Archive for Guest Post

Seven Days for SEVEN PRINCES: The Horror/Fantasy Connection

7 days for SEVEN PRINCES

 “As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.” — Baudelaire

In today’s world Fantasy fiction is split into many genres: Epic, High, Low, Heroic Urban, Suburban, Historical, Science, Weird, Dark…you’re likely to find any of these words in front of “Fantasy” these days. Many authors enjoy blending and “splicing” genres together, which can often lead to new sub-genres and even anti-genre approaches. There are two enduring genres that have always gone well together, seamlessly blending one into the other, and their combination continues to be a popular pairing.

Often Horror and Fantasy are lumped together like fraternal twins forced to wear the same plaid sweater. Many are the theories defining exactly what each one of the genres actually IS, and the closer you look at either, the more splintering you find, the more sub-genres, the more distinctions being made on the “microcosmic” level. Yet examples of Horror/Fantasy blends continue to amaze and terrify readers.  (more…)

The Spaces In-Between

Silver-Tongued DevilThe word “liminal” comes from Latin word for “threshold.” Often it’s used to refer to in-between spaces, the murky shadows of society and institutions and expected norms. Doorways, graveyards, crossroads–these are all symbols for transformative thresholds and they show up in fiction over and over again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept lately in regard to my own books. My stories are full of examples of the liminal. I have a soft spot for marginalized characters—mixed-bloods, down-and-out faery drag queens, Recreant mages, dozens of characters struggling to reconcile their desires with duty. These are characters on the fringe of polite society and I go back to them over and over.

I also utilize the concept of liminality in my settings and plots. In SILVER-TONGUED DEVIL (out this week), Sabina Kane goes into a liminal realm—aptly called “The Liminal”– that exists between our mundane reality and the magical underworld to fight her demons, both literal and figurative. It is only through interacting with liminal characters, exploring strange, new settings and being forced to explore the margins of her own psyche that she can truly transform. (more…)

Seven Days for SEVEN PRINCES: The Inspiration

7 days for SEVEN PRINCESI’m proud to tell anyone who asks me about it that I write fantasy novels. The publication of SEVEN PRINCES represents many years of hard work, commitment and stubborn dedication to one man’s mad vision. Writers are obsessed with their ideas. They have to be.

I also write in the horror and sci-fi genres. Yet fantasy has always been my first love — specifically high fantasy, or epic fantasy, as some folks like to call it. Although the term dark fantasy is also one of which I’m rather fond. A lot of my favorite fantasies are indeed “dark,” and you will find some darkness in every fantasy — if only to provide contrast to the sweetness and light. The murkier the darkness, the brighter the light. (more…)

Seven Days for SEVEN PRINCES: The Significance of the Number 7

7 days for SEVEN PRINCESThere’s something strange about the number 7.

Something mystical. Something downright magical.

Looking back through history, literature, religion, and philosophy, one can see this number coming up again and again – usually with a significant aspect invoking holiness, mystery, power or prosperity.

A few examples:

– In Buddhist mythology the newborn Buddha took seven steps right after he was born, declaring “I alone am the World-Honored One.”

– In Christian mythology the Walls of Jericho fell seven days after seven priests marched around the city seven times with seven trumpets.

– In Islamic mythology there are seven heavens and seven hells. (more…)

SEVEN PRINCES: It’s About Blood

The cover of the debut fantasy novel ‘Seven Princes' by John R. Fultz, showing a band of princes going to war
Seven Princes – released Jan 2012

So what’s your book about?

Is there any more difficult question for an author to answer? I know I have a hard time with this one. After spending so much time (often years) crafting a novel, living inside the souls of your characters, building the intricate world in which they live, overseeing the progress of an invented history and chronicling the fictional exploits of your literary “children”, it’s hard to encapsulate all the diverse threads of a novel into a single statement.

Yet the market demands a “hook” or “premise” on which any novel can hang its metaphorical hat. After all, if readers don’t know what to expect, why should they even buy the book? Blind faith? Hardly. Word of mouth? Well, that’s the best advertising you can get . . . but consider the irony. If you as the author don’t come up with a satisfying answer to “What’s your book about?” then your early readers and reviewers are going to do it FOR YOU. They’re going to summarize, encapsulate and foreshorten your Massive Undertaking of Artistic Purity to a description worthy of a sound-byte (or at least a Facebook update). So authors are better-off coming up with their own answer to this big question, rather than leaving it up to somebody else to explain.

