What I Write and Why

I love fantasy. A story set in a quasi-Western-European inspired land, knights, wizards, dragons, great beasts – I love those.

I love thrillers. Fast-paced stories with a deadly mystery, twisting plot, desperate heroes against a masterful villain – I love those.

What I write is a blending of the two. I take the style and best tropes of thrillers and use them with the setting and elements I love about fantasy. So if you’re a fantasy fan looking for something a little different, I have something for you. If you like thrillers and want something fantasical, I have something for you.

And they’re the same thing.

As to why I write like this…

Since childhood I’ve tinkered around with writing stories. Decades ago I made my first go at taking it seriously. The results were mixed. Something was just off. I knew what I was creating was not as good as I wanted it to be, but my efforts to study the craft and improve floundered. I dipped my toe back into writing every once in a while for years after, but most of my creativity went into running table-top R.P.G.s (which I also love).

At the same time I, through bad luck or market forces or both, kept running across the same sort of fantasy books again and again. I read many, often with a sigh, and didn’t bother with most. It was about this time I started reading the occasional thriller. Even though I found the few I read compelling, I had it in my head I was an FSF guy. Stubborn like a half-blind bull that way.

This changed in 2014. I’d been on Radio Career 2.0, working as a morning show producer for a pair of hosts big into reading. That year they ramped up interviewing authors on-air. Unlike most every show at the time, radio or television, these two guys actually read the book before the interview. This meant the show began receiving promotional books, usually more than two. One of the first ones I picked up was a David Baldacci thriller.

I absorbed it, tearing through it in two days and loving every moment like I hadn’t enjoyed reading in years. Even before I finished it I knew this was the kind of style I wanted to read. Except – I wanted fantasy. I wanted this with wizards and dragons and swords. Inspiration struck. I thought of something so obvious I still don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me years earlier.

Combine the style and best tropes of thrillers with the setting and elements I love about fantasy.

A fantasy thriller.

I began work on what became The Artifice Conspiracy. Published by Dark Oak Press in 2015, it received reviews that put a smile on my face.

Through the drama and changes and great events of the years since, I kept writing. And I made a fresh study into the craft of writing along with the business of publishing. What I’ve learned and what I’ve done are now on the threshold of public presentation.

It’s a very exciting and terrifying moment right now. I love it.

Now available:

The Artifice Conspiracy

After a spy sabotages the demonstration of an experimental magical airship, the resulting explosion kills nearly a hundred people. Among the dead are an imperial princess, a bishop, and most of the family of the wizard Lord Harlow Tammadore – cousin to the airship’s designer and himself an arcane consultant on the ship’s ground breaking propulsion artifice.

Teaming with the Imperial Knight Zorrah Pestle, charged with bringing the perpetrator of the deaths to justice, Harlow seeks revenge for his family’s death. Together, Harlow and Zorrah uncover a conspiracy involving a rebellious prince about to undergo a ritual that will make him an undead of unspeakable power, a mysterious dragon with a secret agenda all his own, and the development of the most powerful weapon of magic the world has ever known.

Available in Memphis at The Book Juggler on South Main, and Two Rivers Bookstore in Cooper-Young. Also available via Amazon (including e-reader formats).

Read the first chapter for free right here!

 

 

Coming soon:

The Treasure Betrayals

The logistics of transporting a dragon’s treasure hoard across thousands of miles are daunting. The logistics of stealing it are even more complicated. When a late night attack slaughters most of the treasure caravan’s security escort, Imperial Knight Fanderlin Redbranch and Imperial Battle Wizard Karisa Camorhil begin a chase of the perpetrators. Those perpetrators have prepared. Redbranch and Camorhil must see through the misinformation and false clues to discover who has killed so many of their fellows, and what it means for the dragon’s treasure. There have been betrayals already, and with a hoard of riches at stake, there are more coming!

 

(If you have one of the fifty first chapter preview pamphlets I distributed at MidSouthCon, you’ve got something with the original title!)