An Interview with Terry Mancour

Pleased to say that today I’ve been joined by Terry Mancour, author of the Spellmonger series (10 parts currently and still going strong). There are some spoilers in the interview below.

What's the premise of Necromancer, the tenth and most recent instalment in the Spellmonger series?

Necromancer is a climactic book, in a couple of different ways. First, it’s the tenth book in the series, and hitting double digits deserves some celebration, plot-wise. There are elements that I brought up in Spellmonger, Book 1, that I didn’t revisit until Book 10. Secondly, it’s also the conclusion of a trilogy (quadrology?), of sorts. Books 8 (Court Wizard) and 9 (Shadowmage) take place partially concurrent with Book 7, Enchanter, but from different character perspectives. In Necromancer I had to unite those three disparate character and plot perspectives and put Minalan back into the picture, character-wise. All of those deeply personal questions that arose at the end of Enchanter had to be answered.

Plot-wise, Minalan the Spellmonger is in rough shape . . . but he has hope. It involves an impossible quest and a tricky set of moves in which he manipulates everyone he needs to, from his own vassals to the very gods, to get what he wants. Thematically, it’s a quasi-Orphic quest in which he goes into both a figurative and a literal Land of the Dead in order to bring his wife, Alya, back from a persistent vegetative state. It’s a fight between Min’s ego and intellect and the dark forces around him – not all of which are readily apparent. He emerges from a dark place, by the end of the book, but only at great cost.

The early books focused very much on the goblin threat, but more recently it’s on the backburner. Can you tell us whether the Dead God and his goblin hordes will be coming back soon, or even at all?

The role of the gurvani (goblins) has changed, since Spellmonger, but they are still very important to the over-all plot, as is their fossilized Dark Lord. As truths about Callidore’s past get revealed, Sheruel’s simple desire for genocide will seem quaint and wholesome compared to Korbal – or, at least, the reader might feel a little more sympathetic to the gurvani. They have been kicked around by a lot of different peoples over the years, and they feel sidelined by the Nemovorti. They were finally on top, with an undead Dark Lord of their very own, and now this! They very aren’t happy about it. We will see Sheruel again, and the rise of the Goblin King as rebels against Korbal’s betrayal. Gurkarl will decidedly play a role, because yes, I enjoy drawing out plotlines that far for the pure hedonistic joy of it.

There are many parts already in the series, and many planned ahead. How much detail have you charted out the course of future books, or do you make a vague outline for each planned instalment and only develop it when you arrive at that book?

In some cases, quite a bit. I know how it ends, more or less. I know what has to happen for the end to happen. I know the cool scenes I want to write. But there is much undiscovered country along the way, and part of the joy for me, as the writer, is having unexpected stuff fall out of my brain and onto the page. I know we can expect to see some familiar fantasy tropes tackled in a slightly new or different way.

Min will go on the road, during his exile, and there will be a lot of adventures before the end. But I’ve learned not to over-plot my books before I’ve started them. That’s boring for the reader and for me. And its too much work. It’s easier to hitch my subconscious to the plow of my keyboard, or somesuch other analogy, and let it do the heavy work. That opens my writing up to spontaneous inclusions of interesting bits of stuff I pick up in my research.

Writing a series offers both writer and readers the ease of a consistent world and characters, as well as enabling for more character depth and development than a single volume, but keeping consistency without making things repetitive or ‘samey’ can be tricky. What’s the greatest challenge you’ve found writing a series which is now up to part 10?

Thankfully, while the piano only has 88 keys they still keep getting new songs out of it. Fantasy is much the same. Both J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin use the medieval European fantasy setting, dragons, swords, magic, etc., but they are two entirely different stories. Hopefully, Terry R. R. Mancour will be able keep playing across those tropes in an entertaining way.

The episodic format of series fantasy fiction is helpful. But it’s also important for the writer to not abuse that. I make a point that each of my novels is a complete novel, in itself, not merely a section of a larger work. That means they need a beginning, a middle, an end, a plot, character development, and the rest.

Part of that can rest on the natural progression of events and character development. If you do it right, and understand human nature sufficiently, then figuring out how your character is going to change and develop in response to the course of events isn’t as hard as most writers seem to make it. In Enchanter, Minalan underwent stages of psychological response to a major personal trauma. That’s a pretty clear course of development to follow, and it gave the story greater depth without a lot of psychobabble. Or not much.

Part of that has to be supplied by the author applying a different approach or perspective on the same old medieval fantasy tropes. I find I take a lot of inspiration from significant events of the Middle Ages. Journeymage, for instance, was inspired by the Children’s Crusade.

Thankfully, the Middle Ages had a lot of fascinating stories that Fantasy literature has endlessly reinterpreted. While knight vs. dragon, elf vs. dwarf, etc. has had a lot of play, there are plenty of great tropes I haven’t used yet. In the future, expect some stories and plots revolving around the plague, voyages of exploration, peasant’s revolts, pirates, a succession crisis, and perhaps even the Inquisition. I’ll also be doing some more-familiar Fantasy tropes, such as the Dragon’s Lair, the Secret Cult, the Lost Civilization, the Ancient Evil, etc. Any of these is enough to hang an entire novel on, if you do it right. Mixing and matching them in the Spellmonger universe is a joy, and I have a long way to go before I start running short of material.

