Author Interview with Matthew Davenport

Author of

Andrew Doran and the Scroll of Nightmares, and more

Please tell me a little about your current work in progress.

            Andrew Doran is an Archaeologist who studies the occult and tries to keep the monsters behind the veil from coming into our world. Unfortunately for him, it would seem that everyone else in the world is trying to do the opposite. This most recent work, Andrew Doran and the Scroll of Nightmares, pits him against a new enemy, a nightmare god from an alien world. In the first several books, Andrew has fought destiny, the horrors of war, and just about anything Lovecraft has dreamed of. This time around, he’s beginning to see that his actions have consequences and that not everything can be solved with a spell and some luck. We will also test how far he is willing to go, where his line on “too far” is, when it comes to protecting the world.

Where did you get the idea for this book or series?

            The series was a natural evolution from my love of Lovecraft and my own past as an Archaeologist. After reading so many great adventure stories by other authors, I just wanted one that tackled the mythos my way. That’s where this amalgam of Indiana Jones and Randolph Carter came into being. After that, I was just a kid in a sandbox with his toys. Andrew Doran is the most fun I have writing and his influences are infinite. From books, you get Lovecraft, Gaiman, Lumley, Hambling, Asimov, King, and Clines. From television, you get Indiana Jones, The Librarians, Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and more. Andrew Doran is just the culmination of everything I enjoy and twisted into my own stories.

Do you write in more than one genre?

            I write in several genres. Andrew Doran is pulp/adventure. Then there’s Satan’s Salesman and The Trials of Obed Marsh, which are both horror. My Broken Nights series is part of the superhero genre. I have even written a fantasy/young adult novel called The Sons of Merlin. I write what I enjoy, and my interests tend to fluctuate daily.

Tell me about something that you believe makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.

            I write to entertain myself and tend to believe that the things that entertain me probably entertain others as well. If I’m not enjoying what I’m writing, then no one else will. That being said, my stories tend to take a likeable person and thrust them into impossible scenarios with the end goal being that person doing something incredibly normal, or incredibly human to get past the climax. And sometimes not.

Is there anything about your personal history or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?

            I have been an archaeologist and I have been a salesman. A lot of Satan’s Salesman, the anecdotes within, and the characters, were built out of people that I have known at some point in my life and exaggerated into the characters you see in the story.

            Aside from that, I use a lot of my personal relationships and how I feel in moments from my memory to build believable relationships between my characters. I detail a lot of the background of scenes based on places I have been or lived and a handful of my characters have at least a basic template of someone I know that I can build off of and turn into the character that I need.

What else would be helpful for readers to know about you?

            I write at my own pace and I love feedback and interaction. If you enjoy reading one of my stories, let me know in a review or through my website or Twitter. I love talking about stories in general and seeing people excited about the same stuff that excites me is the fuel to my creative furnace.

Excluding your own work, what underrated author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?

            I don’t know about underrated, but David Hambling is the coolest guy out there. He writes Mythos stories with a pulpy feel, much as I do, but his are just better. His characters are thoroughly enjoyable and his adventures are just plain fun. On top of that, he’s just a great guy to talk to and shoot ideas off of. There is a lot of complex plot that wouldn’t exist from me if I hadn’t first felt out the ideas over long conversations with him. Go download Elder Ice by Hambling now. Or War of the God Queen. Before you get my books, go read that.

Which of your books do you most highly recommend? Why?

            If I had to recommend only one of my books to an audience who’s tastes may vary, it would have to be The Statement of Andrew Doran, the first of my Andrew Doran novels. It’s fun and episodic and has a little bit of something for everyone. Adventure, history, scenery, fight scenes, romance, betrayal, zombies, I mean everything. If you end up enjoying it, there are two more novels and a ton of short stories in crossover novels with other Mythos writers. Something like 10 (ish) total Andrew Doran stories are out there and he’s far from done.

Which break, event, decision, or fortuitous circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?

            NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. About 12 years ago, I saw that it was happening and thought it might be fun to try. My first novel, Random Stranger, was born as a result of that. I’m a huge fan of it and refer to it as my “month-long holiday.” The event is a global phenomenon and aspiring writers, or even veterans, can find all sorts of community and tools available to assist the entire process.

What question do you wish you would get asked more often?

