My most recent novel, The Left-Hand Way, is a contemporary fantasy thriller of magician-soldiers and psychic spies. It’s the sequel to American Craftsmen, but its new story expands the U.S. focus of the first book out onto a global stage. In this series of books, I’ve mixed magic with the modern mundane world. This creates certain problems that can usually be ignored in the pseudo-medieval and alternate world settings of much of fantasy. The main difficultly is the fantasy equivalent of Fermi’s Paradox--if magic is out there in our version of the real world, why don’t most people see it?

Some writers answer by not trying to hide the magic--the world shifts, or the supernatural comes out of hiding, and everyone finally knows the truth. But I would guess that secrecy remains the more common approach. So how can anybody keep such a huge secret?

The Harry Potter books deal with this problem by having wizards mostly off in their own version of reality, not usually accessible or visible by muggles (but there’s still some spillover into our reality from Hogwarts). In contrast, for my version of the modern world, magic has always been very active in mundane events yet also hidden in the background. My soldiers and spies have to act constantly in war and peace and change the direction of history--everything from the American Revolution to the D-Day landings to recent developments in Ukraine.

To make this cryptohistory plausible, the magic should be such that it’s not usually noticed even in plain sight. That means the scale and scope of powers should allow for natural and statistical explanations. For example, altering the local weather for a finite time is probably the biggest scale power that any craftsperson has, yet it’s also an event easily attributable to chance, as many of the temperate regions of the globe have changeable weather within wide norms. So, the unlikelihood of the bad weather that saved George Washington’s army at Brooklyn Heights or the brief window of good weather than allowed the D-Day invasion to go forward may draw historical interest, but few would assert magical intervention.

But most of the magic in my books is not on the same level of magnitude as changing the weather. Instead, it’s oriented to providing advantages in personal combat. These supernatural skills allow soldiers to fight at a level just beyond normal human, but they can’t fly about like superheroes, and craftspeople in all-out combat will exhaust themselves within an hour at most.

It aids secrecy that my magician-soldiers are not detectable by scientific means. Craftspeople aren’t different physically from normal humans, and I have no supernatural creatures except for the spirits of the dead. To keep magic covert, the folks in the know should be highly motivated to keep the secret. Despite our present-day problem of constant leaks, there are recent historical examples of hundreds of sufficiently dedicated persons keeping a secret to their deaths--for example, the British codebreaking operations at Bletchley during World War II. For my characters, it helps that nondisclosure is a normal part of their jobs--special ops and intelligence. It also helps that there’s a historical pattern of persecution if the craft secret is known, and that the fear of such behavior remains a consideration even in our more tolerant age.

Finally, I have a big stick: governments don’t want these supernatural powers to be widely known, since their use often violates or at least circumvents international and domestic law. To this end, they will silence leaks and leakers by any means necessary. As my characters like to say, any public display of magical power outside of government service is Ex-22, as in Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

During normal periods, my characters view their world as functioning smoothly under an inverted form of Clarke’s Third Law: any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology True, their covert power can be elitist and anti-democratic in a way that parallels certain techno-elitist strands of SF, but modern societies seem big and resilient enough to cope with their hidden presence. But in the crisis of The Left-Hand Way, an ancient evil stretches the system to the breaking point, and magical secrecy begins to fail along with the other arrangements between mundane and craft authority, with potentially devastating consequences for my characters.

A big thank you to Fantasy Book Critic for inviting me here, and if you’d like to see more of my work, please visit my website.

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Official Author Website
Order The Left-Hand Way HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of American Craftsmen

GUEST AUTHOR INFORMATION: Tom Doyle is the author of The American Craftsmen series. He grew up in Michigan and did his undergrad at Harvard, while completing his law degree at Stanford. He writes science fiction and fantasy in Washington, DC. He has also won the WSFA Small Press Award and the Writers of the Future Award.

Official Author Website
Order the book HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Greg James is a Fantasy author based in London, England. He has been writing stories since he was a child and still maintains that his pre-adolescent adaptations of The Wizard of Oz featuring Godzilla and the Transformers have validity. He studied Literature and Media at university and spent a year in the Far East teaching English as a foreign language. He enjoys long walks around his home city of London as well as reading, writing (of course) and thinking up new imaginary worlds to entertain readers with.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Khale the Wanderer: dark warrior of legend, a reaver with a demon’s soul.