The series is focused entirely on Minalan to start with, but more recent instalments have seen other perspectives become increasingly important. Was this always planned, or did you feel that either telling the story or offering a new point of view was necessary to keep things fresh?

At a certain point, I think you have to vary the perspective in order to keep the reader’s attention. Consider that an awful lot more happened in the Civil War than what Rhett Butler saw and experienced. Offering those different perspectives allows you to give true depth to your world-building. It also allows the author to inject differences of perspective that can be jarring.

A case in point is how I handled the character of Dara in Necromancer. Dara has been the lead in the Young Adult/Cadet spin-off series I’ve done chronicling the events of the Spellmonger Series from her perspective. An adolescent girl and a middle-aged man see things very differently, and their perceptions of each other are as flawed and biased as anyone’s. I caught some flak from fans about how Dara, after being a strong and resilient character in one series, seems to be a whiny and self-absorbed girl in the main series.

Here’s the thing: to Minalan’s perspective, she is a whiny and self-absorbed girl. But Min’s perspective is informed by only a few brief scenes, not the introspection that Dara is undertaking as she moves from childhood to adulthood. To her, Min is a wise and powerful wizard who always knows what to do, not a self-doubting and sometimes self-loathing mage who frequently feels he’s in waaaay over his head. Which perspective is the “true” one? Neither. Each is just as valid, and by shifting viewpoints and characters to review the same events I hope to build up a tension that eventually erupts into conflict between the two.

A similar thing occurred with Pentandra. Responding in part to the popular ideas that a) there were no good female leading characters in Fantasy (which I dispute) and b) that men could not write good or convincing female characters, I wrote Court Wizard from Pentandra’s perspective. Within the novel she sees quite a bit of Callidore’s society that Minalan doesn’t, thanks to both her class and her gender. More, I had to change not only the nominal gender of the main character, but had to work to understand her perspective myself. Regardless of the politics of the moment, men and women generally tend to approach the same situations from slightly different directions. While there are notable exceptions, writing a female lead convincingly had to encompass some of these basic differences or Pentandra would have just sounded like Min in drag. No one wants that.

The further excursions into perspective, specifically Book 4, Knights Magi, and its more-or-less sequel Book 9, Shadowmage, explore the relationship with Tyndal and Rondal, Min’s senior apprentices. They’re undergoing an entirely different journey than Dara. They have different motivations and seek different risks and rewards. And they all see Callidore differently.

It’s not just a matter of keeping things fresh. Changing characters and perspective can serve the greater story when the reader knows things that the main character doesn’t. In fact, keeping track of who knows what, when, and how that advances the plot is something I spend a lot of time on.

Your books are selling nicely and well-reviewed, but do you ever want a break from the Spellmonger world? Are you working on anything else/have other plans, or are you just enjoying writing the series?

I’m so glad you asked! I am absolutely devoted to the Spellmonger series – it’s like a rich mug of ale.  But I have two sci-fi series underway, at the moment.

The first is my Tanith series, a continuation of H. Beam Piper’s classic space opera novel, Space Viking. After the original author tragically committed suicide with no heirs, his work became public domain. I’ve written two short sequels to the original already, Prince of Tanith and Princess Valerie’s War, and I’m working on a capstone finale to the work now, called Trask’s Odyssey.

And I will be totally honest: one reason it’s taking so long to produce the final book is that I’m enjoying it too much. If Spellmonger is like a rich mug of ale, then the Tanith Series is like a dirty double martini with three olives.

Secondly, I have a second sci-fi trilogy I’ve begun publishing. I won’t get into the background of the work here, but it’s an original time-travel piece that’s also (wait for it) openly pornographic. Sexually explicit. With all the best dirty words. It’s called the Casanova’s Butterfly trilogy, and the first book, Bad Penny, was released last summer to generally good reviews. I’ll be releasing the other two parts this summer and next, respectively. It’s already written, I just want to space it out because I’m like that.

It’s a trashy beach read and a lot of fun for any student of history or erotica or both. The main character is an anti-hero Pick-Up-Artist who goes pro by joining an elite government-sponsored time-travel program which goes back in time to insert certain genetic corrections into the human genomes to avoid a future catastrophe. The Old Fashioned Way: by seducing your grandmother. Most of the MC’s work is in the mid 20th century, the 1940s-1970s, one of my favorite historical periods. Along the way, the character’s hubris and arrogance screws up the time stream but good. If Spellmonger is a rich cup of ale, Casanova’s Butterfly is like a classic Manhattan with a roofie in it. I like to think of it as the Thinking Man’s porn novel.

The Spellmonger series is classic high fantasy. What were your inspirations, whether fictional or (for the political side, probably) real life?

It goes without saying that Tolkien is my bedrock inspiration, and my appreciation of the Professor grows every time I start another book. I also credit George R. R. Martin for some inspiration, because I began reading him before Game of Thrones and enjoy his approach to prose.

Other influences may be more obscure or subtle, even when I try to make them blatant, but here it goes: First and foremost would be Steven Brust’s Adrilankha series. My approach to Min’s character is closest to how Steve handles Vlad, his main character. Careful readers of both series will recognize me blatantly ripping off Steve’s character for a kind of cross-platform cameo in Shadowmage. But Steve’s wit and humor informed Min, and his approach to a well-drawn character is something I am proud to have stolen from him. Brust is the spiritual heir of Roger Zelazny’s amazing style, and I can’t recommend his stuff highly enough. Zelazny, himself, is a huge influence as well, particularly the Chronicles of Amber and the Lord of Light, but I even tracked down his “hard boiled detective novel” from the 1960s, and it rocked.

