P J O’Rourke and Hunter S Thompson taught me that whatever everyone else is doing, I should step outside of it and lampoon it cruelly.

Dominic Green – 3 November 2016

The Back Flap

Warlords of Llantatis‘s graphics, gameplay, and immersive three-dimensional virtual reality experience took the online role playing gaming world by storm when it was first released – but it was first released over fifteen years ago. Now it’s a haunt for the nostalgic and unfashionable. Cyrus Baggett and Raj Rengarajulu have been pretending to be Smelrond of Quimnimbriel and Mordaxxe, Pwner of Noobs since college. Now they’re old, married, and wanted by most of the crowned heads, secret police organisations and demonic familiars of the game universe. They are considering growing out of this thing – at least, until they meet the Character With No Name. The Character’s player is living in one room, which he has never left and appears to be being held in against his will. He doesn’t know where in the world the room is; he doesn’t even know his own name. The only way of finding out more about him is through playing Warlords of Llantatis, and that can only happen if Mordaxxe and Smelrond can keep him alive for long enough to talk – and if they can stay alive themselves, with Beëlzebelle and the Munchkins, Wizard Sparklebeard and Titanowang Lord of Fertility at large in the same universe.

About the book

What is the book about?

It’s a race against time to find out the identity and location of a mystery player who appears in a near-future online fantasy game. He claims to be being held prisoner, but has no idea of his location. Unfortunately the game in question doesn’t have the concept of respawning – once your character’s dead, it’s dead – so in order to find out where (and if) he’s being held captive, the other players need to keep him alive for long enough to ask questions. Luckily, the two players who stumble across him, although paunchy and middle-aged in real life, are combat veterans in the game.

When did you start writing the book?

Some time in 2009. I wrote the first chapter and didn’t get any further with it as I was busy with the Ant and Cleo series and Littlestar (the sequel to Smallworld). The first chapter is a little Silmarillionesque (i.e., it’s about How The World Was Made, except for the fact that this world isn’t being created by a god but by software designers). It’s essential, though, as it lays the groundwork for the rest of the story (the ‘Lord of the Rings’ part).

How long did it take you to write it?

I picked it up again in about 2013, and it took another year to finish after that.

Where did you get the idea from?

The germ of it was a conviction that the MMORPG games of today are fundamentally flawed. I grew up with the paper-based RPG explosion of the 1970s, and despite being touted as ‘RPGs’, MMORPGs really are nothing of the sort – you turn up in the world in the same place everyone else does, you walk up to the same old innkeeper everyone else does, who tells you to go over the same old mountain and fight the same old dragon. I wanted to write about a virtual world that was entirely driven and moulded by its participants, where the story content was made by the players.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

The sheer number of characters was hard to keep track of and tie into a finale.

What came easily?

The characters. I know so many of the people I’m describing in the book – the munchkins, the corpse campers and teabaggers, the pathologically immersive roleplayers, the lonely middle-aged men playing female characters in the game as one of their few forms of access to sexual release. I have also been just as woefully addicted to MMORPGs as the next man, so writing about Llantatis was rather like writing about my own home town.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

It’s never a good idea to completely shoe-horn a real-world character into a fictional setting. Usually, writers do it because they particularly hate someone and are seeking revenge, or because they’re writing their story as some sort of personal catharsis (for example, elderly man with prostate trouble writes novel about elderly man with prostate trouble who is irresistible to women and a Secret Agent). It doesn’t work; it takes away your creativity. When you write, you should be using your real-world experiences as building blocks to make something new and beautiful (stroke terrible, stroke apocalyptic), not writing a report of What I Did On My Holidays.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny taught me that, no matter how ridiculous a thing is, if it feels good, go for it

Terry Pratchett, J R R Tolkien and J K Rowling taught me that if your reader doesn’t want to actually live in your world and feel your alien breeze on their face, you might as well pack up and go home

P J O’Rourke and Hunter S Thompson taught me that whatever everyone else is doing, I should step outside of it and lampoon it cruelly

Neal Stephenson – taught me that cyberpunk should have its feet in the ones and zeroes if it wants to have its head in the Matrix

Do you have a target reader?

