Welcome to Randall Ritnour and Kerry Nietz from the Takamo Universe.
Q: Let us start with the beginning, The Takamo Universe. What is the history behind the Takamo Universe, and how has it evolved over time?
(Randall) In 1981, a group of about a dozen students at the University of Nebraska (Go Big Red) had a semester-long fantasy roleplaying campaign going. I was the game master. Between classes, we would gather at the Student Union, where participants would come by and give me details about their character’s actions and movements. It was a great diversion from our studies.
One of our group, Bill Hayes, mentioned that there were commercial play-by-mail (PBM) games that were like our roleplaying campaign. I’d never heard of such a thing, but I did some research and designed a science fiction game. Then, I and three others—Bill Hayes, Al Edeker, and Bill Bunselmeyer—developed our first computer-moderated PBM game, Takamo.
Think of it as a snail mail version of a massively multiplayer online game before the Internet. Our first computer was an IBM PC with a huge ten-megabyte hard drive, a three-foot wide tractor-feed dot matrix printer, and a banker’s box of computer paper. The whole setup cost about $10k.
We released the game and ran it for seven years. By then, we had ten thousand players, which is pretty good for snail mail. We also had a magazine based on the game and a newsletter that featured short stories and fan fiction. Players loved to write descriptions about their empires and species, which, over the years, developed into a huge cache of lore. My love of science fiction kept me writing and adding my own Takamo stories even after the sale of the company.
In the mid-nineties, I learned that the game had closed. I wanted to get back into game design, so I bought the game system from the company that had purchased it from us and began a project to convert the game to an online MMO. That effort didn’t succeed, but it did result in a spin-off Takamo book publishing company, drawing from 40 years of accumulated Takamo writings.
We collaborated with Kevin J. Anderson and Word Fire Press to publish our first book, Empire’s Rift by Steve Rzasa, under the moniker “Kevin J. Anderson Presents” in 2014. Since then, we’ve released twenty titles, all based on Takamo lore. They span a vast and detailed timeline involving the five galaxies of the long-dead Radnian Empire.
Q: How did you initially get involved?
(Randall) Kerry Was recommended to me by Steve Rzasa. I curate the Takamo lore for the authors we work with. I was looking for additional authors to write in our shared universe so I asked Steve for names. Kerry Nietz was at the top of his list. At first, Kerry worried that his workload might not allow him to participate, but I think that the descriptions and sayings of the Mutos of Rhatsibahn got under his skin, and soon Frohic, the reluctant spacefaring Rhat, came to life.
(Kerry) An author friend, Steve Rzasa, connected Randall and I. At the time, Takamo wanted short stories set in the universe. (To be used as rewards or hidden unlocks in the game later, I think.) Steve had already written a few stories for Takamo and knew that, as an entrenched sci-fi guy, I’d probably be interested. He also mentioned it was a paying gig—which was an often-neglected benefit. 😊 I’ve been fold-gating my way around the Takamo universe for more than seven years now.
Q: The Muto Chronicles are set in the Takamo Universe, can you tell us a bit about it?
(Kerry) Sure! The Chronicles revolve around man-sized space-faring rodents called mutos or rhats. They hail from a portion of the Takamo Universe called the Rhatsibahn Empire. They’re generally scoundrels and lackeys (think Star Trek’s Ferengi) but occasionally a nobler character emerges.
(Randall) Takamo is a region of five galaxies, Estra, Celsus, Deltar, Baxel, and Fadren, with a half-million-year timeline leading to an apocalyptic event. There are about 350 empires throughout these galaxies. Some of the main Empires include the Terran Republic, the Naplian Empire and the Briddarri Kingdom. The stories in Takamo cover many sub genres within a shared universe.
The term Muto comes from the Mutos of Rhatsibahn Empire, originally a player empire in Takamo in the 1980s. Terry Buchholz ran the empire in the game. He loved to write descriptions of the Rhats. Terry published his own newsletter with descriptions of characters, their exploits, and sayings. These became part of the lore and background that Kerry drew from in his stories.
Q: Rhats Free! is the third book in the series. Did you have the whole series planned out from the beginning or have things evolved in ways you didn’t expect?
(Kerry) The series has followed its own path. The first book was planned as a one-off novella. Randy lured me into it with the idea of telling a story from the perspective of giant rodents. I loved the potential there. I enjoy being challenged. Love unique situations and characters. So, yeah, a rhat-based story was right up my alley.
