Just Days Away: Spellmonger 16

 

As autumn slinks delightfully across the landscape, I feel as if my batteries are getting recharged.  Being a professional creative person involves a lot of cycles that get established as a part of the process, and it can be exhausting even if it’s something you love.  Thankfully, there are greater cycles that you can rely upon, and paying close attention to the seasons is one we can all depend upon to give us a sense of perspective, renewed energy, and fresh insight on our lives.  Autumn also gives us a moment to reflect on the work we’ve done—the harvest of our creativity, so to speak.  And there is a lot to reflect on and be proud of in my personal and professional life. There are two projects that collided, so to speak, in the tragic death of Jonathan Thompson of Battlefield Press, the game publisher who secured the rights to the adaptation of the Spellmonger universe into a TTFRP (table top fantasy role-playing game, for the uninitiated).  The other project was writing Book 16 of the series, Preceptor.  I was in the early stages of composing the book when I heard the news about Jonathan, and I admit that it knocked me out of my creative game for a few weeks.   But when I finally got back to work, I realized that I needed a structure to the next novel that somehow memorialized the feeling of comradery I felt with Jonathan as we worked on the game.  Gamers in general are a particular lot, and we can sometimes be obsessive or overly passionate about the minutia of the game.   It’s akin, emotionally, to being into sports, except on a more mental scale.  Jonathan, however, went beyond that.  You have to be a special kind of nerd to decide to develop fantasy role-playing games and other amusements and be at all successful.  Jonathan was that kind of professional. He was a fan of the series, and that meant a lot to me.   He was exacting in the game mechanics, at one point scrapping his approach and starting anew before he was ready to proceed.  Personal tragedy struck a few times, delaying the work, but Jonathan was committed.  A few months before his death, he submitted his result for my final edits.  He still wasn’t completely happy with it, and that’s partially my fault—the game covers mostly the first ten books (the first decalogy).  But in order to add the rules and mechanics for the magic in the second decaology, Jonathan realized that entire new sections would have to be added.  But you have to stop somewhere, so we agreed that was a good place and tried to finish the project.   In reflecting on my experience with Jonathan in the development of the game from the books, I recognized the importance of a wizardly trope rarely explored in regular fantasy.  Wizards, of course, are the Ones Who Know—usually secret and important information up to and including the use of magic.  Exploring the different guises and artistic variations of the wizard is one of the main themes of the series.   For this book, I wanted to explore the Wizard as Maker of Rules.   Jonathan’s influence in this aspect was key.  That was his entire job: deciding what the rules were, considering a wide range of factors.  It is as creatively exact as composing fiction in the first place.  And it comes with the same creative risks.  As Minalan has to contend with the Royal Family, the Alka Alon, and the war against Korbal, he realizes that it is a time to set boundaries, establish rules, and impose his will, wit, and wisdom on his world.  He has no choice.  No one else is going to do it—not even the gods.  He, like Jonathan, has to become a Preceptor, someone who takes the responsibility for establishing the rules of the game.  And to learn that each of those rules comes with responsibility for the consequences.   So there is a decided element of gaming in the book, from that perspective.  As well as gaming as a motif throughout the story.  But there was another aspect of wizardry I wanted to include as well, one that complicated the Wizard as Rulemaker To keep it non-spoilery, Minalan is at a place in his career and his character arc where he can—where he must—set the rules and conditions of how things must go, in many different ways.  We also get to see the Wizard as Tutor, as he’s asked to take on a difficult student.  We do see this trope a lot in fantasy, of course, from Merlin’s mentoring of Arthur to Gandalf’s relationship with Bilbo and Frodo (and Aragorn).  But we usually see this represented from the student’s perspective, not the teacher’s.  I wanted to find out what went on behind the sage advice, mystical aphorisms, and intriguing object lessons implicit in the wizard/pupil relationship.   That’s not to say that this is another “cozy” and philosophical book; there are massive battles (about a quarter of the book, actually) and political intrigue and startling developments aplenty.   But throughout it all, Minalan is contemplating some fairly deep issues during a complicated and tumultuous time.  I would say more, but that might spoil a few things. It was an intriguing book to write, and I’m pretty proud of the result.  I am eagerly awaiting the release, which is just a few days away.

Available Tuesday

To help celebrate and promote the book, I will be doing a live Q&A on Sunday, November 19th, to be seen on Discord, Facebook, and YouTube.  My faithful superfans have already been assembling a number of questions and consolidating them for this, but I’m certain we’ll take live questions as well.  Tune in on your favorite media platform and get some of the answers (but not all of them) and help me celebrate Book 16, Preceptor! In addition, I will be doing interviews both before the release and in the coming weeks to discuss both the book and the series.  This includes an interview on the B Cubed podcast on Sunday morning (9:00 PT / 12:00pm ET), which will be live streamed on their Facebook page and later posted to the B Cubed YouTube channel.  Watch this space, my Facebook page, and the Discord server for announcements about when these future interviews will be released.   And yes, I’m already hard at work on the next book, Practical Adept.  It, too, will be Minalan-focused, and likely considerably longer than Preceptor.