Author Interview - Rick Waugh

Hello and welcome to our latest interview! Today we'll be talking with with fantasy author and musician, Rick Waugh!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.

I’ve been a creative person my entire life. I started to play music seriously and to write when I was a teenager in the 1970s. I came close to selling a historical fantasy novel — but not quite close enough. It was painful to get that far and fail. I got busy with life, career, family, and put music before writing for the small amount of time I had. I didn’t start writing again until I retired.

I had a thought rattling around in my head for years, to write a series about a minstrel mage whose magic worked through music; the result was the Eternal Muse series, which I self published through winter 2021-2022. I also wrote all the music for the songs that appear in the books, recorded them and made videos for them as well.

I’m currently working on a new series, The Skin of the World - Gods of Chaos. The Skin of the World is a term that refers to the thin layer between our world and the supernatural, ripped open by Mischief the Trickster. Chaos magic, accompanied by every supernatural god or creature ever imagined by man, crept through the tear. My characters need to figure out how to manipulate the magic to survive.

To world build for the series, I wrote a 35 episode serial novel that I’m sending out through my newsletter twice a month. It was quite an exercise writing it — a serial story is a very different beast from a novel, trying to keep the episodes tied together, reminding the reader of what went before. I’m now working on what will be at least a trilogy in that world.

Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?

I started to read fantasy in the 1960s and 70s, when LOTR was huge, and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series came out. Obviously Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula Leguin, Lord Dunsany, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and on and on, too many to list. I always find it difficult to find other authors’ influence exactly in my writing, but…I’ve read an awful lot of fantasy, many different kinds, and it’s all sunk in, in its own way.

How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?

Kind of underpins everything, doesn’t it? I was having discussions with my critique group about my current work and it’s lack of proper medieval nobility levels, and during the Eternal Muse that level of culture reference was always coming up. How would you act if you were X in front of Y. What kinds of clothing, what kind of money, how would they interact. So even though it’s fantasy, and you can in theory do what you want, if you’re writing second world epic/high fantasy, that knowledge, those concepts of how things worked in the medieval period are always there, and you have to work around them, or at least, you feel you do. 

Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?

When I was in elementary school, grade 2 or 3, we didn’t have a library. We had a ‘book bus’ that came a couple of times a year, and they would feature a book. This one time it was the hobbit, and they had a paper mache map of Bilbo’s journey on the wall. My head pretty much exploded at seeing that, it was what I wanted to read. A few years later I read LOTR, and I read it three times in a row. So Tolkien’s entire feel, the cadence of the books, the sense of wonder, was engrained in my brain. The words were so completely beaten in that when the movies came out, I could tell what was dialogue from the books. So Tolkien got me into fantasy in the first place, and everything since then I’ve viewed in comparison; for me, it’s the wellspring. Do I write like him? No, I don’t think so. But that sense of wonder has never left me.

What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?

Honestly not sure about innovations. I’m not seeing a lot of wildly original books, just a lot of good ones. It’s hard to come up with entirely new stories when so many have been written, and the tried and true can’t help but leak into your own work. It is interesting that format variety is coming back; when it’s an ebook, people don’t seem to care so much whether it’s a novel, a novella, or a short story, as long as the length works for the tale being told. For the longest time in print it was novels only. Now you see writers creating series using novellas and short stories, and of course there are serial platforms like Vella available as well.

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?

I’m a bit tired of epic fantasy, of long heroic quests, massive, universe threatening struggles. One thing I always liked about the sword and sorcery I read when I was young was that it was often just about a couple of people trying to make their way in a fantasy environment. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, by Fritz Leiber, is a classic example. So, less epic consequences, more personal ones.

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?

I’m pretty tired of graphic violence and sex that does nothing to drive the plot. I’m not sure detailing rape or torture is useful at any time. As to steam, I’ve read some relatively steamy books where the sex was well integrated in the story and the relationships there, and drove the character arcs. But too often, it all just seems like cheap thrills tossed in. Which is fine, if that’s what readers want. But it feels like lazy writing to me.

Is there anything else related I didn't ask a question about that you'd like to add?

I feel we are in a state of transition. Amazon is constantly being filled by a river of new books, and now with ChatGPT making it ‘easier’ to write, magazines and agents are being buried by volume. The days of the Indie gold rush, where it was relatively easy to put your book up and make money, are done. Time to buckle down, put in a bit of extra polish, make your good books better, because I think that’s the only way to stand out from the crowd. Certainly what I’m going to try and do.

Where online can our readers find you and your work?

