A recent interview question….

Some folks have asked about certain aspects of the first book’s story line and in fact I was interviewed by a blog recently who asked, “I am fascinated by some of the hints you’ve given at the odd wild life in Trimoria, but you barely touch on it in your first book. Could you comment?”

Well – let me touch a bit on the topic of book length. With the age demographic that the book is geared for, the publishers frown severely when it comes to books that go too far beyond 80 to 90,000 words. I’ll be frank and the first book was right around 94,000 words. Oddly enough – almost exactly the same size as THE HOBBIT. For those not in the publishing industry, this typically translated to 350 or so pages (exact page count depends on font size and physical page size).
So when I write, I focus primarily on detailing the main actors in a scene. So if a particular animal/person isn’t a main actor, you may see a reference to it, but the reference will likely be limited and not dive too deeply in the history of that referenced “extra”. In HEIRS OF PROPHECY, blink dogs are an example of such an overlooked species of animal.
Being that I want to shove as much detail and storyline into a single book that makes sense, I do have to make such optimizations — but I think the story does not suffer from lack of detail. It just might not touch the details everyone would like to see.
Obviously the person interviewing me was an animal lover and wanted to know more about the animals. I too love animals, and suffice it to say that in the second book of the prophecies series, TOOLS OF PROPHECY, you will get LOTS of detail on various animals. In fact – I can’t give too much away, but you will be exposed to many more animals in an exciting fashion. Whether wolves are your fancy, dragons, or our intrepid kitten Silver – I promise you’ll get your fill of animals actors in the next episode of this epic tale.
Thanks,
Mike