Hello Jim, welcome back to SFFWorld. It’s a pleasure to have the chance to ask you a few questions again, this time related to The Thirteenth Man just released by Harper Voyager.
First of all can you in your own words tell us a bit about The Thirteenth Man?
I like to say that The Thirteenth Man is “The Man in the Iron Mask–in space.” It takes place in the same interstellar civilization as A Choice of Treasons, but it’s not as dark, and it occurs about three or four hundred years earlier, before the formation of the Lunan Empire. When I started writing it I actually wrote the names of Alexandre Dumas and Edgar Rice Burroughs on a post-it, then stuck it on the wall above my desk at about eye-level just to remind me that I wanted to do something adventurous and heroic. The hero, Charlie Cass, starts out as a fellow of somewhat low-rank, the bastard son of a powerful duke, and he must find a way to save the kingdom, and everyone he loves. By the way, while the heroine, Del, starts out as not terribly heroic, she must rise to the occasion as well.
Having read A Choice of Treasons I must say it was very interesting to get to know the origin of the Hunter Killers and more details about the Kinathin breed warriors. Was it the sort of “ancient history” of the universe you’ve created in A Choice of Treasons you wanted to base your story on when you first got the idea?
I got the idea while watching the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991. In the opening scene Kevin Costner is filthy and lice ridden after spending some untold amount of time imprisoned in a dungeon in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. I wrote a few thousand words then put it away for over fifteen years. Then, when I decided to write the story of York Ballin’s ancestors–he’s the hero of A Choice of Treasons–something similar became the opening scene to the book. The movie was not actually the basis for the book, but for the idea of a hero who starts out in very bad circumstances, comes back from a war after being a prisoner for many years, and finds he must save the kingdom and his friends. Then, he must come up with the wherewithal to do so.
I know you have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and know a great deal about laser physics. How important is being scientific accurate for you when writing your stories?
It’s both a personal thing, and an obligation I feel toward my readers. In this interstellar civilization they have conquered gravity, and in sublight can accelerate ships at thousands of gravities. But if you do the math, it would still take days to cross a solar system. In FTL they can drive their ships at thousands of times the speed of light, but it would still take weeks, even months to cross interstellar distances. So I want to give the reader a realistic feel of what it would be like, even with such extreme capabilities.
I also don’t want to be caught out. If I give the reader A, B and C, and one can be computed from the other two, like distance, time and velocity, I’d better be right. For that reason, just to be accurate when writing one of these stories, I keep spreadsheets and notes full of actual computations for both relativistic and non- relativistic flight. Very little of that gets into the story, because it would be boring, but I do want to get it right.
You also have to tell us as bit about the new cover?
To me, it’s an exciting cover. I love the expansive view of ships of all kinds and sizes approaching a massive space station. That’s the kind of space opera I truly enjoy.
Other than the cover have there been many changes to this new revision?
Nothing substantive. It always amazes me how hard it is to self-edit your own work. The editors at Harper Voyager were meticulous and thorough. They found a lot of small errors, and one serious inconsistency.
Can you tell us a bit about the process that led up to The Thirteenth Man now being published by Harper Voyager?
Two years ago, at the World Science Convention in London, I was sitting in the hotel lobby with my editor from Open Road. We were discussing the final details of the books we would work on together, when she noticed an old friend, the acquisitions editor at Harper Voyager, walking across the lobby. She introduced me to him and we started talking, and here we are two years later. I have to say, working with the team at Harper Collins was a real pleasure, and I hope I get to do so again.
Is it now a dream come true to have your books published by major publishers as Harper Voyager and Open Road Media? Looking back a few years did you ever expect this?
I must confess that I started self-publishing purely out of frustration. I had been writing for thirty years and had four or five completed novels and had never had any success. So four years ago I just threw them out there as self-published works. When they went viral and sold really well, all the other writers I met told me I’d have no trouble getting a contract with a publisher, but that didn’t happen.
Because of eBooks, the publishing industry has been in enormous flux for the last five years, and back then very few people were thinking outside the box. Open Road and Harper Voyager were a few of the exceptions.
Do you have plans for more books set in the same universe?
I’m thinking of a prequel to The Thirteenth Man that follows Charlie as a young man trying to survive the prejudice that comes with being the bastard son of a powerful duke. I’m also thinking of a sequel about one of Charlie and Del’s children. She’s their youngest daughter, and very rebellious.
What other new and exciting projects are you working on at the moment?
In June I finished the third book in my urban fantasy series, The Dead Among Us. It’s titled Never Dead Enough, and it follows the misadventures of Paul and Katherine as he tries to survive this strange world he’s found himself in where all these wizards and witches are hiding in plain sight among us ordinary people.
I’m also about to finish The Witch of Val d’Ossa. The book is shaping up to be something like Henry Fielding’s 18th century novel Tom Jones, but set in the 19th century, with witches, and lots of murderous plotting between the Witch who rules the city and the High Noble Houses. The hero and heroine are Jax and Maelleen, a thief and a prostitute who are lovers. They find themselves caught in the middle of that plotting, and if they don’t stay one step ahead of the Witch and the Noble Houses, they’re likely to become the victims of that murderous intrigue.
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2016
