A.I.Q. (Author Invented Questions)

A.I.Q. (Author Invented Questions)

What is your book about?

It is a fantasy story of a young man named Mica just getting started out in his world.  The setting is high fantasy without a lot of grime, gore, and guts is featured.  The characters spend most of their time resolving their individual situations without killing.  As an author I figured that to set myself apart from the more violently themed fantasy literature this was something I wanted to do and achieve with the Tales from the Reading Dragon Inn series I’m writing.

Do your books The Lucky Cricket and Thomas the Poisoner contain romance?

Yes.  They do contain romance in addition to action and adventure.  They also talk quite a bit about food.  However, for those looking for more salacious activity, all of the private parts of the romance story lines occur “off stage”, and will remain without graphic depiction. I fully intend the Tales from the Reading Dragon Inn books to be readable by a PG style audience (a suggested age of 12 years and up depending on maturity and reading skill).  My other books in the series will likely also contain romance, but all of them are fantasy novels first, and contain romance as a secondary characteristic.

Where did you get your story ideas from?

That is a hard question to answer at length.  The best short answer is from my brain.  The longer answer is from reading a large volume of books, watching a lot of fantasy themed programs, and playing Role Playing Games (RPG) since 1978.  The individual influences literally total in the hundreds if not thousands over the years.  What it comes down to is that I’ve come to know the kinds of stories I like to experience, so I set out to write some original stories in a similar vein.

How come you are publishing Tales from the Reading Dragon Inn Book 2 first?

Because it is the book I started second.  I know that makes little sense, but let me elaborate.  I have been writing Book 2 and Book 1 of the series pretty much at the same time.  As I got a little bit held up on one book, I switched over to the other to write.  It just happened that the story of Thomas the Poisoner came together much quicker of the two.  I am still working on the first book The Lucky Cricket, and I plan to have it available by July 2011 if all goes well in its production.  UPDATE: Per my plan The Lucky Cricket has been released in July 2011. Yay!. I love it when I manage to prognosticate with this level of accuracy six months in advance.

Are you planning to write any more books in this series?

Yes.  I have already begun working on the third book in the series.  Some characters from the first two books will return in cameo roles, but like The Lucky Cricket and Thomas the Poisoner each book is a self contained story featuring a different protagonist.  I’m not following the pattern of titling all my books after a single character and pushing out dozens of them in a continuing series.  However, key characters I write in each book will show up again in the subsequent works.

Could you reveal a secret (something which can only be learned by reading your web page) about your first two books?

I’ve probably got people wondering in some my books about the behaviors of the title characters.  I have a very good personal reason for their behavior which has its roots in role playing games.  In role playing games (RPGs) there is a concept of character which are “played” by the players much like actors in a performance.  Then there is also the concept of narrator controlled characters often referred to as Non-Player Characters (or NPCs for short).  These characters in the story serve the same general purpose as an NPC in a RPG.  They set up the heroes with a quest, and point them in the direction they need to go.  The difference is that these stories are told more from the perspective of those who give the quests instead of those who complete them.