Another powerful influence was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. Even though it has dragons and castles, it isn’t Fantasy. Not a lick of magic in it. It’s high-concept Sci-Fi with really good characters. Much of my cadet novels were cribbed from her Harper Hall YA trilogy. Another was Andrew Offut, who might be a little obscure for some folks but who did some great work back in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly for the Thieves’ World shared-universe series (for which Brust contributed a story, last volume). If you aren’t familiar, Thieves’ World was a wonderful collection of fantasy stories that really demonstrated the chops of some of the better fantasy writers of its time. Offut’s stories always impressed me the most. His original novels were likewise superior, though he didn’t get the acclaim that he deserved for their quality. Andy Offut knew how to get the most out of his characters, especially the minor ones, and when I need inspiration I frequently turn to his stories in the anthologies.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Fritz Lieber and Robert Howard, whose magnificent bodies of work informed the adventurous imagination of my childhood and occasionally leak all over Spellmonger. They made the world safe for brawny-thewed barbarians everywhere.

Non-literary influences should be included. Count the Boy Scouts and Dungeons & Dragons (which I was, incidentally, introduced to in Boy Scouts by Chris Evans – thanks, Chris!) as among my strongest. The BSA led, of course, to the Kasari culture in Spellmonger, and D&D has been a constant source of both inspiration and research.

Looking back at the 10 parts to date, which character (whether major or minor) have you found most enjoyable to write, and why?

I have a few favorites, and I’ll take the various main characters off the table for the sake of this question. Writing Crazy Alya was fun, largely because she’s usually so level-headed. I love writing the various Wizards of Sevendor, especially Olmeg the Green and Banamor. Both are based on people I know. Gatina the Kitten was a delicious delight to write, because she combines utter commitment with youthful enthusiasm. Onranion is a blast because he just doesn’t give a crap, and so is the Sorceress of Sorsha Wood, Lilastien the Rebel, M.D., the last remaining member of the Callidore Colonial Medical Service.

I love Sire Cei. I love writing Azar. There are characters that I absolutely love and who I haven’t even gotten to, yet. And yes, sadly, some won’t make it. But I have plenty to work with, and as long as I can keep them all sounding different and exciting, we’ll keep seeing them. Some will even get their own books. Banamor, Olmeg, Sire Cei and Zagor the Hedgemage will all get separate stories focusing on their perspectives, hopefully this year. Others will be explored in the future.

When can we expect the 11th instalment, and can you reveal anything about the premise?

I thought I might tell this one from the vampire’s point of view.

Seriously, Book 11 begins the second major arc of the series. The first ten books (decalogy) is The Spellmonger Ascendant. The second ten will be The Spellmonger’s Exile. In the first series, we see the rise of Min from lowly village spellmonger to senior noble of a unified kingdom. We saw how he built Sevendor from scratch and changed the feudal society he found himself in for the better: Magic in the Service of Man.

The second series will go a little darker. Now that Min has been exiled from Sevendor for at least three years, and then put unexpectedly in charge of the Magelaw, he has an even greater task ahead: building Vanador, a city designed to challenge the might of the various Dark Lords directly, without messing around too much with the rest of the Five Duchies. He has recovered his family, somewhat, and finds himself threatened in ways he never suspected once he becomes Count of the Magelaw.

In one way, the pressure has never been higher. At the end of Necromancer we saw our understanding of the war, so far, challenged by events and revelations from the past. Humanity has finally caught the attention of the Sea Folk, and now Min has to figure out what to do with it . . . as well as solving the complicated thaumaturgic puzzle of how to re-create the freak Snowstone spell. His wife is only beginning to recover her sanity and her fragmented memories. He faces a dauntless foe with very few resources or advantages, and no allies nearby to speak of. His political situation has never been more dire, and the future looks grim.

Yet in another way, Min has never been happier. The accomplishment he feels after retrieving the Handmaiden in Necromancer gives him great power, and he doesn’t see the various threats to Vanador as serious, compared to Korbal and Sheruel. The goblins are fighting each other, for a change, and the thousands of former slaves he helped free are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives in a shattered and depopulated land. Min has learned how to develop a country, thanks to Sevendor, and he has a lot more help this time. He’s living where he originally wanted to (more or less) with the girl of his dreams and their children. His enemies are far away and think he’s been bound by his exile, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Min sees his exile as a means of catching up on some important work while allowing Sevendor to grow naturally, without his direct guidance for a while. In a way, he’s off the game board of Kingdom-level politics. In a way, he’s at the center of it.

It’s a time of restful watchfulness and preparing for future battles. A time of repose, reflection, rebuilding and consideration of the future. So, nothing of consequence happens. I anticipate that it will be a really long and boring book on peasant market economics and the fascinating study of crop rotation’s effects on overall productivity and peasant farmers’ risk management schemes. I foresee some fascinating discussions on comparative thatching techniques. Perhaps some titillating debate about the differences between canon and secular law. Livestock will be discussed in depth and detail. There might even be some authentic pottage recipes, if you’re good.

