TA Frost interview

Today I’m interviewing TA Frost about his forthcoming dark fantasy novel Up To The Throne, which came out on the 18^th December.

Q: First things first: is it a stand-alone novel, or the first part in a series?

A: Up To The Throne is a stand-alone novel, but there will be two sequels, which will involve the same characters in further adventures. They'll also introduce the setting: I've got plans for a much longer set of related novels, but that's a very long-term objective at the moment.

Q: What’s the premise of Up To The Throne?

A: Several years ago, a petty criminal was left to die when a crime lord wiped out the stable of thieves of which she was a part. She was little more than a witness to be silenced - but she survived, and has returned to her home city to take her revenge. However, things have changed since she fled, and the man who ordered her death is now a respected member of society, whose killing will leave the city vulnerable to some very bad people indeed. Giulia, our heroine, must decide whether to take her revenge, even if doing so may bring the city down.

Q: Up To The Throne’s protagonist is Giulia Degarno. What can you tell us about her? What’s her background and aspirations?

A: Giulia is something of a renegade: once a pickpocket, she now fits into that grey area between enforcing the law and breaking it - and has considerable experience concerning theft. She's bitter and vengeful, but also intelligent, loyal and very skilled - not the best person in her world, but not the worst by a very long way. A useful person to know, and a bad one to cross!

Q: The blurb describes the story as taking place in a Renaissance city. Is it historical fiction, or a Renaissance-style city in a mythical world?

A: The setting of Up To The Throne is to the Renaissance what a lot of classic fantasy is to Medieval Europe: a magical, slightly condensed version of the present. Giulia's world has a lot of parallels with our own, but with one main difference: magic. Magic not just in terms of wizardry, but in enchantments that enable all sorts of bizarre contraptions to work, and in the magical creatures who occupy a perilous but important position in society.

Q: Again going by the blurb, it sounds strongly Italian (and perhaps Roman) influenced: what sort of technology is used? Do we have gunpowder, or are crossbows de rigueur? Is magic present in this world and, if so, how does it work?

A: We do have gunpowder, although (as with the real world back then) it's imperfect, expensive and not very reliable. There is magic, but this is a fairly low-magic setting, in that there are not many wizards who can throw fireballs around (probably fortunately, what with the gunpowder!). Magic is more often encountered in subtle forms, such as alchemy and enchantments. Timber soaked in the right alchemical reagents, for instance, is ideal for making flying machines...

Q: Recent years have seen some cracking grimdark books released, although the squeamish find them a bit much. How much sex and violence can we expect to enjoy in your new dark fantasy book?

A: The sex and violence is really hard to answer. It's not actually incredibly graphic, but there definitely is some violence. More interesting to me is a sense of murkiness and danger, like a film noir. One of my big non-SFF influences is Raymond Chandler, and while his books aren't wall-to-wall gore, there's a real feeling of corruption, intrigue and menace. So I don't mind if people want to describe Up To The Throne as grimdark, but I don't think it revels in carnage. Maybe a 15 rather than 18 rating?

Q: What sources, whether historical or fictional, helped inspire the setting and/or characters? Are there hints of Machiavelli and Borgia?

A: There were loads of inspirations! Definitely history, and the Borgias, Medicis and so on would certainly feature highly. You can find some fascinating bits and pieces in history that help you go beyond the stereotypes. Also, I looked at a lot of paintings from that time, which help to focus my mind on the setting. But I was also influenced by crime novels and other fantasy: the inspiration for Giulia came from a picture in an old D&D manual!

Q: Obviously, people know you (as Toby Frost) from writing the adventures of Space Captain Smith. Although you’ve written several entries in that sci-fi comedy series, this is your first foray into both ‘serious’ fantasy and self-publishing. What different challenges have those two things presented?

