Small Spec Book Awards - Semi-Finalist Feature #2
Welcome to the second post featuring the semi-finalists of the Small Spec Book Awards! Check out the first post here!
Today is Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada and I have had a busy, busy weekend full of food and family. When I think of lots of food, I think hobbits and Lord of the Rings, one of my first entries into fantasy. My father loved fantasy and Tolkien most of all. So in honour of him, I've selected three of the fantasy semi-finalists to feature today: J. A. Mortimore and Penelope Hill, co-authors off The Harlequin: The Draper's Reel, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, author of Cursed Under London, and Sam Flynn, author of The Mystery of the Pale King.
Each author has been asked the same questions:
1. What inspired you to write this book?
2. What was your favourite part of writing it?
3. Where can we find you and your work? (socials, blog, website)
The Harlequin by J. A. Mortimore and Penelope Hill
Question my honesty if you must, but nobody, and I mean nobody, questions my skill.
I’ve
never paid much attention to the gods, which may be why I foolishly
agreed to steal Pardeem’s reel. It seemed a straightforward enough
challenge for a master trickster like me, but with things like this you
never know.
Leaving my cosy retirement isn’t difficult. Wearing the Harlequin’s hat again feels right. However returning to Emor holds challenges. Old friends and enemies wait in the shadows; maybe I can turn that to my advantage. But now my own god seems to be paying me far too much attention. This isn’t going to be straightforward.
But
that’s the thrill, isn’t it? To dance with peril, to spin with the
twists, to confound expectations and to embrace the trick for its own
sake. The Harlequin doesn’t give up at the first hurdle.
If I can carry this off, it will be the heist of a lifetime.
Failure might cost me everything.
1. What inspired you to write this book?
The Harlequin can be blamed on two things: a set of dice rolls on a ‘write an adventure’ table, and Judith’s twisted mind. We still have the dice rolls; it could have been a completely different story. Instead, influenced by Thorne Smith’s ‘Rain in the doorway’ and a single snapshot of a soap opera star who will not be named – who came complete with the hat – the Harlequin sprang fully-formed into our minds.
2. What was your favourite part of writing it?
Bouncing ideas off each other. We were living at opposite ends of the country when we wrote the original draft, and hours-long phone calls were a weekly feature!
3. Where can we find you and your work? (socials, blog, website)
Judith’s website is at jamortimore.com. You can find her on Instagram: judithmortimore and on Facebook: J. A. Mortimore - Author.
Penny’s personal (somewhat neglected) website/blog is: https://www.mythweaver.co.uk/, and there is also (slightly less neglected) https://knownkingdoms.com/ (the world building website for one of our other novels). You can also follow her on Instagram: mythichistorian
Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
In a dark alleyway in an alternative Elizabethan London, Fang’s heart stops. Moments later, it magically restarts again. A grumpy traveller from the Ming empire, Fang is disappointed to discover that not only is he still alive, but he’s also become another creature entirely: an immortal. The first of his kind.
That is until he meets Lazare de Quitte-Beuf, an annoyingly cheerful – and undeniably handsome – Frenchman who shares the same curse. But in a world where immortality is a coveted commodity, Fang and Lazare quickly realise that eternal life is far from a blessing. With both of their futures at risk, will they ever admit that they have finally found something – or someone – to live for?
1. What inspired you to write this book?
When I sent Cursed Under London to my publisher in 2023, they asked if I'd done any research that found Romantasies were hot at that point - I hadn't at all! It's just that, being a comedy writer and a romantic soul at heart, I've always wanted to write a romcom, and being very Fantasy minded, it made sense for me to write a romcom set in a fantasy world. I set it in an alternate Tudor Britain because I love the Tudors. I'm a writer on Horrible Histories and wanted to throw in some of the fun facts I've learned in the writers room (you will notice a lot of references to Qin Dynasty China in the book as well - another historic era I was fascinated by while writing kids' comedy history shows). I love Shakespeare and Marlowe and had been thinking for years about writing a frienemies comedy about those two, that ended up a long running background plot of the Cursed series. I'm also fascinated by King James Stuart's obsessive hatred and fear of witchcraft, and felt him waiting to take over the crown of England would make a great threat to a land of dragons and alchemists. I came out as bi really quite late in life - just before turning 40 - and all of the romances in Cursed are, in my words, "aggressively bisexual" because, well. Why the Hell not. All of my previous books have had LGBT+ romances in them, but I wanted to write a romcom that had one front and centre, and to set it in a world where them being bi+ wasn't the issue, the issue was that the middle of a dangerous quest is a dreadful time to fall in love. I made Fang and Lazare (and Nell) immigrants, since the first story is one about London, and the London I know is one made great by immigration. Also, as a bisexual middle aged woman, and a Welshwoman who's spent most of her life in England, I wanted to explore the internalised feeling of being not quite one thing nor another, hence the main characters' 'curse' leaving them not quite a part of the human world nor the magical world.
