”

“I only like mint.”

“Nothing wrong with mint.” He waited for her to say something else, something that would ease the tension he felt in the room, but she remained silent. She must be a little shaken, he thought. That’s understandable. “Were you able to get rid of the body?” he asked gently.

“Yes. Why are you here?”

He went up to the little window and lit a cigarette before answering. There was no mistaking the animosity in her tone. I have to fix her fuck-up, and she’s angry? At me? He sucked the smoke deeply into his lungs. “You know exactly why I’m here. What you did today will impact—and possibly kill—many people. It will help if we don’t argue about it.”

“You’re the one who’s mad. I can see it.”

“I’m not very happy, but that’s not the point.”

 “Don’t you ever sleep at night?”

 “Not much. It’s easier to hike in the dark. You can’t see the incline, you can always pretend that it’s flat. What about you? Having nightmares?”

 “Not at all,” she lied. “I would do it again.”

“Ah. The Ice Fairy. I remember.” He could feel a headache coming. “Next time I have a hit job, I’ll make sure to ask you first. At least you’re not wasting bullets.” He had gone to the hidden phone and was checking its functioning as he spoke. “What’s your next project? Anyone in mind?”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Do you want to know who it is?”

No, not really, he thought. He couldn’t ease the suspicion that he might be on her revenge list. She had once said that she didn’t hate him, but who could trust her? Maybe she had planned something terrible, like cooking him in the sawmill kiln. He almost made a joke of it, and thought better. She never understood his jokes, anyway. “You owe me an explanation,” he said instead. “I don’t remember asking you to murder a Nazi officer. You want to tell me why you didn’t discuss it with me?”

“It happened too fast. And it couldn’t be helped anyway. Even Rieder knew that, I saw it on his face, then, when it happened.” She lowered her forehead like a stubborn child ready to take a beating. “I didn’t go looking for him. He came after me, and as you know, Nazis don’t give you a lot of room to negotiate.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

My agent said I should do a sequel, but I think I’ve said everything I had to say on the subject, so I am working on the contemporary tale of a young school teacher who is entrapped in a scheme to cast her as a terrorist. There are strong political and religious themes, as well as a romantic element. I guess you could call it a tale of modern resistance.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I don’t identify as a writer. I am a wife, a mother, a teacher. I am Christian, I am a woman—but not a feminist. In fact, I am nothing that ends in ist, unless it’s individualist. Yet I have to admit that writing this book was an amazing experience. I discovered more about myself and the world than all my years spent in college.

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 am an English and French teacher, but my call is special education. My students are non-verbal, a real challenge for someone who lives to share ideas. The positive side is that I won’t get in trouble with my school district for jumping on my soap box and voicing politically incorrect ideas. I like to work, it provides a wealth of details and ideas I can adapt to my stories, particularly the MS I’m working on now. I am also busy with four acres of forest to clear, two daughters, two dogs, and a lot of reading. I write here and there, sometimes just a few lines, sometimes a whole chapter, and never stress about it. It must always remain a pleasure.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I’m sure it’s visual, although I can’t take any credit for that. The Vercors mountains are so breathtaking a backdrop, that they would give an absolute dimension to any story. I see the cliffs first, and they turn into some sort of secret well in the desert, the fount of all beauty, the Aristotelian Final Cause of all human experience.

For me, oui?

And that’s what I had to share by the way, a place so unbelievably beautiful that people from all over Europe decided it was where they would make their last stand and die to save France from the Nazis.

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

I had no idea! Growing up in France was not professionally motivating, given the chronic unemployment rate and the pervasive de-culturation atmosphere, and all I wanted was to travel anyway. A good thing since it took me to the United States, a place that happens to be personally and professionally motivating, and where I found the inspiration to work hard, study, and write a book, even though I am not a writer, or even a native English speaker. America is the place where anything is possible, because when things don’t work out one way, the options are endless.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I put my heart and soul into this book, and I hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Links:

Website | Facebook

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Interview with novelist James Vella-Bardon

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Author James Vella-Bardon helps me wrap up the week by chatting with me about his new novel, The Sheriff’s Catch.

Bio:

James was born and raised in Malta, an island nation steeped in the millennia of history. As a boy he often caught a rickety old bus to the capital of Valletta, where he would hover around the English bookshops to check out the latest titles in fiction.