            “Excuse me, sir, but is this your hundred dollar bill?”

Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that you like? What is it? And why do you choose it?

            “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” - Samuel Johnson.

______________

Thanks to Matthew for participating.

In my own writing this week, I've knocked out a couple more chapters in the prequel to the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire series. The prequel features the commander, Lucette, and at least one other character from the series--so far--and is likely to include a couple of other important characters before it concludes.

Threading the Rude Eye, the first book in the series, remains at 99 cents on Amazon. Also, the stand-alone novel of the dystopian future of next week The Shrinking Zone is also only 99 cents. Links are in the bar at the top of the page.

 

The play testing continues with the Wreck at the Ruins scenario. This is a great scenario. It's fun and doesn't take too long to play. It's the third scenario, and changes the flavor from musketeerian to Barsoomian. I won't give the complete details here because I've given an AAR of the scenario before using a previous iteration of the rules. I think the rules are even better with the latest changes. Here are the high points of the rumble between red and green warriors searching for the prize.

The green warrior at the top of the picture, Bak Badja, shoots Mardos Tors in the foreground (or maybe it was in the leg or the side) for a serious with a radium gun. Mardos Tors dashes for cover.

During his search for the Melihum Princess, Bak Badja disturbs the white simian  - it attacks

The combat dice for this combat –they each wound the other, and Bak Badja, in desperation, races for the exit before the simian can grab or whack him again.

Meanwhile, Han Tadron finds some healing balm which he got to Mardos Tors to reduce his serious wound to a minor one.

Bak Badja leaves the white simian behind and moves to attack Nantos Nan.

However, the white simian has been enraged. It bounds after the green warrior even as Bak Badja tries to engage Nantos Nan.

The pale ape closes and attacks before Bak Badja can deal with Nantos Nan.

The simian raises his club and bashes Bak Badja who tries to get away from the fury of the beast. Nantos Nan sees an opportunity. He skewers the green warrior before the enemy can escape. Of course, that leaves the great ape all for him.

Vak Voka, the other green warrior at the ruins, has searched a room, only to have the wounded Mardos Tors blast him with a radium pistol. The green warrior falls dead.

Dav Ravos of the red warriors finally finds the princess, and begins carrying her to safety.

The pale simian leaps over the dead Zarhoon to get at Nantos Nan.

Instead of the picture of Nantos Nan being clubbed by the ape, and backing away to empty his pistol into the big pale target, I have a picture of dice--don't ask me why. Anyway with both green warriors face-down in the sward, and the corpse of the big white brute providing some ambiance in the street, there are no enemies left to hinder the warriors in getting the princess to safety.

I played this scenario three times through the week. The red men were victorious every time. The green men had the misfortune to find the simian every time. They did find the princess in two of the three matches, but the red men managed to rescue her both times. The green men did fare better each time--as I remembered to give them the benefit of using two weapons. On the last outing, but for Nantos Nan's special, but limited, skill in avoiding unfavorable combat results, the green men would have been triumphant as they killed two red warriors and wounded a third before being driven from the ruins.

Overall, it was highly playable, fun, and fast-paced. I think the K-man and RC would enjoy it.

____________________

On the writing front, the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire prequel is making progress. The story of how the commander acquired his stone is complete. The matter of Lucette and the acquisition of Cartier's map is still underway. Outrageous fortune is hitting Lucette without mercy, and leaving her world forever changed.

 

Interview with Bruno Martin Soares 

Author of 

Laura and The Shadow King

Please tell me a little about your current work in progress.

My latest book, LAURA AND THE SHADOW KING is about a little girl fleeing from her cruel captors with her mother in a post-apocalyptic Southern Spain and Portugal devastated by a pandemic (two, actually – one after the other). And then she is saved by Special Forces team Shadow. Laura is a special girl who can make all the difference to find a cure, so the invading Russian army will not let her go easily. People usually notice my strong female characters and the girl’s mother, Maria, is someone to be reckoned with. The second volume of this two-part miniseries will come out at the end of the year. Here’s where you can get it: https://amzn.to/2Tb9628

 

Where did you get the idea for this book or series?

