Wednesday, August 6, 2025
SPFBO Champions' League Interview: Michael McClung, the Author of The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael McClung was born in San Antonio, Texas, but now lives in Europe. He has had the requisite number of odd jobs expected of a speculative fiction author, including soldier, book store manager, and bowling alley pin boy. His first book, the Sword & Sorcery novel "Thagoth," won the Del Rey Digital first novel competition in 2002 and was published by Random House in 2003.
First of all - congratulations! You already conquered SPFBO once, which means you’ve been scientifically certified as Awesome. But now… it’s time for the Champions' League. One winner to rule them all. Ten champions enter, one leaves with eternal bragging rights (and maybe a trophy if Mark can source one).
Before the games begin, we’d love to hit you with 10 questions:
Looking back to when you entered SPFBO, did you ever imagine your book would take the top spot? What made you take the plunge and submit?
SPFBO has become an institution over the last decade, but that first year, to me at least, it was simply “Hey, Mark Lawrence is doing a cool thing. Might as well throw my hat in the ring.” I hoped Trouble’s Braids would do well, of course, but there wasn’t the same kind of… weight, I guess, to entering that fist year.
How has life changed since winning SPFBO? More book sales? Wild parties? Paparazzi at your grocery store?
Without a doubt, the SPFBO my book(s) in front of thousands of readers who likely would not have read them otherwise. No paparazzi yet, and the wild parties have been, uh, unrelated to literature.
Many champions talk about the pressure of following up a winning book. Did you feel that? How did it shape your next projects (if at all)?
I feel pressure every time I sit down to write, but it doesn’t have much to do with the SPFBO win. At this point the Amra Thetys series has five books (six if you count The Last God), and I’ve been struggling to finish the latest one for far, far too long. Life sometimes throws things at you, and you can only have faith that the words will flow once more when you come to the place in life where they are meant to.
There are nearly 3,000 SPFBO entries out there. What, in your opinion, helped your book climb to the top?
Readers really enjoyed spending time with Amra. The intimacy that a first person narrative provides, when the character has things to say and says them in an interesting way, is something I’ve always loved about hardboiled detective fiction. Few Sword and Sorcery stories, barring the Vlad Taltos series, were written in first person at the time I was writing Trouble’s Braids (and by the way, Amra existed before Locke Lamora, thank-you-very-much), and it just seemed right to tell the story from inside her head. It would have been a different, less interesting story in third person.
Imagine your main character finds out they’re competing in the Champions' League. Are they thrilled? Terrified? Confused? Demanding a rewrite?
Amra’s response would be something on the order of “Kerf’s wrinkled ball sack, this nonsense again?”
Every author has that “this is never going to work” moment. Did you? How did you push through and keep writing?
Last week I deleted everything I’d written on the latest Amra book, The Thief who Wanted More. I’ve been working on and off on it for years. I’ve started again from scratch, and that’s okay. The thing that has allowed me to write the books that I have is the belief that you don’t fail until you quit.
Apart from your own novel, is there a past SPFBO book (any year, any entry – doesn’t have to be a winner or a finalist) you’d hype up to readers - maybe one you loved or thought deserved more of the spotlight?
Oh, there are too many excellent books to count. If I got started I would be here all day, and would still end up forgetting someone worthy and feel bad about it. I’ve gotten huge amounts of reading enjoyment out of books that have come to my attention via the SPFBO.
What’s the project currently on your desk - and is it behaving, or making you question all your life choices?
None of my WIPs are behaving. Thanks for reminding me.
What’s one piece of writing advice you completely ignore - and one you swear by?
I ignore the idea of not editing as you go. Especially at the beginning of a project, it allows me to slow down and feel my way into the story. As for one I agree with, it is to read widely, and not only in the genre you want to write in.
Win or lose, your book’s in the top 10 of nearly 3,000. But personally, what would be your proudest writing achievement - published or still locked away on your hard drive?
There’s s short story I wrote that I am very proud of, though nobody else seems to have been especially impressed with it—“All the World a Grave.” I’m proud of it not because it is the best short story ever, but because it is the closest I’ve ever come to putting on paper exactly what was in my head, if that make sense.
Thanks so much for the opportunity to blather on about writing!
3:00 AM | 
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wick writes sci fi, medicine and zombies. He's also an ICU doctor. He has an amazing wife and baby girl and an adorable cat that keeps it all together.
Publisher: Demodocus Publishing (November 4, 2023) Length: 390 pages Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardback. paperback Awards: SPSFC Finalist
Buy Pearl City
Read our review of book one, Ebony Gate
FORMAT/INFO: Pearl City was published on July 15th, 2025 by Tor Books. It is 400 pages long and available in hardcover and ebook formats.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles including the Music Kitchen, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Shattered Glass, and Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy award in 2020. Natural Beauty is her first novel.
Published: April 4, 2023 by Dutton Page count: 272 pages Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardback, paperback
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: J. L. Odom hails from Oklahoma. After a five year stint in the Marine Corps as an Arabic linguist, she graduated from George Washington University with a degree in International Affairs with an emphasis on Conflict and Security. She lives with her husband and five children wherever it is that the U.S. Army happens to send them. Her hobbies include running, jiu jitsu, and cooking to feed a crowd.
She can be found on Instagram @jlodom.author.