A: Writing fantasy and books without jokes doesn't feel like that much of a worry - in a way, it's quite nice not to have to be funny. There's the same sense of building a world that I've had with the Smith books, and populating it with interesting stories and strange people. Self-publishing is a bit scary, though: there's this real fear that, after all the hard work, your book just vanishes into the ether. And, of course, you've not got the support network that you usually have. So it's quite daunting, to be honest! In a way I'm seeing it as an experiment, but Up To The Throne is a story I've wanted to tell for a long time, and it's good to be able to tell it.

Q: After Up To The Throne is released, what are you immediate plans for writing and publishing? More dark fantasy, a return to comedy, or a bit of both?

A: As for what happens next, there's loads of ways it could go. I'd like to return to Space Captain Smith's world, perhaps to write something at a bit of a tangent. But I've also got plans for more fantasy, and I'm working on a sequel to Up To The Throne right now. So there's a lot of potential - the difficult bit is in making it work!

Thanks to TA Frost for the interview, and if you want to buy the book or learn more, check out these links:

Buy on Amazon

Author site

Book mini-site

Thaddeus

Review: A Game of Battleships, by Toby Frost

A Game of Battleships is the fourth Space Captain Smith adventure, and sees the eponymous hero once again accompanied by his lunatic friend Suruk the Slayer, cowardly alcohol-enthusiast pilot Polly Carveth and love interest space hippy Rhianna.

The British Space Empire is seeking to sign a treaty so that the civilised races of the galaxy can stand together against the deranged forces of Ghast, New Edenites and Lemming-men. Unfortunately, the enemy has a seemingly unstoppable new battleship and are rather keen to use it...

The style of comedy is, as you would expect, in line with the first three books, and has many nods to the past and British stereotypes. My favourite new addition was undoubtedly the fairly brief appearance of a Hellfire space fighter's autopilot, who has all the restraint and serenity of a Klingon on crack.

There are occasional formatting issues (new paragraphs not indented) but these are minor and infrequent.

Although the enemies are not new, there is some new mockery of the EU and French, which (as one might expect) I rather liked. The spawn of Suruk (check the cover's lower left corner) are also a nice little addition.

It's an enjoyable read, and if you liked the earlier instalments (reviews/interviews here) then you'll like this. There will be at least one more Space Captain Smith book.

Thaddeus

Interview 2 with Toby Frost: Interview Harder

My first interview with the author of the Space Captain Smith series, Toby Frost, (which was also the first interview I did for this blog) can be read here.

I’m delighted to say that I managed to prise him away from the tea and crumpet long enough to ask some more questions.

Q: It was May 2011 when we did the first interview, and you said (correctly, as we’ll shortly see) there was more to come from Space Captain Smith. A Game of Battleships is due out in August. Could you give us a quick rundown of the plot’s premise?

A: Certainly. In short, Isambard Smith and his supposedly trusty crew are given a mission to hunt down a mysterious vessel that’s been picking off convoys at the edge of the British Space Empire. Meanwhile, the Empire is about to sign a top-secret treaty with its allies. Unfortunately, the head of security for the treaty is Major Wainscott, a half-sane commando with a propensity for nudism and violence, and the ship that Smith is hunting turns out to have sinister powers of its own. Things soon take a turn for the chaotic as cultists, aliens, creatures from another dimension and about a thousand killer frogs become involved...

Q: As well as writing the Space Captain Smith comedy sci-fi series you’ve also penned some more serious fantasy. Do you think we’ll see your fantasy before Space Captain Smith book 5, or is it too early to say?

A: It’s really hard to say. I honestly don’t know whether the fantasy novel will ever see print. I do have some other projects on the go, so there’s a lot to deal with. I wish I had more time to write, but then there is this annoying day job thing to take into account.

Q: Will we be getting other versions (audiobook and e-book) of A Game of Battleships (Amazon currently only lists a printed version)?

A: I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see an ebook version. As for audio, I’m not sure as yet. It would be nice, as I was very impressed with the audiobooks of the first three stories.

Q: Do you find comedy easier or harder to write than ‘serious’ stuff?

