Category Archives: Interview

Interview

Interview with Author Paul Leone

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Q1:What inspired The Dweller in Drury Lane? Are there any other related works that precede or follow this that might help further explore these legends you are creating?

 

Leone: Both Ya’el and Renee and Innocence appeared in previous stories, and I thought putting their tales (including a few new ones) side by side would make for an interesting contrast. They’re all part of my Immortal Champions setting, which starts off in my novella The Governess of Greenmere and continues in the short story collections The Hungry Dead of Yü-Ching and Other Stories, Kung Fu Antipopes and Other Strange Stories, The Third Crown and Other Weird Tales and Webs and Shadows: Strange Stories of Barsetshire.

Q1/2: So where do we first encounter Ya’el, Renee, and Innocence?

Leone: Ya’el is first mentioned in “The Holy Woman of the West” in The Third Crown, while Renee and Innocence debut in “A Ride in Barsetshire” in Webs and Shadows.

Q2: The first thing one notices when reading The Dweller is your prose. How did you develop such a magnificent prosaic style? How do you manage to completely block out all traces of modern-day euphemisms and urban jargon in your writing?

Leone: I think it’s a combination of reading (a lot) and writing (a lot). Find an author or two who write like you want to, and just immerse yourself in their works. In my case, I aimed to imitate J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing style, especially in the first half of The Return of the King. 

Q3: Who was Ya’el before becoming an Immortal Champion? How did she become an Immortal Champion?

Leone: Ya’el’s background is still a little foggy to me, but she was the daughter of a shepherd in the 2nd century BC. After an encounter with one of the night people (my general term for vampires, witches and other evil beings), she met Nimrod (then the Champion of the Holy Land) and became his student and eventual successor.

Q3/2: What exactly is a Champion and where did the idea come from?

Leone: Immortal Champions are the chosen servants and warriors of the Angels of Limbo (or Sheol, as Ya’el calls it; there’s many different names). Long ago, the ‘neutral angels’ were cast out of Heaven for not taking a side in Satan’s rebellion, and some of them have since decided to atone for their cowardice by helping humanity against the minions of the Devil. There are 72 Champions all around the world who use their powers (immortality, greater physical abilities, and what might be called ‘magic’) to protect mankind. The basic idea has been in my brain for almost 20 years – what if the Slayers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer were put into an explicitly Christian setting? – and grew until I came up with Elise from The Governess of Greenmere and then her various peers.

Q4: I personally fell in love with the character of Coem from Hibernia. She comes from a land where the Gospel hasn’t spread yet (65 AD), but she does wear her heart on her sleeve and comes off as a young girl with a strong mind. Any possible spinoffs featuring her specifically that you might bless us with in the future?

Leone: Thank you! She’s one of my favorites, too. I do have some plans for her adventures in the Roman Empire, possibly with Victoria of Alexandria, or perhaps later on in history when she meets a certain British-born evangelist in early medieval Ireland.

Q5: Renee and Innocence–are they too Immortal Champions of Sheol? And if not, how are they able to fight the forces of evil the way we see it done in the second half of The Dweller? What exactly sets them apart?

Leone: Renee and Innocence are ordinary mortals. Renee is blessed with luck, a quick wit, and being born into a wealthy family with an indulgent father. Innocence, on the other hand, is a poor country girl (and as a Puritan in Restoration England, doubly looked down on), but her devout faith gives her a power over many things they face.

Q6: As I’ve mentioned to you before, I did read another of your novellas a couple of years ago-The Governess of Greenmere-but truthfully I did not see or notice any of the amazing writing I witnessed in The Dweller. Do you think I was distracted and should go back and re-read it or has your writing changed much ever since that book?

Leone: I wrote that several years ago now and like to think I’ve improved, but I definitely recommend giving it another shot! There’s some passages in it that I’m fond of. (I’d also recommend Webs and Shadows, especially the story “Sigriđ Sigdansdohtor and the Wolf of the Lobbeweald”)

Q7: In closing, Paul I can’t stop expressing my gratitude for getting me inspired while reading your book. You embody everything I work and preach (no pun) every day both in my personal life and my social media life. I want to believe that this world, with all its evil, sin, depravity, and THE AGENDA, still hosts men and women who uphold higher standards for everything that is sacred, everything that is holy, everything that is immortal.

What’s next that we can look forward to? And needless to say, I hope this is just the beginning of having you on Virtual Pulp to promote more NEW LEGENDS IN THE MAKING!

Leone: Thank you very much! I’m very glad you hold the book in such regard. As for what’s next, I’ve got a couple more Immortal Champions short story collections coming eventually. Stay tuned and God bless.

Fantasy, Historical, Interview

Q&A with Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe

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Virtual Pulp consistently reviews hidden gems in the cyber-slush pile of online book shopping. Independent authors who you might have never heard of otherwise get their books in the spotlight. The Infamous Gio occasionally gives them a microphone, too, when he conducts interviews. Recently Gio got independent author Shattuck O’Keefe to give an in-depth interview, and is sharing it with you today.

Q1: The Spirit Phone is your first published full-length novel. Why this book and why now?

 

O’Keefe: As for why this book: The idea for it hit me suddenly one day in August 2009, and I couldn’t let go of it. 

As for why now: It really should have been much earlier, but from the time I conceived of it, various life events got in the way of getting it written. I finally got a complete draft done in early 2019, then managed to land a publishing agreement with BHC Press in late 2020, with the release in November 2022. (The audiobook, which came out the following June, earned Daniel Penz, the narrator, a 2023 Voice Arts Award.)

I’ve always loved books, and I decided to write a novel. I’ve long enjoyed speculative fiction as well as allegedly true tales of the supernatural. (Even if you take the latter with a grain of salt, they make for interesting reading.) I’d been mulling over ideas for several years, and one day I was re-reading my copy of Phantom Encounters, a volume of the popular Time-Life book series called Mysteries of the Unknown. It contains a chapter on the alleged “spirit phone,” a device to attempt communication with the dead which Thomas Edison claimed in interviews that he had been trying to develop. Suddenly the idea hit me: What if Edison had actually built such a device, and what if it worked? That could be the premise of a novel, I thought. So, I wrote it.

Edison is a key supporting character, while the protagonists are occultist Aleister Crowley and inventor Nikola Tesla, who investigate the secrets of the spirit phone as its users increasingly fall prey to insanity and suicide.

In the course of my research for the book, I learned about a claim circulating online that Edison stole the spirit phone idea from Tesla. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. I wrote about it in an article posted on Medium.

There’s also a short story connected to The Spirit Phone, titled “A Spirited Conversation,” which appeared in the literary magazine The Stray Branch (Fall/Winter 2021). The magazine is in print form only, but the full text can be read on my website. It previously appeared in Suspense Magazine (Summer 2020), though it’s a slightly different version than the 2021 publication, which I consider definitive. There is a beautifully done audio recording of “A Spirited Conversation” by The Spirit Phone audiobook narrator Daniel Penz. It’s a little over 16 minutes long. 

 

Q2: the way I found your book was purely coincidental. I was looking for new content to cover and (as I often do) I was reading some of the Amazon reviews on The Spirit Phone, when this specific reviewer caught my attention by  negatively highlighting the lack of female characters in your book. I knew immediately I had to get you on VP! 

What do you think of this modern trend that requires or even demands at times that authors meet a particular demographic representation quota in their stories?

 

O’Keefe: I don’t agree that a novel or short story must reflect a demographic checklist to be a “proper” work of fiction. Though if, as a reader, the lack of some category of human or other is a deal-breaker for you, so be it. There’s no such thing as a novel that will appeal to everyone. 

Your question reminds me of one review (really a non-review) of The Spirit Phone which listed the book as a DNF simply because the reviewer couldn’t get interested in characters who were white men. Nothing whatsoever is mentioned about plot, premise, editing, dialogue, world-building, or anything else that makes a novel a novel. I can’t consider that to be a book review. If you label a novel unreadable simply because you find the skin color or sex of the characters objectionable, you have not evaluated the novel. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with trying to assign “diversity” requirements to a book. Still, I find this to be the exception rather than the rule in the reviews I’ve read.  