Find J.L. online: website
Published: May 14, 2024 by Azimuth Length: 374 pages (Kindle) Formats: audiobook, ebook, paperback Literary awards: SPFBO Award for Best Fantasy Book (2024) Series Land of Exile #1
FORMAT/INFO: The Nightshade God was published by Orbit on July 15th, 2025. It is 480 pages and available in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: With Lore and her allies scattered across the world, all hope seems lost. King Bastian reigns under the influence of an evil god, making deals with despots and undoing the reforms made in the last few months. But destiny has its own plans. Even scattered, Lore and her friends have one last chance to thwart the god trying to reshape the world, one last chance to steal his power back. It may just unfortunately take their own lives to pull it off.
The Nightshade God is the kind of finale that lands the plane competently, but without much pizzazz. It isn't a BAD book, but it lacked tension and failed to make me invested in the personal stakes for the characters. As an example, look no further than the central plot of the story. Book two ended with our characters scattered across the world for various reasons, and early in The Nightshade God, they all learn of objects that have been hidden for centuries that are important to defeating the central villain. Rather conveniently, there's one of these hidden objects in each of the locations these scattered characters ended up. While there's some attempt to explain this as destiny, it felt instead like it was giving the characters a thing to do before bringing them all together for the finale.
The characters themselves also really have very little growth to go through. There's still pining and angst between the characters but nothing that we hadn't seen previously. The one new romantic pairing that was introduced honestly left me baffled. Worst of all, the finale felt like it betrayed the themes of the entire series and the very lessons that the characters were supposed to be learning.
CONCLUSION: All that being said, I was never in a place where I was hate-reading The Nightshade God. It was simply that I was never excited to pick the book up, never dying to know what could possibly happen next. Every plot point was simply a hurdle to overcome fairly quickly in the journey to the inevitable conclusion. It's a book that I can honestly say I walked away from simply....whelmed.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: With Lore and her allies scattered across the world, all hope seems lost. King Bastian reigns under the influence of an evil god, making deals with despots and undoing the reforms made in the last few months. But destiny has its own plans. Even scattered, Lore and her friends have one last chance to thwart the god trying to reshape the world, one last chance to steal his power back. It may just unfortunately take their own lives to pull it off.
The Nightshade God is the kind of finale that lands the plane competently, but without much pizzazz. It isn't a BAD book, but it lacked tension and failed to make me invested in the personal stakes for the characters. As an example, look no further than the central plot of the story. Book two ended with our characters scattered across the world for various reasons, and early in The Nightshade God, they all learn of objects that have been hidden for centuries that are important to defeating the central villain. Rather conveniently, there's one of these hidden objects in each of the locations these scattered characters ended up. While there's some attempt to explain this as destiny, it felt instead like it was giving the characters a thing to do before bringing them all together for the finale.
The characters themselves also really have very little growth to go through. There's still pining and angst between the characters but nothing that we hadn't seen previously. The one new romantic pairing that was introduced honestly left me baffled. Worst of all, the finale felt like it betrayed the themes of the entire series and the very lessons that the characters were supposed to be learning.
CONCLUSION: All that being said, I was never in a place where I was hate-reading The Nightshade God. It was simply that I was never excited to pick the book up, never dying to know what could possibly happen next. Every plot point was simply a hurdle to overcome fairly quickly in the journey to the inevitable conclusion. It's a book that I can honestly say I walked away from simply....whelmed.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Superman 2025, I don’t think any DC CBM has been released with such a cloud of anxiety over it. You have the DC fans along with the James Gunn fans who genuinely want this movie to succeed wildly and herald the start of a new (and hopefully joyful & colourful) DCU. In another corner you have the DCEU or mainly Snyder diehards who might have a vested interest in this reboot, seeing that it came at the expense of the further expansion of their beloved Snyderverse storyline that Zack Snyder has more than hinted at and gloriously shown in his EPIC 4 hour vision. Then there’s the middle of the road CBM fans like me who would like a new movie that doesn’t fall to the usual pitfalls and entertain us while giving us a good story. We want to watch Supes fly, kick ass and be his good natured self.
Get SHATTERED for FREE on the author's Patreon (until July 14th)
Official Author Info: Nicholas W Fuller has been writing all of his life. He began writing his first novel while still in fifth grade—a science fiction story featuring an alien race inspired by his neighbor’s basset hounds. While that work remains incomplete, Nicholas has worked on various blogs and stories over the years, including publication in JCM Berne's Grimdwarf Magazine and earning an honorable mention from ElegantLiterature.com. Nicholas also started a youtube channel in early 2023 where he posts videos talking about books and other fun nerdy things as well as his interviews with authors and other creatives.
Thursday, July 3, 2025
SPFBO Champions' League Review: The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael McClung was born and raised in Texas, lived in Southeast Asia for twenty years, and currently resides in Poland. He has published nine novels, a novella and a short story collection. His first novel was published by Random House in 2003, and in 2016 he won Mark Lawrence's inaugural SPFBO contest with The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids. He goes by @mcclungmike on Twitter, but doesn’t do the Facebook anymore, because reasons. He occasionally talks about stuff on his blog at somethingstickythiswaycomes.blogspot.com if you're interested in, uh, stuff being talked about.
Published: November 28, 2012 by Michael McClung Length: 208 pages (Kindle) Formats: Literary awards: SPFBO Award for Best Fantasy Book (2015) Series Amra Thetys #1
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