A: It’s a very different discipline. Of course, you’ve got the extra effort of writing jokes as well as stories. You also have to keep the jokes coming, which means that you don’t have to – and can’t – go off on rambling asides, or change the tone too drastically. That said, I think people have a tendency not to regard comedy very, er, seriously. Perhaps you can get away with slightly more when you’re telling jokes, but then you have to write the jokes in the first place. I think it evens out as about equivalent in difficulty.

Q: Do you find it easier to do world- and character-building for fantasy or sci-fi, or is it pretty much the same in terms of difficulty/challenge?

A: Pretty much the same. A lot of the time I’ll find myself looking at real-world history and extrapolating some interesting detail, or using a real story as the springing-board for making something up. There are many broad themes you can latch onto that make good inspiration: the empire-building of the Victorians, or the intrigue and progress in the Renaissance. You end up knowing an awful lot more than you can ever put into your stories, but that’s just how research works. When I get famous, I’ll put it all the extra stuff in a role-playing game. Have I ever told you about the adventures of Old Blueteeth the space pirate...?

Q: When you aren’t writing, how do you like to unwind?

A: I am somewhat geeky and spend a lot of time reading and building model kits. I don’t play that many computer games, but there are a few that really grip me, usually where you can amble round a world exploring. I’m lucky enough to live in the countryside, so quite often I’ll go for a wander in the woods nearby. It’s good exercise, and there’s less chance of being eaten by a dragon.

Q: What’s been your best moment as a writer?

A: There’ve been a lot! I’m always very pleased when people say they’ve enjoyed the books. I also like seeing the covers, because they’re so well-drawn. It seems to make the books so much more real, to know that the publishers liked it enough to commission a picture! But in general, it’s knowing that people have enjoyed the stories. That and the royalty cheques.

Q: Which authors first inspired you to become a writer?

A: The first writers that really seemed to be saying something of direct relevance to me were George Orwell and Mervyn Peake. I then read Raymond Chandler, and loved his writing. All of those authors had a very strong, clear prose style, and even when being florid, were always precise. It also helped that two of them had strong social consciences, and were skilled enough to be able to integrate their own views into their stories without seeming to regurgitate the Guardian editorial.

Q: Darker fantasy, as epitomised by Martin, Abercrombie and Lynch, has in recent years become some of the most popular. There’s been a bit of a criticism for it recently, with the subgenre dubbed ‘grimdark’ and attacked by certain quarters for being too nasty. What’s your view on this, and how dark or delightful is your own fantasy?

A: I think it’s part of the process of fantasy moving on from being (apologies to the exceptions) a genre massively overshadowed by one writer, Tolkien. However, a bad book with rape and murder is still a bad book. We have to be careful not to move from writing childish books where everyone in the kingdom is permanently overjoyed to adolescent books where everyone is miserable and incontinent. Monty Python covered that territory in the Holy Grail ages ago, and the first book would probably be more fun anyhow.

What I’d like to read in fantasy would be shorter, more eccentric books, with unusual characters and one story per volume, that were about something other than saving the world. Not every thriller is about assassinating the president, so why shouldn’t we have a fantasy novel about someone trying to find his mum? My feeling is that to produce really great novels, fantasy has to ditch the soap opera elements. Of course, this won’t happen, since series sell...

My own stuff was written a long time ago, and I always tried for a noir-type feel, with a level of realism somewhere around John le Carre or Raymond Chandler. I don’t see it as dark as such, just realistic within its own setting. But at the end of the day, if the story is about talking rabbits on a pony farm, there’s no point squeezing in a load of carnage if it’s going to make the story false. You have to get the tone right in any sort of novel, comedy or otherwise.

Thanks for the questions – it’s been interesting!

Thaddeus

Review: Wrath of the Lemming-men (Chronicles of Isambard Smith), by Toby Frost

The third (and presently final) book describing the escapades of Space Captain Smith once again features the Ghast, but this time they’re joined by new allies. Allies filled with insane rage, and the suicidal instinct to hurl themselves from high places. The Yull, also known as Lemming-men, featured briefly in God-Emperor of Didcot and are more prominent in Wrath of the Lemming-men (as might be expected, given the title).

