I've done an interview Terry Mancour, author of the Spellmonger Series, and gotten an exclusive look at the start of his next book.
If you click the link you'll not only get the Q&A but also the first chapter from Magelord, which is the third instalment in the Spellmonger Series:
http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/interview-with-terry-mancour-author-of.html
To give you a taste of the interview, here are the first two (of 10) questions [and also answers]:
Q: I was a bit surprised when I checked your author page on Amazon that you'd written Spartacus (the Star Trek TNG book), which I read, and enjoyed, quite some time ago. Why did you choose fantasy rather than sci-fi for your new series?
TM: I’ve always been fascinated by both sci-fi and fantasy – my two favorite authors growing up were Heinlein and Tolkien – and I was as happy playing with spaceships as I was castles. After the initial success of Spartacus, I faced the prospect of following up my first book with something original – which I knew would never be as successful as Spartacus. I felt more confident with fantasy than sci-fi at the time, so I started putting Spellmonger together. Spellmonger was my second novel, and I know it feels like a second novel. That’s not to say it isn’t good, but it isn’t great. And it wasn’t intended to be. After Spartacus I got a lot of great advice from other sci-fi writers, and Larry Niven encouraged me to work on my craft before I tried to push for more commercial success. So while I was submitting new Star Trek proposals and getting them shot down, I started Spellmonger as a kind of workshop, something I could experiment with and write for my own amusement. After I gave up pursuing a lucrative career as a licensed series writer, I had this little novel sitting around that wasn’t half-bad. I submitted it to all of the big fantasy publishers and got rejected for perfectly legitimate business reasons. So I published it on my own.
Q: Which fantasy series inspired you, both in general terms and regarding what you wanted to portray in the Spellmonger Series?
TM: As I mentioned, Tolkien was my biggest fantasy influence – I’ve read the trilogy and the Hobbit over 250 times since my adolescence – so the danger of doing something hopelessly derivative was always there. As much as I love Tolkien, I’m not nearly good enough to do that kind of High Fantasy justice. And while I am also thoroughly geeking out about Martin’s brilliant Game of Thrones series, I didn’t want to do what he did either. So the author I was most influenced by for Spellmonger has to be Steven Brust’s deliciously complex and entertainingly-written Dragearan series, notably the Vlad Taltos books.
Brust is, in my opinion, one of the top three fantasy writers alive today. I’d say he was the literary heir to Roger Zelazny, one of the most brilliant voices of the New Wave era of sci-fi. His Vlad Taltos series, beginning with Jhereg, is probably the closest to what I’ve patterned the Spellmonger series on. Not setting-wise – Dragera and Callidore are very different in many ways, while both technically adhere to standard fantasy tropes – but in terms of style. One of the things about the Vlad Taltos series that I always liked was the first-person narrative. It’s difficult to pull off believably, and it’s incredibly difficult to sustain over several episodic narratives, but Brust does it effortlessly. His lead character goes from being a sneering underclass teenaged punk to a cynical and mature man who finds himself influencing world events, without losing his essential core. If I can keep that kind of standard for Minalan in Spellmonger, I’ll be quite pleased with it.
If you click the link you'll not only get the Q&A but also the first chapter from Magelord, which is the third instalment in the Spellmonger Series:
http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/interview-with-terry-mancour-author-of.html
To give you a taste of the interview, here are the first two (of 10) questions [and also answers]:
Q: I was a bit surprised when I checked your author page on Amazon that you'd written Spartacus (the Star Trek TNG book), which I read, and enjoyed, quite some time ago. Why did you choose fantasy rather than sci-fi for your new series?
TM: I’ve always been fascinated by both sci-fi and fantasy – my two favorite authors growing up were Heinlein and Tolkien – and I was as happy playing with spaceships as I was castles. After the initial success of Spartacus, I faced the prospect of following up my first book with something original – which I knew would never be as successful as Spartacus. I felt more confident with fantasy than sci-fi at the time, so I started putting Spellmonger together. Spellmonger was my second novel, and I know it feels like a second novel. That’s not to say it isn’t good, but it isn’t great. And it wasn’t intended to be. After Spartacus I got a lot of great advice from other sci-fi writers, and Larry Niven encouraged me to work on my craft before I tried to push for more commercial success. So while I was submitting new Star Trek proposals and getting them shot down, I started Spellmonger as a kind of workshop, something I could experiment with and write for my own amusement. After I gave up pursuing a lucrative career as a licensed series writer, I had this little novel sitting around that wasn’t half-bad. I submitted it to all of the big fantasy publishers and got rejected for perfectly legitimate business reasons. So I published it on my own.
Q: Which fantasy series inspired you, both in general terms and regarding what you wanted to portray in the Spellmonger Series?
TM: As I mentioned, Tolkien was my biggest fantasy influence – I’ve read the trilogy and the Hobbit over 250 times since my adolescence – so the danger of doing something hopelessly derivative was always there. As much as I love Tolkien, I’m not nearly good enough to do that kind of High Fantasy justice. And while I am also thoroughly geeking out about Martin’s brilliant Game of Thrones series, I didn’t want to do what he did either. So the author I was most influenced by for Spellmonger has to be Steven Brust’s deliciously complex and entertainingly-written Dragearan series, notably the Vlad Taltos books.
Brust is, in my opinion, one of the top three fantasy writers alive today. I’d say he was the literary heir to Roger Zelazny, one of the most brilliant voices of the New Wave era of sci-fi. His Vlad Taltos series, beginning with Jhereg, is probably the closest to what I’ve patterned the Spellmonger series on. Not setting-wise – Dragera and Callidore are very different in many ways, while both technically adhere to standard fantasy tropes – but in terms of style. One of the things about the Vlad Taltos series that I always liked was the first-person narrative. It’s difficult to pull off believably, and it’s incredibly difficult to sustain over several episodic narratives, but Brust does it effortlessly. His lead character goes from being a sneering underclass teenaged punk to a cynical and mature man who finds himself influencing world events, without losing his essential core. If I can keep that kind of standard for Minalan in Spellmonger, I’ll be quite pleased with it.
