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I have found that one of the benefits of self-publishing is total control over pricing and marketing. It’s one aspect which deters some aspiring authors, while at the same time being a challenge which many experienced hands embrace.
Monday, November 2, 2020
Exclusive Cover Reveal and Interview: Dragon Mage by M. L. Spencer (by Mihir Wanchoo)
As avid fantasy readers, we love discovering new voices and hidden gems. SPFBO contest gives us such a possibility and we’re thrilled to participate in it for the sixth time. The first stage of the contest has just ended.
Jesse Teller is mentally disabled. He suffers from PTSD from an abusive childhood. He is bipolar, suffers from daily to hourly hallucinations, and has DID (multiple personality disorder).
He has been a member of the self-published fantasy community for four and a half years now, has published fourteen books, with plans to publish countless more.
Jesse Teller is not a sane man. He has been declared mentally unfit and is a certified madman. This blog series is a glimpse into the way he sees a small handful of his peers and a look into his own mind. This is an excerpt from the third volume of his autobiography yet to be published.
He has been a member of the self-published fantasy community for four and a half years now, has published fourteen books, with plans to publish countless more.
Jesse Teller is not a sane man. He has been declared mentally unfit and is a certified madman. This blog series is a glimpse into the way he sees a small handful of his peers and a look into his own mind. This is an excerpt from the third volume of his autobiography yet to be published.
The Judge
She came into my life during the SPFBO contest. I have entered it two times, this year will be three. The blogger has Legends of the Exiles now. I have no idea what she thinks of it. She might love it. Might hate it.
Legends of the Exiles was the book that was never meant to be. See, there is a huge aggressive movement right now against men writing women. A lot of male writers have a big problem writing women. It is obvious from what they write. And those who are rabid about this topic are lumping all men into that group. The idea is that no men write female characters correctly. That idea is ludicrous. But when you are a male writer and someone says this and corrals you in with misogynistic writers you have to prove them wrong. I felt like I needed to defend myself. The only way I know how to do that is with my writing.
There was a bigger reason for the book’s creation of course. I loved the characters. The book is a collection of four novellas that all cross over each other. These four women had either not been touched on or had barely been touched on in the seven-book epic series they belonged in. They had been side characters. Other female characters had been more important to the story at large. So I desperately wanted to know the story of these four women.
I wrote Exiles as a cool down book after finishing the first act. After the attack on my sanity that The Great Hall gave me, I needed a fun book to write. This did not end up being fun.
Exiles dealt with issues women have to deal with every day. Sexual assault, dick pics, molestation, patriarchal society ruling over their freedoms. The intelligence of women being down played. The sacrifices a woman is forced to make for her family. All of these things and more are discussed and serve as themes for Legends of the Exiles. Every woman who has read it but one thought it was brilliant. Every man had issues with it. So, I call it a win.
I only mention Exiles when I talk about The Judge because she is a strong female and a bastion of women writers of fantasy. She is also a source of hope to me and a source of judgment. She is inspirational in her power and devastating in her ability.
I met The Judge through my wife’s reading of her book. She liked what she read and told me that this was one of “us.”
Us is the word I use for the writers who take their work very seriously. The ones who put money and time into the creation of the product they put out, and The Judge is that.
Her covers are amazing. Her books perfect quality. They are edited, beta read, edited again, read and reread to get them just right, because The Judge has been working on this project for a long time.
When she was young she started creating the world that she writes in. It took her decades to get the first book finished. See life gets in the way. It always does. Kids, work, marriage, schooling. Everything in your life will get in the way of your writing. Plus there is The Wall that you hit.
It happens at about page eighty for me. I am excited about the book and talking about it all the time. I have been waiting to write it for years and when I finally get to start it and leap head first into it, I am so psyched. But at around page eighty it becomes work. I am not as excited. I am far from finished, far from my trophy, far from any sort of accomplishment, and it becomes a chore to write for a long time. The words don’t come, the scenes seem to stretch on forever, and no matter how good a scene you have written you know there are still so many more to go.
