Tag Archives: interviews

Release Day Interview: David B. Coe Interviews D.B. Jackson!

Time's Assassin, book III of The Islevale Cycle, by D.B. Jackson (jacket art by Robyne Pomroy)Release week continues with a special Tuesday interview post! Yes, that’s right: I am going to interview… Myself!!

Today, I am pleased to welcome author D.B. Jackson to the blog. D.B. has a new novel out this week. Time’s Assassin, the third volume in his critically acclaimed Islevale Cycle, will be released on Tuesday, July 7, by Falstaff Books. (Order it here.  Buy the first two books in the series at a special price here.)

David: D.B., welcome to the blog, and may I say that you are even better looking in person than you are in your pictures.

D.B.: Nice, starting right off with full-on conceited creeper. Way to hold your audience…

David: Why don’t you start by telling us about Time’s Assassin?

D.B.: Well, that’s a lazy-ass question. It’s not like you haven’t read the book….

Fine. Time’s Assassin is the concluding volume of the Islevale Cycle, my time travel, epic fantasy series. The Islevale books tell the story of Tobias Doljan and Mara Lijar, fifteen-year-old Walkers, time travelers, who go back in time to stop a war. But they’re trapped in the past and forced to protect and care for the infant daughter of an assassinated royal. The catch to all this is that time travel in my world exacts a price: For every year they go back in time, they age that amount. So they went back fourteen years, which means that they arrive in the past as twenty-nine year-olds, but with the thoughts and emotions of teenagers. They are pursued by assassins, caught up in castle intrigue, and have to match wits with a host of Ancients, as my demons are called. There’s a lot going on, and in this volume, all the story arcs come together.

David: It sounds interesting!

D.B.: Well… I’m glad you think so. If I couldn’t win you over, I was going to have a lot of trouble getting anyone else to care…

David: What made you decide to take on time travel?

Islevale compositeD.B.: Hubris, foolishness, self-loathing: take your pick. Time travel is so difficult. I love these books, and I’m very proud of them, but I hope never to write another time travel novel. The allure of time-travel lies in the narrative possibilities, the complications, the twists and turns. And it’s all there. But those attractions are also the biggest problems. No plot point is certain. Every event is, potentially, subject to a do-over. When we mess with time, we take away the guaranteed permanence of everything we do to and with our characters. That’s why I had to make the price of my time travel magic so steep. Because if it costs nothing to travel across time, then the time travel itself takes over the story and makes everything transitory. At least with the time travel exacting such a cost, I can limit this somewhat. And even so, once my characters made it to the past, I had to take steps to ensure that they couldn’t Walk through time again, at least for a while.

David: Islevale is yet another world of your own creation. Tell us a bit about it.

D.B.: Islevale is a world of oceans and islands, a bit like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea. The Earthsea trilogy was one of my very favorite fantasy series when I was young — it’s one of the works that inspired me to write — and so I meant the world as an homage to Le Guin and to those books.

If I had to place Islevale in a period analogous to some historical era of our world, I would probably choose the early Renaissance. That’s the technology level. And, like many fantasy worlds, Islevale is inhabited by a diverse population of humans and also by other sorts of creatures. Specifically, humans share the world with the Ancients, different races of what the humans, in their ignorance, call demons. These are magical beings with their own customs and ancient forms of commerce and culture. They were enormous fun to write.

David: So, you are actually a pseudonym. What’s that like?

D.B.: Excuse me?

David: You’re a pseudonym. A pen name. You don’t really exist. You’re just the alter ego of a real, well-established author. So I’m just wondering—

D.B.: I knew you were going to do this.

David: What?

D.B.: You know what. Pulling the whole “I’m real, you’re not” thing. That is so typical of you corporeal types. You think our readers give a flying fart about which one of us is “real”?

David: Just for the record, I am.

D.B.: I know! But what I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter. We share a newsletter and a Facebook page—

David: Maintained by yours truly.

D.B.: —And a lot of our audience likes books by both of us. Moreover, Mister Real Guy, I’d be careful about who you call the “real established author.” Would you care to compare reviews?