King Alosse: ruler of Colm, willing to risk everything to save his city and its people. Princess Milanda: an innocent, kept pure since birth, unknowing of her fate.

Neprokhodymh: the cursed city of sorcerers where Khale must make a choice that will scar him for life, or fall into darkness forever.

FORMAT/INFO: Under A Colder Sun is 215 pages long divided over twenty-five chapters, and an epilogue. In this book, narration is in the third-person, via Khale, Leste, Princess Milanda, and Timoth. Under A Colder Sun is the first volume of Khale The Wanderer series. The book also contains the following short stories "Timestone" and "Each Dawn, I Die".

August 28, 2014 marked the paperback and e-book publication of Under A Colder Sun and it was self-published by the author

ANALYSIS: Under A Colder Sun is Greg James’ dark tribute to Robert E. Howard’s Conan and perhaps a credible hat tip to Kane by Karl Edward Wagner. The story is perfectly set in the grimdark mold and captured my imagination the most among the entire set of books that were in my SPFBO line-up.

The story begins immediately in a land of Colm where Khale is widely reviled and the soldiers sent to give him a royal invitation share the same disgust. King Alosse has summoned Khale with a request and being that they were once friends, Khale does come to see his friend. Tasked with a strange request, Khale agrees, as is his wont however he soon finds himself feeling a strange sensation that he hasn’t felt in centuries. The other POV characters introduced are Princess Milanda who is a virgin and a simple person. Lastly there’s also Leste who is a common soldier and completely baffled by the king’s orders and deference towards Khale.

What got me hooked was the main character of Khale, he truly is a villain so as to speak. Heinous deeds are his legacy and this story is that of his conversion to an anti-hero at best. The author makes no qualms that his main character is a vile person and the world is a dark, foreboding one. The author perhaps takes a page from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight by never quite revealing how Khale acquired his immortality. But often we find some characters telling different stories with regards to his ascent towards immortality. I found that a nice throwback to the Joker and his several different stories of how he got his facial scars.

While the author shows the dastardly side of his story with Khale, we are given two good characters in Milanda and Leste. The author delightfully explores this dark dichotomy and has Khale’s evil balanced by Milanda’s earnest nature and Leste’s simple-minded focus. I enjoyed this aspect of the story and often found myself what would happen when they met with each other. This story is also on the shorter side and has quite some pace to it. There’s not much action sequences in the story however the author makes sure that something interesting and deadly is happening throughout the pages. There’s a tiny thread introduced with a minor character named Timoth that’s perhaps to be explored in the sequel.

One of the major drawbacks of the story is the lack of worldbuilding. We are presented with snippets about the land and its history but the readers won’t get a true immersive experience as the author never quite reveals much about the world and its denizens. Another aspect that perhaps seemed a tad overdone was the darkness of the story and what I mean is that the world is shown to be a desolate one. But there’s no clear reason shown as to why that might be the case. Sure there’s proclamations about a blight on the land and some evil slowly taking over but it’s more said than shown.

CONCLUSION: Under A Colder Sun is Greg James’ grimdark debut and it has many reasons as to why most grimdark fans will like it a lot. Of course it isn’t without its faults and readers will have to give it a read to see which side they fall towards. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would recommend it certainly to all grimdark fans looking for a quick dark read.

Mihir invited me to write about the development of my new historical horror novel Andersonville, due out from Random House’s Hydra imprint August 18th. Andersonville tells the story of Barclay Lourdes, an African American intelligence agent who infiltrates the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp at the behest of Mary Todd Lincoln and her spiritual advisor to stop a dark ritual being enacted within its confines in order to swing the tide of the war for the South.

The story of how I came to write Andersonville actually begins with Star Wars.

Back in 2008 I discovered Lucasfilm was running an ongoing contest called What’s The Story in which every month, fans were given the opportunity to write a backstory for a different background character from the film series. These were extras basically. Characters who might have appeared for a few seconds. Over the course of the contest, I submitted three entries that won, one for a character in each of the three original movies.

This was kind of my breakout from total obscurity, and gave the confidence to really kick my career into gear. In addition to sales of short stories elsewhere, I got my first professional rate story sale over at Lucasfilm, when then online content go-to guy Pablo Hidalgo included me in a list of authors for potential short stories, and I sold one to the site, a pulp boxing story masquerading as Star Wars, called Fists of Ion.