There will be a mix of old characters and new. To the fore will be Tyndal, Gareth, Ruderal, Carmella, Azar, Wenek, Sandoval, Terleman, Landrik, Caswallon, Thinradel, Cormoran, the Dradrien, and others. On the back burner (in the “Meanwhile, Back In Sevendor . . . .” sense) will be Rondal, Gatina, Pentandra, Anguin, Sire Cei, Banamor, Olmeg, and Dara. Ithalia and Onranion will be present. Varen, Fallawen, and Lilastien will have cameos, at best.

We’ll also see some new folk in the woods of the Wilderlands: Rumel’s people, commonly known as Wood Dwarves. Durin’s Folk, they ain’t. Some new critters we haven’t seen before, including powderhorns and shapeshifting predators. We’ll see how someone other than Dara commands a wing of Sky Riders. We’ll start to get to know Min’s kids as more than names. Including the children of Greenflower. We’ll see what light an ancient AI from humanity’s past can shed on the current colony’s precarious position. We’ll find out more about the Forsaken. And we’ll see just who among his many manly minions Korbal considers powerful enough to challenge the Spellmonger.

As to when it will be out, that’s difficult to say. It takes a while to craft a book like that, a lot of research and a lot of writing. I took much of this year off of Spellmonger to prepare for the next series and finish up the audiobooks for the first one. I’ve committed to publishing three other novels and some stories before I even get there. I’m also feverishly working on additional texts, like the Atlas of the Five Duchies and a FRP module and sourcebook, in conjunction with superfan and recognized Mage Knight of Sevendor, Aaron Schwartz. I need to continue my marketing efforts and my development efforts. I’d really like to see some elements of Spellmonger in an AV format, someday, and have been working in that direction. I’d also be interested in exploring a comic adaptation, if I could find the right artist. I’ve been looking for a few years, now, but haven’t found someone who can do it, yet.

All of that being said, I can make this simple guarantee: YOU WILL SEE BOOK 11, THAUMATURGE, BEFORE YOU SEE WINDS OF WINTER. Likely sometime in early 2019.

So, suck it, George R. R. Martin.

Links:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terry-Mancour/e/B004QTNFOO/

https://www.amazon.com/Terry-Mancour/e/B004QTNFOO/

Audible: https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchAuthor=Terry+Mancour

Thaddeus

An interview with Terry Mancour, author of the Spellmonger Series

I'm delighted to say that top writer and fine fellow Terry Mancour, author of the excellent Spellmonger Series, has agreed to an interview. Enjoy!:

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.

Q: What's your favourite fantasy book or series (excepting your own, of course)?

TM: The Lord of the Rings.  I have read it exhaustively, and I have a reverent awe for the magnificence of Tolkien’s construction.  The more I study it, especially the evolution of his work over the course of decades which can be found in his voluminous notes, the more impressed I am at the tender care this man took with his creation.  I think we’ve gone past the point where you can take 30 years to work on a book, and then spend another five just typing it and editing it, which is a little sad.  But then again, there can never be another Tolkien.

Q: Writing a series (whether a trilogy or a saga like Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire) can be quite daunting. Did you map out the entire series' plot before beginning the first book, or did you prefer to have a more organic approach to the books that followed Spellmonger and take each one as it came?

TM: While I wrote Spellmonger as a stand-alone experiment, I relish the idea of a long-running series.  It’s a challenge to keep the reader’s level of interest and encourage a fan base by giving them more of what they want at the same time.  With Spellmonger, I envisioned a long, multi-book series from the beginning and planned accordingly.  Before I was done with the first manuscript, I had Warmage and Magelord plotted out, and had good ideas for at least four other books (working titles, in no particular order: Knight Magi, Footwizard, Court Mage, and Archmage), but the more I work on the series, the more new books I want to add.  New plots have been born for Seamage, Enchanter, Resident Adept, and High Mage. At this point, I feel confident that we’re looking at a ten book series, at minimum, and perhaps more.  Whether or not I’ll still have an audience by the last books or not is debatable, but I’ll write them even if I’m the only one who reads them. 

Q: What one piece of advice would you offer an aspiring writer?

TM: Write. 

Really.  Quit bitching about getting rejected, quit bragging about the stuff you’re going to write, quit talking about it, quit blogging about it, quit going to cons and geeking out over other writers, if you want to be a professional writer you sit down at the keyboard and write.  Write until your fingers fall off.  Write whatever you can, whatever you need to, and ensure you go back and re-write it into something decent if it’s good.  Realize most of your stuff is going to suck and accept that . . . because each failed idea is compost for your next flash of brilliance.  But if you don’t write, and write a lot, you’ll never make the English language your bitch.

Q: What aspect of writing do you find most challenging?

TM: The re-write.  “Great works are never completed, only abandoned”.  I re-wrote Spellmonger 5 times before I published it, and each iteration was painful.  Warmage only got one re-write, but then Spellmonger was my second book and Warmage was my 15^th. (I have four or five pseudonyms under which I write a wide variety of stuff).  Both will be re-released in a re-edited form by the end of the summer, giving me one last chance to screw around with it.  But I still will find fault with it in places for years to come.  Not because it’s bad, but because I’m getting better as a writer.

Q: Writing is a slightly odd occupation, in that it offers authors almost total freedom. Do you like to take a structured approach (daily word count targets, tightly defined lore etc) or prefer to take a more laid back approach?

TM: A little of both.  My process is organic, simply because I work a full-time day job as a copywriter and then act as primary care for my three kids after work.  Therefore I have to write in the cracks between picking up the kids, cooking dinner, and dealing with homework.  I write into the wee hours, of course, but if I’m really obsessed with a concept I can find myself getting up before dawn to grind out a few thousand words before work, or setting up the laptop and typing while I’m waiting in car line. 

