Guest Blog Post Archives

Welcome to Val Hall…

November 19, 2019 June 13, 2020

Today we’re joined by Alma Alexander. Alma’s life so far has prepared her very well for her chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with her husband and two cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination.

Val Hall: The Even Years — *Available from Book View Café, 26 November 2019*

What do you suppose would happen if a perfectly ordinary human being somehow seized a moment in which an extraordinary ability blossomed to face a crisis or an adversity… and turned themselves into a literal ‘superhero’? In the introductory story of the Val Hall books, the founder of the place talks about Superheroes First Class (they can’t help it, they’re gods, and that just comes with baggage…) and Superheroes Second Class (rich mortals, effectively – people who can use their wealth to create a superhero persona or trick themselves out with ‘special’ abilities, people who need zero help from the rest of us…) and then there’s Superheroes Third Class, people just like you and me, people who might claim to have done a single extraordinary thing that changed the world.

Val Hall: The Odd Years — *Available from Book View Café in January 2020*

Val Hall is there to help these people, when they get too wounded, or too old, to care for themselves. This is home, the last home of all, the place where you come to find your kind and to be loved, respected, even venerated, but never patronized or belittled or treated like you’re no longer important or necessary. Val Hall is the Retirement and Rest Home for Superheroes, Third Class. A place to find sanctuary when the world moves on from your own moment. A place where such legacies are brought to be remembered, and appreciated. A place that will find you when you need it – a sort of Hogwarts, which will send you an invitation to take your place amongst the deserving when the time comes when you have a need for it.

Val Hall: Century — *All the tales from the first two volumes, plus four new stories. Coming soon from Book View Café.*

You might think that there is very little to be said on the subject of decrepit, ancient, geriatric ex-heroes in a nursing home in the twilight of their lives – but you’d be wrong. This is the wisdom of the elders. These are the superheroes you will remember.

There are no high-speed chases here, or “shazam” moments, or ‘Deus-ex-machina’ gods, or aliens. We aren’t going to Wakanda, or Gotham, or that place that almost shares the name of my refuge, the “other” Valhalla. You’re coming home, with me, with all of them, with Eddie the orderly who has his own secrets and who cares for them and loves them all and is so fiercely proud of them all. You’re being given a rare privilege. You’re invited to talk to a superhero. One on one. You’re invited to find out what makes them tick, what makes them unique, what makes them special… and how you can use all that as a mirror to find out where you’re special, too.

Superheroes are us. They always have been.

Welcome to Val Hall.

The Val Hall books, and other novels by Alma Alexander, can be purchased as ebooks at Book View Café or as paperbacks on Amazon.

Website: www.AlmaAlexander.org

Twitter: @AlmaAlexander

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlmaAlexander/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AlmaAlexander

Guest Blog Post

Writing as if Women Mattered

November 15, 2019 June 13, 2020

Today we’re joined by Heather Rose Jones. Heather is the author of the Alpennia historic fantasy series: an alternate-Regency-era Ruritanian adventure revolving around women’s lives woven through with magic, alchemy, and intrigue. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chronicles of the Holy Grail, Sword and Sorceress, Lace and Blade, and at Podcastle.org. Heather blogs about research into lesbian-relevant motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project and has a podcast covering the field of lesbian historical fiction which has recently expanded into publishing audio fiction. She reviews books at The Lesbian Review as well as on her blog. She works as an industrial failure investigator in biotech pharmaceuticals.

So often the focus on women in fantasy novels is on the exceptions, the extraordinary women who break past whatever limitations are placed on their gender within the setting of the story. And we need those larger than life women to change boundaries and expectations. But what of the women who challenge gender limitations by pushing forward, day by day, in more ordinary lives? Women whose support for each other is what enables the world to keep turning?

Each of the central characters of my Alpennia series so far has been exceptional in some way. But there is one way in which they follow the expectations for women in early 19th century European society: they have lives that are primarily populated by other women. For the most part, their friends, their enemies, their allies, their rivals, their closest loved ones are all other women. In every age when the genders have lived segregated lives, this has been the case. Men might have influence over the larger course of your life, but women were the heart of your existence.