As a lifelong fan that was a big accomplishment for me, and as thanks, when I saw Pablo a year or so later at WonderCon, I passed him a copy of my first published novel, which was the first Merkabah Rider book, Tales of A High Planes Drifter.

I kept in touch with Pablo over the years and probably about two years ago now was contacted by a pair of editors at Random House/Del Rey, Frank Parisi and Christopher Krovatin. They were searching for somebody to expand on a supernatural horror concept they wanted to publish for their Hydra imprint and Pablo had recommended me. On the strength of that and Merkabah Rider, they decided to contact me.

So I can’t take complete credit for the initial idea. The concept Frank and Christopher brought me was of a historical figure in Camp Sumter (Andersonville) using the camp as a kind of church of pain to summon some dark force to alter the course of the war, and of an intelligence agent having to infiltrate the place to stop him. They also mentioned some of the other tertiary characters that would be moving through the prison at the time that they would like to see utilized, particularly Boston Corbett, the man who would eventually play a real life role in the assassination of President Lincoln. They gave me a few days to come up with some ideas and expand upon that. One thing Frank told me was they wanted a Lovecraftian feel of cosmic dread, but not a strict Mythos book.

So I took some time and read about Andersonville. The historical Camp Sumter was a horrendous place in 1864. Some 30,000 soldiers were incarcerated there in what amounted to an animal pen. No permanent shelters had been erected by the Confederacy, so the prisoners lived in exposed conditions unless they burrowed into the ground or built what shanties they could with whatever they had on hand – and that amounted to little more than pack blankets and the odd bit of timber the Rebels allowed them to scrounge. By 1864 any trees in the pen had been cut down to expand the walls. There weren’t even stumps. Everything had been shaved clean.

The ground was mud on top and sand underneath, and situated on a rise so that when it rained, everybody not on this choice parcel of elevated land were basically washed out. The main source of clean water was a marshy creek that bisected the land, and which the Confederates upstream outside the prison used to dump refuse from their bake house. It doubled as the latrine for the inmates, and so was infested with parasites. Horrendous. Some prisoners were able to dig down and strike wells, but these became bitterly contested real estate.

As if the natural hardships weren’t enough, a hierarchy rose within the prison, in which a loose gang of ‘Raiders’ systematically beat and robbed new arrivals for their possessions, trading up to Rebel guards for amenities. Escape wasn’t really possible. The inner wall of the prison was surrounded by a kind of staked and roped border called the deadline. Sentries on the picket walls would shoot anybody who crossed that for any reason. There could be no tunneling out as the subterranean ground was shifting sand and couldn’t really sustain excavation.
The Rebellion was in its death throes at the time so resources were pretty scarce. There was barely enough to feed and clothe the Confederate Army let alone divert to prisoners, and corrupt officers in the prison diverted some resources to their own ends, denying the prisoners. They even charged the inmates a fee to receive and send mail.

So the basic story of Andersonville was horrific on its own without any supernatural element. The challenge would be in coming up with something fantastic that could even match that.

I had some left over elements of Judeo-Christian folklore research from Merkabah Rider that never made it in, angels and demons (like the named entity who opposed Moses through the Pharaoh’s court magicians) that were in my notes but who didn’t make the cut in the series for whatever reason, so I knew I had a supernatural threat I could develop. For me though, the real interest in the project came in coming up with its protagonists.

I had recently been to New Orleans with my wife and picked up a book on Hoodoo folklore and magic that I’d been reading, and I felt like I wanted to do something with an African American Creole protagonist. I’d done some things here and there with African magical practices, in my novella Dubaku and in one of the Merkabah Rider installments, The Dust Devils. I wanted to expand on that. I think unconsciously I was creating a kind of fictional bloodline. I think Kelly in The Dust Devils is some kind of relation to Dubaku, who is sort of the progenitor of this dynasty of Dahomeyan magic, which in turn, through the diaspora becomes Kelly’s Vodoun. But Kelly is a villain in Merkabah Rider, and I really wanted to write a heroic black character. I’m a big fan of the comic book character Brother Voodoo, a character I’ve always felt had a lot of potential for a writer willing to do his homework, but has never really come into his own. I wanted to write a kind of spiritual counterpart to Jericho Drumm.

