This guest post is part of the 2013 Blogger Book Fair and was written by D. H. Aire. He is the author of Highmage’s Plight.
CJB: Tell us a little about your book.
DHA: First, thank you, C.J., for the opportunity to appear on your blog. I know you’re a fantasy writer, so you likely understand why I love to write across genre, sci fi and fantasy. These are among my favorite genres and combining them in unusual ways offers me the opportunity to dream up unique stories, combining adventure, satire, humor, and, of course, elves.
My debut novel Highmage’s Plight, published last year, and the forthcoming sequel Human Mage, is the story of an archeologist from our future, who falls through a ripple in reality while holding onto his computer staff for dear life. He finds himself in a world where long ago a starship with human colonists crash landed and the elves did not appreciate the invasion. To win the ensuing rather devastating war, magic bent the laws of science and it will need the reintroduction of science on the level of magic to save the world from a terrible evil.
In a similar vein, I have published a number of time travel short stories which entwine fantasy with sci fi.
CJB: What future projects are you looking forward to?
DHA: The next book in the Plight series, Human Mage, is being published in a few months and I’m about to begin serializing the next book in the series, Highmage, in the ezine Separate Worlds. One of my current projects is Dare2Believe, a Young Adult urban fantasy series. I have posted sample chapters on Wattpad, a free site for YA fiction. Dare is best described, I guess, as Gulliver’s Travels meets Urban Fantasy.
CJB: What authors or books have been most influential in your writing?
DHA: As I mentioned, I enjoy writing a blend of sci fi and fantasy. In many ways sci fi started out as fantasy. The authors and books that have been most influential to me include the works of Jules Verne From Earth to the Moon (where people fly to the Moon by being shot out of a cannon), Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea (with its wonderful submarine and sea monsters) are sci fi as we describe it today. I doubt they were so easily classified back when Verne wrote them. He offered visions of the fantastic and looked at what technology might make possible. He captured imaginations, a hallmark of good sci fi. Yet to me the fantasy element is what resonates.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, The Lord of the Rings, caught my imagination just as strongly as a teenager. After that, I found myself appreciating fantasy as fantasy, magic, quest, and all. I wasn’t able to read enough of it after that. Thinking about it, I couldn’t read enough sci fi, either. I guess not being able to get enough made me dream up my own stories and spurred me to write them.
For me, combining both genre is rather, well, fun. I love dreaming up worlds or twisting ours. I love stories like Gordon Dickson’s The Dragon and the George, which takes a psychology experiment over reality’s edge and makes a dragon a twentieth century man, and Roger Zelazny’s Amber Series, where reality changes for the family that can walk between worlds. I’m also a fan of Anne McCaffrey’s The Dragonrider’s of Pern Series, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover Series, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar Series, the works of Robin Hobb and Elizabeth Moon. On the sci fi side, I’m a big fan of David Feintuch’s Nicholas Seafort Saga, and David Weber and John Ringo’s March to the Sea.
In terms of my own writing, I feel you really don’t need to have elves or dragons to write fantasy… but it helps. I also like to explore issues in my stories, which is what good sci fi should be about, through a different lens, which can be clearer when, for example, humanity faces racist elvins. Okay, not all elves are racist. Trolls can have their human issues, too, which I love too.
For those interested in a chance to win a free Highmage’s Plight t-shirt and the opportunity to get an advance read of the sequels in the series, visit my website at www.dhr2believe.net for details during the Bloggers Book Fair, July 22 – 26, 2013.
You can find me online at www.dhr2believe.net, librarything.com, shelfari.com, #dhr2believe1 on twitter, and facebook. Oh, I am also featuring a guest blog post from C.J., so you’ve another great reason to visit.
Dare to Believe,
D.H. Aire
Author of Highmage’s Plight and Human Mage (forthcoming) Paperback Kindle Nook
Flights of Fantasy, Vol. 1, featuring the short stories of D.H. Aire and Barry Nove, ed. Colin Neilson (Spectacular Publishing) Paperback epub formats
Look for my short story Crossroads of Sin in the anthology RealLies (February 2013) the story behind Christopher Columbus’s voyage and the time traveler, who had to make sure he wasn’t a footnote in history as his three ship flotilla was in hers. Available on Amazon and at https://www.facebook.com/tzppbooks/app_138996027389.