When I began creating the social world of the Alpennia stories, I embraced this concept and promised myself to write as if women mattered. As if they could build communities and social networks and power structures that could drive the plot of an entire series without ever needing to center men in the narrative.

Some of them are directly challenging male institutions in the process. Margerit Sovitre’s frustration with begging for scraps of learning at the university drives her to found her own women’s college. Antuniet Chazillen pushes past the barriers to women in science by hard work and stubbornness. Luzie Valorin recognizes the subtle ways in which her male mentors have discouraged her work and stops letting them hobble her dreams.

None of them could have succeeded without alliances to other women whose work might not challenge power as directly, but does it just as effectively. Jeanne de Cherdillac is my archetype of the “social fixer”–the woman who knows all the undercurrents in society and knows how a word here and a hint there can move mountains. A woman who knows what people want and how to use those desires to build bridges. Barbara Lumbeirt knows exactly which rules can be effectively broken and which must be subtly bent. Over them all, Princess Anna Atilliet knows how to turn these women’s talents to her own advantage in ways that a prince couldn’t have commanded.

But in the newest Alpennia novel, Floodtide, we see women whose alliances and concerns operate at a more immediate level and can be a matter of life and death. For laundry maid Rozild Pairmen, her enemy isn’t the footman who is jealous of her relationship with her fellow maid, but the housekeeper who holds the power to dismiss her at a whim. Her second chance comes not from the priest whose judgment she fears, but from the dressmaker who understands her desperation and knows what favors to call in–favors carefully collected and hoarded from the women who are her clientele.

Roz cements her position in her new household via the other female servants–men are a hazard and unreliable. Her dream of learning dressmaking would be far more difficult if not for weaving a friendship with Celeste, the dressmaker’s daughter, and Roz in turn sets herself to fulfill Celeste’s dearest dream.

When women matter, it isn’t only by riding out on quests or fighting battles or breaking rules. Sometimes it’s being a confidante, knowing who to turn to for help, and holding the lantern for another’s work. The heart and the core of the Alpennia series is that thought: that whatever women do matters, and that they can change the world.

Bella Books: http://www.bellabooks.com/Bella-Author-Heather-Rose-Jones-cat.html

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Heather-Rose-Jones/e/B00ID2LQE6

Website: http://alpennia.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Heather-Rose-Jones-490950014312292/

Twitter: @heatherosejones

Guest Blog Post

Q&A With David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson

June 6, 2019 June 13, 2020

Today we’re joined by award-winning author David B. Coe, who also writes as D.B. Jackson. Under those two names he has published more than twenty novels and as many short stories. His newest novel, Time’s Demon, the second volume in his Islevale Cycle, has just been released by Angry Robot Books. David, welcome.

Thank you for having me on your site!

Tell us about The Islevale Cycle and, about Time’s Demon in particular.

The Islevale Cycle is a time travel/epic fantasy series that tells the story of Tobias and Mara, Walkers – time travelers – who Walk back through time hoping to prevent a devastating war. Upon their arrival in the past, however, the assassination of their sovereign traps them in a dark misfuture with the only survivor of the assassination plot: the sovereign’s infant daughter. They have to keep the princess safe as the assassins seek to finish their work, and as the two of them seek to reestablish the rightful line of ascension to the throne.

That’s a very basic overview – there’s a lot more to the story than that: subplots, secondary characters, a romance or two, lots of intrigue. In short, I tried to blend in all the ingredients readers might hope to find in a sprawling epic fantasy. The first book, Time’s Children, came out last October. Time’s Demon is the second book in the trilogy, and as such it deepens the story and introduces new perils and conflicts, while also starting to resolve certain key plot points. Tobias, Mara, and the infant princess, Sofya, are on the run, pursued by the sovereign’s killers. They are aided by a variety of characters – humans and “demons,” or Ancients, as they’re called in Islevale. In particular, this second book focuses on Droë, a Tirribin, or time demon, who is fascinated by human love in general, and infatuated with Tobias in particular. She seeks to help him, but she’s deeply jealous of Mara. And since Tirribin are deadly predators, this is a problem.

