Ask me anything

[James]

Any questions welcome. The world, the history, the writing process, the publishing process - I'll try to answer them all.

The Shadow of Black Wings
The Warrior's Soul
The Islands in the Mist

[James]

A few years ago I was suffering from a long, unbeatable writer's block. None of my ideas worked. In the end, I decided to take the age-old advice: "write what you know" - and what I did always know A LOT about was world history and Japan. Not enough to write a non-fiction book - I'm not a professional historian - but enough to make it a base for a believable historical fantasy.

A lot of the book comes from my travels. Wales is my favourite destination within the UK, and its history, culture and mythology are an endless source of inspiration. Japan is the place I always come back to, whenever I can - there is still so much to discover there, I feel I'm just scratching the surface. I could never write this book the way it is written without having personally seen most of the places in it.

The opening of Japan in 1853 was an obvious choice for the general setting, as not only it's the most interesting period in the nation's history, but also it enabled me to realistically pit Victorians against the Samurai - even if the confrontation involved dragons and steam-powered dirigibles :) Once that was clear, the rest of the plot just kind of came about as it sometimes does when you come up with something that just clicks with you as a writer.

[Andrew]

Your current sequence focuses on Japan, but with a lot of world-building for other major powers in the Year of the Dragon world. Do you think you'll return to this world for future series?

[James]

Oh, definitely so. Maybe in short stories, if not full-fledged novels. Even in this series I show a bit more of China and (spoilers) plan to move the story at some point to another country altogether - although only for a little while.

There's enough backstory here to have me going until retirement, if the readers can stand it ;)
(not that I don't have other ideas - at some point I have to write down the entire saga behind Dragonbone Chest)

[Andrew]

Yay! Must get to Dragonbone Chest at some point soon.

How far ahead of the release schedule have you written? Is Book 4 already complete or are you still in the polishing stages?

[James]

I had first two books pretty much ready at the same time, with the third requiring some polishing, which is why it took me a few months to release it.

For the fourth one I have about 40k words written down from a very early draft which needs a lot of work, and at least twice as that in my head, so this one is going to be a bit longer wait - I've given myself March 1st as the tentative launch date, but that's just guesswork, really.

[James]

That's a bit like asking which child do I love best ;) I think each book is slightly better than the previous one, so my current favourite is the third volume - until I finish the fourth one, that is :) There's much more happening in "The Islands..." and I can finally start getting into the meat of the greater, over-arching plot of the series.

[James]

Hard to tell at the moment. At a guess I'd say I have enough plot for about a million words or so, but I'm not sure if I will continue with the current format of 70-80k long volumes or start writing larger books.