Z. Lindsey
GENRE: Fantasy
BLURB:
Devil bureaucrat Essie Darkenchyl and her friends barely survived the jungle, but now they're going straight to Hell--AKA her hometown!
Purchase The River Against the Sea (The Saltwater Chronicles #1) @ Amazon and Barnes & Noble (for paperback)
Purchase Cargo of Bones (The Saltwater Chronicles #2) @ Amazon
Excerpt:
“I had a bit of an incident,” Essie said, stepping into his office.
“Not surprising,” the duende said.
“There was an attempt on my life. I’ve filed the required paperwork with the security agents, but I need a less inferior pen for protection.”
“Uh . . .”
“I’m not scared, in case you’re wondering,” Essie said, glancing around the room to see what books she recognized on his shelves. She was unaware that she did this when lying.
“But I am investigating the attacker, which may expose me to more danger. And more importantly than what happened to me, I need to deflesh and repatriate the remains of an Aordés body. I can’t do that with a pen that’s exploded.”
The duende frowned and adjusted his glasses.
“Pens are not weapons,” the duende said in a low hiss, his nostrils flared. “Or for . . . flaying, or whatever you want it for. They’re for signing shipping contracts, approving payroll, and weighing cargo.”
“Yeah, I need it for that, too, but—”
“And I told you, pens do not explode, even one as, to use your word, ‘inferior,’ as the one I loaned you—”
Essie smiled, unbuttoned the leather quill pouch on her belt, and removed the corpse of the inferior loaner pen. She dropped it onto the desk. All the barbs were burned off. When it hit the wood, it should have wiggled with the chance to do some signing. Instead, it hissed, shot off a few blue sparks, and produced a single smoke ring before expiring.
“Whoa,” the duende said.
Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
Oh yeah, plenty. Every book can help us think differently about fiction. Even bad books can change us. As a writer I’m constantly reading with an eye for things that make me think differently about fiction, because it can help my own storytelling.
As a kid, I ravenously consumed fantasy novels, but when I was a teenager, I read a lot of very pretentious literary fiction. Some of it I still think is good, but a lot of it, be it classic or not, I now find a bit repulsive. And much of what I wrote in my teens was very pretentious as well. But hey, that’s what being a teenager is for, right?
When I read The Once and Future King, it reminded me of how fantasy can be used to tell an extremely human story, and in fact that by stripping away some of the realism, it was possible to focus more on the underlying humanity of the central characters. Holy crap that book is good. Funny and weird and heartbreaking.
When I started writing fantasy again, I wanted it to be more about entertainment than literary fiction, but I still took inspiration from the way T.H. White loves his characters and makes them such real people despite, or really because of, the absurdity and the tragedy going on around them.
How do you select the names of your characters?
My main character’s name is Essimore Darkenchyl. Well, that sounds dramatic, which is nice for a devil character. But it’s really so her nickname could be Essie. She’s based on my wife and my wife is big into nail art, so I wanted her to have a bit of my wife’s interest in her name.
But what’s funny about creating fictional cultures is, you come up with a name like that, well, now you have a rule about their culture. When I had to name other entities of her species, I had to make them sound the same. Besides Essie, there’s you’ve got Dumin Lichslayer, Vashon Blightmure, Feia Moonwein, etc. None of the other ones are named for nail polish, though.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
I wrote my book for my wife, so it’s got lots of little personal jokes in there. Keep your eyes peeled for The Big Lebowski references.
What was your hardest scene to write?
My book is a dark humor book. It’s kind of making fun of the intense plots of a lot of grimdark fantasy but in a way that is hopeful. What I mean is, characters can die, the political situation in the world is a hot mess, and the villains are powerful and ruthless, but the books have a happy ending.