My website is https://rickwaughauthor.com. You can find listings of my books there, and a signup for my newsletter. You’ll also find links to my music there, which is recordings of all the songs I’ve written for my books.

Rick, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and experiences on Post-Tolkien and Post-Middle Ages influence!

Author Interview - Day Leitao

Hello and welcome to our latest author interview with YA fantasy author, Day Leitao!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.

I'm originally from Brazil and I like to write sci-fi and fantasy. I've written three YA fantasy series.

Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?

I'm not really sure. I grew up reading books in Portuguese. There's a Brazilian author I like very much, called Pedro Bandeira, but I'm not sure it's an influence. For English writing, I like Cassandra Clare and Holly Black. 

How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?

I studied Medieval Literature in university and I like it a lot. I enjoyed learning about a different language, the evolution of English and the history of Europe and the United Kingdom. It's so fascinating. Because I studied so much, I feel that I turned away from it when it was time for my writing. I just wanted something fresh and new, but the medieval literature and some of its meaning and influence will always be there, in the background, lurking. 

Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?

Yes. I love The Hobbit. I think it's nice that it places value in human relationships and friendships, and although it has a clear evil, it muddies the waters between good and evil with good characters doing things that, let's say, are not so great. 

What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?

I think we want to be as close as possible to characters, and that's a good thing. 

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?

There's so much out there already… But I'd love to see more diverse writers being promoted by publishers. 

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?

I don't think YA is the right place for titillating, explicit steam. Nothing against it, by the way, but it shouldn't be YA. I'm not saying YA can't have sex or that teens shouldn't read those books, but that, as a category, if books get detailed on what goes on down there, they shouldn't be YA.

Where online can our readers find you and your work?

Dayleitao.com has all the links!

I'm active on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/day_leitao_ya/

Day, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and experiences on Post-Tolkien and Post-Middle Ages influence!

Tales after Tolkien Society Annual General Meeting Survey

ℌello, again, all!

To facilitate getting the 2023 Annual General Meeting of the Tales after Tolkien Society scheduled, an email has gone out to listed members at the email addresses most recently on record for them. If you're a member--check your spam folder, just to be sure, and check the list, here, for our current membership--and you didn't get one, please send the Society an email so that we can get things corrected.

If you'd like to be a member, send the Society an email so we can get you listed!

Agenda items already known are elections for the VP (At-large) and Secretary, currently Andrew Higgins and Rachel Sikorski, respectively, as well as proposals for panels for the 2024 Congress. If you're willing to stand to office, or if you have ideas for panels, let us know!

As ever, thank you for your continued interest and support!

Author Interview - Steven Piziks

Hello and welcome to our latest author interview with science fiction and fantasy author, Steven Piziks (also writing as Steven Harper)!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.

I started my first novel when I was nine years old. It was about a boy who was kidnapped by aliens living under the sea, and I worked on it assiduously. The manuscript disappeared a long time ago, and I sometimes wonder what I'd think of it if I read it now!

When I was thirteen, I sold an article about raising rabbits to THE MOTHER EARN NEWS. My first professional sale! Ten years later, I sold a short story to one of the SWORD AND SORCERESS anthologies, and I've mostly stayed in the F&SF provinces since, though I've also written mysteries, thrillers, media books, steampunk, and romance. Twenty-six books and several dozen short pieces in all.

My fantasy trilogy The Books of Blood and Iron (IRON AXE, BLOOD STORM, and BONE WAR) came about because my editor at Penguin Random House, who had edited my steampunk books, said she would love to see a fantasy series from me. I pitched several ideas at her, but she rejected all of them. I finally remembered a short story I'd written years earlier about a teenaged boy who was half human, half troll. I'd always thought Trollboy would make a good series protagonist, so I pitched that. My editor loved the idea, and the series was born.

The books were initially meant to be historical fantasy set in the Viking era, but my editor said, "Vikings don't sell," so I moved the story to a world of my own creation and modified it. You can still see the Viking influence. Tolkien and I swiped from the same sources!

Most recently, I wrote a short story called "Eight Mile and the City" for WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, an anthology put out by Zombies Need Brains. It's science fiction noir story about a hard-boiled detective set in near-future Detroit, and it won the Washington Science Fiction Association award for small press short fiction last year, so now I can call myself an award-winning author!

Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?

This is a hard one to answer. I read everything I could get my hands on when I was growing up. My small-town library didn't have much fantasy or science fiction, so I read everything else. I was finally able to get Edward Eager and CS Lewis on inter-library loan thanks to my school librarian (thank you, Mrs. Hoerger!), and they stayed with me. I still have a copy of HALF MAGIC somewhere. I'd like to list Octavia E. Butler as an influence, but while she's my favorite writer, I can't say that I write anything like her. Who could?