My basic process includes juggling multiple projects.  In addition to the Spellmonger series, I’ve also got a sci-fi series (the Tanith series, a continuation of pulp-era sci-fi author H. Beam Piper’s novel Space Viking . . . think of it as “Atomic Punk”), a “fan” series of books (Firefly – over at FFF.net they know me as “ScrewtheAlliance”, and I’ve got two and a half Firefly “fan” novels, Kaylee’s Lament, The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu, and Unfinished Business which is, ironically, incomplete) and then work under three other pseudonyms in dramatically different genres.  So right now I’ve got Secret Project #1 on the front burner (my agent called and someone in Hollywood liked it), then Magelord, then the next Tanith book, Trask’s Odyssey, then Secret Project #2, Unfinished Business, and three separate Spellmonger short stories.  And then I’ve got at least four more books on the back, back burner.  I find that having something to work on while I’m stuck on something makes me more productive.  Oh, and my process also involves large amounts of caffeine and small amounts of Irish whiskey.

Q: Except for Minalan, who is your favourite character to write?3

TM: Probably Pentandra, with Tyndal a close second.  But it’s still hard to say, because I’m still getting to know them.  Writing Pentandra is like writing an over-sexed, hyper-ambitious Hermione who becomes addicted to power.  Writing Tyndal is like writing an obnoxious teenager who suddenly got handed power and wealth far beyond his station.  But then some of my supporting characters are a hell of a lot of fun, too.  In Spellmonger, Zagor was neat.  In Warmage I really enjoyed writing the nasty little piece of work known as Rardine for some reason – although writing Isily was fun, too.  And in Magelord, apart from some new characters I honestly am having the most fun with Sir Cey.  Yes, the taciturn castellan returns.

Q: Magelord (the third Spellmonger Series entry) is due next year. Will it be the final book in the series, and, if not, can you tell us how many books there will be?

Q: Magelord is pencilled in for 2013. How's it coming along?

TM: I’ll answer both of these at once.

Magelord will definitely not be the final book of the series.  And it won’t be out next year.  It will be out this year. 

In 2011, I published three books under my own name on Kindle, Spellmonger and the two Tanith books.  Spellmonger succeeded beyond my expectations, and was lucrative to the point where I was financially inspired to drop everything and finish Warmage.  Then Warmage came out this year and was even more wildly successful, overcoming the Curse of the Second Book.  To date, I’ve sold over 10,000 copies of Spellmonger, and more than half of those readers have gone on to buy Warmage.  That has financially inspired me to re-arrange my writing schedule to put Magelord as a higher priority.  At the moment I’m about half-way through with it, and if it wasn’t for the sweet scent of Hollywood money in the air I’d probably be done with it by now.  But as soon as Secret Project #1 is in the can, I’ll return to it and finish it off.  At this point, I’m hoping to release it in early-to-mid Autumn of 2012.

But wait!  There’s more!  Before its release, I’m also planning on publishing three short stories filling in gaps in the story.  One involves Tyndal’s daring escape from two agents of the Censorate in Minalan’s home town.  One involves a curious thing that happens to Minalan on the way to collect his reward after Warmage.  And the third covers the wedding of Minalan and Alya, just before the events in Magelord. 

Each one will be initially put on sale for the ridiculous price of 2.99 for ONE MONTH.  This is only because that’s the lowest price Amazon will let me set and allow the story to be in its Prime lending category, which allows Amazon Prime members to borrow the story for FREE.  After 30 days, I’ll drop the price to .99 cents for everyone else.  If you aren’t an Amazon Prime member, then PLEASE wait until the price drop before you buy it.  I don’t want to get accused of trying to hustle anyone by selling a 40,000 word short for the same price I sold a 120,000 word novel.  And I will likely bundle all three stories together in a mini-anthology for less than the cost of all three separately, before all is said and done.  And they might even wind up free at some point as a marketing device.

This might seem needlessly confusing or needlessly greedy on the surface, but it is actually more reflective of the current market.  Kindle has changed everything in publishing the way Napster changed everything in music.  Now that the author, not the publisher, is in command of the process, then it falls to the author to make marketing-based decisions.  That’s not always a bad thing.  Oftentimes the author is actually better in-tune with the marketplace than a publisher is, and realizes a niche or a need that a publisher doesn’t.  I get 2-3 fan requests a week about when the next book will be out, and my hardcore fans are, well, hardcore.  I think the current market encourages not just big ugly novels, but the literary equivalent of “DVD extras”: short stories and supporting literature to flesh-out the property.

Consider that J.K. Rowling, despite becoming richer than Paul McCartney on Harry Potter books, found as much success with writing little one-offs about Quidditch or Wizard history for her fans.  These are little value-added works that give depth to her series but don’t screw with her plot.  And the fans LOVE THEM.  I’m no J.K. Rowling, but if I have a few thousand fans who want to know what happened on the night Tyndal left Talry, or about Minalan and Alya’s wedding, or why Minalan’s witchstone has quadrupled in size by the time Magelord opens, then this gives them something to chew on between books.  It also allows me to add background without bogging down the main narrative with a lot of exposition.