Randy gave me a little plot guidance initially. He told me what the rhats might be searching for and where they might go. He also was a great resource along the way for all the Takamo minutia—the different races of beings, the ships, planets and gadgets, all that stuff. But other than that, he let me run with it. Takamo has an incredible amount of lore to mine.
The story flexibility suits me well because I’m a discovery writer. I typically write with little to no idea where a story is going and let the characters take me where they will. Frohic and his merry band grew from that discovery process. Each story builds on the last, though they are generally self-contained adventures. It feels like I’m writing an episode of Buck Rogers or Firefly.
If Randall wanted specific events or characters chronicled, of course, I would’ve done my best to accommodate. Rhataloo is the only book in the series that chronicles established Takamo canon, but even then, I had a lot of latitude.
Q: Can you give us some insight into your main character?
(Kerry) Frohic starts the series as an inexperienced and unwilling space explorer. He has no inherent skills, other than blind luck. He’s honorable and thoughtful, though, which makes him a bit of anomaly, but also brings out the best in those around him—whether they realize it or not. By the second book, he’s found a mischief of mutos that serve as a shipboard family. They’re flawed misfits, but they suit him. And they find lots of trouble.
Q: How do you feel your characters have evolved throughout the series?
(Kerry) Frohic has gone from being an interstellar neophyte to being the second-in-command of a ship, and in doing so, has found his calling. The other members of the crew are specialists—a pilot, a mechanic, a secret agent, a historian—but Frohic is the peanut butter that keeps the rest of them all in place.
Q: How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?
(Kerry) I’ve dabbled with writing most of my life. My degree was in Computer Science, but I always wanted to write “someday.” Then one day I realized coding had lost its joy for me. It felt like it was getting too repetitive and predictable. So, I decided to give writing a try.
I floundered around at it for a few years. Read lots of craft books and wrote lots of stories that will never see the light of day. I had a non-fiction book published a few years into it named FoxTales but had no success getting a novel published.
Then I wrote what I thought was going to be my last novel. One last story, for me, before I tried something else. It was about this implanted coder of the future who fixed robots. When I finished, I thought it was cool enough to let someone else read. I sent it to an editor who, for a fee, would give me his opinion as a former acquisitions editor. He liked the story so much that he published it on his own as part of a new publishing house called Marcher Lord Press. My “last novel” was over a million words and twelve novels ago now.
Q: What is your favorite and least favorite part of the writing process, and why?
(Kerry) My favorite part is probably the beginning. The wide-open possibilities a blank page represents. That said, I’ve come to enjoy all aspects of the process—except maybe marketing. Like most writers, I’m more comfortable creating than trying to sell what I’ve created. But, I’m trying to build my skills there, as well.
Q: What’s next, do you have more new and exciting projects you are working on at the moment?
(Kerry) Currently, I’m working on the final book in a trilogy—set in the same universe as my first novel, in fact. It’s going longer than I expected, though. I’m hoping it does, in fact, finish at some point.
After that, I’m not sure. I’m still waiting on the next fun idea.
I’m sure we’ll have another rhats adventure before too long, though—if nothing else, for my youngest son and father, who are both Frohic fans now. It is a fun universe to play in.
(Randall) We have several books slated for release this holiday season.
Counterstrike’s Ruin, the third book in the Empire’s Rift series by Steve Rzasa, should be out by the time this interview is published. Interestingly, some of the events in Steve’s series and Kerry’s first book of the Muto Chronicles, Rhats!, happen on the same planet. If classic space opera is your thing, you’ll love this series.
Degara’s Bane, the second book in the Omiata Chronicles by author Amber Draeger, will be out by Christmas. Degara is a snarky, disgraced military pilot who leaves her apartment to go to work, lands face down in the hallway under the boots of a Terran SWAT team, and finds herself on a mission to save, of all people, her not-so-nice brother when everything goes sideways (doesn’t it always.)
Other books slated for release include Escape from Emdera by Benjamin Brooks, Ogonin Trials by Kassandra Dick, and To Kill A Star by Dakota Caldwell.
Our website is www.takamo.com. You’ll find all twenty of our current titles available in Ebook and paperback. Many are also available in audiobook format. There’s a blog featuring Takamo news and lore, a store with nifty Takamo gear, and a Wiki page in development.