All of this begs the question: “What is SEVEN PRINCES about?”

If you look at the cover text, SEVEN PRINCES is about war. “An age of legends. An age of heroes. An age of war.” Now that’s a great tag line. It’s engaging, evocative, and it rings with mythic resonance. Ready for more irony?

Here’s the thing: I never considered this book a “war novel” when I was writing it. Yet war itself is definitely one of the themes that drives the characters and the plot. Some characters want to prevent war—they know the red tragedy and the pointless slaughter that it brings—while others actively seek war to prove themselves, to avenge wrongs, or simply as a means of grabbing power. So the concept of war itself is definitely buried in there. There’s even a conversation at one point between two characters who argue about the essential nature of Man as a war-like being. Is Mankind capable of living in peace—true peace—for long? That’s a question that also lies at the heart of SEVEN PRINCES. So yeah, it’s about war. But it’s also about a lot more . . . (more…)

The Hedgewitch Experiment

The cover the The Hedgewitch Queen, showing a woman in a white dressI wrote The Hedgewitch Queen, let’s see, ]mumblemumble[ years ago, in a feverish haze. It started, as so many books do, with a character whispering in my ear. If not for a muddy skirt, a clear, cultured, decorous voice said, I would be dead like all the rest.

Dead…or worse, perhaps.

Of course I had to continue writing to find out what was “worse.” Arquitaine opened around me, and several drafts later (I think this was the book that cemented my faith in my long-suffering beta reader’s patience) I had a novel I was happy with. Well, as much as a writer is ever happy with a draft. We’re inveterate pickers. But I digress.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the right time to release it. I was hip-deep in other series, and my editor and agent both agreed that dear Hedgie had to wait. I stuck out my lower lip, pouted a bit, and then got over it and cheerfully agreed. Of such moments are a career in publishing made.

Cut to years later, when my editor at Orbit called my agent. “Does Lili still have Hedgewitch? If so, there’s this opportunity. It’s an ebook-only release.” (more…)

Out today – Philip Palmer’s Artemis

Artemis is the heroine of my fifth novel for Orbit Books, and she’s a lot like me in many ways.  She’s a cool, sexy, superfit, ruthless, murdering bitch who loves reading books.

Okay, she’s a lot like me in ONE way.  I also, um, love reading books.

I find I’m naturally attracted to characters with a hint of evil in their souls.  Like Lena, or indeed Flanagan, in DEBATABLE SPACE. Or Saunders in RED CLAW.  Even Sharrock in HELL SHIP is a warrior, and hence a cold blooded killer.

Some of the characters I’ve created in these books are, however, Good Guys. Version 43, for instance, in the novel called (would you credit it?) VERSION 43 is an honest cop in a dishonourable world.  He may have flaws but he’s not corrupt.  In fact his main flaw is that he’s not nearly corrupt enough.  He is, exasperatingly, too good to be true; because he’s a cyborg and not a true human.  But, as time goes by, he gets more and more human…and that makes him, in my view, easier to warm to.  And he’s also very good at his job, of enforcing law and order, usually by killing people.

Artemis, though,  is very much at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum of amorality.  She is a one woman killing machine.    But does that make her an unsympathetic character? Well, I’d argue not. Because she has reasons for what she does.  Good reasons…

But she’s flawed, without a doubt. Highly flawed.  Murderous – sometimes selfish – obsessive – and vengeful.  I like characters with flaws;  perhaps because I am myself a character with many flaws… And I believe firmly that characters who are nice and full of virtue aren’t the ones we root for when we read stories.  That’s why Satan is the one we cheer on in Paradise Lost, not those wretched angels; certainly not God.