2. What was your favourite part of writing it?
I love making myself laugh and making myself cry. There aren't that many tears in Cursed Under London, although I empathise desperately with Fang and his grief, his deep sadness, his lack of self esteem. I will freely admit to making myself laugh a LOT. Amber and Wulfric, both intended initially to be there as plot points that we quickly move away from, both delighted me as I wrote them so much that I knew I had to make them part of the regular crew. I also have a habit of making myself laugh by slipping injokes or pop culture references into chapter titles, and playing around with tropes. You will notice that in Cursed there is only one bed. There is ALWAYS only one bed. The Only One Bed follows them around. Sharing a bed was a standard in Tudor days, for warmth, which is my excuse. I also enjoyed looking up lesser known mythological creatures, like the puca, and non-european mythological beings like the jiangshi. I had a LOT of fun with Susu, she's part Pepe le Pew and part Colin Robinson. I will also admit, I enjoy writing horrible people. Besides the main villain, who I won't say much about because of spoilers, I also loved writing Kit Marlowe far too much. My version of him is such a terrible person, but he's so charming and his total lack of filter, manners or regard for others' feelings just made him great fun to write.
3. Where can we find you and your work? (socials, blog, website)
I'm mostly on Bluesky as scriblit.bsky.social. I am technically also on Mastodon and The Website Formerly Known As Twitter, also under the handle Scriblit - although I'm only really there to answer questions. I'm on TikTok as GabbyHCWrites. All of my books are available on my publisher's website here https://farragobooks.com/fb-author/gabby-hutchinson-crouch/
The Mystery of the Pale King by Sam Flynn
"Tonight, my friends, the performance is real. To you, my most faithful, I dedicate this, the final production of 'The Mystery of the Pale King.'"
As an orphan growing up in a distant border province, Faron took pride in the epic tales of the Hero of Hathur, a great and powerful warrior who ruled in the name of the sun-worshipping Church of the Sol Creator. That pride is shattered by accusations from the Hero's family that he squandered their entire inheritance on the production of a profane play with him at the center: "The Mystery of the Pale King." The Church proclaims him under interdict and dispatches Bishop Antonius, his devoted page Faron, and a cadre of soldiers downriver to repossess Hathur on its behalf.
The cruelty they witness on their perilous mission forces them to confront the horrors at the heart of Hathur's past and question not just their devotion to the Church but their very beliefs in gods and heroes. Amid a storm of betrayal, murder, and sacrilege, Faron must survive fanatical cultists, their obscene rituals, and the evil hiding in the light in order to save Bishop Antonius from the Hero's final performance.
Inspired by the historical legend of Gilles de Rais, The Mystery of the Pale King probes the roots of modern American dysfunction in a grim flintlock fantasy setting that reflects the best and worst of humanity.
1. What inspired you to write this book?
Three things. First was when I attended the Futurescapes Writers' Workshop in 2022, agent Elizabeth Copps taught a class on publishing comps and I started to think about my stories not just in terms of what I wanted but what the audience wanted, in this case agents and publishers. X-meets-Y may be reductive but it is effective for likely the same reason. Second, I read The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, which is an anthology of weird horror short stories centered around a fictional play of the same title. The play is never shared or depicted save snippets because if it's performed, the King in Yellow will appear and the world will end. Third was when I stumbled across the legend of Gilles de Rais, a Medieval French nobleman who fought with Joan of Arc, returned home and proceeded to bankrupt his family on an extravagant play he wrote, directed and starred in. His family (aka inheritors) did not like seeing him light their wealth on fire and went to the King of France to stop him. Secular and religious organizations investigated and in the end he was tried, found guilty and executed for occult child murders. I immediately saw the potential for a story from the POV of the investigators dispatched to a similar situation, only to confront history and horrors they never anticipated. From the seed of Gilles de Rais-meets-The King in Yellow grew The Mystery of the Pale King. Turns out you can reverse engineer a story from a comp.
2. What was your favourite part of writing it?
The fact that it got published is my favorite part of writing it. To be real, my creative experience is that stories stagnate without exposure to an audience. I spent many years working on my passion project, an epic fantasy-mystery novel called The Darkest Fate, with the unrealized goal of being traditionally published. After attending Futurescapes in 2022, I was finally ready to step away from the novel and apply everything I'd learned on shorter fiction, which I had previously written without success. This is backwards of how it usually goes for writers where they start in short fiction and build to a novel but apparently I love to make things hard on myself. I set out to write something shorter that might conceivable be published and lo and behold, it was (check out Timber Ghost Press for more freaky tales).
3. Where can we find you and your work? (socials, blog, website)
The Mystery of the Pale King is available from Timber Ghost Press, Amazon and Audible in paperback, ebook, and audiobook (narrated by me!). I primarily post on my website (https://www.sam-flynn.com), Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/SamFlynn), and BlueSky (@samflynnwrites.bsky.social). Sign up for my quarterly newsletter (https://sam-flynn.beehiiv.com) to stay up to date on my books. Find all links over on linktree (https://linktr.ee/samflynn7).
Thanks for reading!
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