This is my stop during the book blitz for Trials and Tribulations, these are two anthologies set in Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage universe. This book blitz is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The book blitz runs from 20 February till 5 March. You can view the tour schedule here.
Interview with Jean
Rabe
1. What was it
like to play in the Rogue Mage world?
It was wonderful and amazing. A clever, deep world
that I envy, It touches on dark and light and the shades in between. And it has
magic. Oooooooh!
2. Was it hard
to develop your character within the confines of the Rogue Mage world?
I came up with the idea right away...someone from a
convent, who had religious schooling, and yet was at odds with it. A thief of
sorts, but one who steals from the ground and the past rather than people. A
cross between a junk man and Indiana Jones...and who likes to use explosives. I
made her feisty and quick and more than a little selfish. I threw in a touch of
a scholar. One of my favorite books is Norton's compilation of Old English
literature. It gave me an opportunity to quote from that. She fit in well with
the world because the place Faith created has all sorts of opportunities to
relic-hunt.
3. Tell us about
your character.
Oops...I just did! I'll mention my day walker...he's
beholden to the cartel that controls the jungle, but he becomes sympathetic to
my main character and sees her as his way to get out. Too, he's got magic and
loves Old English literature. They get along.
4. When your
story was finished, how did you feel about your character and story?
I was floating! I got to play in Faith Hunter's
world! So...I was floating.
5. Tell us about
your other projects.
I'm working on the second book in my Piper Blackwell
mystery series. This one is called The Dead of Night...and I need to finish it
by the end of February. Cross your fingers I get it done.
***
Interview
Lucienne Diver
1. What was it
like to play in the Rogue Mage world?
At
first it was incredibly intimidating. Faith is such an amazing writer, and the
world she’s created is so rich and textured that it was a challenge to jump in
and feel that I was doing it justice.
But because the world is so well-realized, it really lives and breathes,
and once I got a handle on the approach I wanted to take, it was a lot of fun.
Who doesn’t want to write a kylen? Or the woman with a dangerous secret she’s
afraid he’s come to expose? Who doesn’t want to fight the good fight in a post-apocalyptic
world?
2. Was it hard
to develop your character within the confines of the Rogue Mage world?
Not
at all. Aoife (pronounced ee-fa), my heroine, is an itinerant storyteller and
something a little more. She’ll carry
packages and messages for the right price. Not smuggling per se, but not
necessarily things that are approved by the Administration of the ArchSeraphs. She’s such a product of her upbringing. Aoife grew up in an Enclave where her parents
were in service, so she’s got a healthy distain for neomages who treated her
and her family as though they were lesser because they were only human. As soon as she was of age, she left to make
her own way in the world, but with some specialized knowledge, like bataireacht, the Irish stick-fighting taught
to her by her father, which is very handy in the dangerous Post-Ap world Faith
has created. Put Aoife in the same mule
train with a second or third generation kylen (the product of a union between a
seraph and a mage or human) and you have instant tension. Add to that the
mysterious parcel she carries and dangers stalking their caravan, bring things
to a head, and Aoife discovers where she really stands in the grand scheme of
things.
3. Tell us about
your character. What species, etc.
I
jumped the gun on this question above, but the short version: Aoife describes
herself as “standard-issue human” and is proud of it.
4. When your
story was finished, how did you feel about your character and story?
I
really love Aoife. I know we’re not supposed to put too much of ourselves into
our characters, but I identify with her in so many ways, from the skepticism
and continuing evaluation of beliefs to not being a joiner. I love that I was
able to use my time in Ireland and the nature of the place and people
themselves to inform her development, and I’m very pleased with the way she
turned out. I hope my story will resonate with others the way it resonates with
me.
5. Tell us about
your other projects.
My
latest novel, Faultlines, is
a young adult thriller dealing with some serious issues that are close to my
heart. In short, six months ago, Vanessa's best friend Lisa changed, pushing
everyone away, Vanessa included. Now she's committed suicide. As
Vanessa struggles to come to terms with Lisa’s death and to reconstruct the
last months of her life, someone begins taking revenge against those he or she
perceives drove Lisa to suicide. Everyone thinks it's Vanessa, the former
best friend and some begin their retaliation. As vengeance, counterattacks and
clues mount, it becomes a race to the truth…and hopefully not to the death.
In
addition to Faultlines, I’ve written the Latter-Day
Olympians urban fantasy series featuring a
heroine who can, quite literally, stop men in their tracks, and the Vamped
young
adult series featuring a heroine who goes from chic to eek when she becomes one
of the undead (think Clueless meets Buffy).
My short stories and essays that have appeared in the Strip-Mauled and Fangs for the Mammaries anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen
Books), in Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell
Their Stories (HarperTeen) and the anthology Kicking It edited by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price (Roc Books).
***
Interview with Spike Y Jones
1. What was it
like to play in the RM world?
For me, things
were a bit different than for most of the other Trials and Tribulations
authors. I began working with Faith (and Christina Stiles) on the Rogue Mage
RPG back in 2007, so I'd edited all of Faith's RM vignettes and
short stories (but not novels) and edited all the game text (including writing
the occasional bit of extra text). Actually writing fiction in the setting was
in some ways the logical next step for me.
2. Tell us
about your character; what species, etc.