 I like militaristic stories and wanted to do a Special Forces tale in the wake of my series THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES. In the second volume of this Scifi Space Opera, there’s a sequence of Special Forces action in a destitute Pirate City and I liked it so much I wanted to do something larger with that kind of feel. I also wanted to write something about hope and resilience – and came out with this idea of a little girl that can be the key to beat a pandemic. Little did I know that two years later we’d have an actual pandemic. Also, I never had done anything with a post-apocalyptic scenery, so it was an opportunity to do that as well.

 

Do you write in more than one genre?

I started by writing traditional literary narratives and still write a few stories in that genre. But my main focus now is in Scifi-Fantasy. I end up writing in different subgenres. I wrote a SciFi Saga with Fantasy tropes (The Saga of Alex 9), then a Space Fleet trilogy (The Dark Sea War Chronicles), now a post-apocalyptic action-thriller with a superpower mixture (Laura and the Shadow King), and am writing a supernatural/SciFi horror story (Insight) that should come out next year.

Tell me about something that you believe makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.

People tell me my writing is thrilling and suspenseful and gritty. People like my strong characters and page-turner style. But I also like the way my writing style evolved to something less orthodox but nevertheless interesting and even exciting. I pay a lot of attention to rhythm and what I call Melodic Writing. You can look me up in Medium to learn about this – I wrote a few articles on the subject.

 

Is there anything about your personal history or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?

I won the Young Creators National Award for Writing in ’96, and represented my country in fairs in Torino, Rome and Sarajevo. I was in Sarajevo when Clinton decided to bomb Belgrade, which was a little bit scary, but not so much as the earthquake we felt a few days earlier.

Overall, it was a special experience for me. I was there 3 years after the Civil War and scars were everywhere. Every single wall had bullet holes in it and some quarters the windows were still covered with United Nations’ plastic, as no window had survived the war. But the worst scars I saw were in the eyes of people around me. You could see they had all gone through Hell. Sarajevo is separated in two by a river and during the war, no-one could go from one side to the other without being shot by snipers. And children could only play outside when there was fog. These kinds of stories were very impressive to me. I wanted to go there because I wanted to learn for myself, up close, the real consequences of war, and I did see them. My parents were involved in the Portuguese Guinea Independence War, and I knew they had been scarred by it. And I’m fascinated by those extreme events. War brings out the best and the worst in people. That’s a little bit what I try to show in my writings.

Both LAURA AND THE SHADOW KING and THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES are about war and its consequences, even though the most important themes in them are resilience and hope. A couple of years ago, the Portuguese version of THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES won the Adamastor Award for Fantastic Writing, which was my latest award and one I’m really proud of.

 

What else would be helpful for readers to know about you?

I was born in S.Sebastião da Pedreira, in the center of Lisbon. If you dig it up, you’ll find a surprising number of Lisbon-born Portuguese were actually born in that bairro. It’s the place where you’ll find the largest maternity in Portugal.

I moved to the Madeira Island when I was 2 years old. The island is made of two 2000-meter-high mountains in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A tiny spec of dust in any world map, but it’s there, about the same latitude of Casablanca but far away to the West. My father was an executive and an entrepreneur, and my mother was a nurse, and I had a younger brother and a younger sister I could annoy. But most of the time, I resorted to books.

I don’t really know how old I was when I started to write stories. I wrote them for school, I’m certain, but the first time I wrote without any academic goal I was 12. Sometimes in the Summer we would go to my grandmother’s house in Continental Portugal, north of Lisbon, near Coimbra, and once in a while I, my siblings and my cousins would enact a show for our parents and uncles. When I was 12, I decided to write a play for that purpose. I never finished it. I never finished a lot of stuff, back then. I started novels and all kinds of stories but wasn’t convinced of the outcome. So, I started to write short stories, just so I could learn, making sure I finished them.

When I was 18, I came to Lisbon to study Law and then Business Administration.  I kept writing different stuff. When I was 22, a friend of mine incited me to enter one of the largest and most prestigious Young Writers’ contests. I did and won an Honorable Mention. I tried again two years later and won it. I went to Torino and them Rome and Sarajevo, representing my country as a Young Writer. One of the best times of my life.

 

Excluding your own work, what underrated author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?

I love Alexander Kent/Douglas Reeman. Even though he’s a successful writer with dozens of novels published, his work doesn’t have the attention of a C.S.Lewis, a Patrick O’Brien or an Alastair McQueen. Yet, I think he is way more talented than most of these and his protagonist, Richard Bolitho, is the model for my hero Byllard Iddo in THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES.