David: [Clearing throat] Why don’t you tell us what you’re working on now?

D.B.: Yeah, I thought so.

I’ve just finished working on a set of three novellas set in the Thieftaker universe. These will be released one at a time in ebook format later this year, and then the three together will be published in a printed omnibus. And, speaking of Thieftaker, our agent and I have recently gotten back the rights to the third and fourth Thieftaker novels, A Plunder of Souls and Dead Man’s Reach, which had been hard to find. We will be re-issuing these in trade paperback later this year or early next year.

David: Well, that sounds great. I wish you — us, really — every success with Time’s Assassin and the rest of the Islevale books, as well as with the upcoming Thieftaker releases. Best of luck to you.

D.B.: Thank you. And to you. [Sotto voce] Pinhead…

New Post, Old Stop on the 2016 Blog Tour

I didn’t want to change anything with respect to plotting, character, world building, magic, setting, etc. Quite the opposite: I wanted to be faithful to the original story. The LonTobyn books had — and still have — a lot of fans, and I didn’t want to change things that those fans might remember fondly. My purpose in editing the books was to clean up the writing so that the other elements of the story could really shine.

The Outlanders, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)The 2016 Blog Tour has returned to the site of my friend, Ken Schrader, who has been kind enough to host me for another short interview. The last time I was with Ken, the Author’s Edit of Children of Amarid, the first book of my Crawford Award-winning LonTobyn Chronicle, had just come out. Now we’re marking the re-release of the second book, The Outlanders. This is also an Author’s Edit (think “Director’s Cut”) and this book, which has long been one of my favorites, reads better than ever. You can find the new interview here.

Eagle-Sage, book 3 of the LonTobyn Chronicle, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)And it’s worth noting that the third book in the series, Eagle-Sage, has just been released in ebook format. The paper edition should be out before long. That’s right, the whole series is available, and just in time for the holidays. Woot! Check them out. And thanks so much to Ken for welcoming me to his blog.

First Stop on the Summer/Fall Blog Tour!

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Today I kick off my Summer/Fall 2016 Blog Tour with a stop at the Word Nerds blogsite, where I’m interviewed by Bethany Warner. We discuss the re-release of Children of Amarid and the rest of my LonTobyn Chronicle, as well as the process of editing these books, which were the first I wrote as a professional. Come by and read the interview here, and you can enter for a chance to win a Blog Tour gift certificate!

Alex Bledsoe, the Library Police, and Me

Last weekend, at the Chattanooga Steampunk Expo, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting in person and hanging out with my longtime internet buddy, Alex Bledsoe, author of the Eddie LaCross and Tufa novels, among others. (Visit his site for more info.) During the convention, Alex and I did an hour-long interview with Dietrich Stogner and Josh Mauthe, also known as the Library Police. It was a great discussion, wide-ranging, irreverent, fun, and, I hope, informative.

The interview in now up and available for download as a podcast. You can link to it here. I hope you enjoy it!

POV and Q&A, Today on the Blog Tour!

As writers we should be deliberate in choosing the proper voice for each story. We shouldn’t choose third person simply because the market might prefer it, as once it did, nor should we automatically gravitate toward first person just because that voice is in vogue right now. Rather, we need to consider several factors in choosing the right POV voice and, for that matter, the correct point of view character.

Today’s installments of the 2015 Summer-of-Two-Releases Virtual Tour take me to the blogs of two dear friends.

Lucienne Diver is not only a wonderful writer, she is also a fantastic agent, and I should know, because she has represented me for about fifteen years now. I am at her blog today with a post about point of view, and its uses as a narrative tool. Using the examples of Dead Man’s Reach, the fourth Thieftaker novel, which came out a couple of weeks ago, and His Father’s Eyes, the second volume in the Case Files of Justis Fearsson, I discuss how I choose the correct voice for a novel. You can read the post here; I hope you find it helpful.

Brandy Schillace, author, academic, blogger, reviewer, friend extraordinaire, has been kind enough to host me again on her Fiction Reboot. Today, I answer questions about the Thieftaker books, writing, history, and magic. You can find the interview here.

Enjoy!