My writers group—the Untitled Writers Group of Ann Arbor—has had a tremendous influence, though. They're my beta readers, and they include everything from full-time writers to Nebula finalists to short story writers to newcomers. We meet twice a month and critique each other's work. Without them, it probably would have taken me ten years longer to get published than it did!

How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?

Oh, man! How has it not? There's so much wild history, anyway—stuff that you can't put in a fiction book because fiction has to make sense. I've put material into my work that got an editor to say, "This isn't believable, so you'll have to take it out" when it was based on an actual event. Like dressing a pig up in a hat and coat and putting it on trial for witchcraft. Or that in Germany, a married couple could get a divorce if they fought a few rounds of public combat, but the husband had to stand in a hole with one hand behind his back and the wife's weapon was a sack of rocks. I'm sure the people involved had reasons that made perfect sense to them, but now we laugh and point fingers. It makes me wonder what people will laugh at when they look back at us.

To me, the fun and interesting parts of medieval history are the ordinary things. Historians love to write about monarchs and wars and explorers, but I want to read about John, who built a house under a beech ("bacchan") tree and became known as John Bacon. What was his day like? What was his relationship with his wife like? Did they marry for love, economic reasons, or both? What kind of bed did they sleep in? How did he decide what to plant on his farm? But the ordinary stuff rarely got recorded. Why write down how to make bread when everyone knows how to do it already? That kind of stuff I have to hunt for.

But the more I read about history, the more it becomes clear that people haven't changed one tiny bit. They're kind and cruel, loving and hateful, proud, and self-effacing. Most love their children and want what's best for them, while some are shockingly abusive. They fall in and out of love. They keep secrets. They squabble with their neighbors. The technology changes, but people don't. It makes it easier to write, really—the people in the Middle Ages are us!

Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?

Tolkein paved the way for the trilogy. Yeah, I know he wanted five books and the publisher persuaded him to make it three, but still. As a result of Tolkein, the trilogy is still the main way publishers want to package fantasy and science fiction, and it means that I plan stories assuming I'll write three books.

This means, of course, that I get asked to write four.

When I finished NIGHTMARE, the second book in the Silent Empire series, my editor abruptly offered me a two-book contract instead of a single. Suddenly my carefully-planned story was in disarray! I had to conjure up a fourth book without making it feel like it was just tacked on to the third. When I finished THE DRAGON MEN, my third Clockwork Empire book, I was knackered. Exhausted. Dead. I couldn't even write blog entries. Then my editor said, "I'd really like a fourth book in this series."

I said, "Whu—?"

She said, "That's right."

I said, "But I'm done! I finished the story. It's all over. No more plot left."

She said, "We'll give you a bigger advance."

I said, "I'll have you a pitch by Thursday." This became THE HAVOC MACHINE.

Despite the above, I still planned my Books of Blood and Iron fantasy series to be a trilogy. This time, I wrote exactly three books.

Tolkien didn't think small. His books cover big, world-wrecking events. Dragons that decimate an entire country. Wars that cover an entire continent. Magic that affects entire millennia. But his books always start small. A hole in the ground. A country village. A wandering ranger. As we move through the story, the world—and the events—get bigger and bigger. Immortal elves. A dark kingdom of orcs and goblins. A mountain full of vengeful spirits.

The Book of Blood and Iron start with a slave—thrall—in a small village who is best friends with a girl born in a foreign land. But the story moves forward and outward to encompass a kingdom of trolls, a city of merfolk, a kingdom of wyrm-riding orcs, a continent cracked in two.  Death herself.

Tolkien pushes us all.

What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?

Afrofuturism is the current big one. It has opened up an entire new world—worlds—of storytelling. My friend Nisi Shawl has been one of the pioneers in the field, and I've been thrilled with the attention her work his getting now!

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?

Gay lead characters. Mainstream fantasy and science fiction still usually put LGBTQ characters into secondary roles, if they appear at all. It's getting better, but nowhere near parity!

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?

The prejudice against e-reading. It's strange—you'd think that fantasy and science fiction readers would thoroughly embrace e-books, but it's really been the romance readers who have flocked to it. F&SF readers are, a bit oddly, old-school when it comes to books. I flipped over to e-books when I had to move unexpectedly, and I saw how many books I had. There wasn't room for them in the new place, and I realized that most of the fiction books I would never read again, and nearly everything in the non-fiction books was available online, so I ruthlessly pruned my collection and donated most of it to the local Friends of the Library organization. Now I'm a firm e-book reader. They're convenient and take up zero storage space. Yet I get criticized for reading them, as if I'm somehow a traitor to reading! I don't quite get it.