Besides, diversity of characters is not just things like race, sex, and sexual orientation. There are the characters’ motives, objectives, personal values, temperaments, skills, etc. The protagonists of The Spirit Phone are historical figures. Aleister Crowley was a hedonistic, smart-aleck, pipe-smoking, drug-using adventurer who delved into the occult. He set mountaineering altitude records in an era before bottled oxygen and high-tech winter clothing. Nikola Tesla was a straightlaced, germophobic, non-smoking, work-obsessed genius who made invaluable contributions to electrical invention. Their personalities were very different, and that’s the kind of diversity I tried to depict in my novel. If you want the more “standard” usage of diversity, Crowley’s bisexuality and Tesla’s apparent celibacy are alluded to, but these aspects are included because that’s part of who they were, not for the purpose of satisfying a perceived diversity checklist. Horror author Terence Taylor expressed a view similar to my own on this point in his review of The Spirit Phone for Nightmare Magazine.

As for the particular review you mention, by horror author and editor Amanda Lyons, I see it as a mixed review rather than a panning of the book. There is also praise, and I actually thanked her for it. However, I disagree with the portion quoted below, which I think partly exemplifies the issue you mention:

“For my own tastes this was a bit dry and impersonal and I was chagrined to find very few female characters (and that those who were there came in the form of uncouth harpies and demons at the beck and call of male sorcerers).”

It’s unclear what “personal” elements are seen as missing, so I’ll skip that. As for the rest: Female supporting characters include Sadie the bookseller, who is indispensable in helping Crowley and Tesla. There are two female demons: Lirion and Elerion. Yes, they are bound to male mages (Crowley and antagonist Ambrose Temple, respectively), but Lirion voluntarily goes beyond the scope of her obligations to help Crowley and Tesla, while Elerion–also in freely choosing to aid the protagonists–gives Temple the ultimate dressing down as she declares herself absolved of serving him. This is after she telekinetically snaps the neck of a monster that tries to sexually harass her. Thus, the female demons are much more than simply things to be used by the male mages. There is also Martha, a woman who is crucial in highlighting the moral bankruptcy of Temple and his plan. The only female characters who could reasonably meet the “shrill harpies” description are two in total: one female spirit contacted through the spirit phone and a young woman who Crowley and Tesla encounter in New Jersey. So, with all due respect to Ms. Lyons as a far more prolific author of fiction than myself, I can’t agree with her on this point. 

When I read that review, I was reminded of an academic paper I’d written on the female characters of Ernest Hemingway’s unfinished story (possibly intended as a novel) “The Last Good Country.” In it, I quote a paper by literature professor Margaret Bauer, who states:

“Hemingway is often criticized for his one-dimensional characterization of the women in his fiction. I would suggest that such critics are actually arguing with Hemingway’s choice of focus. The problem they have with Hemingway’s female characters is not that they are one-dimensional (the numerous studies of them suggest otherwise), but that they are usually not central characters. I would argue that it is the writer’s prerogative as to whose story he or she is most interested in telling.”

I agree with Professor Bauer, and I think her reasoning applies to either a literary giant like Hemingway or an obscure “genre fiction” debut novelist such as myself. Besides, there is no shortage of books with female protagonists in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, and horror, if that’s what you’re looking for. 

Anyway, mixed reviews or bad reviews are a fact of life. Even the Harry Potter books were roundly condemned by Harold Bloom, perhaps the most famous and influential of American literary critics.

Q3: speaking of modern, what I loved about The Spirit Phone is the respect you showed for the period of time/locations where the story takes place. New York, her streets, restaurants, hotels, daily papers, everything is so detailed and so faithful to that time. Do you feel it’s important to keep that level of historical faithfulness even in alternate history fiction?

 

O’Keefe: Yes. With the caveat that I think of The Spirit Phone as a cross-genre novel, it is among other things an alternate history tale, and I think it’s important to strive for historical accuracy. If you’re going to depict the year 1899 without an effort to do so accurately, why bother calling it the year 1899? Unless, of course, you introduce anachronistic aspects–historical inaccuracies–as a deliberate decision in the service of the story.

One way to do this is to have the entire world be “openly” anachronistic, such as in William Gibson & Bruce Sterling’s novel The Difference Engine: The computer (a steam-powered variety) has become a reality in the 19th century, resulting in a global political order which includes a much more powerful British Empire, an independent Confederacy, and a Marxist republic on Manhattan Island. Another example of this approach is Bonsart Bokel’s Association of Ishtar series.

In The Spirit Phone, which is set in 1899, I tried to make the publicly known technology, infrastructure, political situation, etc. the same as our actual history (with the exception of the spirit phone itself, which is being marketed by Thomas Edison as a consumer product). If you suddenly appeared in the New York of the novel, it would look just like the real 1899 New York. Most of the anachronistic technology, such as a high-speed airship, is behind the scenes.

Every time I thought something might be historically incorrect, I checked it, especially “public” technology and language. I took pains to make sure no one was using a 20th or 21st century expression. One exception is the expletive “wanker,” used by Crowley, that dates from the 1940s (in print), which I decided to use anyway because it conveyed the feeling I wanted. (One reviewer on the website LibraryThing claimed I was adding historical details only to “show off” my research rather than advance the story, but gave no examples of the allegedly superfluous details.)

I dispensed with accuracy in the case of certain biographical details, of course. There’s no evidence I know of that Crowley and Tesla ever met in real life, and a lot of the advanced technology I attribute to Tesla in the book isn’t necessarily stuff the real Tesla made, such as a metal detector and a taser. And as far as I know, Aleister Crowley never levitated naked up the side of Devils Tower in Wyoming. 

Q4: Crowley and Tesla were just a delight to see interact with each other! Where did this idea of chocolate consumption for heightened clairvoyant powers come from?

 

O’Keefe: I actually don’t recall (ironically!) exactly how I came up with eating chocolate as a way for Crowley to recall a crucial lost memory. There is a scene in which Crowley is trapped, mid-teleport, in a bizarre environment. I came up with that first, then decided that Crowley had forgotten the incident, but needed to remember it, and I struck upon the taste of chocolate as a kind of mnemonic. 

I think of Crowley and Tesla as a kind of oil & water mix, a speculative fiction “odd couple,” and when I came up with the idea for the book, it surprised me that (as far as I knew) no one else had ever put them together in a novel. I think there might be one other novel out there with the two of them (I can’t remember the title), which I learned of after I started writing The Spirit Phone. And I think Crowley shows up in one issue of the comic Herald: Lovecraft and Tesla.

 There’s no evidence the two met in real life, though they were both living in New York during World War I. 

Q5: all throughout the story we read how Crowley and Temple use these grids to summon ‘familiars’. Tell us more about that.

 

O’Keefe: In hindsight, maybe I should have called them talismans instead of “grids.” They are taken from a book of magic titled The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, aka The Book of Abramelin. It’s thought to date from the 15th century, but the original publication date is unclear. The book was used by Aleister Crowley in real life, so I decided to draw upon it.

There were already German, Hebrew, and French editions of Abramelin when S.L. MacGregor Mathers, an associate of Crowley’s, translated it into English. Mathers’ translation was published in 1900. The book was used by Crowley early in his occult practices, in particular at Boleskine House, his estate in Scotland near Loch Ness. There are even rumors that Crowley called forth the Loch Ness Monster.

The talismans (“grids” in the novel) are said to be a means to accomplish various feats of magic. Every use in the novel corresponds to a claimed use in The Book of Abramelin. For example, when Crowley summons the demon (or familiar) Lirion so that she can interrogate a spirit trapped within Edison’s spirit phone prototype, he uses a talisman described in The Book of Abramelin as used “To know Secret Operations.” When the demon-familiar Ashtaroth is summoned to try to get rid of a massive lump of magnetite that is causing an emergency aboard the airship, the talisman used is one described in Abramelin as meant to perform “Chemical labours and Operations, as regardeth Metals especially.” Similarly, the names of all three demon-familiars depicted in the novel–Lirion, Ashtaroth, and Elerion–are taken directly from The Book of Abramelin. 

This was another point where “historical accuracy” had to give way to the demands of the plot. In The Book of Abramelin, the magical operations described are often time-consuming, meticulous, and ceremonial, but I wanted something more dynamic and fast-paced. So I just have Crowley write out a grid and call the demon, boom.  

Q6: you and a few other authors like Bonsart Bokel are redefining modern fiction by using a different approach. Alternate history in the last few years’ mainstream has been, frankly, a joke. But you guys are exploring realms that are opening ground for new and compelling literature. What are your thoughts on this approach?