So in reading more into Andersonville, I took an interest in the treatment of non-white prisoners, because of course there were African American, Latino, and Native American soldiers imprisoned there too. The situation for African Americans was even more dire, if that was possible. They were outright denied medical attention and were practically enslaved in all but name. They were requisitioned to work clearing the surrounding pine forest for the Confederates and just doing loads of menial labor. Even the white officers captured in command of black units were treated differently.

When a story clicks for me, when I’m doing it right, I feel things just start fitting together, magically. I realized that an African American would in a way, be the best kind of spy in a place like this. White soldiers were living in a state of forced indolence. They couldn’t move, they were slowly wasting away. Black soldiers were allowed to move in and out of the prison performing their tasks, and were actually fed a hair better (or at least, more regularly) to keep up their strength, much, I suppose, as a slave owning southern planter would keep his charges in a state conducive to performing physical labor. In addition to seeing more of the camp, wouldn’t the inherent racism of Southern planter culture cause the jailers to overlook and perhaps underestimate black soldiers?

Were African Americans ever employed by the Union in a covert intelligence capacity?

That’s where the first of several happy accidents occurred, and I came to educate myself about the contributions of Black Dispatch agents during the Civil War. Of course I wasn’t the first person to have this idea of black Americans being the perfect spies for the Union. They certainly were, though sadly, due to the nature of espionage work and dominant cultural mores, much of this history has been lost or obscured.

Celebrated detective Allan Pinkerton, who was a kind of proto-spymaster for the Union during the war, recognized the value of African American agents and employed several to glean valuable intelligence for the Federal side. John Scobell, an educated ex-slave, used his skin color like a chameleon in the south, fading into a cloak of faux subservience to go completely ignored where white agents could not. He feigned ignorance and so went unnoticed, and undertook several dangerous and successful missions on behalf of Pinkerton.

Another Black Dispatch agent whose story I found particularly exciting was Mary Elisabeth Bowser, an African American woman who actually worked on Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ own household staff as a servant, and passed unseen among the highest levels of government, filtering information to the Richmond Union spy ring and even attempting to burn down the capitol residence to cover her own successful escape when she was discovered. Both Scobell and Bowser appear in minor roles in Andersonville.

I also wanted to give a more holistic view of the war, one not always explored in fiction. I thought it would be interesting to portray a black character who was not, nor had ever been a slave. In New Orleans I had learned a little bit about the aristocratic Creole class of property owning African Americans called the gens du couleur libres (the free people of color), and their fascinating experience in the initial days of the Civil War. One of the first African American military units during that conflict, it turned out, was not a Federal regiment, but the Confederate Louisiana Native Guard (sometimes referred to as the Corps d’Afrique), culled from this aristocracy and the long serving black militia to defend the port of New Orleans against the incursion of Admiral Farragut and the Union forces.

Seen as something of a public relations gesture by the Confederacy, in the face of Union invasion, the whites didn’t seem to know what to do with this armed Negro contingent at their side, and ordered the Native Guard disbanded and disarmed. I think this, almost more than any other gesture in history, effectively puts the kibosh on the argument that the Rebellion wasn’t at its core about racial superiority, but that’s a heated discussion better vented elsewhere. I wondered what sort of effect this would have had on the morale of loyal Southern Creole aristocrats who volunteered to defend what they perceived as their home, to have their white neighbors refuse their help.

Lt. Andre Cailloux became another blueprint for my protagonist. A property owning sportsman and cigar manufacturer, a respected Creole citizen fluent in French and English, he was a lieutenant among the Native Guard. When Union General Butler took over New Orleans and formed the 1st Louisiana Native Guard composing mostly escaped slaves, Cailloux and others like him volunteered to lead this new regiment against the Confederacy, and was instated as a captain of Company E. Cailloux fought bravely and was killed at the Siege of Port Hudson.

Things started really clicking.

I then remembered an old episode of the Twilight Zone called Still Valley, set during the Civil War, in which a sorcerer named Teague offered to win the war for the South if only a Confederate officer would renounce God and sign his name in the Devil’s book. The officer soundly refused the offer, saying something like that if the South was to die, it would die on hallowed ground. This refusal of evil by a character whom my own upbringing in the North had sort of painted as evil himself had always stuck with me, and I knew I wanted to revisit that here, the idea that the Confederacy might not really be keen on infernal intervention in their cause, misguided as it was. Like Erwin Rommel, good men can sometimes be found on the wrong side of a fight.