The epic books I write have over eighty scenes. Over sixty chapters. There comes a point where I feel they will never be finished. But I have the time, I have the support. I have been given all the tools, and if I need more, I can always find them. I have every advantage. No job. Big slabs of time during the day.
The Judge had none of these things. So, chapter after chapter, page after page, over decades of time she pounded out this book. It never left her. She thought of it constantly. And she had to watch it bubble and hiss in her mind as she did the other things life expected of her and she ached for the time to pound it out.
Legends of the Exiles was the book that was never meant to be. See, there is a huge aggressive movement right now against men writing women. A lot of male writers have a big problem writing women. It is obvious from what they write. And those who are rabid about this topic are lumping all men into that group. The idea is that no men write female characters correctly. That idea is ludicrous. But when you are a male writer and someone says this and corrals you in with misogynistic writers you have to prove them wrong. I felt like I needed to defend myself. The only way I know how to do that is with my writing.
There was a bigger reason for the book’s creation of course. I loved the characters. The book is a collection of four novellas that all cross over each other. These four women had either not been touched on or had barely been touched on in the seven-book epic series they belonged in. They had been side characters. Other female characters had been more important to the story at large. So I desperately wanted to know the story of these four women.
I wrote Exiles as a cool down book after finishing the first act. After the attack on my sanity that The Great Hall gave me, I needed a fun book to write. This did not end up being fun.
Exiles dealt with issues women have to deal with every day. Sexual assault, dick pics, molestation, patriarchal society ruling over their freedoms. The intelligence of women being down played. The sacrifices a woman is forced to make for her family. All of these things and more are discussed and serve as themes for Legends of the Exiles. Every woman who has read it but one thought it was brilliant. Every man had issues with it. So, I call it a win.
I only mention Exiles when I talk about The Judge because she is a strong female and a bastion of women writers of fantasy. She is also a source of hope to me and a source of judgment. She is inspirational in her power and devastating in her ability.
I met The Judge through my wife’s reading of her book. She liked what she read and told me that this was one of “us.”
Us is the word I use for the writers who take their work very seriously. The ones who put money and time into the creation of the product they put out, and The Judge is that.
Her covers are amazing. Her books perfect quality. They are edited, beta read, edited again, read and reread to get them just right, because The Judge has been working on this project for a long time.
When she was young she started creating the world that she writes in. It took her decades to get the first book finished. See life gets in the way. It always does. Kids, work, marriage, schooling. Everything in your life will get in the way of your writing. Plus there is The Wall that you hit.
It happens at about page eighty for me. I am excited about the book and talking about it all the time. I have been waiting to write it for years and when I finally get to start it and leap head first into it, I am so psyched. But at around page eighty it becomes work. I am not as excited. I am far from finished, far from my trophy, far from any sort of accomplishment, and it becomes a chore to write for a long time. The words don’t come, the scenes seem to stretch on forever, and no matter how good a scene you have written you know there are still so many more to go.
The epic books I write have over eighty scenes. Over sixty chapters. There comes a point where I feel they will never be finished. But I have the time, I have the support. I have been given all the tools, and if I need more, I can always find them. I have every advantage. No job. Big slabs of time during the day.
The Judge had none of these things. So, chapter after chapter, page after page, over decades of time she pounded out this book. It never left her. She thought of it constantly. And she had to watch it bubble and hiss in her mind as she did the other things life expected of her and she ached for the time to pound it out.
Races and magic systems. Fantasy with a sci-fi element. More and more, the book showed her over the years, and more and more she waited and chipped away at that first book. She kept writing and she kept waiting and dreaming of the day she would finish it.
But no matter how many years she worked on it; she never gave up. She kept slicing and building, shaping and forming until she had her first novel done. She called it Blade of Amber. It was how she wanted it. It was ready. Now was the time to start the second.
But as she looked at the first and what she had done with it she was not happy. She did not like the final product.
