Q &A: Infrequently asked questions.
If you’ve peeked inside “Room 101” you’ll know my opinion about Q & A and also about Facebook. And it’s because the geeks in Silicon Valley arbitrarily decided to axe “Facebook Questions” that I moved it, lock, stock and barrel, onto this website. Hope you approve.
Q: Where do you get the ideas from for your books, James?
A: https://jameslever.com/the-ideas-behind-my-books/
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Q: Why Magesty ? Did someone forget to use the spellchecker?
A: I cribbed it from an ancient allegory, the ‘Tainekan Prophesy’.
One who betrays the reign of Orc,
Conn joins with one of the Eyal Sea;
And one who is born again – The Hawk
Will come to reign in Mage-esty.
Q1: Magesty: a person destined to be crowned “King of Magic” (a mage) – and
also a very apposite, one-word book title!
Q2: – No, the books are already full of spells.
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Q: Many of the books appear to be duplicated. Why is this?
A: When I used to buy books (paperbacks) I always sought out a meaty tome and so, when I started writing, I aimed for 250,000 words per book. It was only when I came to self-publish that I learnt that this is not a good marketing strategy to adopt on Kindle. So I split each of the three books of the trilogy in half – not all that easy to do as the plot wasn’t designed to unfold in such convenient packages. Despite all that hard work, it’s the box sets that people still choose to buy – probably because it works out cheaper in the end. But rest assured, it’s not a devious device to inflate my bibliography – please ignore the cynics, I am not a devious person.
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Q: Yet another book on magic. Is this just a grown-up Harry Potter?
A: If you’d said David Eddings, I might have been insulted. Magesty is definitely not a take-off of Harry Potter – the characters are primarily adults and there are no wands or verbal incantations of magic. Imagine a world where the genome of arcane magic is woven into the DNA of the indigenous people and then what might happen if an alien race invades and attempts to take over, with all the advantages of their sophisticated, advanced technology. “No contest,” you say. But maybe there’s something you’re not aware of: the laws of physics are only a subset of the lore of arcane magic.
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Q: Why have the units of time, the calendar and the points of the compass been changed? It’s really distracting.
A: Good. It’s a device to remind the reader that this isn’t some feudal society located in medieval England. None of those parameters are relevant to the storyline: neither are the rhymes designed to help children of the Five Kingdoms learn how many days there are in a week. You may even argue that their system is more logical than ours, based as it is on 60 : 60 : 24 : 7 : 28, 30 & 31 in a random combination designed to add up to 365 (and occasionally 366). The location in the southern hemisphere is an added, Machiavellian twist.
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Q: I really like the maps. Did you draw them first and then copy / paste the images?
A: I did for the battle plans that appear in Blood Within the Stone and Dark Matta. In the former case, I realised afterward that from a Saurin perspective the map should be the other way up, but I was too lazy to change it (damned hard graft). The map of Paresia in the front of all the books was drawn using Inkscape, a free software tool which took me two months to learn how to use the package before crafting the map – even before I started writing the storyline that was already evolving rapidly inside my head. Inkscape is good, it enables you to provide a gradient on eg the size of a river from its source to the sea. To me, a good map is essential for a Science Fantasy novel – I constantly refer to them as I read. Must admit, I did the crib the coastline from a real map. Can you identify it? It’s actually located somewhere on this planet.
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Q: A number of the book titles and chapter headings appear to have been cribbed from other sources. Why is this?
A: “Wards in the Stones” began life as “Bethany”, but after I fell in love with the idea of a sorcerous entity being locked up inside a crystal lattice, the title just popped up out of the ether. It is so very apposite to the plot and I thought it would catch the eye – you know, “Did I just read that right?”
Someone beat me to the title of “Cutting for Stones” – a phrase lifted from the Hippocratic oath, but in my book surgery is performed without a knife. “Dark Matta” is the name of one of the goddesses – a chance homophone of some obscure, astrophysical myth. “Dark Moon Rising” relates to the lunar eclipse (blood moon), a phenomenon taken up by authors of books about vampires and werewolves. [If you’re into such things, I recommend you try Kathie Ellisdon’s series: The Letalis Chronicles.] In a book where witchcraft abounds, the title is particularly apt, as Dark Matta of the Crossroad is synonymous with Hekate the three-faced goddess; Trivia, She of the three ways; the Goddess of Darkness; Moon Goddess and many more.