 

O’Keefe: Well, I tend to read more “widely” than “deeply,” and I can’t say I have a take on any recently published alternate history fiction. Those works which have inspired me are from the 20th century. For example, Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South, Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine, and Len Deighton’s SS-GB (which is alternate history but non-science fiction). Then there’s The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, which depicts a novelist living in an alternate timeline who writes about “our” reality as an alternate timeline. I think the original alternate history novel depicting the introduction of advanced technology into a past era is actually a 19th century work: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, though it is not usually seen as “speculative fiction.” 

I think of The Spirit Phone’s premise and particular mix of historical characters as its distinctive points, but if I’m opening up any new ground beyond that, I’m happy. Maybe it’s also that the occult and technology both feature prominently, either separately or combined, though I don’t think I’m the first writer to try that. 

While alternate history is one aspect of The Spirit Phone, I think of it as a cross-genre work combining elements of horror, science fiction, science fantasy, murder mystery, and action-adventure. (Locus Magazine calls The Spirit Phone a historical fantasy. I have no objection to the label.) When I started writing the book, I didn’t think, “I’m going to write a horror novel,” or “I’m going to write a science fiction novel.” It was more like, “I want to write a novel with lots of weird stuff happening,” and added whatever elements I needed to make it so. 

Q7: The Spirit Phone seemed to be a complete story. So what can we expect next from Mr O’Keefe? Will the Crowley/Tesla team be somehow reunited? Or any new projects you can tell us about? I think I can speak on behalf of VP and all of our readers and we definitely want to see more of these legends in the making!

 

O’Keefe: My current projects are: an English punctuation style guide for a publisher in Japan (which is nearly complete); an essay on Aleister Crowley’s poetry collection Alice: An Adultery, which will be partly based upon an article I wrote on Crowley’s visit to Japan in 1901; and a second novel which may or may not be a sequel to The Spirit Phone. It’s very much in flux at the moment.

 

Make sure to check out  the author’s work if it sounds interesting to you. Tell us what you think in the comments and tell somebody else about what we’re doing at Virtual Pulp.

Interview, Marketing, Non-Fiction/Documentary

Marketing Wisdom with Luke Stone & Crom

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This was such an informative stream, I wanted other creators to  catch it. I don’t advise sitting around watching streams for hours instead of being productive, but you can listen to this this while you’re working out, drawing, making supper, playing your instrument, etc.

One of the many takeaways is the dubious value of book trailers. Like so much I’ve done over time to provide something cool for readers/fans/followers, it takes a lot of time and effort, without earning you sales/ratings/reviews. The ROI is awful for probably 99% of authors. Something to think about.

Fantasy, Interview, Steampunk

Steampunk and Bonsart Bokel – a Q & A

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By INFAMOUS 🦀

After having reviewed both The Wrench in the Machine and Journey to Elysium, we felt it necessary to have a little interview with the visionary behind this universe we are so much enjoying. All the way from the Netherlands, Mr Bonsart Bokel!

 

Q1: is what you are writing steampunk? Or what should we call it?

 

Bokel: Yes, although I use different descriptions for every book. The Wrench in the Machine takes my definition of the Steampunk genre, Cyberpunk in the Past, to ‘Eleven’.

Q2: Steampunk seems like a very niche subgenre; what the general audience sees seems to be very limited and restrictive for creativity to thrive. Do you agree?

Bokel: I think the problem is we haven’t had the conversation on what Steampunk should be. To many, Steampunk is just an aesthetic. They discard the idea of being a genre entirely. So it became “Steampunk is like porn. You know it when you see it.” 

Currently, there is a lot of Fantasy with a Steampunk skin. (This is not necessarily Gaslamp Fantasy either).

The other cliche is the overall approach to history. This being the ‘oppressor vs oppressed’ or ‘class struggle’ narrative. It might make for decent stories, but does not make good Alternate History.

Q3: The ‘historical’ element in fiction has been underrated or even misused. Do you feel your approach is different when applying history to your stories?

 

Bokel: My series has a high emphasis on Alternate History, so I’m taking the ‘Past’ part of the definition very seriously. There are more Steampunk authors like that. But you wouldn’t know them. They went to a different school and live  in Canada now.

Joking aside, some ignore the historical part just to give themselves the freedom to explore historical processes without seeming biased. The Guns Above series is a good example of this. 

Q4: My favorite character from Journey to Elysium was Subject-09…Any chance we might see her again or even have her own dedicated novel? I love her character and not because she is a woman or because she is disabled either!

Bokel: Subject-09 is kind of an accident. A silly idea that people really love for some reason. Even as a short story (Cough, check out my page on Ream, cough) S-09 quickly proved people’s favorite along with Subject-06. 

Currently, I am still exploring ideas for the future novels. Although I have ideas for her, S-09 place is in the bigger picture of the overall series. There is still so much I need to figure out for what I call Phase1 of the Association of Ishtar, I wouldn’t be surprised if I can’t get her to shine until the start of Phase 3. When will Phase 2 start? When I finally know what I want to do for the third novel. Until then, she’ll make some small appearances, like in Anwin and Journey to Elysium.

 

Q5: Tell us briefly about your latest project going live soon on KS. Is this a comic book or a novel?

 

Bokel: The Kickstarter will launch on March 17 if all goes well. The Casket Girls is a novelette about mecha pilots serving in the French Imperial Penal Legion that will be illustrated. It will also contain various miniatures for your 3D printing pleasure as we are working on an RPG.

Q6: Originality in modern fiction seems rare these days. I think you are carving out the blueprints of something new and original. What can we see from the Association of Ishtar next?

 

Bokel: I already mentioned the RPG we hope to present by the end of the year.

I’m working on various books. One is a second Anwin novelette, which is about an autonomous doll and her owner, Igraine. Another is the Knights of Avalon, which is kind of the male chivalrous counterpart to the Casket Girls. 

Of course we also hope to have the second issue of our comic Journey to Elysium done.

Overall, I hope to create a community creating new Subjects, Constructs and Planes to be explored. I’m already doing it on the illustration front with our Alternate History videos on Youtube. Finding a way to collaborate with co-writers would be great if only to explore other genres beside hard sci-fi without losing sight of the themes of Steampunk.

 

(Gee, and here I thought Alternate History stories were simply about taking famous characters from history and swapping race or gender LOL!)

🦀

Don’t forget to back Bonsart!

And also follow him on REAM!

 

Interview, Reviews

Your Go-To Site for Discovering Good Reads

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2024 is off to a pretty good start this year, this blog is back to fulfilling its original purpose: spreading the news of good reads still being produced, by authors you might not have ever discovered without Virtual Pulp.

For those who are late to the party, here’s some of the authors we’ve featured here so far just since New Year’s:

 

Adventure:

Milton Lane

Fantasy:

Ernie Laurence, Jr.

Michael R. Schultheiss

Jonathan Shuerguer

Sci-Fi:

Misha Burnett

Robert Kroese

Hans Schantz

Sword & Sorcery:

James Krake

Robert Victor Mills

Eric Waag

It’s no coincidence that these are all indie authors, either. Tradpub fiction sucks, with few exceptions. Sure, there is a lot of indie fiction that stinks just as bad as tradpub. But thanks to Gio and me, it’s now easy for you to find the diamonds in the rough.

Have I missed anybody so far? Don’t worry–the Infamous Gio is a reviewing/interviewing machine, and he’s got a lot more lined up for you. In fact, this very week is already packed with reviews and an interview. (Steampunk fans should feel right at home.)

This is worth remembering:

First of all, nobody pays us to do this. We even buy the books/comics/whatever ourselves. We don’t owe anybody anything.

Secondly, we are honest. We want to find/read good books. We like giving indie authors a signal boost. When we enjoy something, we like sharing our experience, so others can enjoy it, too. But when we think a book is bad, we will let you know we think it’s bad. If it’s good, but misses the mark in one or more aspect, we will say so. It’s nothing personal against the author. We might even be fond of the author as a human being, but we are still going to be honest.

Speaking for myself, I’ve got empathy out the wazoo for my fellow indie authors. I know the odds stacked against them and the petty, unfair, and even diabolical crap most of them have to wade through just to make a sale. I’m very pleased when an indie has put together a masterpiece. But if it ain’t a masterpiece, I’m not gonna try to convince people it is.

At the same time, we won’t get butthurt if you disagree with us over the quality of a book. We’re not gonna  unfriend you, block, mute, or cancel you because we have different opinions. (We might debate with you, because that can be healthy and stimulating.)

We’re not gonna engage in shady behavior to steal somebody’s traffic, or reduce their traffic–even though that has been done to us, by individuals supposedly on our side in the Culture War. We’re not jealous because other blogs also share quality content, or are reviewing indie work. I wish there were more indie reviewers out there working through their towering TBR piles like we are–especially if they’re honest.