This is where a writer will either pull the book and stuff it in a trunk or just let it fizzle out and become forgettable. This is where a writer pulls their book and slinks off. They give up. Every one of them does. Their writing career was a failed experiment. It is over.
But The Judge would not give up. The Judge does not know how to quit. She does not know how to drop the project she has been working on for so long. So she rewrote it. Reworked it. Jerked out everything she didn’t like about it, and when she had it perfect she rereleased it under the name A Wizard’s Forge.
More years of waiting and aching to get back to the keyboard as the next book boiled and hissed.
She wrote the second book in the series, A Wizard’s Lot and put that out too. Soon after its release she decided she wasn’t happy with it. So again she pulled it. She worked on it for years. Rewriting. Betas. Rewriting. Editors. Rewriting. More Betas. And after many years had gone by, she had a new book for a waiting world.
But this is not the end of the Woern Saga. So back at it. Chipping. Never given enough time to pound it out. She is working on it every chance she gets. Keeping her focus. Keeping her dream alive. Getting it out to beta readers. Fighting through their comments. Rewriting, polishing again, out to the editor, rewriting. The job never ends and The Judge never quits.
Encouraged by the reviews she is getting, encouraged by the things people say about her books, and more shaping and chopping. No one I have ever met has worked harder on a series. No one I have ever met has wanted it more.
A few lines here. A chapter there before life pulls her away again. The anticipation of the next writing session sits on her chest. The chores that need to be done to put out a great product never ending. And yet she loves her story so much, and she is so dedicated that she pushes it on. She works through days of compliments and encouragement. She works through days of silence when no one talks about her work. Nothing curves her love of her world and her character. Nothing dulls the need she feels to get the book out, the series finished. More when she can. She is the never-ending wave that slowly eats away the shore. She is the constant drip of water that cuts through the mountain.
The Judge does not stop. The Judge does not know how to stop. And my respect for her is higher than anyone else in the game. Anyone else in the community of self-published writers. Because there are so many things I cannot count on in my life. My mood, my alters, my bipolar, my hallucinations. So many things are wavering and inconstant. I have a few people to hold on to. And when I begin to lose my footing, I know that The Woern Saga will be finished.
It’s an odd thing to be encouraged by. But when your career starts off as slow as mine has, and you wrote for twelve years without any kind of recognition, then things like the constant of this sort of determination bring you peace and strength.
The Judge does not know that there are times when I feel the need to walk away. And she does not know how frustrated I get when the readers pass by my book. And she does not know that the reason I have not lost hope is because A Wizard’s Forge is out there. And after so many years of work the rewrite of the second book, now called A Wizard’s Sacrifice had broken free. Book two is out again. So much better and so much stronger than ever before.
That is all I need to know sometimes to come back to this board at page eighty-four. And keep typing.
But no matter how many years she worked on it; she never gave up. She kept slicing and building, shaping and forming until she had her first novel done. She called it Blade of Amber. It was how she wanted it. It was ready. Now was the time to start the second.
But as she looked at the first and what she had done with it she was not happy. She did not like the final product.
This is where a writer will either pull the book and stuff it in a trunk or just let it fizzle out and become forgettable. This is where a writer pulls their book and slinks off. They give up. Every one of them does. Their writing career was a failed experiment. It is over.
But The Judge would not give up. The Judge does not know how to quit. She does not know how to drop the project she has been working on for so long. So she rewrote it. Reworked it. Jerked out everything she didn’t like about it, and when she had it perfect she rereleased it under the name A Wizard’s Forge.
More years of waiting and aching to get back to the keyboard as the next book boiled and hissed.
She wrote the second book in the series, A Wizard’s Lot and put that out too. Soon after its release she decided she wasn’t happy with it. So again she pulled it. She worked on it for years. Rewriting. Betas. Rewriting. Editors. Rewriting. More Betas. And after many years had gone by, she had a new book for a waiting world.
