Hello Lucas, thank you for taking time to chat with me. This won’t be as violent as Nysta – and there’s no swearing. I hope that’s okay.
Lucas: I am not an igloo.
SFFWorld: I never said you were an igloo, did I? Anyway…what’s your SFFWorld.com’s forum alias and why did you pick it?
Lucas: I was very boring, and just chose my name. In another life, I would have chosen an alias. One of many, perhaps. But the internet has really changed since the 1990s and everyone seems to use their name. Our names are quickly becoming brands, too. I think it’s kind of sad. Is it too late to change my alias to yellow weasel stomper the structurally unsound?
SFFWorld: It’s never too late to change your handle. There’s even a special thread where you can make a request. But I think it’s already taken. So…how did you discover SFFWorld.com and why did you decide to join?
Lucas: I found it through Kat, who recommended it to me after she was awesome enough to find my book’s cover and write about it on her blog. I figured anyone with such obviously great taste will probably belong to a pretty good forum!
SFFWorld: Cool! Do you mean this cover?
It is a cool cover. If KatG wrote about you, I think that makes you some sort of royalty. Back to the interview: How long have you been a member and what keeps you coming back?
Lucas: I used to haunt old newsgroups and kind of miss that kind of conversation. Where you can slap down a few comments and then come back a day or two later and carry on. There’s a chance to be more thoughtful in those than, say, the endless stream of consciousness that is social media.
I come back because of the lack of social drama. The odd moment I see is refreshingly passive-aggressive, which makes it friendly and pretty quick to move on. I like the genuine love and enthusiasm in every element of literature, too. Especially the book cover thread that will not die. And should never die. I love that thread.
SFFWorld: What’s your favorite book?
Lucas: Picking a favourite book is hard! I’d say let me have a list of ten or twenty, but even then I wouldn’t be able to narrow a list. Having said that, I have one book I often think of when I get these questions from friends or whatnot. And that’s Eric Dando’s Snail.
It’s a tough book to track if you want a challenge, but worth it. It’s a small book which is, essentially, the story of a guy living in share-housing in Melbourne. There’s a terrific legend involving how it was published in that Eric sent the manuscript to Penguin pressed between two pieces of an old fence because he liked the texture of the fence. It lay around the office until the editor got tired of tripping on it and read it.
It’s written in short, almost poetic, fragments. The language is simple in that it never uses long or unusual words. It’s a simple and eloquent story for what it is, and it taught me as a writer to stop using words such as opalescent in a sentence and that you can say so much with simple language. I treasure this book for that reason. And also because it’s hilarious.
Side note: Eric went on to write a book called Oink! Oink! Oink! and it’s a bizarre scifi masterpiece.
SFFWorld: Who’s your favorite author?
Lucas: Again, how can I narrow this down? I think, though, in the past year or so, the author who made the most impression on me is Kameron Hurley. I read God’s War last year and was blown away. It was like Mad Max had been shoved into Dune and had its gender roles flipped without being flipped solely as a statement. The creativity of her writing continued into The Mirror Empire and it’s so exciting to see someone creating such an energetically different world in a landscape of novels which draw more from common sources.
Personally, I think Kameron should have swept every SciFi award this last year. She was robbed.
SFFWorld: What’s your favorite genre (science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk, etc)?
Lucas: I go in cycles, often moving from genre to genre. But I always come back to fantasy. I probably prefer a more pulp classic style in that I love Moorcock and Leiber so much, but I’ll pretty much try anything.
SFFWorld: Where’s your favorite place to read?
Lucas: Definitely in bed, though I haven’t been able to do so for the past few years. I kind of used to love getting sick so I could spend the day in bed reading. Who doesn’t? Side note: every time I get the flu, I have to read Eddings’ Belgariad. I don’t know why. It’s like some kind of compulsion.
SFFWorld: Favorite con (convention)?
Lucas: I’ve never actually been to one! I was from Perth in Western Australia most of my life and they weren’t a big thing. I never knew anyone going to them or anything. I remember one year being surprised to find out there was such a thing in Perth. Now I’m in Melbourne and still missed the Cons. I guess I’ve also worked in too many Customer Service jobs that I find I am unable to deal with crowds.
SFFWorld: What do you do when you are not reading or messing around on SFFWorld.com?
Lucas: I’m a man of too many hobbies! My wife is very patient. I go through phases of painting Warhammer, playing Skyrim (Crom, it’s such an addiction), managing music and movie collections (leftovers from a life spent working in video stores when they were a thing), and, of course, writing my stories.
SFFWorld: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Lucas. Anything else you’d like to add?
Lucas: Thanks heaps for the chance to say HI! I’ll shamelessly self-plug my latest book, Hemlock and Melganaderna: Trail of the Necromancer. It’s the next in a long series which has been funding my dream to quit the olde day job (next year!). If you like your pulp fantasy violent and maybe more than a little sweary, give it a shot!
© 2015 N. E. White / Lucas Thorn / SFFWorld.com