No – I write books, not marketing exercises. I would like to hope I can appeal to anyone who’s got a brain and understands the English language. I’m aware that I can’t be all things to all people, though, and I’m also aware that I don’t appeal to people who buy their opinions in bulk at Left- (or Right-) Wing Opinions ‘R’ Us.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I sit down and write. Often I do this in a café, though cafés have become more distracting now that many of them have wifi. I usually take my dog. This means I have to sit outside, which is cold in the spring and autumn, but it’s good to have my dog with me and he gets a bone out of the deal, so he’s happy. It’s not cold for him to sit outside. He’s a big shaggy thing.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I usually write out a scene-by-scene plan of the whole book. For big series like Ant and Cleo, I also maintain a master document containing dates of events and the names of characters, planets, spaceships and malevolent alien life forms.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I do both. I find it’s easy to produce volume, but far too easy to produce something appalling that needs serious hackwork before it can be allowed to see the light of day. And I always read through the whole book at least once and try to correct any typos, grammatical errors and offenses to God before publishing (that said, I did have to hastily rush out a new version of the eighth Ant and Cleo book because one of the first readers spotted the fact that I’d written two completely different versions of the same scene and left them side by side in the manuscript). I read quite a few ebooks by other people, and so many good books by very competent people are ruined by failure to review.

Did you hire a professional editor?

No – I can’t afford it.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I get inspiration from music, which in turn means that I can’t concentrate on writing if I’m listening to music at the same time, because the music will be trying to get me to think about Scene A while I’m trying to write Scene B. And I like all sorts of stuff. To me, the very best music is usually music that many people dislike, because experimental musical forms are experimental, and most experiments are negative. Ninety per cent of punk rock, metal, prog rock, neue Deutsche Härte, hip hop, goth and reggae is awful earbending garbage – but the top ten per cent of all those genres is genius.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

Hardly ever, unless I hear of a new agent who handles work similar to my own. It would be great if an agent were to express an interest, but I have never, ever had a response from an agent that wasn’t a form letter. My experience is that it’s more use to buy a lottery ticket than to approach an agent – even after I was nominated for a Hugo, that didn’t seem to impress anyone. I have no idea what does impress agents, but it ain’t me.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

I was introduced to the possibilities of self-publishing by Fingerpress, who published my novel Smallworld. They published a hardcopy of that book, but accompanied that with a free softcopy. That opened my eyes to how easy self-publishing via Smashwords and KDP is.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

I produce all my own covers.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

I’m just doing everything I can think of (in fact, I have read at least one piece of marketing advice that just said: ‘Do everything’). Marketing a book is at least as difficult as writing one.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Point one – get a job that isn’t Writer. You’re going to need it. Point two – think about the marketing as you’re writing the book, don’t just write it, slam it onto KDP and hope it sells. Point three – there are many, many people out there, and this includes big multinational corporations, willing to take your money for marketing services without delivering any concrete benefit. I can recommend Penny Sansevieri’s Author Marketing Experts company. They are honest and will deliver exactly what they promise (and more importantly, tell you what they’re not promising to deliver).

About You

Where did you grow up?

I’m about as English as it is possible for a human being to be. I think one of my great-grandfathers may have been Irish, but you have to go back that far to find anyone who didn’t eat fish and chips out of newspaper and get misty-eyed at the sight of a Supermarine Spitfire. I grew up in Bakewell in Derbyshire (a nice little town in a national park, just over the hill from Chatsworth where, by a law dating back to the Middle Ages, every British costume drama has to be filmed) and Wellingborough, near Northampton (a town that used to be a sleepy little collection of shoe factories, and is now one of the many places London vomited out its overspill onto).

Where do you live now?

Northampton (more out of chance than design). It’s a funny old place – it has a history of fighting on the wrong side in civil wars and losing its standing in the kingdom as a consequence. At one time, it had both a castle and a university (the third university in Britain). Now it has a very nice railway station.

What would you like readers to know about you?

I’m available for parties and Bar Mitzvahs at very reasonable prices, but I don’t do dirty stuff.

What are you working on now?

Book nine of the Ant and Cleo series. I can’t disclose the plot, but it’s going to involve dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dirty great dinosaurs. I have also just written Elder Shepherd, my take on the James Bond genre (hopefully rather different to Fleming’s), and I’m about halfway through writing a paranormal thriller set in the fictional town of Kingshampton, a town that fought on the right side in two civil wars and still possesses both a castle and a university.

End of Interview:

Get your copy of Warlords of Llantatis from Amazon US or Amazon UK.