New Brunswick Author, James A Shaw.

 

 

Jim Shaw is the author of The Secrets of the Damned series and has a new book in the works of a different series. We met through JJ Carrier’s FB page – New Brunswick Independent Author’s Association. Jim is an active member of the group and we are fortunate to have him as our guest this week.

He has agreed to a 4Q Interview and is sharing as Excerpt from A Father’s Legacy. 

 

 

I have been penning my lies for over thirty years now. I live in Woodstock, New Brunswick, which is in Atlantic Canada. My first series is Secrets of the Damned, and it is based exclusively in small town New Brunswick. My second series, The Legends of the Seventh One, is set somewhere else, in a galaxy torn by war. I have a passion of the written word that I inherited from my Mother, combined with the keen imagination I inherited from my Dad. My books have been sold as far away as Europe and even in Iraq.

 

4Q: Lets talk about The Secrets of the Damned. Vampires and other scary things. Tell us briefly about the series.

 

JS: Secrets of the Damned is very near and dear to my heart. It is my first series that will eventually consist of three novels and one spin off. Here is a fun little jimfact, SOTD started out as a creative writing project. While attending NBCC Woodstock in 1987, in English class, we were asked to write a story, any story we wanted, so long as it met all the stipulations in the guidelines. So, we got the assignment on a Friday, and I went home and wrote it over the weekend. The actual story I wrote was the intro to the second Secrets of the Damned novel, Forbidden Dreams. 

It was about a couple boys out late at night investigating a notorious haunted house. In this ‘story’ the mansion was as much a character as the two boys creeping around in the shadows as they explore the old house. It was about twenty pages and I thought that was the end of it. So, on the following Friday, we all were instructed to pass our stories around for everyone else in class to read. We were all to write our thoughts and comments on the bottom of the stories. The most consistent comments I was getting was in the form of questions asking me where the rest of the story was. I thought that was odd because I really thought what I had written was complete. But I obliged my classmates and started writing a chapter a week. Of course, the story has changed and mutated several times from those early drafts, to the finished story that you can get today either on Kindle, Audible, or hardcopy on Amazon.  The stories I had envisioned were three in number, each about a vampire, the damned, each having a secret they protected at all cost. Around that kernel I wrapped the human stories. They are very much stories written inside larger stories, kind of like a smile hidden inside a frown. Eclipse fans beware my vampires do not sparkle, and they do not fall in love with their food. If you do buy them, you are in for a fun roller coaster of a ride, and you never quite know what will happen next. Promise.

 

 

 

4Q: What draws you to this genre of writing and reading?

 

JS: Who doesn’t like a good scare every now and again? I sure do, yet there is one thing common to all the genres I write in, which is freedom. The over the top genres, like Thrillers, Sci-Fi and Fantasy offer the writer a wide latitude to explore the big questions we as humans often must face over the course of our lifetimes. Now, do not misunderstand me, I am not trying to sound smug. I am not offering the readers of my books any profound knowledge that will lead you to nirvana. Nothing that grand, the ‘big’ questions I explore are questions I sometimes have wrestled with or more to the point questions my characters are struggling with and need my help to explore them more fully and completely. For example, in, A Father’s Legacy, first book in the new series, one of the main characters Marcus, struggles with who he feels he is and who everyone expects him to be. All his life he has been told of the great deeds he will accomplish, and ultimately how he alone will save the galaxy. Yet in his heart of hearts he does not feel worthy or capable of any of it. We the readers get to follow along as he navigates his world in search of who he really is.

 

 

 

4Q: Every new guest on the Scribbler gets asked this question. Please share a childhood memory and/or anecdote.

 

 

JS: Well the first thing that comes to mind, is kind of a circle. When Star Wars, Empire and Jedi first came to the big screen, my sister took me to all of them. Then when Mr. Lucas brought those movies back to the big screen as ‘special editions’ I took her children to them. It is kind of the Sci-Fi circle of life so to speak.

 

 

 

4Q: Your first book in your new Legends of the Seven Sons series is on the shelves now. Titled A Father’s Legacy. What can we expect when we pick up a copy?

 

 

JS: Well this new series is a departure from the Secrets of the Damned, and I have pivoted from writing Thrillers to Sci-Fi. They both still have a healthy does of Fantasy mixed into them, guess it would not be me if they did not. It is defiantly a series, and by that, I mean it has always been one huge expansive story meant to be told over the span of several novels.  It really is just too big to be told any other way.  In this series I wrestled with some big themes, like the Manifestations of prophecy, and belief, both in ourselves and in others.  What exactly fuels that belief?  Proof for most of us is subjective at best, don’t you think? All this is set against a galaxy shattered by a decade’s long war and the politics that drives the beast of human conflict.  What if you had been told all the days of your life that you were destined to be the savior of the galaxy and the older you got the more you doubted everyone around you.  You doubt yourself even.  Marcus, the main character is struggling with this very thing.  His story alone could not be contained in three hundred pages, not even four hundred I suspect.  But rest assured over the course of the series we do eventually get to the bottom of it.  We also get to the bottom of Haughn and Princess Aurora’s love story.  We also see how Dane Torrek puts his own plans in motion.

This first novel is exactly as it says, ‘an introduction’, a rock thrown into a pond.  The story rides on the ripples.  I intended it to be your introduction to this galaxy, present to you the background of the story, and introduce you to some of the main characters complete with what drives them to do the things they do. Money, love, power, revenge, not everyone wants to be a hero, or do the right thing even.  By the time you reach the end of ‘A Father’s Legacy’, you should have a fairly good idea what makes them tick as people trying to move and exist in their worlds. Each one of them rides the ripples in a different way, each hoping for different results.  The cliff hanger ending was entirely done on purpose, as was front loading the novel.

In the second novel, ‘The Stone Empress’, our characters, by now your friends, will be questing for the secrets they found under the statue of Bichon DaVue.   The war will intensify, and the young Emperor will assume his thrown and begin his own quest to find and kill the man he believes killed his father.  Marcus will continue to struggle with his identity and reluctantly agrees to take his sister Princess Aurora under his wing, and the marriage is put off by circumstances out of Haughn’s control.

 

 

 

4Q: We see that, like many other authors, you are offering A Father’s Legacy, as an audiobook as well. Tell us about this experience.

 

JS: All my work has been turned into audible books. I can think of no other way that I would want my work showcased. I have a profound and deep love for the written word spoken aloud. This I think goes back to my grade nine English teacher, Mrs. Thomas. She would read to us, the whole class, for hours. I loved every minute of it! So, all you guys and dolls who love my audio books, you can blame her,