This led to my secondary protagonist, a Confederate officer known personally to Lourdes, and a direct way to explore the main character’s sense of betrayal by his homeland and neighbors. It also added an interesting way to contrast the schools of African and Western European magic, and really made the characters blossom in terms of their history and motivations.

I pitched all this to Frank and Christopher, kind of holding my breath, since now I was excited by the idea and when you get to that point it frankly sucks if the editors don’t share your vision and you have to throw it out. But thankfully, we were all of us sympatico, and I took the job, and Andersonville is the end result.

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Official Author Website 
Pre-Order Andersonville HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter 
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name 
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Deadcore 
Read Fantasy Book Critic interview with Ed Erdelac

GUEST AUTHOR INFORMATION: Ed Erdelac is the author of various books and is also a regular contributor to the Star Wars canonical universe. He is an award-winning screenwriter, an independent filmmaker, a chain reader, and a closet gamer. He was born in Indiana, pursued his education in Chicago and then moved to L.A. to pursue his career interests. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his family.

Julie Crisp is a literary agent, freelance editor and script doctor after having most recently been an editorial director for fiction at Pan Macmillan UK heading up the UK arm of one of the largest global brands of science fiction and fantasy, Tor. She is an editor with over fifteen years’ experience working for three major houses across a broad spectrum of commercial titles within fiction, non-fiction and children’s. Julie has worked on bestselling and award-winning authors such as Ann Cleeves, Peter F. Hamilton, China Miéville, Neal Asher, Amanda Hocking, Naomi Novik .

I've been fascinated with her work and that of her authors, some of whom loom over the SFF genre, most of whom are favorites over here at Fantasy Book Critic. I was excited when she said yes to being interviewed and so read ahead to know how she began her professional journey, what makes her tick and what plans she has for the future...

PERSONAL QUESTIONS: 

Q] Welcome to Fantasy Book Critic, You’ve been involved in the field of editing for over a decade and half. Where does your love for writing/editing arise from and what events led you to pursue a career as an editor?

JC: My love of literature started early. I’ve always been a reader. The local library was something of a haven for me and I used to get through a book a day as child. And I read everything. Anything that could be used as a form of escapism and I devoured it. At first I decided I wanted to be a writer. I believe my first story involved a magic cottage and a time travelling mirror. I was seven. When I hit ten I discovered my Dad’s bookshelf, reading Stephen King’s IT and then went on to discover Frank Herbert, Ben Bova and David Eddings. That’s when my love of SFF really grew – it’s the ultimate form of escapism. While other girls were falling madly in love with New Kids on the Block and Bros, my first crush was on Peter Davison’s Doctor Who. It says a lot.

I studied English at University, everything from the classics through to modern literature. My particular passion being African-American female writers and the Golden Age of detective fiction. I knew when finishing my course that I wanted to work with books – and publishing just seemed to be the perfect fit for me.

Q] Early on in your career you were a senior editor and since July 2006 you had ascended to the position of an Editorial Director, how many responsibilities increased with this shift?

JC: The biggest shift was that I moved my focus from broad spectrum fiction publishing, working on crime, thrillers and upmarket women’s fiction to concentrating solely on genre. I loved genre so it was fabulous, although I did miss being able to have a more widespread commissioning brief.

The other thing I was tasked with doing was building the genre list and imprint. Over the next seven years I doubled the turnover, implemented the website and blog, built Tor UK as an identifiable brand within its own right and commissioned some absolutely fabulous authors. I had a great time and am pretty proud of what was achieved during my time there.

Q] Could you please describe a typical day in your professional life? How much of your work do you bring home with you?

JC: Well as I now work from home full-time I bring all my work home with me. I actually have an office set up, my library. Wall-to ceiling books, wooden floor-boards, a comfy reading chair and sunny bay window that looks out into the garden. It’s a nice spot!

As I’m currently balancing a duel role of freelance editor and agent, it’s pretty busy and there’s no 9-5 about it (not that there ever was!). I start at 8.30 a.m. – emails are always checked first, responded to and filed. Then if I have a freelancing job on I’ll spend the next nine hours working on that. The evenings are spent reading through agency submissions and I usually finish about 10.30 p.m.