The Vorl also make a ghostly return. Beings of an ethereal nature and great power, they are sought after by the dreaded Ghast 462, who plots to splice their super-advanced genes into Ghast bio-technology. This would provide Gertie with incredibly powerful soldiers, and Space Captain Smith is dispatched at once to stop the diabolical plot.

We also get a pair of new adversaries, the high ranking Number Eight of the Ghast and Colonel Vock, deadly lemming and nemesis of Suruk the Slayer.

The plot’s a bit meatier this time around, and the characters get a little bit more developed. Carveth, the escaped sex toy who became the ship’s pilot, mechanic and chief coward, in particular sees a bit more of the spotlight.

Isambard Smith leads his motley assortment of misfits, aided along the way by Dreckitt and Wainscott, from world to world as they track down the likeliest place to find the mysterious Vorl. It’s unusually packed with plot developments and twists, actually, particularly in contrast to God-Emperor of Didcot which was a bit simpler. Suruk’s family make a welcome return and provide some of the most amusing moments.

Suruk remains my firm favourite due to his, er, unorthodox take on the universe, but it’s nice to see the others, especially Carveth, get a bit more fleshed out.

The book's got as much humour as the previous two, but benefits from developing the characters a bit more. All of the crew get some sort of development and a bit more of the limelight. However, the story doesn't get bogged down with terribly serious moments, and although it's a more complicated plot than God-Emperor of Didcot the book doesn't suffer for it.

What does the future hold for Space Captain Smith?

Well, he’s going to star in some audiobooks of the present three stories chronicling his heroic deeds.

When I interviewed Mr. Frost, the author, earlier this month (http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.com/2011/05/interview-with-toby-frost-author-of.html), he had this to say:

Q: Lastly, will we see a new Space Captain Smith book and, if so, when?

TF: I really want to do more Smith. I certainly feel that there are loads of jokes and adventures still to come, and I’ve made notes for more. Unfortunately it’s really difficult to say when I'll be able to write them at the moment.

So, it’s likely that we’ll see him again, though we don’t know when. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.

Thaddeus

An interview with Toby Frost, author of the Chronicles of Isambard Smith

To my delight that splendid fellow Toby Frost agreed to a little interview. So, here it is:

Q: I remember reading somewhere (probably on Chrons http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum) that you almost accidentally fell into writing Space Captain Smith and actually planned to do something else first. What’s the story behind that and Smith’s origin?

TF: Yes, I started writing Smith whilst writing a very serious fantasy epic, really just as an outlet for all the jokes and silliness that weren’t happening in my grim and bloody version of the Renaissance. Needless to say, the fantasy masterpiece isn’t published, and Space Captain Smith is. I still have hopes that one day, perhaps when I’ve backstabbed my way to Prince, I’ll be able to get the fantasy novel published at last. I think it’s great, but that’s just me.

Q: In my review of God Emperor of Didcot I describe the world of Space Captain Smith as Blackadder meets Red Dwarf. What were your inspirations when you wrote the books?

TF: Blackadder always has been a great inspiration. It strikes a great balance between fart jokes and historical references. There may be funnier comedy, but not much better comedy. While I enjoyed some of Red Dwarf it’s never been that much of an influence. I’d also cite Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, the Biggles books and of course Dan Dare. Frank Hampson was a genius. A lot of the things I’ve parodied are also pretty good: ranging from old war films to The Difference Engine and, of course, the British.

Q: I checked your website recently and saw you have a number of free mini-stories available for download http://spacecaptainsmith.com/, and that Smith is now on twitter http://twitter.com/isambardsmith. What d’you make of the rising importance of technology, including eBooks and eReaders?