How about drama?

I suspect there are some talented creatives out there who identify as #IronAge. From what I know, I fit under that umbrella, too.

I’m sure there are talented creatives associated with #Comicsgate, too.

Unfortunately, it appears there are overly sensitive (or perhaps just drama-addicted) folks on both sides locked in a pissing contest over some petty BS even they probably can’t explain the origin of. I’ve been honing my craft/plying my trade alone, and don’t know that many people from either side yet. IOW I have no dog in this fight. I also believe it’s a silly, counterproductive fight. Same with Eric July vs. Ethan Van Sciver. I’ve got more important items on my to-do list than to take part in all that drama. I’m also annoyed that I have to wade through all that silly drama to find anything that interests me as a reader, a novelist, and an aspiring graphic novelist.

Bottom line: I’m not gonna take anybody’s side in one of these squabbles based on what hashtag they’re associated with.

The Good News:

There’s a lot of quality entertainment being written in the indie-sphere, and we’re gonna help you find it.  (And some of it is mine, so consider looking at my work, too.) We’re also hosting the Infamous Writing Contest, to discover and showcase even more talented writers, whose published work you may be unfamiliar with.

We put out consistent content here, so stop by on the regular and let us know what you think. Consider subscribing to the blog, so you’ll never miss a post. And tell others about us and what we’re doing. We’re trying to grow our Internet footprint, and you can help with that.

 

 

Adventure, Interview

An Interview with Milton Lane

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By THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER Gio 🦀



Q1: what was the initial motivation to write Island of The Lost? And what or who influenced the final product?




ML: Before I had started writing Island of the Lost my ambition was to write an urban fantasy novel. At the time I was reading the Monster Hunter series by Larry Correia (paid link) and wanted to try my hand at the genre. As I was fleshing out the story and the world I soon realized I didn’t have the skills to tackle a story of that length and scope. In the end I shelved the idea, kept the notes for the world I had built, and set about writing a smaller more contained adventure. Island of the Lost was the result.




Hannibal Harken started out as a character who had built a legend around himself seeking out the weird and magical, cataloging what he found, and creating a vast encyclopedia to pass on that information to others. In the original idea he was a bit of a character who would be referenced but never appear. His journal entries would have appeared in the appendix of the book and would have served as a means of providing world building and lore without dumping all that information in the middle of the narrative. This idea is why Island of the Lost starts out the way it does.


In the end I would have to say there are two main sources of influence on this novel. I’ve always loved the 1920’s – 1940’s style action hero and Harken was meant to fit into that mold. I wanted the main character to be in a similar vein to Indiana Jones and Rick O’Connell. But it wasn’t until I was introduced to Doc Savage via Razorfist’s video on pulp characters that Harken really coalesced as a character. The Man of Bronze really is the first Superhero and the gold standard for this type of fiction. To understand what makes Doc such a pulp icon helps a writer understand the genre.




My second influence would be the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. I loved the worlds they created in that series and it has served as inspiration for the world Harken and his friends inhabit.




Q2: are The Island of the Lost and your other (cyberpunk) novel your very first official publications?




ML: The Island of the Lost and The City Beneath the Eye (paid links) are my very first official publications. I have written quite a bit in the past. From short stories as a kid to a book trilogy when I was in early college. Telling stories has been a passion of mine for a while, though it was only for friends. Until recently I saw writing as a fun hobby but not something I would do as a profession. It wasn’t until Razorfist put out that Iron Age video that I decided to throw my hat in the ring and start creating for others’ enjoyment.




Q3: this book went through a ‘revision’ as stated under the book description on Amazon. Can you share with VP what exactly was revised and why?


ML: Oh yeah, the book went through a major revision! When I first started writing and connecting with other people on X/Twitter I became aware of what Brian Niemeier calls ‘Self-Publish Syndrome’. Self Pub opens the door for everyone to put together a novel and publish it through Amazon no matter the quality. Because of this, self published works carry a stigma of being poorly edited, poorly written garbage. I was determined to avoid that stigma, then fell face first into it.




As I finished the first edit on the manuscript, I knew I needed an editor to polish this story as much as possible. At the time I had let one of my coworkers know I was working on a novel and was looking for an editor. He had a contact that had spent over twenty years as a technical writer and this person had spoken about moving into editing as a side hustle. He put us in contact and we worked out a nominal fee for an editing pass of my manuscript. It was more affordable than some of the editing rates I was seeing at the time, so I went for it.


I got the manuscript back and there were a ton of corrections and suggestions made. At the time I was very pleased with the results and set about fixing the issues the technical writer had found. After the revisions I did a two more editing passes, confident I was well on my way to avoiding the pitfalls of self publishing.


I was riding high right after publishing, too. The initial reviews were positive, and I made more sales than I expected. Then the critical reviews came in. The reviews weren’t negative but they were brutally honest. Throw in a few direct messages from fellow writers who reached out to offer me some advice and one thing became clear: the story was good but the manuscript was a mess. Readers mentioned issues such as grammar, sentence structure, and pacing. From an outsider’s perspective it looked like I had just thrown my book out into the world without getting it into the hands of an editor.




This was a gut punch. Here I am asking people for their money and delivering a substandard product. It had to be corrected.


By this time I had made better connections in the Iron Age/Small Press/Pulp Rev circles. I had made a connection with a fantastic editor by the name of Daniel Riley who was working on editing my second novel. I was so impressed with his work and his dedication I sent him the manuscript for Island of the Lost while I got City Beneath the Eye ready for publication.


I figured, how many corrections could my manuscript really need? After all, I wrote a rough draft, did one round of edits, got an ‘editor’ to make corrections, then did a second and third pass. The problems should be few and far between, right?


Boy, was I wrong. Daniel took that manuscript behind the woodshed. He was absolutely brutal with his notes and corrections. Seeing all those notes was a humbling experience. But I was happy to see him tear it apart like he did. By being unrelenting in his edits, Daniel showed me he cared deeply about making my story the best it could possibly be. And the results speak for themselves.


The new version has been revised top to bottom, is leaner where it needed to be leaner, and is fleshed out in areas that needed some extra attention. Without Daniel’s edits my manuscript would not be at the level it needed to be.




Q4: we are seeing a ton of sword & sorcery in the indie circles at the moment, followed by sci-fi and some cyberpunk. But what I really think needs more of a ‘revival’ is the golden age pulp writing like you brought in The Island of the Lost. Do you think you could be the one carrying that torch, or do you feel like your heart is more into sci-fi  and/or cyberpunk?




ML: I do feel like classic adventure fiction has a lot of potential for a revival. Though I don’t think I’ll be the torchbearer to lead it. I see myself as following a path already laid out by other Indies who have worked hard to figure all this stuff out. Brina Williamson’s Merona Grant novels are in the same vein and from all accounts are very good. I also think Cirsova and Story Hack Magazine have published some pulp adventures as well. I’m sure there are others who have already published works. People like them did all the heavy lifting to create an environment for others to be able to successfully publish and start finding an audience.


For a proper revival I think it would take a Lester Dent or Walter B. Gibson type to succeed. Someone who knows how to spin a yarn, has the right combination of lived experiences and imagination to draw from, and can put out several adventures a year. I’m not sure who can pull it off, but I’m sure someone can.


To be honest, I feel like I’m still finding my feet as an author. The City Beneath the Eye is an outlier that I half stumbled into while trying to make a short story for a magazine submission. I don’t see myself doing much more in the cyberpunk genre but I have some plans for various books that would fit Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Science Fantasy as genres as well as more adventure fiction.




Q5: what I found refreshing is that your MC doesn’t get romantically involved with any of the female characters in the story. Nothing wrong with romance per se but sometimes these relationships feel forced or very routine-like. Was that something you intentionally avoided?




ML: Not getting the main character involved in a romance subplot was a conscious decision. I don’t find anything wrong with romance but it certainly didn’t fit here. When formulating Hannibal as a character I wanted him to walk the line between being a gentleman and a hell raiser. The kind of man who could navigate the complex social structures of high society by day and go drinking with the lads at night. With that in mind I wanted him to take a more classic approach to romance. Rather than the ‘Love interest of the Week’ where Hannibal shacks up with a different woman at the end of the book similar to a character like James Bond, he is very much a Gentleman in search of his Lady. I may introduce a love interest in the future, but I’d rather it be one important character. Someone who compliments Harken well.