But that’s not all . . . I’ve also begun to discuss the possibility of a Spellmonger graphic novel in conjunction with some of my contacts in the Comic industry.  We’re still at the preliminary stages, but I think it would be a hoot and there seems to be enough interest. 

So that’s the scoop:  Magelord THIS year, not next year.  The next book (probably Knight Magi) will be out in 2013.  Three interstitial short-stories before then.  Lots of confusing pricing. 

And as far as what Magelord is about, just consider that when you defeat the goblin army, marry the girl of your dreams, and semi-retire to your stately manor castle for a well-earned Happily Ever After, things might not go as smoothly as you plan . . .

Thanks for the opportunity to speak about my work.  And as an EXTRA BONUS, here’s an excerpt from Chapter One of Magelord . . . EXCLUSIVE to your readers:

Magelord

Chapter One

The Domain Of Sevendor

Sevendor was a mess when we got there, with a pall of neglect hanging over it as potent as any spell.  You could tell the moment you rode into the village. 

Now, I’m not the kind of spellmonger  – or newly dubbed Knight Magi, or even a Magelord – who looks a gift horse in the mouth, but when His Grace, Duke Rard of Castal (and about half of Alshar) granted me an estate along with my knighthood and other honors to reward me for stopping (or at least slowing down) a goblin invasion, I had assumed it would be a picturesque feudal land with jolly peasants, green fields, a stout castle and a treasury full of coin. 

It’s not that I had chosen my boon poorly – quite the contrary.  I had spent almost a week researching my options in the dusty corridors of Wilderhall, under the gimlet eye of Lady Arnet, the Mistress of Lands and Estates for the Duchy of Castal.  The Duke had specified the exact level of landed fief from which I could choose – rated by some arcane system the Ducal Court alone understood – and Lady Arnet had presented me with dozens of acceptable holdings on the Duchy’s books, each folio wrapped in leather and sealed with her official seal.

After researching each one and then agonizing about my choice, I had finally made what I had thought was the best one for my purposes: a small estate in the northwestern Castali Riverlands, only four hundred miles away from the town of my birth.  My new fief was situated in the northern foothills of the Uwarri range, near the frontier with Remere.

As far away from the goblin hordes as I could safely get, in other words, and still be close enough to the front to be of some use.  And it had . . . other advantages.  It had been one of the regions helpfully suggested by the Tree Folk, for one.  I still wasn’t certain why, but I assumed they had a good reason.  But I had been far more interested in other factors at the time I selected it.  And it was quite the prize estate . . . on parchment.

According to the meticulously kept tax records and correspondence from the Ducal caretaker, the Domain of Sevendor was supposed to be a well-tended, prosperous little estate, snug in the charmingly-rugged foothills, with a sturdy little castle, a secondary tower fortress, three prosperous villages and five hamlets within its demesne.  Sevendor had been developed for three hundred years, and was one of the former cadet estates of the famous House of Lensely. 

House of Lensley is one of the wealthiest families of the eastern Castali Riverlords, but in all honesty their power peaked about a hundred years ago.  There’re still plenty of Lenselys around of course, despite the House’s proclivity for killing each other off in spectacular duels.  But while Lensely, was a rich and prosperous noble House (The Count of Lensely is the traditional head of the Riverlord’s League, and there are a couple of powerful local Lensely barons still lingering around) Sevendor hadn’t been under Lensely control for two generations, thanks to an ongoing inheritance dispute between rival branches.

That was the reason the Duchy had taken control of it in the first place.  It had been confiscated by the Coronet as a fine to one of the younger Lensely barons for killing someone he shouldn’t have at the wrong time and in the wrong place. 

Lady Arnet patiently tried to explain it to me while my patent of nobility was being drawn up, but I hadn’t paid much attention.  I was the first wizard in two centuries who held land in service to a noble lord, breaking the Bans.  I was excited.  I wasn’t interested in the story.  I wanted to hurry up and get to the tiny little sliver of history she had carefully removed from her dusty old books, not listen to a long droning recitation of the colorful history of the domain.  Perhaps I should have.

Sevendor was never any great prize.  While technically in the Riverlands, it was a seventy miles south of the nearest navigable river, a hill-country fief that hugged the valleys of the small but respectable mountains to the south.  It was one of those odd slivers of territory that doesn’t quite fit neatly into a region, a marginal property unblessed by the bountiful croplands of the river valleys. There was another parcel forty miles northwest I could have chosen, Ormacar, that would have been twice as large, half again as fertile, and which had two castles and four villages.  But I had my reasons for choosing Sevendor.

Sevendor was a vale in the northern the Uwarri Range (hardly mountains at all, compared to the majestic Mindens or the grand and rugged Kulines), a strip running east to west about six miles long and three and a half miles wide at the widest point,.   It was a kind of double-blind vale, two valleys stretching to a common gap to the north, separated by a low ridge. 

The smaller eastern area, known as Brestal Vale, had the better croplands, while the larger western vale, Sevendor proper, boasted an itinerant stream through its midst and several hundred acres of timberlands.  Neither lobe was particularly fertile, but the peasants farmed corn, beans, rye, millet, oats, garenth, goats, turkeys, and the occasional cow or sheep or llama and managed to stay alive.  

About all the apocrypha I could recall from Lady Arnet’s briefing was that Sevendor once had a history as a horse breeding farm; there was a substantial nut grove, pecans in particular, on the castle grounds.  The cadet branch of the Lensleys who had ruled there had exported a significant, though not substantial, amount of produce, before they’d lost it.   According to the historical record, in its prime Sevendor produced over three hundred bushels of corn for export, seventy bushels of nuts, and two hundred turkeys. 