But this is not the end of the Woern Saga. So back at it. Chipping. Never given enough time to pound it out. She is working on it every chance she gets. Keeping her focus. Keeping her dream alive. Getting it out to beta readers. Fighting through their comments. Rewriting, polishing again, out to the editor, rewriting. The job never ends and The Judge never quits.
Encouraged by the reviews she is getting, encouraged by the things people say about her books, and more shaping and chopping. No one I have ever met has worked harder on a series. No one I have ever met has wanted it more.
A few lines here. A chapter there before life pulls her away again. The anticipation of the next writing session sits on her chest. The chores that need to be done to put out a great product never ending. And yet she loves her story so much, and she is so dedicated that she pushes it on. She works through days of compliments and encouragement. She works through days of silence when no one talks about her work. Nothing curves her love of her world and her character. Nothing dulls the need she feels to get the book out, the series finished. More when she can. She is the never-ending wave that slowly eats away the shore. She is the constant drip of water that cuts through the mountain.
The Judge does not stop. The Judge does not know how to stop. And my respect for her is higher than anyone else in the game. Anyone else in the community of self-published writers. Because there are so many things I cannot count on in my life. My mood, my alters, my bipolar, my hallucinations. So many things are wavering and inconstant. I have a few people to hold on to. And when I begin to lose my footing, I know that The Woern Saga will be finished.
It’s an odd thing to be encouraged by. But when your career starts off as slow as mine has, and you wrote for twelve years without any kind of recognition, then things like the constant of this sort of determination bring you peace and strength.
The Judge does not know that there are times when I feel the need to walk away. And she does not know how frustrated I get when the readers pass by my book. And she does not know that the reason I have not lost hope is because A Wizard’s Forge is out there. And after so many years of work the rewrite of the second book, now called A Wizard’s Sacrifice had broken free. Book two is out again. So much better and so much stronger than ever before.
That is all I need to know sometimes to come back to this board at page eighty-four. And keep typing.
Author Bio: Jesse Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between man and woman, to understanding the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller uses his stories and settings to study real-world themes and issues.
We are thrilled to be part of the #BardsAndScribes blog tour and you can read the previous stops over here:
19th October - The Druid over at Fantasy Faction
24th October - The Panda over at Grimmedian
26th October - The Gunslinger over at Lynn's Books
27th October - The Swashbucker over at Booknest
28th October - The Cannibal over at Fantasy Book Review
29th October - The Alchemist over at The Fantasy Hive
31st October - The Lunatic over at Weatherwax Report
Order Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City over HERE
AUTHOR INFORMATION: K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. According to the biographical notes in some of Parker's books, Parker has previously worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, and now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. It is also claimed that Parker is married to a solicitor and now lives in southern England. According to an autobiographical note, Parker was raised in rural Vermont, a lifestyle which influenced Parker's work.
FORMAT: Orbit published How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It in August 2020 as a second book of The Siege series. It works as a standalone. The book is written in the first-person POV (via Notker) and counts 354 pages.
OVERVIEW: I don’t have to convince Parker’s fans to buy his books; they’ll do it anyway - even his weaker books beat most of the low fantasy published nowadays. How to Rule the Empire and Get Away With It is a loose sequel to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, but it works as a standalone. And it’s great.
Notker, a cynic, actor, and playwright has a knack for impersonating influential people. His acting skills and physique allow him to win the audience and make a living. Things get complicated when the enemy’s trebuchet kills Lysimachus, a venerated war hero. Without him, the city is doomed. It turns out Notker resembles him. A bit. He doesn’t have scars, and he dislikes blood and violence, but who cares. Definitely not the conspirators who coerce him into impersonating the hero.
Notker’s ex-girlfriend, Hodda, gets caught up in intrigue as well. To make matters more interesting, she used to date the real Lysimachus. Not to mention other influential figures. The pair gets tangled in a web of lies, and things escalate quickly. The Senate appoints Notker as Emperor and wants him to lead the war against King Ogus and his ruthless warriors. While Hodda plays an important role in the story, we stay in Notker’s head and POV. Like most of Parker’s protagonists, he’s no hero:
Me, I don’t care about the bad guys, so long as they keep the hell away from me. When they get too close in my face, I tell lies and run away. That means I’ll never be a hero, but I don’t mind that. I do character parts and impersonations.