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Q: Why don’t you advertise your books, James?
A: Too expensive for one! On Amazon, you pay for every click. And Facebook is too restricted in scope and likely to change at the whim of any one of the many faceless geeks in Silicon Valley. You cannot build a rapport with customers on shifting sand. While the global giants line their pockets via (“free”) sponsored platforms, it is Jo Public, attracted like a moth to the flame, that is the cash fodder – groomed and addicted to “Likes”. There’s always a price. And unless you protect yourself, any property rights you might once have had over photos you have posted will soon become non-existent.
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Q: Which one of your books has sold the most copies and why do you think that is?
A: That’s a really good question, one for which I don’t have a magic answer I’m afraid. Blood Within the Stone, or more specifically the second half of that book, Cutting for Stones, far outsells anything else. When you consider that this book is in the middle of a series, this is a real conundrum. I mean, back in the dark ages when I used to borrow books from the local library, I would have to wait weeks sometimes before my request for Book 1 of a series came to the top of the pile – and then usually with a “no-renew” restriction applied.
I’ve had lots of theories about this but no definitive solution so far. One theory as to why readers take the plunge right into the middle of a book series is that it’s the only Magesty book that contains any sex! Could there be a secret forum out there sharing gen on this kind of thing – “Studreads” perhaps.
But before you rush out and download it, be aware that The Unlock Code – a stand-alone, marketplace tester to prove or disprove that particular theory, currently sits at No. 2 in the charts but hasn’t even begun to challenge the number of downloads of Cutting for Stones. Maybe there’s a Shapeshifter Readers’ Forum, you never know: “Hey, you must read this one. There’s this incestuous scene where this woman changes into a sea snake and seduces her brother. And no wonder… male sea snakes are particularly well-endowed!”
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Q: What are you working on at the moment, James?
A: Part 3 of “The Serpentine Labyrinth”, called Grey Matter. It is expected to be complete by September 2020. Add another month onto this for edit / review. There are just so many competing things to do right now (in the middle of lock-down) that it’s taking longer than usual to expand the plot onto the page. A few of the characters from Magesty appear in TSL, but the series opens with the stand-alone thriller At the Crossroad, set in the Cotswolds and New York State, and contains no overt applications of arcane magic at all – it’s about genocide conducted through germ warfare. I started this back in 2017, long before Covid19 appeared on the scene. The 3 books are normal length, described in reviews as page-turners and, as with Magesty, involved a lot of background research.
And after that? Not sure; I’m thinking of trying my hand at a crime novel but don’t want to fall into the trap of starting up a detective series. Watch this space.
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Q: What exactly are blood witches – are they some kind of vampire?
A: Blood witches are evil with a capital “E”. I’m not sure that the modern-day take on vampires is necessarily the same as that portrayed in Dracula for instance. Whereas vampires feed on blood; blood witches use the power of blood to control the minds of others. The concept of blood witchcraft is one of linking ancestry through the bloodlines – backwards and forwards in time – by means of blood signatures embedded within the DNA; and Blood Majjik provides the means to manipulate a person’s will through the conduit of their living blood. Thus, a smear of blood from a hair follicle, a nail clipping or an extracted tooth can provide remote access to that person and, via ancestral links, also to other family members. Menstrual blood provides the most potent source of such power, or course. There is one similarity to vampires, however, and that is that a blood witch, armed with a continuous source of blood from a living blood sacrifice, is able to grossly extend the range of her influence.
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Q: The ending to Grey Matter contains similarities to Genesis, specifically the story of Cain and Abel. Am I imagining this?
A: Indeed not. The original plot of Magesty (& the Serpentine Labyrinth) was that Cain & his people were exiled to the Land of Nod: cursed by God and bearing the Mark of Cain. The premise to my stories is that the Land of Nod was in fact Mesopotamia on planet Earth, and that Cain’s people (our ancestors) were banished through a portal by the Magi of Abel’s people. The “curse” was to have the power of arcane magic stripped from their DNA and the “mark” was to possess only a single belly button instead of the usual two. And the four rivers mentioned in Genesis actually exist on Abel’s planet (Darkwater being the common source) not the Tigris and Euphrates + 2 more about which speculation still exists. The murderous aggression exhibited by the descendants of Cain is chronicled throughout the Old Testament, recorded history and endures to this very day.
My books, of course, are pure fiction.