Mulling on this theme, I’ve coined the term ‘Rootability’, to refer to that special quality in a character that makes us want to root for him, or her.  Tyrion Lannister (in George R. R. Martin’s  Games of Thrones series) has it in abundance. Eddard Stark is far more heroic. Daenerys is more exotic, and has those wonderful dragons. But Tyrion is the evil dwarf we love to hate; he’s the underdog; he’s the smart one.

Harry Potter, for my money, DOESN’T have Rootability. He’s too powerful.  He’s too nerdy. He has those glasses. I’d like those stories much more if Hermione were the heroine – the ‘little girl’ who no one takes seriously but who always wins the day.  But then again I’m strange; and JK Rowling’s fans seem to like Harry’s books just the way they are. (more…)

The Horrible, Horrible Roots of the Science Fiction Genre

Last month, I posted a piece on my own blog highlighting some of the real people and places from history that show up in The Edinburgh Dead, including a dastardly graverobber called Merry Andrew and houses of ill-repute called the Holy, Happy and Just Lands (the Scots had a rather dry and ironic sense of humour even then).

But shortly after posting it, I realised I’d left out arguably the most interesting fragment of historical truth lurking in the whole novel.  Annoying in one way – because when I first started thinking of doing that post I made a mental note to be sure to include that particular snippet, and then … didn’t, obviously.  D’oh! – but fortunate in another, because on reflection it’s worth more discussion than I would have given it over there, and probably deserves a post of its own here at the happy home of Orbit on t’Web.

So: here comes the tale of Mathew Clydesdale, his gruesome fate and what it has to do with the very beginning of the whole science fiction genre we know and love today.  Never heard of him?  I’m not surprised; neither had I, until I began researching The Edinburgh Dead.  But trust me: it probably won’t take you long to realise how he connects to the origins of science fiction. (more…)

The Birth of the Comarré

Kristen Painter’s House of Comarré series continues this month with FLESH AND BLOOD. Book 3, BAD BLOOD, will be available in December. You can keep up with Kristen at the official Facebook page.

One of the questions I get asked most often is where the idea for the comarré came from, these hybrid humans bred to be blood slaves for the vampire nobility. Usually I say that I’ve carried the idea of Chrysabelle around in my head since college, which is true, but that was just a blurred image of a woman in a slinky white dress dipped low enough to reveal a gold tattoo on the small of her back. It wasn’t the comarré, exactly. More like the seed that grew into Chrysabelle. (more…)

Interview with Uri

In honor of my Days of the Dead blog tour, I’d like to introduce you to one of my vayash moru (vampire) characters from the Chronicles of the Necromancer and Fallen Kings series.  Vayash moru play an important part in my books, aiding–and sometimes opposing–Tris Drayke and Jonmarc Vahanian.

Here, I’d like to introduce you to Lord Uri,  a member of the Blood Council.  In life, he was a thief and a card sharp, and in death his ethics have been questioned even by others on the Blood Council.  He is not overly fond of mortals, especially not Jonmarc Vahanian, with whom he has repeatedly sparred verbally. 

Q:  What has immortality taught you?

A:  Mortals never learn.  This creates great opportunity for those who do.

Q: You have repeatedly shown disdain for Jonmarc Vahanian, yet in the end, you have grudgingly chosen to side with him rather than against him.  Why?

A:  Jonmarc Vahanian annoys me.  I knew his kind quite well when I was mortal.  And while he made a lot of money for me when I bet on hi back when he was a Nargi fight slave, I find him arrogant in his abilities. But I have to admit, he is good at fighting.  And after last year’s vayash moru insurrection, I find myself owing him–a damnable situation.

Q:  Like most of the Blood Council, you chose to ally with the mortals of the Winter Kingdoms against the Temnottan invaders.  Why?

A:  In this, the living and the undead have common cause.  Temnotta will not be a kind master if the northern forces prevail.  I endured far too much of that kind of oppression in Nargi to serve another such master.  Once again, to my great annoyance, I find Jonmarc Vahanian and I to be on the same side.

Q:  What is your biggest disappointment about immortality?

A:  That despite superior strength and speed, my kind still fall prey so easily to those who would destroy us.

Please check out my Days of the Dead online blog tour—there are lots of other free downloads, drawings for free books, excerpts, interviews and fun—details are at www.ChroniclesOfTheNecromancer.com