Notker’s sardonic voice, and his cynically philosophical asides about life, love, and politics, charmed me. Despite his shortcomings, Notker makes do. He uses his wit and resources to ensure an exciting and surprising finale. I love Parker's use of tight first-person narration. It always makes me laugh, think, and brood over the condition of humanity.
Ah, the people. My countrymen, my fellow citizens, my brothers. Mind you, some of them are all right, when you get to know them. But a lot of them aren’t; and here’s a funny thing, because when you mix them together, the ones that are all right and the ones that aren’t, as often as not the resulting blend is far worse than the sum of its parts. Greedier, more cowardly, more stupid.
Parker conveys backstories through instant immersion into the everyday life of Notker, an actor turned Emperor trying to save the day against impossible odds. He has no illusions about his countrymen, but he’ll try to help them, anyway.
Nothing changes more often, more rapidly or more radically than the past. Yesterday’s heroes are today’s villains. Yesterday’s eternal truths are today’s exploded myths. Yesterday’s right is today’s wrong, yesterday’s good is today’s evil. And tomorrow it’ll all be one hundred and eighty degrees different, on that you can rely.
Much as I enjoyed Sixteen Ways to Defend The Walled City, I liked How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It more. It feels tighter and Notker is easier to like than Orhan, even if there are a few moments where pacing could be improved. Still, this is a fantastic novel. Parker provides an immersive story with clever twists and uncomfortable truths about human nature and society in elegant yet utterly unpretentious prose.
One could argue that whole of Parker's oeuvre has the same general feel. That he writes only one character with the same fatalistic but humorous outlook on life. And yet, as a writer, he gets away with it because he does it so well and he always offers unexpected twists. How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It is darkly funny and cheerfully horrific and I had a great time reading it.
I love epic fantasy with all its sword and sorcery, magic, castles and intrigue. As much as I enjoy the classic series I grew up with, I realize that the world changes and the way we tell tales should change with it. So as I continue writing my fourth epic fantasy series (Assassins of Landria), here are some things that I try to keep in mind.
Many readers don’t have the time or inclination to dive into massively-thick novels. While they’re home during the pandemic, they may be juggling working remotely, having more family at home all the time than usual, remote learning for children, or just the stressed-out attention span limitations of these trying times.
While some readers welcome immersing themselves in a really long book, others can’t muster the focus and concentration. That’s why my newest series, Assassins of Landria has books that are about half the size of my traditional epic novels. They’re lighter, funnier, with fewer points of view and interbraiding plotlines, and a smaller cast of characters. They’re also buddy-flick style, with a lot of banter. My goal was to provide epic feels without the epic length.
I also try to approach the cast of characters with a fresh eye. A lot of classic epic fantasy limits women to roles as wife, mother, servant, and paid companion. Yet the historical record shows that many women went to war, took up arms to protect their villages, and carved out roles for themselves beyond home and family. The same is true with LGBTQ and non-binary characters. Once again, history provides many examples of real people through the ages, figures who have been too often overlooked in the most familiar retelling but who existed and from whom we can draw ideas.
Since my study as a history major was Western European Medieval history and my own ancestry comes from that part of the world, my books’ fictional settings tend to resemble that area in topography, economics, political systems, technology, etc. But the historical record is clear that throughout history there were travelers, merchants, and others of many ethnicities present in Northwestern Europe, so the Middle Ages weren’t nearly as ‘white’ as our movies and TV shows tend to present. An ethnically varied cast of characters is actually more historically accurate.
At every age in history, there were people who held a range of views about social, cultural and political beliefs and actions that were common in their time. That includes topics like slavery, persecuting witches, forcing religious conformity, and abusing the power of a title, position or office. Showing characters who oppose such things, even if they are in the minority, is not retconning the past, but rather acknowledging that humanity has never been in full agreement on anything.