Growing up he was an avid reader and a relentless day-dreamer, with his standout subject at school being English composition. He also won a couple of national essay competitions. Although he spent seven years studying and obtaining a doctor of laws degree, this did not cure him of his urge to write stories. So, after emigrating to Sydney in 2007 he resolved to have a proper stab at writing his first novel.

The result of this decision is an epic, sprawling five-part historical fiction series called The Sassana Stone Pentalogy. It is the product of nine years of intense rewriting and research, and tells the story of a Spanish Armada survivor who is shipwrecked in Ireland.

The first instalment in the series is a rip-roaring, myth-busting page-turner called The Sheriff’s Catch. Its anti-hero protagonist Abel de Santiago is an Armada survivor who finds himself on the run across Connacht, whilst being pursued by English troopers who want him tortured and killed.

Please tell us about your current release.

It’s very cross-genre: thriller, mystery, horror, action, adventure, suspense, and historical. It’s got a pinch of black humour in it and one reviewer even said that it contains romance!

It’s a breakneck action thriller set in 16^th Century Ireland. An edge-of-your-seat page turner which will leave readers white-knuckled so that it has drawn comparisons in terms of its pace to ‘The Da Vinci Code’. The protagonist is a deadly sniper named Abel de Santiago, a Spanish solider who is stationed to the Spanish Netherlands. When his treacherous army comrades kill his pregnant Dutch wife, Santiago deserts the army and hunts them down to Seville. Before he can achieve his revenge he is captured by the men he hunts who sell him as a galley slave, leaving him to row aboard one of the ships forming part of the Spanish Armada. Yet his real troubles start following the Armada’s defeat at the famous Battle of Gravelines, when he finds himself shipwrecked upon the coast of Ireland. For Ireland is a country terrorized by mounted English troopers called Sassenachs, who have orders to find, torture and kill all Spanish castaways. Santiago’s fate appears sealed, so that the reader is instantly confronted with a pressing, life or death question: can Santiago outrun his own fate? I should also add that The Sheriff’s Catch has earned incredible reviews to date on Goodreads and Amazon, and is also the first instalment in a five-novel series called The Sassana Stone Pentalogy.

What inspired you to write this book?

I read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code when I was 23, and it was the first novel I could not put down until I finished reading it. Henri Charriere’s Papillon was another novel which greatly inspired me, a highly intriguing thriller which is recounted in the first person. I wanted to write something as addictive as those two books, and when I read the first chapter of Q by Luther Blissett, I knew that I could do it in an original and largely unexploited setting like 16^th Century Europe.

The spark of inspiration occurred a year later when I read a small non-fiction book called Ireland: The Graveyard of the Spanish Armada by T.P. Kilfeather yet another book which I could not put down until I had finished reading it cover to cover. The adventures of the Spanish castaways in 16^th C Ireland blew my mind, and I knew I finally had a setting to write an incredible novel to rival my favourite historical thrillers which have been a great inspiration to me like Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Adventures of Captain Alatriste, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Tiger, Tim Willocks’ Tannhauser Trilogy, Q and Altai by Luther Blissett / Wu Ming, J.B. Pick’s The Last Valley, Robert E. Howard’s The Adventures of Solomon’s Kane and Robert Low’s The Whale Road. I was definitely also inspired by fantasy series like Tolkien’s and Stephen Donaldson’s trilogies and David Eddings’ pentalogies, which were part of the reason I wanted to write a lengthy yet pacey epic that a reader could be happily lost in.

Excerpt from The Sheriff’s Catch:

‘Take his keys!’ I yelled out in Sabir, feeling like I spoke the thoughts of most present. ‘Take his bloody keys!’

Dimas’s eyes widened as I stood off the bench and pointed at him, still shouting at the other slaves to act. As the overseer made to speak, a brawny arm suddenly curled about his throat, which belonged to a hefty Berber strokesman. The enormous slave nodded at me once, before he spoke to the rowers alongside him.

‘Get the keys.’

He then bent over sideways and shoved the stunned Dimas underwater. The crazed overseer kicked with his feet and twisted and turned, yet it was all in vain as the bulging muscles rippled in the arm of his victim turned aggressor. Meanwhile another slave had already reached Dimas’s side and undone his huge belt, with the heavy clanking keys passing through many hands even before the overseer had stopped kicking. The large Berber then pulled Dimas’s head from the bilge water and wrung his neck for good measure.

‘Be silent,’ he boomed across the benches, ‘and let none escape without my command!’