At the moment I’ve shelved my freelancing so I can concentrate on editing my first client’s novel. I also have another couple of scripts which I’m seriously considering for representation. Then there’s always admin, blogging, social media, market research to keep up with. I’m also attending conventions and having London meetings with publishers so it’s all very busy. Much prefer that to being bored!

Q] You wrote a blog post about female writers and their participation that ruffled more than a few feathers. What are your thoughts about it after 2 years? Do you think that post attracted so much attention because it blew a lot of holes in to various theories about women writers?

JC: You know I never in my wildest dreams expected that post to have the effect it did. On the whole the reaction to it was positive. I think I was the first publisher to actually provide some facts and figures for context as to what we’d actually been receiving from authors. I’d written it, to begin with, as part of the ongoing conversation that was happening about genre at the time – and still is. The under representation of women in the area. While I do think things have moved on in the last two years a little – of course there are still areas that need a lot of work. The Hugos are, sadly, a prefect reflection of many of the problems still inherent within this particular area. The one thing I take away from that unfortunate situation is that it’s recognized, discussed and fought against in a way that many other areas of literature aren’t.

My original post had wanted to show that there were other factors involved as to why women weren’t being published. The most straightforward factor of all for genre editors (many of whom were women and actively looking for female writers) was that we weren’t, at the time, getting many submissions in from women. I do think that’s changed a lot. More women submitting genre and so more women are being published and recognized for their work.

Look at just some of the fabulous female writers out there: Sarah Pinborough, Ann Leckie, Sarah Lotz, Laura Lam, VE Schwab . . . I’ve had a lot of submissions in as an agent now and I’d say the split is about 50/50 as to who’s submitting and what’s being submitted. That’s not to say the market still doesn’t need a nudge here and there. While women do buy as much fantasy as men, they’re still lagging behind on picking up SF or horror.

Maybe I should do an updated post . . . ;-)

Q] With editing being your profession, you must often get very little time for personal reading. But if & when you do, what are the genres you like to read in? Also who are your favorite authors besides the ones you work with?

JC: Personal reading. I remember doing that once. To be fair, much of what I read for ‘work’ would be the type of book I’d pick for pleasure reading so in that aspect I’m lucky. I don’t read anything now that I think I’m not going to enjoy. As for my favourite authors – my ‘go to’ in times of stress are Terry Pratchett and Stephen King. I’ve re-read them so many times that they’re like old friends. I still have a passion for Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston and re-read those every few years just for the sheer love of their voices. I adore losing myself in China Miéville’s playful prose and, like the rest of the genre crowd, am eagerly awaiting the next George R R Martin behemoth.

Q] Last year saw the launch of The James Herbert Award for Horror Writing. Can you talk to us about your involvement in its inception and your thoughts on the inaugural winner?

JC: It mainly came about through thinking about all the great talent in horror out there; specifically I’d been thinking about Adam Nevill, S. L Grey and Sarah Pinborough. It seemed unfair that there were so many avenues for SF and Fantasy to be nominated for awards but so little recognition for good horror writing. We’d also recently lost Jim and so it felt like there really need to be something that recognized the legacy he’d left behind. The two then kind of came together naturally.

I thought that Nick Cutter’s The Troop took traditional horror and did something really interesting with it. It’s exactly the sort of book that James Herbert would have liked.

PROFESSIONAL QUESTIONS:

Q] What are the factors/elements that you look for in any new submission which you receive? Are they genre-specific or something, which work across the spectrum?

JC: I take each submission on its own merit. I have an open brief so it’s really anything that really grabs me. The writing has to be good and flow easily and the characters need to be well-defined and interesting. But, as with any submission, it’s the ‘unputdownable’ factor that I’m looking for. If I’m still desperate to know what happened at the end of the three chapters then I’m going to be requesting the full script. If I’m rather laissez-faire about it then it’s not going to be for me. That’s not to say another agent might not love it to bits.

Reading is a very personal endeavor and what might work for me may not be someone else’s cup of tea. But yes, I also always have one eye on the market. What I think will work and what I think will have a wider reach. You have to unfortunately. It’s no good loving something if you think no one else will.

Q] Do you have any specific reading habits or methods for evaluating submitted manuscripts?

JC: I read mainly in the evenings. That way I’m a little tired, need to concentrate and something really needs to grab me to keep my attention. It’s almost a natural selection process.

Q] While evaluating manuscripts in the past few years, did you ever have a conflict between your personal preferences versus that of being the Editorial director? If so how did you resolve it?