TF: To be honest I’m not a natural technocrat. Twitter baffles me pretty much, although I do like having a web presence. I think it brings readers and writers together in a way I wouldn’t have imagined when I was younger. As to ebooks, they’re not really to my taste – I much prefer actually owning a solid object, especially since all the digital technology I own breaks with alarming frequency – but if they get people reading, so much the better. I wonder if we will get some new way of quality assurance better than the Amazon review stars, though.

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

TF: I’d suggest new writers keep reading and keep writing. You have to get the practice in to get better, as with any craft, and reading widely enables you to see things you wouldn’t normally get. I write comedy, and often find myself turning to Raymond Chandler and George Orwell, neither of whom are renowned for their levity, just to see how good writing can be done. I’d also suggest joining a good writing group. There are some excellent ones out there. That’s actually about four pieces of advice, but then again the world is a better place for me not having gone into maths.

Q: What’s your favourite aspect of being a writer?

TF: I’m not sure, really. Getting paid for doing what I enjoy is pretty good, as is being able to do what I’m probably best at. I’ve still not got used to going into bookshops and seeing my name on the shelves. That’s pretty excellent too.

Q: Do you ever suffer writer’s block, and, if you do, how do you work through it?

TF: I don’t really get much writer’s block. Whenever I’ve found myself not getting into a scene, I do tend to write a later one and go back to the first scene later on. I try to keep this to a minimum, but it’s sometimes necessary. But to be honest, most of the time I’m so keen to get the words down and the story out it isn’t really too much of a problem.

Q: You mentioned on Chrons that audiobooks of the three SCS books will be out at some point. Can you give away who the reader is?

TF: The reader of the audio books is a chap called Clive, and very good he is too. He has a good feeling for the characters, and manages to strike the right balance between being slightly silly and completely ridiculous. They’re coming together pretty well. Highly recommended!

Q: Lastly, will we see a new Space Captain Smith book and, if so, when?

TF: I really want to do more Smith. I certainly feel that there are loads of jokes and adventures still to come, and I’ve made notes for more. Unfortunately it’s really difficult to say when I'll be able to write them at the moment. There should be a new longish short story out in the next few months, and of course the audio-books, but I’m still trying to get life and writing in general sorted out enough to be able to promise a fourth book at a definite date. That doesn’t mean we’ve heard the last of Smith, though: I’ve loved writing it and would love to do more!

Many thanks to Mr. Frost for kindly agreeing to give me the interview, and here’s hoping Space Captain Smith gives Gertie a darn good British-style thrashing in the fourth book.

Thaddeus

Review: God Emperor of Didcot (Chronicles of Isambard Smith), by Toby Frost

God Emperor of Didcot is the second book featuring Space Captain Smith (the first being cunningly entitled Space Captain Smith). It’s a sci-fi comedy set in the fairly distant future and detailing the escapades of the heroic space captain as he battles the evil enemies of the British Space Empire.

The sci-fi world Smith inhabits is very much Blackadder meets Red Dwarf. There is a lot of gentle mockery, both of the British and Johnny Foreigner. Moments of amusement are almost constant, and some parts are quite hilarious.

Smith, equipped with a moustache and healthy distrust of the French, has a small but interesting crew, including a navigator android who is actually an escaped sex toy and a hippy Smith desperately wants to get into bed. However, my personal favourite is Suruk the Slayer, a Morlock psychopath who collects severed heads and enjoys mocking Carveth (the navigator).

The author doesn’t get bogged down with scientific technicalities, and the plot is nice and fast-paced. Unlike the fantasy I usually read, this is absolutely not gritty, although there’s plenty of violence. The comedy’s often sarcastic and satirical, which suits me and fits in nicely with the British theme.

In God Emperor of Didcot, Smith is ordered to the planet Didcot, home of the empire’s most productive tea plantations, to try and head off a potential insurrection by lunatic zealots. Naturally, things go awry, and our British hero must use all his cunning to try and claim victory.

The book is simple, very enjoyable and well worth reading. The only potential downside is that I only have one more Space Captain Smith book to read now. Hopefully, more will be forthcoming.

Thaddeus