Q6: are the places and locations listed in this story entirely fictional?




ML: The places and locations in this story are largely fictional but do pull greatly from real world locations that I’ve been to. The Invincible is similar to the Lusitania and Titanic while the Island has geography similar to the U.S. East coast. Though the layout of the sunken bay in the fourth act combines elements from Hanauma bay in Hawaii as well as fuel piers and stations I’ve seen.




Q7: not sure why, but as I was reading the dialogue, I just kept hearing the characters’ voices in an Irish accent. In your vision, what would these characters really sound like?




ML: When creating the characters I tried to ‘cast’ them with actors to give me a clearer mental picture of how they looked and talked. And, by referencing actors from various regions, I was able to solidify each character’s voice in my head. For instance: Hannibal Harken, to me, speaks with a received pronunciation style upper class accent, while Lord Blackwrym speaks with the accent of British aristocracy. The characters of Annabelle, Magnolia, and Sam speak with a southern drawl while Colin O’Shea has an Northern Irish accent. Javier, the man from nowhere, speaks with a generic American accent.




Q8: speaking of language, I believe that for this retro pulp style to really work, prose is crucial. One slip and modern euphemisms can make the whole thing collapse. I was really surprised that you really made that conscious effort to keep it all rooted in that wholesome prosaic style of the great pulp classics. How did you manage that in such a brilliant fashion?




ML: Like you, I hate modern talk in my period entertainment. I find it to be lazy on a scriptwriter or author’s part to add in that kitschy way of speaking that is so prevalent in everything today. If I’m playing Red Dead Redemption I don’t want Arthur Morgan sounding like a guy from a 1990s action movie. If I’m watching Lord of the Rings I don’t want lol-so-random Joss Whedon style snark. I want the creator’s best attempt at authenticity.


Its’ with that mentality I approached the dialogue in The Island of the Lost. I wanted people to speak as authentically to the period as possible. To achieve this I made a conscious effort to keep modern vernacular out of my story. This was a challenge as it took several passes to catch innocuous but modern idioms that would pull the reader out of the narrative. In the end I’m satisfied with the results though I know I’ll have to study more period literature and prose to sharpen the dialogue for future adventures. Thankfully one of the authors I follow on X/Twitter posted a link to an archive of pulp magazines so there’s plenty of material to learn from and enjoy! I wish I could remember who it was so I could thank them publicly and one day buy them a whiskey and cigar for the treasure trove of pulp goodness.




Q9: what can we expect in the foreseeable future from Mr. Lane the ‘classic pulp fiction writer’? Are we going to see The Adventurer back in action soon? I know it’s very easy to take the wrong turn with a character: write too much of the same stuff and people will say it got boring. Write a totally different story and people will say that the new stuff lost its original appeal. Can you disclose anything you are planning, now that you’ve made some true fans of this whole universe?




ML: For the foreseeable future it’s going to be self-publishing novels and honing my craft. I still have half a million words of writing to ‘get the suck out’ so to speak in regards to writing as a profession. Even if I’m producing novels entirely on my own I want to hit a professional standard. I’m comfortable telling stories that top out at 60k – 100k words which is close to the standard pulp length novel. I’m also looking to produce more short fiction and long fiction as I continue to grow as an author.


As far as what I’m working on, I have two books planned for this year. The first is a second Hannibal Harken adventure titled The Terror Beneath Mt. Misery. The outline is complete and work has already started. The other book I hope to have written, if not fully published, is a second book in the Cyberpunk dystopia of Salvation titled ‘Upon the Streets of Salvation.’ That book will complete the thematic arc of the first book and finish the duology.


I plan on doing more Hannibal Harken stories. Ultimately, my long term goal is to hit a professional level of 2.5k words a day and 200,000 words written a year. Once I hit that level I’m confident I could do one or two adventure books a year to a high standard. Like the classic pulp novels that inspired Harken’s world these will be serialized adventures rather than a series. I want each book to be a self-contained adventure that an interested reader can pick up and enjoy without reading everything that came before.


I am conscious of how difficult this type of writing can be. Go too far in one direction and you get formulaic and stale, drift too far in the other and you lose what made readers love your creation. My goal is to tell interesting tales of high adventure set in a world influenced by pulp and high-fantasy. With each novel a reader comes away satisfied by a story well told and leaves them dreaming of what else is out there just waiting to be discovered.




Tell us what you think in the comments, and subscribe for more great reviews and interviews with independent authors!


	

	
	




	
	

			
	

				

			Fantasy, Interview
		

			
Fallen Crest Abbey by James Krake

		

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An inside look by INFAMOUS 🦀




“They fought for themselves and others but paid the ultimate price. They have been buried in the southern cemetery of Fallen Crest Abbey”




There is this author/youtuber I’ve been following now for some time by the name of James Krake. Although known mostly as a cyberpunk genre writer, Krake also runs a webnovel on Royal Road titled The Undying Emperor. This novel departs a good deal from the typical genre Krake is known for. I won’t spend too much time suggesting our readers to start following The Undying Emperor, though they should, for it is truly a marvelous work of sword and sorcery fiction extravaganza. But what I really want to zero-in on is the short story within this webnovel; a true ‘hidden gem’: 


Fallen Crest Abbey.




INFAMOUS: what is Fallen Crest Abbey and what inspired this story?


Krake: Bram Stoker’s Dracula actually. I like exploring form and genre and a gothic horror epistolary story intrigued me. That started the series of questions I had to answer in order to make a satisfying story that would actually matter to readers of my webnovel. I’ve been doing a good deal of thinking about how sci-fi and fantasy should be incorporating matters of faith, so I wanted to take a look at some of the religious aspects of this fantasy world.




INFAMOUS: I’ve read both of your published cyberpunk novels and follow The Undying Emperor on Royal Road, but to me it is in Fallen Crest Abbey that I sense a new level of maturity from you as an author. Do you agree?


Krake: Fallen Crest Abbey was written to have a different tone and feeling to it. I’m not sure I would call it ‘maturity’, but it’s certainly different. The novellas I am writing in 2024 should feel closer to how Fallen Crest Abbey came together, and next year I have a stand-alone I’ll write which should be a full novel length experience that’s even better.




INFAMOUS: sometimes this question gets thrown around a lot: will we ever see the likes of a new Tolkien, or a new Howard, or a new Lovecraft, in the realms of indie authors? I think we have, in the works of British writer R. V. Mills. But when I read Fallen Crest Abbey I see that same ‘sparkle’, that same unrelenting and unapologetic quest–albeit under a different writing style-for new legends in the making. 


Is that something that you have been aware of at all?


Krake: The problem, I think, is that those names became those names because they were able to influence people. They had an impact on future literary endeavors the way Doyle did (or further back, Shakespeare). So, I don’t think the question today is “will we see somebody who writes as well as so-and-so?” but will that person get noticed? Just looking at the numbers, and the advantages today, there are probably MANY people better than Tolkien, who simply haven’t gotten the reverence because society is more connected, critical, and quick to move on.




INFAMOUS: speaking of legends, there is a creature we’re introduced to in FCA called a ‘grendel’. I found some of his features most fascinating. Would you share with us how this grendel came about?


Krake: Beowulf, mixed with my approach to trolls that tries to portray them as early hominids. I coaxed up the legend the way I felt people would rumor-monger around a campfire and indulged the horror aspect it can create.




INFAMOUS: one thing that I loved about Fallen Crest Abbey is how most chapters open with a formal letter written by one of the characters. It really is an effective way to set up a certain mood and pace. Was this a conscious decision or did it just develop that way as you wrote the story?


Krake: It was how I initially conceived of the story, because it posed a technical challenge. I had to figure out how to explain the plot beats, endear the characters, and keep everything well paced, despite using journal entries, letters, posted bounties, and any other ‘record’ that I could come up with. A large reason I became attracted to the idea was the challenge of ending the story, and writing it, without the structure of the story itself giving away the ending.




INFAMOUS: can you disclose future projects-if any-related to Fallen Crest Abbey? What about future works not necessarily related to FCA?


Krake: Well it’s clearly part of The Undying Emperor, which is mostly a life story, hero’s journey of conquest. That has a particular genre to it, however. The world itself has possibilities far beyond what befits essentially a YA action story designed for weekly releases. This year I’ll be writing a novella that is to be like a mix of Romeo & Juliet with The Count of Monte Cristo, taking place in the same world, and I’ve got the start of a novel that started from the question “What if The Odyssey, but the main character couldn’t fight? Can a scholar be a good protagonist?”