By diving deeper into real history and going beyond the broad-brush overview, we can find a much richer, varied and more interesting—and historically accurate/representative—source of inspiration than in turns keeps epic fantasy fresh and appeals to a broader group of readers.
What’s new? Plenty! Sons of Darkness (Night Vigil Book 1) and Inheritance (Deadly Curiosities Book 4) are now on audiobook. Monster Mash and Creature Feature are the newest Spells Salt and Steel books. Witch of the Woods and Ghosts of the Past are the newest in the Wasteland Marshals series, and Black Sun is the latest Joe Mack Adventure. Coming soon: Fugitive’s Vow (Assassins of Landria Book 3) and Reckoning (Darkhurst Book 3).
My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with brand new guest blog posts, giveaways and more! You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! Get all the details about my Days of the Dead blog tour at www.GailZMartin.com
Many readers don’t have the time or inclination to dive into massively-thick novels. While they’re home during the pandemic, they may be juggling working remotely, having more family at home all the time than usual, remote learning for children, or just the stressed-out attention span limitations of these trying times.
While some readers welcome immersing themselves in a really long book, others can’t muster the focus and concentration. That’s why my newest series, Assassins of Landria has books that are about half the size of my traditional epic novels. They’re lighter, funnier, with fewer points of view and interbraiding plotlines, and a smaller cast of characters. They’re also buddy-flick style, with a lot of banter. My goal was to provide epic feels without the epic length.
I also try to approach the cast of characters with a fresh eye. A lot of classic epic fantasy limits women to roles as wife, mother, servant, and paid companion. Yet the historical record shows that many women went to war, took up arms to protect their villages, and carved out roles for themselves beyond home and family. The same is true with LGBTQ and non-binary characters. Once again, history provides many examples of real people through the ages, figures who have been too often overlooked in the most familiar retelling but who existed and from whom we can draw ideas.
Since my study as a history major was Western European Medieval history and my own ancestry comes from that part of the world, my books’ fictional settings tend to resemble that area in topography, economics, political systems, technology, etc. But the historical record is clear that throughout history there were travelers, merchants, and others of many ethnicities present in Northwestern Europe, so the Middle Ages weren’t nearly as ‘white’ as our movies and TV shows tend to present. An ethnically varied cast of characters is actually more historically accurate.
At every age in history, there were people who held a range of views about social, cultural and political beliefs and actions that were common in their time. That includes topics like slavery, persecuting witches, forcing religious conformity, and abusing the power of a title, position or office. Showing characters who oppose such things, even if they are in the minority, is not retconning the past, but rather acknowledging that humanity has never been in full agreement on anything.
By diving deeper into real history and going beyond the broad-brush overview, we can find a much richer, varied and more interesting—and historically accurate/representative—source of inspiration than in turns keeps epic fantasy fresh and appeals to a broader group of readers.
What’s new? Plenty! Sons of Darkness (Night Vigil Book 1) and Inheritance (Deadly Curiosities Book 4) are now on audiobook. Monster Mash and Creature Feature are the newest Spells Salt and Steel books. Witch of the Woods and Ghosts of the Past are the newest in the Wasteland Marshals series, and Black Sun is the latest Joe Mack Adventure. Coming soon: Fugitive’s Vow (Assassins of Landria Book 3) and Reckoning (Darkhurst Book 3).
My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with brand new guest blog posts, giveaways and more! You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! Get all the details about my Days of the Dead blog tour at www.GailZMartin.com
Official Author Website
Order Blood & Honey over HERE
Read Caitlin’s review of Serpent & Dove
OFFICIAL AUTHOR WEBSITE: Shelby Mahurin
Order Blood & Honey over HERE
Read Caitlin’s review of Serpent & Dove
OFFICIAL AUTHOR WEBSITE: Shelby Mahurin
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