Was this your first time writing time travel?

Yes, it was, and, as other writers had warned me, writing time travel will make one’s brain explode. The problem with time travel is not just the various contradictions and anachronisms that crop up when events are taking place in different times and timelines. That’s part of the challenge of writing a time travel story. I enjoyed that, and I think I handled these issues pretty well. But the toughest thing about time travel as a narrative tool is that it lead to endless do-overs. No plot point is permanent if your time traveling characters can go back and change the past.

So in creating the rules for my time travel, I tried to avoid this problem. First of all, not everyone can Walk through time. It’s an ability that first manifests in childhood, and then must be honed through years of training. Second, Walkers need a device known as a chronofor in order to travel through time. And chronofors, which sort of resemble pocket watches, are expensive and rare. Third, the chronofor is the only thing Walkers can carry when they travel back in time. They can carry no weapons, no money, and not even a stitch of clothing. Finally, and most importantly, for each day or year Walkers travel back in time (and forward again to their original moment in history) they age that amount. So I omitted a key detail from my summary: Tobias and Mara begin the book as fifteen-year-olds. They travel back in time fourteen years, and therefore arrive as 29-year-olds — at least to all outward appearances. Their emotions and intellects remain the same. If they then Walk back to their rightful time, they would age another fourteen years.

Building such a steep cost into my time travel ensures that my Walkers can’t just Walk at will. It limits the impact they can have – both on my world and on my plotting. I also chose to handle time travel in this way for narrative reasons. I thought it would be interesting to have my hero and heroine look like adults, to saddle them with adult responsibilities (protecting and caring for a child), but at the same time keep their minds and emotions much as they were when they were kids training to be court Walkers.

What’s been the greatest challenge in writing these books?

I’m what’s known in writing circles as a planner. I tend to outline my novels. Not in tremendous detail, but with at least a brief paragraph for each chapter. These books, however, defied all my attempts to outline them. And I tried, I really did. With the first book, I spent several months trying to jot down at least some sense of the narrative path the story would follow. I just couldn’t do it. The same was true of Time’s Demon. For some reason, the books just didn’t want to be outlined. Or at least that’s my conclusion; easier to blame them than me! For what it’s worth, I’ve had the same problem with Time’s Assassin, the final book in the series, which I’m working on now.

Honestly, I don’t know why I’ve struggled so with the plotting. It may be that the complexities of time travel in a multi-strand, multi-point-of-view novel made that sort of advanced planning impossible. I wouldn’t have thought so, though, and the fact is those complexities would have been far easier to deal with had I been able to outline. Whatever the reason, plotting the books was a struggle. Now, in the end it all worked out. Time’s Children was the best reviewed book I’ve ever published, and I think Time’s Demon is even better. But it took a lot of work, and massive edits and revisions of the initial drafts to get there.

You began your career writing epic fantasy [The LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, Blood of the Southlands] and then moved away from it for a time. What brought you back to this subgenre?

I suppose you could say that the same impulse that pulled me away from writing epic fantasy brought me back to it. As you say, I started out writing three epic fantasy series – eleven novels in all. By the time I finished Blood of the Southlands, I was ready for something different. So I turned to urban fantasy – historical urban in my Thieftaker Chronicles (written as D.B. Jackson), contemporary urban in The Case Files of Justis Fearsson (written as David B. Coe). These were very different books for me. They were essentially mysteries, detective novels really, with magical ingredients. They were leaner books. Generally speaking, each had one point of view character, and though they had subplots, these tended to feed directly into the central mystery. Put another way, all of the Thieftaker and Fearsson novels were very directed and streamlined. And I loved writing them.

Websites: http://www.DavidBCoe.com / www.dbjackson-author.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBJacksonAuthor

Twitter: @DBJacksonAuthor