On a more immediate horizon, my next paperback release is just around the corner, keep an eye out for Low Key Connections, a Narnia-style isekai. Light hearted, fun, and also high action.




Follow here to not miss out.




Well folks, there you have it. In a world of TikTok, instant gratification, and low attention span, supporting authors like James is important to keep good story-writing thriving. If you’re reading this, most likely you already know that there are great authors out there who deserve recognition and that, sadly, reading books in general is dwindling in our society. 


Support these writers, support books, support Virtual Pulp! 


INFAMOUS 🦀




Click to read Fallen Crest Abbey:


 


	

	
	




	
	

			
	

				

			Fantasy, Interview, Marketing, Non-Fiction/Documentary
		

			
An Interview with Ernie Laurence, Jr.

		

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Virtual Pulp is pleased to once again host THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO as he interviews the author of the Islands of LOAR: Sundered.




Gio: Book 1 came out over a decade ago, what exactly drove you to write it and then have it published? Looking back now, would you make any changes or have done anything different?


 


Ernie Laurence: The Islands of Loar series is the last series I wrote.  I have written over 40 novels-worth of stories, but never went through any editing or publishing.  When I married back in 2005, my wife found out and encouraged me to publish.  So, I began the long process of actually learning the craft.  I took several classes, mostly technical writing classes, and learned about editing and eventually publishing.  Since Loar was the last, I felt the most confident (and the least emotionally attached if I didn’t do well) publishing that series first.  I referred to Sundered as “my Isaac”, a child to be sacrificed on the altar of public opinion, so to speak.




I had been telling stories for a long time and they were always well received.  I am a forever GM when it comes to tabletop gaming and some of those elements have made it into my books, though I have expanded the stories well beyond that.  When I started down the road to publishing and let people know, I received a lot of encouragement from those close to me.  The initial versions were well received with some helpful criticism.  Thean, for example, came across as kind of flat to a lot of people and several told me to tighten the story by dumping him.  However, I knew he had a purpose and so I went back in and thickened his story a lot.  I’m glad I did that.


The only difference I would make, and actually have made, is to bring the book more in-line with what I’m doing with the tabletop gaming system I’ve been working on for 7 years now.  The other books grew more aligned with it as I began to develop it.  A couple of years ago, I went back and made some tweaks so that would be the case for all of them.  An example is that I changed Spenciel’s “class” from monk to kaisoma.  And I’m really proud of that word. Heh.


 


Gio: The first thing that strikes me as I read Sundered is the introduction of a multitude of characters, and not just minor characters but major players. Was that a conscious decision, to add so many characters as the story unfolds?


 


Ernie Laurence: Yes.  I read a lot.  I’m somewhere over 4000 books now.  And the ones that I really enjoyed were those with a rich cast – the Wheel of Time for instance.  In fact, I wrote the Islands of Loar right after Crossroads of Twilight published in January of 2003.  I read an article at one point that said, “write each character as if they were the main character” and it used Han Solo as the example.  Han wasn’t just the shuttle pilot for Luke, Ben, and the droids.  He had his own backstory, motivations, goals, and rich personality.


So every character in Loar is like that.  Even the minor ones have their own story.  As I have time, I fill in those tidbits on my wiki for readers to get more depth as they like.




Loar is a story about people in desperate straits.  The only way they are going to survive is together.  I needed a large cast to emphasize this point.  It wouldn’t just be one hero with extraordinary powers in just the right circumstances.  It would be an entire world of people working together to save themselves from annihilation.  Sundered sets that stage by showing the people as disconnected from each other as the Islands are from the original planet they used to be a part of.


 


Gio: Without giving out any spoilers, what is the ‘Sundering’ and what caused it? I ask because for example in Lord of The Rings we know at all times what the cause of all the troubles in Middle Earth is, but in Loar it seems like this is not as clear (at least not in book 1).


 


Ernie Laurence: The Sundering is the explosion of the planet.  Some force, or maybe several working in conjunction, literally tears the planet apart.  It is only through the elemental magic of the sorcerers that anyone survived at all.  The geomancers hold the twenty largest chunks where people have gathered together.  The aeromancers held the atmosphere over them.  The pyromancers channeled the heat of the explosion around the chunks, and the hydromancers used the specific heat capacity of the ocean to absorb what the pyromancers couldn’t redirect.  Once the cataclysm itself ended, they then worked together to stabilize their world.  I intend on writing more about all this and perhaps even turning the part immediately post-Sundering into a MMORPG where environmental changes the players make working together can become permanent.  It will be a much more cooperative MMORPG than standard titles.




I don’t want to specify what caused the Sundering here because that’s part of what the characters (and readers) have to find out as they move through the series.  There are a lot of hypotheses and the characters of the world think they know early on.  It isn’t revealed until later if they are right, partially right, mostly wrong, or if the Council of Wind is just making things up to control people.


 


Gio: There are a lot of politics involved in Book 1. This makes Sundered much more complex than your typical action/fantasy novel because we have individuals in power who basically play this game of chess with people’s lives. Politics and legislature seems to play a big role in this world. Was that also a conscious decision to go that route, and where did you get this idea of writing these pretty intense political debates from?


 


Ernie Laurence: A large part of the hook of the story is for the reader to figure out who the bad guys really are.  The politics are an integral part of the story because it sets the saviors of the world up as the initial antagonists.  They are a council of monarchs, tyrants with near absolute power who control the atmosphere around the Islands.  If you do not obey, they simply remove the air from around you and you die.  They can do this for their entire Island so there is no opportunity for rebellion.  This is in large part because the geomancers and pyromancers are gone.  The hydromancers, for whatever reason, have been relegated to river rats scraping a living out of meager fares carting people around on boats.


This intense political atmosphere drives against the work of the protagonists for a large part of the story as things get worse and worse through the series.  Ultimately, I set up a counter-plot to it, but that’s not in Sundered so I’ll say no more.  The politics and economics, though, are reflective of that overarching thought: Loar won’t survive if they are divided and the political actions of the aeromancers are dividing the people more and more.  Sadly, most of them are just too tired, too downtrodden by living on a broken world to fight back.  They need some jolt to wake them from their stupor, some shining light to guide them out of the darkness.  There’s even a chapter called “Boiling the Batrachos” (Chapter 39) where the Dhorens are introduced.  Its purpose is to show that the few people who are speaking out against the tyranny, the bards, are being systematically rounded up and silenced and no one is stepping up to defend them.  Batrachos means “frog” so it’s a familiar analogy for most readers.  The society has been on a slow-burn fall into tyranny and they are just accepting it so long as they have air and food.




There are certainly parallels with our own world, at least in the most general sense.  I don’t have specific political groups or individual politicians in mind when I write the aeromancers.  They are their own characters.  But the idea of tyranny versus liberty and America’s slow slide into the former certainly has a strong influence on my thinking and how I crafted the political climate of Loar.


 


Gio: Going back to the multitude of characters we encounter, it seems like there is no one main character here, but readers might find a personal favorite character as they further explore this world. In your mind, who is truly the main character or protagonist here?


 


Ernie Laurence: One of the conscious decisions I made when starting out on this world was that this story was bigger than one person, one hero.  The main protagonist is all the heroes working together and those who join them later (yes, the cast definitely grows).  There are three “main” threads in Sundered, each with its own cast.  Doogan’s group, Spenciel’s group, and Thean’s group.  In Sundered, they begin to cross paths as I set up the main conflict over the four book arc.  In book two, “The” protagonist, the group, starts coming together as choices and circumstances make that necessary.  In terms such as you are asking about, it is more helpful to think of the protagonist as the group and the antagonist as a question mark.


 


Gio: we’re now on Book 4. What do you have in the works for the immediate future and what can we expect to see regarding Islands of Loar? Are you planning to focus more on the novels or tabletop games?


 


Ernie Laurence: I have a lot of pots on the stove, so to speak. My main project right now is to finish the art for the Player’s Handbook for the tabletop system.  We already have an introductory module out for sale so it’s important to get the core rules out soon.  Yet, as far as novels go, I am going to polish a novella I wrote called “Steel” for publishing.  I’m also working on bringing my very first novel up to date maturity-wise, polish it and then publish.  This is the first book I wrote that turned out to be more than 350,000 words.  So it will be broken into a trilogy.  Right now it’s just called “Demon War”, but that will be the trilogy(?) and each book in the series will get its own name.