JC: That happens all the time. You read a script you absolutely love but know that, in that particular area, the market has slumped and doesn’t look to be recovering. So you have to decide whether this could be the book to revive the market – or it’s just not going to happen. It’s a balancing act – while the book itself may be brilliant you do have to be commercially savvy enough to know whether it’s got a hope of selling or not. At the end of the day publishing is a business. It has to make money otherwise it doesn’t work.

Q] What is your opinion on an imprint having an "image"? Is it advantageous as that means you have a stable of committed readers, or is it sometimes limiting in a way or another?

JC: Part of my job at Tor was to build it as a ‘brand’ and it’s a great thing to do. Look at Voyager or Gollancz as imprints – they’re recognized for a certain style and type of quality genre. The editors behind the imprint have a lot to do with that in the way they shape their lists. Most readers don’t give two hoots what the ‘imprint’ is – they wouldn’t recognize a Picador title from a Tor title concentrating instead on the author name or book title. But genre readers are a bit different – they’re so involved and so much more aware of imprints and what’s published on them. I think genre editors/publishers play a big part in that, being vocal on social media and inviting reader engagement with their books.

Q] When you offer editorial suggestions, how extensive are the changes you usually request? Do all authors implement the changes you suggest, or have you had instances of someone refusing to make the edits?

JC: It very much depends on the author and manuscript. Some authors I’ve done extensive structural and lines edits on. Other authors I’ve barely needed to touch. It changes with each author and each book they write. But all my authors have always been aware that any notes or changes I make are suggestions rather than dictatorial commands. So I’ve never had anyone refuse to make any editorial changes. I’ve had authors come back and negotiate with different ideas than I’ve provided, Mark Charan Newton was always a fun vocal negotiator, we had some very entertaining discussions ;-), and that is fully to be expected. Editing is just one long dialogue between author and editor. John Gwynne wrote about being edited recently.

Q] Who is the one author (either living or dead) that you would give a limb to work with? And what is it about her/his writing that makes it special for you?

JC: Probably have to be Maya Angelou just because not only was she an amazing writer with a voice that just sang from the pages but she was also the most fascinating person with a life and history that few could rival. I’d be as intimidated as hell to work with a talent like that but wow, what a privilege.

Q] After over a decade with Pan Macmillan and specifically Tor UK, just a few months ago you decided to branch out on your own. Can you talk about your decision to go solo? What lead to it and what lies ahead?

JC: Yeah that was a tough few months and it was really hard leaving all my fabulous authors behind. Many of whom I considered friends rather than just authors on my list. But being an agent was something I’d been considering doing for the last three or four years and I decided if I didn’t do it now then I never would. The thing I’d always loved most about publishing was the authors and their writing.

There are so many other aspects to the role that you have to fulfill as a publisher working traditionally, that it sometimes it can be quite limiting and you don’t get the time to spend on what you really want to be doing. This way I can concentrate on finding a great bunch of talent – from a wide range of genres (not just SFF) and work with them one-on-one to develop their novels before approaching publishers. It’s incredibly satisfying being my own boss and being as enthusiastic and innovative as I like without any restrictions.

Q] Please tell us about your new gig as a literary agent and what type of genre books and authors are you looking for?

JC: So I’m looking for a bit of everything really. I’m a very eclectic reader – always have been – and while I adore genre, I’m also looking outside of speculative fiction as well. I am actively looking for exciting new novels in science fiction and fantasy, crime/thrillers, book club fiction, historical, young adult and middle-grade children’s fiction.

I love stories that have heart, and I adore the unexpected, books that start off one way and then defy all your expectations and preconceptions to do something totally different.

Q] Any particular words of advice for writers who might be salivating to submit their manuscripts to you?

JC: Please send the first three chapters, double-spaced, in a word document with a brief synopsis and a short bio to "julieacrisp@gmail.com". My response time at the moment is about 6-8 weeks.

NOTE: James Herbert picture courtesy of Antonio Olmos (The Guardian). Sarah Pinborough picture courtesy of Mike Brooke (The Docklands and East London Advertiser). Ann Leckie picture courtesy of SF Strangelove. Laura Lam Picture courtesy of Alex Silver. Sarah Lotz & Victoria Schwab author pictures courtesy of the authors themselves. All other pictures courtesy of Julie Crisp.