But yields weren’t what they used to be.  Sevendor’s prime was over a century ago.

The geography was what had sold me on it, but not for the usual reasons.  The stream wasn’t very large, certainly not navigable by anything bigger than a canoe.   It ran cautiously through the center of the vale throughout most of the year and flooded spectacularly every spring, according to the dusty reports.  The croplands were marginal, and wouldn’t support more than a few thousand people without importing food.  It abutted three larger estates, all local nobles of distinguished lineage and honorable repute – which didn’t impress me in the slightest.

It had provided a modest twenty conscripts for the recent Farisian campaign, and three generations ago it had sent over three hundred militia to the disastrous Battle of Goez during one of the innumerable frontier disputes between Castal and Remere.  But the little domain had never really recovered from that.  None of the Castali at the Battle of Goez survived, Lady Arnet told me, and that had left Sevendor depopulated, with fewer and fewer peasants on the rolls every year.  Or, at least up to six years ago, the last time any reports were made.

I liked Sevendor partially because it was remote, and out of the way, naturally protected by mountains, yet but a quick two-day ride from the river port Sendaria to the north on the Bontal River, should I feel like doing any trade or need to get back to more civilized parts in a hurry.   It wasn’t a large land, it was easily manageable, yet it had great potential for development.  I was also counting on its modest size and productivity to keep it from seeming too alluring to my neighbors.  Property rights in a feudal society usually gets settled with lances.

Sevendor was too far from civilization to be considered more than a wardland, and its complete lack of strategic value left it unhampered by growth.  In other words it was an utterly average country knight’s estate.  It had been governed from afar for generations, appended to various high lords’ titles as an afterthought, traded in dowries and weregilds, and largely administered by proxy.  No actual Lord of Sevendor had set foot on the property for forty years.  And no Lord of Sevendor had been in residence there for a century and a quarter.

And it showed.

The neglect was obvious, from the moment we crossed the unwarded, unguarded, overgrown  frontier through the hill pass.  The country was pretty enough – pleasantly-forested hills, the tallest of which grew bald and rocky at their summits.  There was a distinct scent of decaying vegetation that cut through the crisp winter air.  But once the caravan crossed the point where the map included with my patent, I started to realize that things were amiss.

I pulled Traveler’s reigns to stop him, while Sir Cey and my brother-in-law Sagal both rode up beside me.  I stared at the derelict, burned-out pile of rocks that was supposed to be the watch tower to my fief, noted the weeds growing thick within, and I started to get anxious.

“This is Sevendor’s frontier,” I said, quietly.  “That’s supposed to be a three-story stone tower known as . . . Hyer’s Tower.”

“Hyer really needs to do some maintenance,” quipped my brother-in-law.

“That tower was taken in battle,” Sir Cei’s experienced eye informed him.  “Four, five years ago.  Milord Minalan, I mislike this.”

“You think you mislike this?” I asked, with a mirthless chuckle.  “This is my reward for saving two duchies.  I’m starting to wonder if it was worth the trouble.”

“Where to?” asked Cei.  He glanced at the split in the road – and “road” is a generous term.  It was a roughly-worn path overgrown with weeds and only occasionally flagged.  But it split, one road going south and the other heading west.

“Sevendor Castle is west,” I nodded, as the rest of the caravan began coming into the vale.  “South is Brestal Tower, the other holding.  We’ll start at the main castle.  I only hope it’s in better repair than the outbuildings,” I said, as I nudged Traveler to the right. 

“May the gods grant it so,” Cei said, automatically, and followed.  He didn’t sound encouraged.  But then Cei never sounded encouraged about anything.

The next indication that something was wrong was the boundary stone that indicated where one fief ended and the Sevendor began.  Two hundred yards past the ruined tower the west road took a decided turn for the worse, and there we found it, overgrown by weeds but noting the location of the frontier.

“This seems to be out of place,” I commented idly.  “Remind me to move it back where it belongs later.”

“My lord Minalan, traditionally such stones are used—”

“I know what they’re used for, Cei, and I know what it probably means.  But it’s getting dark and I don’t like the look of that sky.  Feels like snow.”  He couldn’t argue with that – he was used to Bovali winters, which start much earlier than in the Riverlands and rage much harder.  But there was no mistaking the smell of snow in the air.

It was a good ten minutes on that rough road before we saw any sign of humanity.  Peasants, of course, bundled up in homespun and furs against the chill, dutifully trudging about their business, herding goats or moving dirt or chopping wood.  There weren’t very many of them, though, and they didn’t look very jolly.  They wore uniform gray homespun, hemp or linen, and crudely woven straw hats.  A few had cloaks of wool, leather or fur.  No one waved or bowed.  They didn’t even look frightened of our party, or curious.  Growing up a commoner, I did more complaining about the nobility than cheering, but I also knew that a good Lord can make a land and its people prosper, and a poor one doom it to misery.  These people had misery in buckets.

“I’m glad we packed rations,” Sagal said, his eyes wide as we rode past a peasant woman hacking at the dry earth with a fire-hardened stick.  She was as thin as a bare blade. 