Plans to revisit Loar in the future are laid out.  There are unwritten novels from different time periods that I want to write.  The arrival of humans pre-Sundering, the Godswar that leads up to the Sundering itself, something immediately following the Sundering (maybe a video game), the War of Wind and Fire, and then another related series that I don’t want to say anything about as of yet.  There is a hint about it in Book 4 of this series that you are reading.


There are a lot of novels written already though that need polish and publishing so I will likely go back and forth between those and new works as well as continually writing modules and the other core rulebooks like the Creature Codex, the Game Master Guide, Manual of Mysticism, Economic Encyclopedia, and so on.


	

	
	




	
	

			
	

				

			Action, Aviation, Fantasy, Interview, Non-Fiction/Documentary
		

			
An Interview with Robert Victor Mills

		

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As in the recent review of the author’s latest, this Q & A is brought to you by the INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO.




Gio: This being only your second publication, how long have you been writing and what made you decide to publish your works only recently?


RV Mills: Well, on leaving university in ‘94, I decided to have a stab at this writing game. Over the next five years I wrote two fantasy novels, submitting them to publishers and agents. A different business, back then, just before the birth of the internet, when sample chapters had to be printed out and mailed in big brown envelopes. I stuck at it for about five years of silence and polite rejections, but, life forged on; family, a full time job and more college. I don’t recall ever consciously giving up on the dream, though I definitely gave up on the reality. All those papers were thrown into a document box and forgotten about.


Nearly twenty years later, 2017, with both my parents gone and me in the process of selling the old family home, I came across that document box. It was, shall we say, interesting and informative. One experience that a writer can never have, is to read his own work completely cold, with fresh eyes. Reading the contents of that box was as close as one might get, because I’d forgotten almost everything I’d written! Of course, the tale would be wonderful if I could romantically announce that I had rediscovered some lost masterpiece. Oh no, it was all terrible! Just awful! But, with that fresh perspective and an older head, I could see plain as day where all my failings as a writer lay. A very useful experience.


Should you be wondering, I burned those manuscripts in the garden in a steel bucket. The world has no need of such horror!


I guess, that would have been that. However, once again, life happened. The virus came, and lockdowns. Like everyone else I read books, watched movies, listened to music, picked up new hobbies, slow tortured by increasing boredom. It drove me to again pick up the pen. I started scribbling science fiction stories, just for my own amusement, nothing else.


Towards the end of that very peculiar period, three things happened, all seemingly the same week. First, I read an article which essentially argued that many talented writers were being turned away by publishers and agents for the sole reason that they didn’t fit a desired demographic, and that this had been going some years. Second, I caught a livestream by the comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver. There’d been an incident with a movie director that had him really riled. And he persuasively called on his viewers to have a go at creating, something along the lines of: “If you can draw, draw! If you can write, write! We need you!” Thirdly, that same night, I had a dream.


I quite often have vivid dreams. Boy, this was one! An entire story played out in my head, like a movie, of a mighty warrior with hair like flame, and his companion, a poet and bard with a tongue like quicksilver. Together they were rescuing a princess snared by a snake cult. Vicious fights, monsters, gore, glory. No names, no dialogue, just images and allusions, but as real as if I were there, involved. I woke up, it was as if a switch had gone over in my mind. I got up, sat down, started writing. And that, eventually, became the first story of Rhoye and Astropho.




Gio: The first thing that we notice when reading ‘The Isle’ is your prose. How did you come to develop and hone such a brilliant prosaic style?


RV Mills: Well, firstly, thank you for the compliment, that’s incredibly kind.


I suppose the short answer is, a long lifetime of reading. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, youngest of eight children, in quite a traditional working class family. Having five older brothers, there was always a lot of stuff left lying around to read, not all of it of a suitable age rating, either. I adored reading. I would read anything I could get: Bond novels, horror, movie tie-ins, comics, magazines, but I always gravitated to more fantastical stuff, myths and legends. Then, for Christmas 1982, my eldest brother gave me a copy of ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. That gift pretty much started me down the path I’ve followed since. From reading those fantasy gamebooks I progressed to Tolkien. I remember saving furiously for weeks to buy a paperback edition of ‘Lord of the Rings’ in 1985. And from there to Mervyn Peake, Anne McCaffrey, Robert E. Howard, and so on. Those books also got me started on a decade of Dungeons and Dragons, first as a player and then, while I was at university, as a dungeon master. I long since gave my rulebooks away, but I still have the dice! 


Naturally, I suppose, my love for reading channeled me in that direction academically, which led to a degree in English Literature. That opened me to a deal of far older material, such as Homer, Mallory, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and classic novels and poetry. That’s chiefly where my reading interests lie now, in older writings, in heroism and chivalry. I often joke that the most recent book I’ve read is ‘The Return of the King.’


As you can tell, my jokes are seldom ripsnorters!


Gio: Your novella seems to be paying tribute to the greats of pulp narrative such as Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft. How do you prevent modern progressive culture to leak into your work, as we seem to be constantly bombarded with it?


RV Mills: Part of it for me, I think, is modern stuff just doesn’t interest me. I’m engaged, as a reader and now as a storyteller, in older ideas, of nobility, of chivalry, of duty, of sacrifice. And I think Van Sciver and the creators in the Iron Age movement are right, there has to be representation of those older strains of literature and entertainment for those members of the audience that still want and desire them. That’s where I’m at, and, honestly, it’s where I’ve always been. That is what my fictional world of the Wandered Lands represents, I think, a place where a reader can become lost in pure escapism, like Middle Earth, Hyboria, or Lovecraft’s old Arkham. My creations are never going to be for everyone. And I’m fine with that. Plenty of other stellar creators out there doing great, great things to satisfy other tastes.




Gio: Rhoye is your MC, however your novel is so rich in characters that he really never steals the spotlight. Was that something you did consciously?


RV Mills: You mentioned Howard. One of the aspects of his Conan stories I really admire is that, in quite a few of them, Conan is almost a secondary character, while the heroine leads the narrative. Valeria in ‘Red Nails’ springs to mind. I like that technique. I think it broadens the scope of the story and grants fresh perspective to events as they unfold. So in ‘The Isle’ we see Rhoye’s standpoint, Astropho’s, and Aona’s. Each offers a unique flavour, I think, which allows the tale room to breathe. 


Gio: Speaking of supporting characters, I must admit the crabs were my favorite ones. How did the concept of an island so very much dominated by these crabs come about?


RV Mills:


Another dream, a nightmare, and with a very specific source. I’d been reading Dr. Jordan Peterson’s ‘Twelve Rules for Life’. That opening chapter, the one with the lobsters, really stuck in my mind. That night, I had a dream of two swordsmen dueling to the death on this hellish shore just swarmed over with the most disgusting crustaceans, not just lobsters but crabs and horrid sticky slimy things. So vivid, I just had to weave it into a story! So I got me a cup of tea, sharpened my pencil, and set to work!


As it happened I’d been working on an idea for a pirate story which really had very little direction. And I had another idea for a tale about a lost shrine. Suddenly these three ideas fused as one in my brain, and that was that. I had no real conception of how long it would turn out to be. I tend to just let each story dictate its own length. It came out long! But I’m exceptionally proud of it. I think it’s a very entertaining piece.




Gio: Can we expect more longer format stories similar to ‘The Isle’?


RV Mills: Yes, I have another finished novella which I’m hoping to put out in February. I’m waiting on artwork for that. It is called ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ It was written before ‘The Isle’ and is a little shorter, but I’ve included a back-up story which is a natural sequel and companion piece.


I’m currently writing the sequel to ‘Man of Swords’, hoping to put that out at the end of summer, which will contain further adventures of Rhoye as a younger man, his wandering through Bruthulia against the backdrop of the war with the Sarkaenid. About halfway complete on that project, as we speak. 


Gio: What inspired the title of this novel?


RV Mills: I struggled to decide on the best permutation! I wanted to mention the ‘shrine’, because shrines are mysterious, and the ‘scarab’, because also mysterious, and also ‘sickness’ to add a pinch of peril, but also the ‘isle’ to hint at location. I wrote it all down, read it back, and yes, it is indeed a mouthful. ‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab.’ But I love it. The ‘e’ in Sick’ning was the only edit I could stand to lose!




Gio: Any plans for spinoffs? Astropho seems to be a very complete and well defined character who could possibly branch out and have his own adventures.


RV Mills: Astropho will return in ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ I have half a dozen other completed stories featuring the two friends together, I’m just in need of some connective tissue to link them into a narrative that is itself compelling, rather than just throw out a collection of disjointed short stories. But, yes, there’s more to come from Rhoye and Astropho, for sure.