So … being the second book in a trilogy, in the grand tradition of The Empire Strikes Back, this book is the dark one. There are a few scenes toward the end, after things have gone to chaos, where it looks pretty grim for the characters. It’s not like they’ve never been through challenges before, but this one is the most painful for Essie because it deals with her family. I think that finale was the hardest to write because it was so hard to keep the tone consistent. Eventually, I just had to accept that it’s the lowest part of the trilogy for Essie, the part that is the most challenging, so even she normally manages to keep her wits about her, she just fails for a bit.
Actually, it’s good it worked out that way. She’s not a Mary-Sue by any means, and seeing her really challenged is a high point of the series for me.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
This is the second book of a trilogy. I’ve also written a number of other works in the same world, but I don’t see them as like the Marvel model of, like, “you have to have read the other books to enjoy this one.” So really the trilogy essentially stands on its own. It tells one cohesive story about a young woman wrestling with her identity and finding a way to make a lasting difference in the world.
But I do have more plans with all the characters. After I release the third book, I wrote a novella that is a sort of post-script which I’ll give away for free, and I also have a few YA works set in the same world but much later in time.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
My main goal with this whole series was to entertain my wife, since I wrote the books for her. And--mission accomplished.
What inspired you to write CARGO OF BONES?
I love the trend in fantasy to create sympathetic depictions of the god of death, and I thought it’d be fun to create a story where you’re rooting for the people who are trying to protect Death.
Can you tell us a little bit about the next books in THE SALTWATER CHRONICLES or what you have planned for the future?
Yeah, in the next book, Essie finally goes head-to-head with her evil bosses. I think it took her a while to get around to the understanding that they’re evil, but if you’ve been reading the books, you’ll notice that I fairly often have others call them evil, so she was being a bit thick-headed maybe. She’s got a bit of ADHD, I’d say, and she really doesn’t want to have to fight her bosses. But she does get around to it. I think the third book is probably the most cathartic. It’s definitely not as dark as the second one, and maybe not even as dark as the first one. Most of the people who die are villains. It’s sort of like the Scott Pilgrim situation if instead of ex-boyfriends it was former bosses.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in CARGO OF BONES?
There are three major groups:
Essie and her colleagues, who are sailors, are trying to bring back the bones of a dead Aordés to Essie’s ancestral homelands. Essie’s the ship’s rules-obsessed bureaucrat. Essie’s colleagues are: a foul-mouthed doctor, a goblin pirate, a stoner, a cowardly security officer, and a former queen who quit. They’re not the most dignified group of people.
Then there are the Aordés themselves: Dumin Lichslayer, a former chancellor who now lives in the desert as a hermit is probably my favorite. She’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi if he was an alcoholic llama herder. Like all Aordés, she rocks powerful magic, and humans think of her as a devil. Other Aordés include Essie’s dad and brother, the mystical and strange Holy Librarian, and Essie’s childhood crush, Vashon, who went and got extremely hot while Essie was away.
The third group are cultists who are trying to kill the god of death. I can’t tell you too much about them, but they’re led by a hypercompetent elven swordsman who nearly killed Essie in their first meeting.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I wrote it for my wife, and I read it out loud to her. My favorite thing about the whole thing is when something frustrating happens and she shouts, like, “Sir, you did not just say that to Essie!” and the line in the book I wrote is something like, “Sir, you did not just say that to me,” said Essie.
AUTHOR Bio and Links: Zac Lindsey is an anthropologist and a linguist who focuses on the Maya people of Quintana Roo. Since childhood, he's had a not-so-secret love of weird, silly, and well-structured fantasy. When other people's parents were reading them picture books, his mom was reading him Terry Brooks. He typically writes hopeful and character-driven fantasy. Today, he lives in Quintana Roo, Mexico with his wife, daughter, and various stray cats.
Connect with Z. Lindsey
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7 comments:
Thank you so much for featuring CARGO OF BONES today.
Sounds like a very good read! Thank you for sharing.
The cover looks great. Sounds like an interesting story.
Looks like a good read.
sounds like a fun one
This looks like an awesome read. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent author interview!! Also, like the book cover!! Very interesting read!!
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