James Enge: Sword and Sorcery's Next Big Thing

Art by Dominic Harman

Paul Jessup has interviewed James Enge (Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, The Wolf Age) on his blog today, in a piece entitled "Sword and Sorcery's Next Big Thing." The entire interview is well worth your time, but here's a taste.

"One of the reasons to write or read fantasy is that it gives you the opportunity to think about what’s real by considering the unreal. Traveling through the uncanny valley with things that look like people but, rather creepily, are not is one way to stir up those thoughts… or at least feelings that might provoke thought. I try not to write with a Message (VOTE FOR BEEBLEBROX! HE’S JUST THIS GUY, YOU KNOW?) but any story that matters enough to people to get them to feel something will also provoke thought. Some sort of beast will be taunted out of its cave, or so we hope."

Lou Anders Interview: The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction

I was honored to be one of the people quoted in Philip Athans' The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction: 6 Steps to Writing and Publishing Your Bestseller!. The book has an introduction and original story by R.A. Salvatore, and features quotes from a number of SFF luminaries, including Kevin J. Anderson, Terry Brooks, Paul Park, our own Mike Resnick, and others.

Today, author Philip Athans takes some of the unused material from our conversation and spins it into an interview over on his blog, The Fantasy Author's Handbook.

I hope you'll read the full interview, but here is a sample:

Athans: What is the one novel every aspiring fantasy author has to read?

Anders: It isn’t The Lord of the Rings. I can’t tell you how many people pitch me with their brilliant fantasy concept, and when I grill them on who they read, it’s Tolkien and no one else or since. If you want to sell fantasy in today’s market, then you need to have read George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, David Anthony Durham, Brent Weeks. Look at what’s selling now. Read what’s selling now.

 Also: Man, that's an old picture!

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist Interviews David Louis Edelman

Patrick St-Denis has just posted an interview with me on his popular Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist blog. Subjects covered include Infoquake, MultiReal, Lou Anders and Pyr, my strengths as a storyteller, the John W. Campbell Award, cover art, websites and interactivity with readers, the trend of high-quality British SF, and whether SF will ever get proper literary recognition by snooty academics cowering up in their white towers.

But the best part of the whole thing is that Pat has seen fit, unprompted, to post this neat little Photoshopped poster that puts the full force and weight of Uncle Sam behind getting you to read Infoquake and MultiReal. And really, ain’t that how it should be?

Brief excerpt from the interview:

What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller?
I feel like I’m very good at the worldbuilding aspect of things. Really, structure in general. The trilogy has layers and layers of metaphor in it, and I’m really quite proud of the way it all works together as an organic whole. My tendency is to wander off into history and background and structure, and sometimes I have to curb that impulse. If I had written The Lord of the Rings, it would have been three whole books of the Council of Elrond, and nobody would have read it.

Were there any perceived conventions of the science fiction genre which you wanted to twist or break when you set out to write Infoquake and its sequel?

Yes, I wanted to avoid the typical mindless action set-pieces that you find in a lot of bad SF, and bad novels in general. I really wanted to write an exciting novel about business. A lot of authors just use the business aspect as window dressing, and then quickly throw their characters into the same car chases and murder mysteries and gunfights. I wanted to write books that really are about the workplace, where the excitement revolves around product demos and marketing meetings and government hearings and that kind of thing. So that’s what I’ve tried to do.