Is there anything else related I didn't ask a question about that you'd like to add?

Keep reading, keep reading, keep reading! Now more than ever, we need readers. Read those odd books, those quirky books, the ones that are different. Publishers have lately become gun shy about anything controversial, so read those books, too! The more books that sell, the more books that get written.

Where online can our readers find you and your work?

Check my website: http://stevenpiziks.com/ And any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Steven, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and experiences on Post-Tolkien and Post-Middle Ages influence!

Author Interview - Rachel Aaron

Hello and welcome to our latest author interview with fantasy and sci-fi author Rachel Aaron!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.

I'm Rachel Aaron, and I'm the author of over twenty novels both self published and trad. I've been doing this full time since 2008, which seems crazy now that I type it. My books are fun, dramatic, full of magic, and always have a happy ending, even if I put the characters through a few books of hell to get there. 

Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?

I was hugely influenced by 90s fantasy I read growing up. I devoured big epics like The Wheel of Time, but also more intimate works by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Elizabeth Moon. I also really loved anything by Ursula Le Guin or Peter S. Beagle. The Last Unicorn was my favorite novel growing up. In terms of my actual writing voice, though, I think my single biggest influence was probably The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia Wrede. Other than an obvious preference for dragons, my books are very different from hers, but there's something about her fun, easy voice that clicked hard inside me as a kid and still shows up in my writing to this day.

How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?

I've always loved learning about history. I was one of those kids who loved getting lost in museums, and I specialized in Renaissance literature in college. The thing I find most powerful about history is that the people then are exactly the same people we have today. They're just as smart, just as inventive, just as dedicated to their causes. The only difference is environment: the world in which they live. Look at it that way and it's easy to see why history and Fantasy go so well together. They're both humans in a different world. The middle ages in particular are exciting because they're far enough back to seem magical from a modern perspective but close enough to still feel familiar. They're the best of all worlds!

Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?

I don't think there's a genre writer alive who can honestly say their work wasn't impacted by Tolkien. He's the water we swim in. The ideas he made popular--secondary worlds, ancient magic, dark lords, ferocious dragons, underground cities, fellowships of heroes--are so baked into our shared language of tropes and references, a fantasy novel without Tolkien probably wouldn't even be labeled Fantasy.

So in that very broad way, Tolkien was a huge influence on me. Specifically, however, I was never a Middle Earth fangirl. I read the books and enjoyed them well enough, but I was much more influenced by the stories that came after his...which were themselves influenced by Tolkien. He really is the foundation.

What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?

I've written all over SFF, from hardcore SciFi with my Paradox series as Rachel Bach to classic Fantasy with my Eli Monpress books, Urban Fantasy with my DFZ novels, and now historical Fantasy set in the Old West with The Last Stand of Mary Good Crow. Over the years, I've seen a lot of fads in all the genres, but the movement I'm most excited about is the expansion of Fantasy and SciFi to include a wider range of voices, experiences, and stories. Just look at the popularity of stories like Gideon the Ninth and pretty much anything by NK Jemisin and you'll see we're in a different world than the mostly white, mostly male-dominated Fantasy marketplace most of us grew up with, which is a very very good thing. Fantasy has and will always be my absolute favorite thing to read, watch, and play games about. I want it to grow and spread as much as possible so I have more amazing stories to read!

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?

Happiness. I know Game of Thrones made a lot of money, but so many of the new books I try just seem so...grim.
It's very frustrating for me as a reader because when I pick up a book, I want to go on an adventure and learn some magic, not be crushed by the grinding unfairness of the world. Fantasy is all about the power of the individual to change the world! It's the one place where good really can triumph, so let's have some happier books!

What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?

Isekai/trapped in another world stories. This genre is freaking everywhere right now, and while I'm guilty of this too since I wrote my own trapped in the game series (Forever Fantasy Online), that was like 4 years ago. I love Isekai a lot, but I feel we've really hit the bottom of this trend. At the very least, I'd love to see some isekai stories that come at the tropes from a new angle. Then again, it keeps selling, so what do I know?

Is there anything else related I didn't ask a question about that you'd like to add?

Not really, this has been a wonderful series of questions!

Where online can our readers find you and your work?

www.rachelaaron.net has a full breakdown of everything I've ever written along with my contact form, mailing list, and all my social media links. If you're looking for anything Rachel, that's place to look. 

Thanks so much for having me!

Rachel, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and experiences on Post-Tolkien and Post-Middle Ages influence!