World of Hadanum

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the Indie Book Lounge and asked to provide answers to an author interview. I'm the featured author today. Here is a portion of the interview. Read the rest at the link below!

• IBL: What was the first book you read that inspired you to become a writer?

RM: Rather than primarily through books, I became interested in second person storytelling and reader immersion through text adventures on my Commodore VIC-20 and ghost stories told around the campfire as a boy in the early 1980s. I also devoured horror-themed short story anthologies, Marvel Comics, and Norse myths and made my first attempts at writing books and comic books when I was around ten. For many years I was content to dabble in writing, mostly for myself.

I first took writing novels seriously after reading The Fountainhead in high school.
 

• IBL: Did you try the traditional publishing route before going indie and if so, what was that experience like?

RM: In the 1990s, while living in Japan, I submitted a completed novel to a few publishing houses, but the form letter responses, cost of sending manuscript packages overseas, and the unchanging rules regarding printed submissions that ignored the rise of e-mail put me off. I was surprised to find that printed submissions are still preferred when I completed my last novel, Globe-Hurler this year. Being a computer user since the early days of home computing, the anachronistic and stubborn refusal of some publishing houses to change with the times only reinforced my decision to go with eBook publishing instead.

Read the FULL INTERVIEW HERE.

None of the stock descriptions I'd read about Rosemary Jones' book City of the Dead really did it justice or prepared me for the story within. While some, like what's on the back of the book cover, are technically correct, they just don't impart the lighthearted yet multi-layered feel of the book.

It was a pleasant surprise and and a joy to read. As an instant fan of Rosemary Jones' from her other book I reviewed here not long ago, the Crypt of the Moaning Diamond, it was not a question of if I would buy City of the Dead, but when. So without reading much about the concept (or really even paying attention that Ed Greenwood was endorsing it), I was on the hook for Rosemary's next book.

The book is not a traditional D&D epic-type fantasy with overpowered heroes and endless trudging over picturesque landscapes to some predictable goal that can be found in some TSR/Wizards of the Coast novels and trilogies. No flaming swords of fire here! Not that I don't enjoy some of that sort of story now and again -- I do. But this new book really got me thinking about the different ways that one might approach game-world inspired fiction and Fantasy novels in general. Rosemary really took a risk with this out of the box story concept and it paid off, at least for me. If I had to draw a comparison with another writer or style, I'd choose Charles Dickens. It's been over ten years since I've read anything by Dickens, but that's what Rosemary reminded me of with her new book.

But here I am four paragraphs in and I haven't even told you what the book is about yet. Well, the heroine is, for lack of a better description, a very ordinary young woman. She's powerful in her own way, to be sure, but most of her might comes from her strength of character and determination. "Plucky" is what Ed Greenwood calls her. She's very much a product of her upbringing, and Rosemary again introduces the concepts of class and being born into one's station that she touched on in Moaning Diamond. That said, she has an independent streak and a lack of desire to fall into some traditional role planned out for her.

Do you want a nutshell description of the story? I'm sorry but there really isn't one to give. The fun in reading this story is getting to know all of the characters within. The plotline is secondary. But if you've read this far then you're unlikely to be satisfied with that evasive answer so I'll put it another way. This is the story of a girl from a family of Carvers. Gravestone-carvers, that is, who lives in a city of magic and legend and cannot help but be swept up in adventure despite her best attempts to avoid it. Her name is Sophraea.

And when you get Sophorea you get the whole Carver family in the bargain, an interesting an unique bunch to say the least.

(SPOILER ALERT) A slightly more fantastic character, suitable for the D&D genre who is introduced as her partner later in the story is Gustin, a wizard. He casts spells and works rituals and while far from being overpowered, he adds a sense of the game that might otherwise be missing. I say this because if not for the setting of Waterdeep, the story of Sophraea might have been told just as effectively in a more generic horror setting.

Sophorea and her partner find curiousity getting the better of them, as well as a baddie with a very....Dickens-like name who just begs to be disliked. I must say that I was not surprised at all with one of the "mystery" twists at the end and saw it coming, but again, getting to know the characters was such fun that this did not impact the story negatively for me.

I strongly recommend Rosemary's book (check it out on Amazon HERE) and hope that Wizards of the Coast will ask her to write another full novel soon. Rosemary has let on that she will have a short story published that is tied to City of the Dead (another member of the Carver family will take the lead), so I'll be on the lookout for that. Until then, I'll follow her site for updates...

About a year ago I ordered one of a series of books in the Dungeons & Dragons-based Forgotten Realms "The Dungeons" series, and since I'm a sucker for anything with the word "Dungeon" in it, I picked it, and another up from Amazon. The title was Crypt of the Moaning Diamond.

I've read quite a few such novels set in D&D worlds (usually the Forgotten Realms setting), but none of them accurately captured the feel of of D&D quite like Rosemary's work. Other books I've read have tended to be too epic, too disconnected with the rules and feel of the game, or too filled with padding to make room for a trilogy to keep me interested.

Rosemary's "Moaning Diamond" has none of those flaws. It's a self-contained story in a single book, for one. And while the rules of the game do not intrude into the work, a few scenes where the heroes, the "Seigebreakers" are presented with a puzzle to solve could have come straight from a D&D module room description. The light banter between the characters also reminds me of a circle of friends at a sit-down pen and paper game.

That said, none of these things distract from the engaging story and interesting characters that kept me turning pages and devouring the book. Most readers less familiar with D&D probably would not even notice the "authentic" feel of Moaning Diamond from a gamer's perspective. It has just the right amount of humor and doesn't take the jokes too far to the point of being corny (something that tends to bother me with some other D&D fiction authors).

As someone who loves fast-paced sword & sorcery fiction, and who has not played D&D in a group since the early 1990's, I found a lot to like in Rosemary's book. If you simply enjoy light Fantasy that's easy to pick up and hard to put down, I think you'll like it too.

I could spend some time here telling you what the book is about, but all you really need to know is that it's about a group of adventuring mercenaries led by a bit of a dirt-caked heroine who manage to do the extraordinary armed mostly with their wits and only a little bit of magic to help. As "Siegebreakers" they are hired to resolve standoffs where defensive forces are too entrenched to be easily defeated by traditional siege methods. They have to get creative about taking down defenses and destroying structures.

Because of my fondness for Moaning Diamond I've been looking forward to her new release, City of the Dead and have ordered a copy.

If you want to read more about Rosemary's work, head over to her site HERE.