Having declared himself the leader of the slave revolt, the giant then turned his tattooed face towards our side of the deck, waiting for us all to be freed. When the last shackle was undone he strode towards the steps before us, crying out to the surviving rowers who already milled behind him.

‘Whosoever craves freedom, join with us now!’

A roar was returned as most hurried after him, with only a handful still clinging to their benches in fear. I flung Esteban away as Maerten and I hurried out, scarcely believing our luck as we ran after the fleeing rows of slaves. A swish of bilge water was heard at our feet before we ran towards the steps. As we hurried through the infirmary I could see that it was choked with countless wounded men, who groaned aloud at our passing while the physicians and surgeons stared at us in disbelief.

Upon reaching the main deck we were greeted by a flash of lightning, which streaked the nightly heavens. The sight left us startled before our ears were deafened by a roar of thunder. Our galley continued to lurch leeward as the end of great waves spattered our decks. The scent of the open ocean left me feeling half-revived, as I took in the chaos which Costa had mentioned. Ahead of us, guards beat back mutineers before they too were set upon by the Berber and his freed cohorts. We all swayed to the growing throes of the ocean, and at the prow a despairing nobleman flung gold doubloons overboard and cried out in despair.

What exciting story are you working on next?

My next story will be ‘A Rebel North’, the second instalment in ‘The Sassana Stone Pentalogy’ and sequel to The Sheriff’s Catch. People have asked me to describe it to them, and my reply has always been that while ‘The Sheriff’s Catch’ is more of a rollicking ‘man on the run’ story like Mel Gibson’s movie ‘Apocalypto’, ‘A Rebel North’ is more about a stranger in a strange land trying to assimilate into a different society. So it’s more like Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances With Wolves’ or Richard Harris’ ‘A Man Called Horse’. I’ll stop there because I don’t want to give much more away, except to say that 16^th C Gaelic culture is staggeringly interesting, especially when it comes to the status which was afforded to women!

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When experienced structural editors Jessica Hatch and Craig Taylor told me that I could write. And especially a couple of weeks ago when legendary New York literary agent Albert Zuckerman told me that I had talent and lots of energy.

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’ve only written full-time once in my life, back in 2010 when I took eight months out to rewrite my first draft of The Sassana Stone Pentalogy, during which time I was financially supported by my then partner (now my wife). Otherwise it’s always been free time. I estimate that part-time writing is 6 months of a full-time year and that free-time writing is 3 months of a full-time year. All of which makes my final wordcount north of 450k words at the end of 2016 quite silly. I don’t know how I managed it.

My Monday is as follows: drop kids off at school, commute to work, commute home back from work, do homework with kids and put them to bed. Then I crumple on the sofa for five minutes, playing this silly computer game on my iPhone to clear my brain. If there’s any drops of energy left in the rag I then peel myself off the couch and plonk myself on the kitchen table, open my laptop and start to write.

I try to write at least two lines, which most days leads to writing until midnight or 1am. I then pass out on the bed and it’s Groundhog Day again for the following four working days of the week. On weekends I’m sometimes too shattered after a whole day with young kids to do anything at night, but it’s getting easier as my younger one grows older. Needless to say that given this highly busy routine (sometimes my evenings get taken up by admin etc.) I write and read a lot on my iPhone on the train and during the lunch break. Although I hate smart phones which are such an intrusion on our lives, without the iPhone I’d not have been able to do what I’ve done, that’s for sure.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

When short of time I record ideas on my video app on the iPhone, then email the recordings to my author email. I type them out later on at night. I’m a big believer in writing down your idea there and then, which sometimes leads to awkward situations during the day.

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

An Australian author. Tick, tick.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Check out the ratings and reviews of The Sheriff’s Catch by real (and I mean real) readers on Goodreads and don’t be put off by the ‘historical fiction’ tag. I hate calling my novel ‘historical fiction’, because it’s not - it’s actually a thriller set 500 years ago. So much love and attention to detail has gone into this novel, it’s definitely not your usual airport quick-flick, although it’s as pacey – one reviewer aptly described it as ‘a blockbuster with depth.’ It is a really authentic and original piece of work.

I also wanted to add that the novel trailer for The Sheriff’s Catch (which I created) has been recently nominated in the ‘Best trailer for a book or novel category’ at the 19^th Golden Trailer Awards to be held in Los Angeles on 31 May 2018! Still pinching myself and can’t wait to attend this prestigious ceremony.

Links:

Website | Publisher | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram

Thanks for stopping by today, James.