“Don’t stare,” I chided.  “It isn’t polite.” I nodded to the collection of huts on the north side of the road.  Stone, wattle and daub, with a roof of thatch, and none in good repair.  There were a few wide-eyed children playing in front of the huts, but they scattered and hid as soon as we approached.  The road had evolved into a simple track through the brush only wide enough for a single horse or light wagon.  The brush on the sides was more brown than green, and the prevalent form of plantlife seemed to be rocks.  They grew everywhere.  The few frozen cultivated fields we passed were full of them. 

“This looks like . . . “ Sagal began, quietly and darkly.

“. . . an excellent opportunity to prove what magic can do for a mageland,” I finished. 

He chuckled.  “That’s one way to look at it.”

As we followed the road across the little dale towards the village, we began to pass a few mean houses – only slightly better than the peasant huts, really.  They were separated by discouraged looking groves of pines, raethwood, and hawthorns, or untrimmed hedges.  The people we passed barely looked up from their fieldwork, and I saw only two or three draft animals in evidence.  It wasn’t quite as depressing as Terrorhall, where the Soulless pantomimed real life, but it reminded me of that. 

“They can’t farm all of this by hand,” Sagal said, confused.  “Even a hillfarm needs a beast or two to . . .” He was right.  I’d seen one donkey and two llamas, but that was about it as far as beasts of burden went.

“These people can’t afford the silage,” I noted, in a quiet voice.  “Goats are about the best they can do.  Look at how few fields they’ve planted.  And how steep the hillsides are.  Not much possibility of a lot of hay.”  We passed a few more lonely crofts and cottages along the way, but I didn’t really start to get depressed until we hit “town”. 

The tiny village outside of the castle was essentially a ring of ancient stone sheds, about fifteen families, and some smaller shacks.  I counted four that had been burned out and not rebuilt.

The tax records had indicated that Sevendor paid for seven hundred hearths, although there hadn’t been a payment since the Duchy took over the estate.  Each hearth meant someone was paying for the privilege to bake their own bread, the primary form of direct taxation.  Now each “hearth” could mean a family of anywhere from three to thirty, but on average it meant about five people, in my experience.  There should be thirty-five hundred people, therefore, at that tax rate.

But there couldn’t be, not based on what I was seeing.  The village may have held seventy hearths at one point, as the records indicated, but it had but a tithe of those now.   And most of those were peasants, too, not tradesmen.  Between them they farmed about three hundred and twenty acres, one third of it “mine”.  But less than half of that had looked under cultivation.  Sevendor was a ghost of its former self.

As we rode through the village I watched the furtive glances of the adults and the curious stares of the children, both through eyes grown gaunt with malnutrition.  There was no central building, although one house seemed a little more sturdy than the others.  There was no taphouse.  No inn.  No blacksmith.  No cooper, no woodwright . . . and certainly no spellmonger.  Rugged-looking goats avoided the rangy dogs who loped wolfishly between the huts.  The well in the village square was rough-cut and muddy.

“This place is disgusting,” Sagal noted under his breath.

“Someone has some things to answer for,” I agreed, my ire rising.  “This place has had the life and vitality raped out of it by someone.”

Sir Cei sneered in contempt as he nodded.  “Malfeasance or simple incompetence, its still neglect. There is no excuse for this.”

“This place is . . . awful,” Sagal noted, shaking his head in amazement.

“I think we should go speak to this knight,” I agreed. 

The local castellan, I’d learned at Wilderhall, was a landless knight who had a few powerful friends at court, and who took the job to enjoy the perquisites of lordship without any of the real responsibility.  Officially he oversaw taxation, local justice, and was in charge of keeping the lands in good repair – everything a legitimate lord of the land would do.  Since the bridge we crossed on the way into the village was damn close to rotting out under our horses’ hooves, the stocks on the other side occupied by two emaciated rogues, and every piece of homespun we saw was threadbare, I could surmise that the caretaker was better at the first two tasks than he was the last. 

And I would have to have words with him.

Thaddeus

Review: Spellmonger (The Spellmonger Series), by Terry Mancour

This is a fantasy story written in the first person, and it’s really rather good.

The protagonist is a spellmonger in a sleepy little village, where he's effectively retired from his previous line of work as a warmage. Unfortunately for him, war erupts and rather disturbs his formerly peaceful life, forcing him to return to action.

Mr. Mancour does a very good job of managing to mix the right proportions of the fantastical with the realistic. The protagonist, Minalan, is likeable and engaging, and he has the petty foibles and occasional virtues of any realistic person. Similarly, a number of other characters (his apprentice, his rival Garkesgu and Sire Koucey) are all nicely fleshed out, whilst remaining clearly in Minalan's shadow.

I shan't spoil the story but it progresses at a fairly swift pace early on before slowing for necessary plot reasons which see the tension rise until the book's end. The author does change the time perspective, jumping from the present to Minalan's early life and working through his mage training and his campaigning (perhaps a third or a quarter of the book's spent in the past). This works well from the off, and helps to further establish the protagonist and his outlook on life.

The fantasy world does have certain typical elements (mostly human with some goblins) but the goblins are nuanced beyond being just arrow fodder, and the additional races (not seen too much, except for the Tree Folk) seem interesting.

If there's a criticism to be made, it must be that a little more time spent checking and correcting errors would've been useful. Typos and similar problems are common (normally I wouldn't mention them, but there are quite a few).

However, the book is very enjoyable to read and I've already begun the sequel: Warmage.

Thaddeus