I had three
short-short vignettes and one short story between Trials and Tribulations.
In the vignettes,
my lead characters were coincidentally all human, although from three different
cultures: a Mexican housewife, a Native American hunter, and a white American
television producer. I used them to illustrate different viewpoints or slices
of life outside of the high-energy magic and adventure of most of the other
stories in these collections.
Damocles, the lead
in my short story "Monster," had a different origin. In the Rogue
Mage Role-Playing Game, at one point, just one time, we referred to
"Damocles, the first battle mage." Unfortunately, none of us working
on the game caught the mistake: In the novel Host, Damocles is described
as the son of two battle mages.
It was too late to
fix the mistake in the game, but after I'd finished beating myself up over the
error, I started to wonder, if Damocles wasn't the first battle mage,
what was so special about him that his sword should be featured so prominently
in the novels. So I took all the information in the novels about Damocles --
all four sentences -- and set to work crafting a character and a story.
3. When your
story was finished, how did you feel about your character and story?
Impressed. Not
only do I like the story itself, but as I was writing it I deliberately worked
in a lot of little details to firmly connect it with Faith's stories, such as
the origin of the phrase "Tears of Taharial" that's used as a
throwaway expression by Thorn St. Croix a couple times in one of the pieces.
And apparently someone else had been weaving a similar web.
A couple months
after I'd finished "Monster," I was making a final proofreading pass
of Faith's vignettes that had appeared in the role-playing game, and I read
"Wheels In Motion" for the first time since I'd edited it in 2009.
And when I finished rereading it, I realized that "Wheels In Motion"
was describing the events that happened in immediate reaction to those of my
"Monster" story, despite the fact that my story was written 7 years
after "Wheels." Although all the action in the Rogue Mage
novels takes place generations after these stories, Faith Hunter weaves a
tighter backstory than might be immediately apparent.
4. Tell us
about your other projects.
The next couple
things on my list are gaming products: the restart of a game line I worked on a
decade ago, plus something that goes by the name "Weresharks."
***
Trials (Rogue Mage Anthology #1)By Faith Hunter, Diana Francis, Misty Massey, Lou J Berger, Ken Schrader, Spike Y Jones, Christina Stiles, Tamsin Silver and Melissa McArthur
Genre: Anthology/ Urban Fantasy
Age category: Adult
Release Date: November 28, 2016
Blurb:
21 Vignettes and Short Stories set in Faith Hunter’s World of Thorn St. Croix.
The Rogue Mage world began long ago, when the epic battle between the High Host and the Darkness was won and lost. TRIALS takes fans of Thorn St. Croix into the past, before the opening pages of BLOODRING. These stories, set in Faith Hunter's Rogue Mage world, are adventures with new characters and old, facing dangers unimaginable. And they must save the world all over again.
If you ever wondered what happened between seraphs, kylen, second-unforeseen, mages, seraph-touched, spawn, humans, dragons, and their creatures before the series, now is your chance to delve deeper and wider. TRIALS features new short stories from nine authors—including Faith Hunter—and vignettes from the Rogue Mage role playing game.
TRIALS will be followed soon by TRIBULATIONS, and then by the omnibus TRIUMPHANT.
TRIALS Authors: Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Lou J Berger, Ken Schrader, Spike Y Jones, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Christina Stiles, Tamsin Silver, Melissa McArthur.
TRIBULATIONS Authors: Faith Hunter, Jean Rabe, Spike Y Jones, Christina Stiles, and Lucienne Diver.
You can find Trials on Goodreads
You can buy Trials here:
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
The Trials Authors:
Faith Hunter
Diana Francis
Misty Massey
Lou J Berger
Ken Schrader
Spike Y Jones
Christina Stiles
Tamsin Silver
Melissa McArthur
Tribulations (Rogue Mage Anthology #2)By Faith Hunter, Lucienne Diver, Spike Y Jones, Jean Rabe and Christina Stiles
Genre: Anthology/ Urban Fantasy
Age category: Adult
Release Date: December 30, 2016
Blurb:
17 Vignettes and Short Stories set in Faith Hunter’s World of Thorn St. Croix
The Rogue Mage story began with the post-apocalyptic novels BLOODRING, SERAPHS, and HOST, when epic battles between Thorn St. Croix and the forces of Darkness were fought. TRIBULATIONS (Rogue Mage Anthology Vol. II) takes place during and after the series timeline. These stories and vignettes, set in Faith Hunter's Rogue Mage world, are adventures with new characters and old, facing Darkness and an uncertain future.
The relationships between seraphs, kylen, second-unforeseen, mages, seraph-touched, spawn, humans grow deeper, and the battles with dragons and their creatures grow more dangerous. TRIBULATIONS features new short stories from five authors—including Faith Hunter—and vignettes from the Rogue Mage role playing game.
TRIALS and TRIBULATIONS will soon be followed by TRIUMPHANT—the paperback omnibus (both Anthology Volumes I and II in a bound format).
TRIBULATIONS Authors: Faith Hunter, Jean Rabe, Spike Y Jones, Christina Stiles, Lucienne Diver.
You can find Tribulations on Goodreads
You can buy Tribulations here:
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
The Tribulations Authors:
Faith Hunter
Lucienne Diver
Spike Y Jones
Jean Rabe
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