 

Which of your books do you most highly recommend? Why?

I have a soft spot for my first trilogy THE SAGA OF ALEX 9 which is still not translated to English. I had people saying THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES is my best work and others saying LAURA AND THE SHADOW KING is better still. I’m always in love with the book I’m writing. My work-in-progress, INSIGHT, is some of my best work by far. Sorry. I can’t recommend just one.

 

Which break, event, decision, or fortuitous circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?

I think the moment I decided to submit my work to the Young Creators Award in Portugal made me a ‘real writer’ – in the sense I became known and read after that. The path wasn’t a bed of roses from then on and there were a lot of setbacks, but I can say that moment changed my life.

 

10. What question do you wish you would get asked more often?

How is Portugal doing in the Scifi/Fantasy genre?

Portugal is a small country (10 million people) with a small book market. You cannot survive as a writer in the Portuguese market alone. Still, we do have several very interesting emerging writers, gathering strength to write more and publish abroad. And we have a flourishing and surprisingly strong lot of comic book artists. Some of our designers are hired by the largest comic book brands. I wish the Portuguese movie and TV producing market wasn’t so fragile and amateurish, because I would love to work more in those formats, but I’m constantly surprised and impressed by what the new generations is preparing in terms of books and other media.

11. Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that you like? What is it? And why do you choose it?

I do, actually… Several. I like the famous ‘Be water, my friend’ quote by Bruce Lee. I used it in my THE SAGA OF ALEX 9 trilogy, and I really identify with it.

I have one at Goodreads I also love. From Churchill, it goes something like this: ‘Many men occasionally stumble on the Truth. But most just get up and keep walking as if nothing happened.’

But to be honest, the one I tell myself everyday in the mirror is from Ridley Scott’s ‘Black Rain’. It’s a phrase Michael Douglas says to a Japanese Yakuza boss, but I say it to myself: ‘I am the solution to your problems.’  It keeps me going.

You can find out more about me and my books at these links:

https://brunomartinssoares.com/

https://amzn.to/3cayo5q

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5759799.Bruno_Martins_Soares

https://www.facebook.com/BMartinsSoares

 Musketeers and Cardinal's Guards meet once again to exchange pleasantries and blood samples

I've played this scenario before. It's the first of the dozen or so scenarios I've created for my skirmish rules. Since I've made some fundamental changes to the method of resolving combat and other things, I figured that I should try it out on the first scenario. So once again, it is the rescue from the hangman's noose. Andre, D'Hubert, Arnaud, and Paul are musketeers on a mission to rescue a friend from the Cardinal's Guards and the hangman's noose. The musketeers are in blue. The guards are in red. The white circles mark the location of objects hidden to help the musketeers. The guards can't take any action, other than looking for the musketeers in the crowd, until they spot the musketeers or the rescuers do something to draw attention to themselves. I've dispensed with the crowd for simplicity's sake for this test. The hangman is played by a partially painted Planchet figure. The friend to be saved from hanging is played by a woodland Indian figure.

Here is the initial setup:

Ignore those Allied troops in the background at the upper left waiting to enter the battle of Leipzig. The musketeers moved first. D'Hubert went for the prisoner while the others went for the hidden objects. 

Here, the guards make an effort to spot the musketeers, and fail miserably--giving the turn back to the musketeers.

Arnaud found an item, a cage of pigeons which flew up and distracted the nearby guards. With D'Hubert blocking the hangman from getting to the scaffold, Arnaud opens the festivities with a the caress of steel to a distracted guard. (The guards have names, but I can't remember them). He nearly killed the guard, but only ended up wounding him, and getting between him and the prisoner and the scaffold.

Unfortunately for Arnaud, the chickens (or in this case, the steel) soon came home to roost. The guard wounded him. Arnaud reacted with an attack of his own, only to have the guard run him through. Scratch one musketeer.

In an attempt to relieve the hangman, so that he could in fact hang a man, a guard rushed to attack D'Hubert. The musketeer received the attack with aplomb, and more importantly, with a sword, which he put through the guard's enthusiasm, and heart. 