Regarding spin-offs, I have two other characters that I am very endeared to, and have written two long stories with a third in outline. They are two templars of Erishala, Vicatiora and her mentor Kionates of Dalathopos. They are essentially sleuths in a fantasy setting, with Kionates being observant and wise if a tad senile, and Vicatiora being green, yet headstrong and quick. Together they solve very peculiar mysteries which abound in the city of Altamantia, and which usually have a magical bent.


But, that is a good ways off, as yet. Watch this space!


Note from Virtual Pulp: Stay tuned for a follow-up interview of Robert Victor Mills by Gio!


	

	
	




	
	

				

			Interview, Non-Fiction/Documentary
		

			
Guerilla Authors of the Culture War: An Interview With Paul Hair Part 4

		

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In this last installment of my interview with fellow author and blogger Paul Hair, we discuss some of his books, the illiteracy/dumbing down of our culture, comic books, the author business, and a little more theology.


Be sure to check out Part One, Two, and Three. Also consider reading some of Paul’s work. It’s rare to find any work in the entertainment industry not crafted by people who hate you–why give such people your money? Virtual Pulp has undertaken a quest to find entertainment by people who don’t hate you, and Paul is one of the authors we’ve found.


Enjoy:


HANK: Talk about your writing: what have you done; what are you working on now; what kind of projects do you anticipate taking on long-term?


PAUL: I encourage everyone to visit my Amazon author page. Please buy, read, and tell others about my books. Also, don’t forget to click on my author name here at Virtual Pulp. I’ve published some wonderful flash fiction and short stories here.


The first, major book I was involved in writing was a nonfiction book I co-wrote/ghostwrote with Matt Barber. It’s called Hating Jesus: The American Left’s War on Christianity. The book was published in 2016, but it’s still relevant today. I encourage people to pick it up.


Hating Jesus was successful. But it was also a lot of work because it was nonfiction. Nonfiction means a ton of citations. And that is a massive amount of work—a job that is so big that it could be a separate job onto itself when writing such a book. But it wasn’t. It was a job we undertook ourselves.


So after that, I thought about doing fiction instead. Fiction means no worrying about citations—no worrying that you are quoting people accurately, correctly representing what they mean, or appropriately using sources. It’s so much easier and shorter. And it’s a lot more fun.


The first fiction I published was Mortal Gods: Ignition. This is an anthology of three short stories that takes place in a universe where superhumans exist in a real-world setting. The book shows that this was my first time writing fiction. I’ve learned a lot about the craft since then. But it’s still good and a quick read.


Then it was onto establishing the Appalling Stories series with authors David Dubrow and Ray Zacek. The first and second books in the series were anthologies. The third is a novella. We’re working on a fourth one now, which will be another anthology of short stories. We have a fantastic group of authors (including you) contributing to this one. I believe it has the potential to be the best yet. I’m certainly excited about the story I’m writing. It should be one of the most fun stories I’ve written; an adventure story with a twist.


HANK: That’s right: we both have a story in the anthology! Will it be coming out late this year or early next year? David said something that made me think late in 2019.


PAUL: Late 2019 is our plan, so we hope to have it published soon.


Beyond this, I’m co-writing/ghostwriting two novels with two people. I won’t reveal their names right now but I’m excited about these novels, and will promote them heavily once we’ve published them. Additionally, I’m working on a young adult novel (or novella) where a teenage boy is struggling with coming to terms with his younger sister who has declared herself to be “transgender.” Through the course of the story, he finds out why she has decided to pretend to be a boy, and from there he works to both address that, and protect her as she deals with issues of self-loathing.


Longer term goals include writing more Mortal Gods tales (again, that’s my universe where superhumans exist in a real-world setting—read a few Mortal Gods short stories here at Virtual Pulp), speculative fiction tales, contemporary tales, and more. I don’t have a particular genre that I enjoy.


HANK: I have too many that I enjoy. Pretty much everything except horror, chick-lit, and the sexual deviancy genres. From a practical business standpoint, I need to just pick one and write series in that genre. But there’s just too many kinds of stories I want to tell.


PAUL: I like working in different genres too. And I think we can successfully do it (including writing series of books).


HANK: What inspired you to write prose tales of superheroes?


PAUL: I have tentative plans for superhero tales, but right now I’ve written superhuman tales. What’s the difference? My Mortal Gods superhuman tales take place in a real-world setting. No one dresses up in costumes and fights as a vigilante (unless he wants to be arrested and imprisoned).


As far as why I write prose tales about them: it’s much simpler than a comic book, and prose allows for a more cultured way of telling a tale than a comic book.


If you want to do a comic book, you have to find an artist capable of doing the artwork. That takes time and money. Fine, if you want to do it. But that’s hard to do. People are turning to crowdfunding to try to do their own comic books. Some succeed, others fail. And if you’re taking two or more years to deliver the final comic book (if at all), are you really succeeding? So from that perspective, it doesn’t make sense for me to do a comic book at this time.


Also, prose is more cultured than a funny book with pictures. I’m not against comic books, but I understand that you can do more from a literate perspective with prose than with a comic book. That’s attractive to me.


Again, I’m not against comic books. I have ideas of what I’d like to do if I ever got the money to do so. But I’m not planning on that right now. I’m enjoying writing prose tales of superhumans; creating the universes and offering a new and exciting vision through prose that no one else is offering.


HANK: Describe the audience you envision for your fiction, past, present and future.


PAUL: Everyone. But to start out, people who are right-of-communist and right-of-satanic are the target audience. Seriously, the mainstream entertainment world isn’t just ignoring this group of people; it has declared war on them.


I’m serious when I say I don’t want to continue supporting them. I imagine others feel the same way.


HANK: Yeah. Me, for one.


PAUL: Going back to my previous comments on theological matters, I’m under no illusion that my works will be read 100 years from now. (I’ll be doing well if I can continue growing the amount of people who are reading them right now.) That’s okay, of course. Everything will eventually pass away. This also means I’m working under the 70% doctrine. I know I’m not going to be the next Shakespeare or literary master. So my goal is to try to publish works that I’m at least 70% satisfied with at a relatively high rate. It makes no sense to try to publish the Perfect Work if it takes forever to publish it. Produce. Get works out there that earn money and create intellectual property. No, I’m not suggesting I become some sort of corporate mill. But I know that I have to earn money to continue writing, and I have to produce stories if I ever want to consider myself an accomplished author.


(Seriously, if one isn’t producing works on a regular basis, and if few people are reading said works, then one isn’t an author; he is effectively a teenage girl who writes in a diary and keeps it under a mattress at night. Both have the same amount of people reading their works.)


HANK: Ouch.


I don’t know if I could stick to the 70% doctrine. It turns out I’m a compulsive editor, revising and rewriting as I go. Even after publishing, sometimes, I go back and tweak.


PAUL: I know what you mean. But for me, it comes down to forcing myself to say something is finished. Yes, there will always be room for improvement. (AARs show us that.) But, again for me, that needs to occur in the next tale. Publishing quality material on a regular basis is a must in my plan.


HANK: Do you have thoughts on the epidemic of illiteracy in our country in recent years?


PAUL: Mass media entertainment has contributed to this. People are simply turning their attention to forms of entertainment that only require passive participation. But I think the aforementioned war on normalcy from the entertainment industry have played a part in this too.


I don’t want to read any of the things that big publishers are producing. I suspect a lot of other people feel this way too. Add in the fact that so many people are now condemning American history and culture, and you have a society that actively is discouraging a lot of people to read. (A lot of fine literature is American. Beyond this, a lot of fine literature can be classified as being part of Western Civilization. And since our betters also condemn Western Civ as well as American culture and history, you have a lot of literature now that people are being told they shouldn’t read.)


Regardless, I spent a better part of a decade writing a lot of nonfiction opinion columns and articles on the decay of culture and society for some pretty well-known websites. That accomplished nothing. So I’ve abandoned that and now am focused on writing fiction instead of complaining. And that’s the best thing one can do when it comes to the state of literacy/illiteracy (or for anything for that matter): do instead of talk.


HANK: Sage advice, for sure.


I appreciate you taking the time for this dialog. Is there anything you’d like to add before we sign off?


PAUL: Buy my books and read my stories here at Virtual Pulp!


 


Again, I thank Paul for his patience and willingness to answer my questions so candidly. I’m thankful to have men like this out there fighting alongside me in the culture war.