D'Hubert in the upper left corner attempts to make his way to safety with the prisoner, after knocking down the hangman. Paul and a guard at the top of the picture have measured their steel with one another. The guard was wounded. Both of them saw that the key to the situation lay with D'Hubert and the prisoner. Both attempted to make their way to hinder or help the musketeer. Paul hoped to avoid going around the scaffold by leaping upon it, but did not have enough umph to make the jump. Meanwhile, Andre and a guard at the lower right have engaged and disengaged. Andre has found an extra knife that was hidden for him. The other guard near the center has had trouble accomplishing anything.

Paul met the guard's attack, giving him another wound, and squeezing between him and the scaffold to head toward D'Hubert who has been set upon by a guard. The guard determined that his wounds required attention and that he could not stay for the remainder of the show.

Above, Andre and a guard continue to fence. Andre has twice wounded the guard, but the Cardinal's man refuses to let the musketeer pass.

Andre finally breaks away. The guard moves to re-engage, but Andre counters with the old knife to guard's level three, or liver, as the case may be (you didn't think I would miss a chance to insert an obscure ST reference?), and the guard falls--but he still isn't dead.

In the upper left corner where the prisoner and D'Hubert are about to escape, Paul has made it to the fray along with two guards. Paul introduces his sword to a guard who is terminally pleased to meet it. The other guard, seeing his companion fall, elects to breakaway from the combat to reconsider his priorities. He takes a wound from D'Hubert as he flees. The guard runs, but not far.

Before D'Hubert and the prisoner can escape to terminate the encounter, the cowardly guard decides that he can be brave at a distance. He fires his pistol, killing Paul. D'Hubert completes the mission. Although Andre and D'Hubert escaped unscathed, two of the four musketeers breathed their last in that town square. Two of the five guards were slain. A third guard fled the field before the final scene.

***

Overall, it played very well. I like the new changes, with one exception: I left something out of the ranged combat rules, which makes the target unreasonably vulnerable.

 Leipzig (the never-ending battle) continues.

In a nutshell (which is a strange place for a massive battle), the French artillery has demonstrated itself to be the most effective arm on the battlefield. No matter how bad the odds, the French guns almost always prevailed. 

 

Around 1400 or so, the Allies brought up another corps of soldiers, artillery and cavalry in the center. They had to throw the troops already occupying the space forward to pound the French defenses. The early attacks met with little success and cost the Allies more casualties than they caused. Nevertheless, the constant attacks began to take a toll on the French center.

At the same time on the Allied right, Russian cuirassiers (unpainted gray horsemen) charged the French positions behind the forward town. The charges were repulsed and the heavy cavalry suffered from the artillery fire both behind the town and along the hill. The artillery bombarding the town had the wrong size shot or the gunners were spending their time playing cards; the bombardment continued to be ineffective.

The Allies kept pounding the center with combined attacks by artillery, heavy cavalry, and infantry. The two batteries of French Guard artillery and a brigade of infantry held and held. The Allied artillery finally pushed back the infantry. A Russian infantry attack further weakened the position. Finally, Austrian cuirassiers took the guns. A second squadron of the Austrian cuirassiers charged the brigade French infantry.

The Austrian heavies smashed into the fatigued infantry, and destroyed them.

French cuirassiers counter-attacked.

The French horse caught the disordered Austrians cuirassiers (cleverly disguised as Scots Greys in the photo) and sabered them into oblivion.

On the Allied left, the Prussian artillery utterly failed to hurt the French in the town on the riverbank. The Prussian Infantry launched several attacks behind the artillery fire, hurting only themselves in the process. The Russian Cossacks (unpainted reddish-brown horseman in the picture) charged the French right. They damaged the French, but the stubborn French infantry with attached artillery turned the attacks. Polish hussars counter-attacked and eliminated one squadron of cossacks, but the Polish leader was took a mortal wound in the fray--or maybe it was in the heart, or the head; the game doesn't provide that kind of detail.

The Allied advance, driven by the fresh troops coming in, continued in the center. The remnants of Russian infantry advanced on the Allied right with an eye to assaulting the French left. The artillery and infantry at the lower right have had been attempting to drive the French from the town for hours. The infantry retreats under fire before they can reach the walls. The Allies have been stymied on both flanks, making costly progress in the center. The French have started edging their reserves forward to plug attempt to stop the flood when the Allies break through.