BATTLE OF EBULON: Neil Shooter

Please welcome Neil Shooter to the blog today. Neil is another of the Battle of Ebulon collaborating authors, and my last Ebulon interview.

Title of the book that lends characters to Ebulon's need:

I've been working on a massive fantasy saga for 9 years. I know, that sounds like a long time to have been writing and not getting finished, or published. The first part of that saga is a series of 5 books called The Circles of Old, and the first book is called The Lay of Old Follies. But because of this project, there is also something new I am working on, which is tentatively called The Wrong Magick. I've also released my Ebulon contribution as a short story called The Kinnon Gate.

Tell us a little bit about yourself as an author.I am easily distracted. And I like making excuses. And procrastinating. I love world-building, and researching new things, but for years they have distracted me, in my precious free time, from the real task. I think I've got a lot of value out of the research I've done, but for the past few months I've been much more focused on writing, and I have Goodreads to thank for that.I write science fiction and fantasy, and almost everything I've ever written tried to get a life of its own, and wanted to grow to an epic size, even if it started out as only a 2000 word short story. In my science fiction universe I have 50,000 years of history loosely planned out, stretching into the past and the future. In my fantasy universe, the elements of invented history go back twice as far. I'm a hopeless case, I really am.I get lots of odd ideas, see significance in the most inane comment or happenstance, and I have more scraps of paper flying around my house than I know what to do with.

Why do you write?I can't help it. I have to. For my own relative sanity. Whenever life has intruded and kept me away from writing, or typing, I have quickly sunk into malaise and funk. I love writing letters and emails. I have many years of diary secreted away in a dark crevice somewhere, mainly the teenage angst years, but I still occasionally have middle-aged adult angst to self-therapize about.For half of my adult life I floundered, lamenting that I didn't know what I wanted to do "when I grew up", stuck in jobs that made me miserable, and not knowing any way out. And then, only a few short years ago, I realized what I should have known all my life, because the evidence has always been there: I am supposed to write. You know, writing is one of those things that isn't considered real work, because everyone who is at all literate thinks, "hey, I can write, writing is easy". But it isn't easy. I never imagined that writing was something I could even attempt to do professionally. I was always surrounded by the notion of getting a "proper" job, even one that would make me miserable, because that is what it seemed I was supposed to do. But eventually I realized that I have to make the most of the time given me, and do with that time whatever it is that I feel gives my life meaning and purpose. Even if I am never successful in the industry, I will have spent my time well.I feel like myself when I am writing.

What got you into writing?This is a two part answer, really. Or three.Part one is my childhood. The first story I remember being really pleased with was something I wrote for grade school when I must have been 9 or so. It was a silly little Star Trek thing, but I was really happy with it, and proud of it.I had a relative whose papers I inherited when I was 10, and who had lived in a small apartment with a typewriter, and wrote, and tried and tried her entire life to be successful at it. It is because of her that I began to imagine that writing might be in my blood.I was lucky to have an excellent high school English teacher who I adored, and who seemed to like everything I wrote. She gave me so much confidence. But I was lured away by sensibility, and focused on Math and Science in my last years of high school. The best part of my university science career was an essay, of course.Part two of the answer is a friend and coworker who made an off-hand comment one day that he had nothing to read, and I got the crazy notion that I would write something. I found some old notes, and began adapting them to my newer ideas about how things should be, and that is how The Circles of Old began to take shape.Part three has to be my baby sister. She spent most of the last year or so prodding me to join Goodreads, because I would be able to surround myself with books, and authors, and readers. She pushed me to join, and then hounded me, no, really, she hounded me, to self-publish something on Smashwords. At the beginning of 2013 I took the first concrete step into a new world of self-publishing, and self-fulfillment really, and if not for her, I wouldn't have found Shane Porteous on Goodreads, or become involved in The Battle Of Ebulon.

Tell us a little bit about your character(s) who answer Ebulon’s call for help.There are a few. Kalummenon is an honourable rogue who prefers to stay out of the spotlight. Vardan is an ambitious young noble, who wants to get ahead. Moriambra is an Alfar diplomat with a certain disdain and distaste for the humans she has to be surrounded by. Khendam is a young squire who is desperate to get back to his impoverished family. Wegri styles himself a poet, but doesn't seem very trustworthy. Tuchala is a timid young girl, with a polarized teenage perspective. Pereg is a soldier in training, but often speaks without thinking. Rysel is a seasoned veteran of many conflicts and is prone to philosophical discourse. Chirath is fun guy, a classic barbarian type with some strange ideas. Mayadawanna is an enigmatic and strong-willed healer and mystic.I think that's all of them, all of the ones who answer the Call, anyway.

Where do they come from?Most are from a federal nation called the Kinnon, a form of aristocratic democracy steeped in millennia of traditions and bureaucracy. Except for Moriambra, who is an ambassador form the distant but powerful Alfar Kingdom.

What is their world like?In their world magic is just another force of nature, a natural law like gravity or electromagnetism. It is a world with many of the classic elements of a fantasy universe, but hopefully put together in a novel or interesting way. It is a world on the brink of an immense war, and the lack of these heroes taken by the Call will change everything.

What about King Yadi’s plea convinces them to join the battle?We only had a minimal framework to guide us in "how things worked", and this included the Call of the King. Ooh, that's a good book title... So I didn't worry about how other authors were dealing with the Call, and thought instead about what worked for me. I had the Call as a spell that spoke to a person's innermost desires and self-image, so that people who thought of themselves as heroic in some way would be Called. They arrive, one at a time, appearing out of a swirling magical vortex, a shimmering portal. I also embraced the idea that every other author's interpretation would be vastly different. I privately explained this for myself as being because each author's world would hear or feel the Call differently, based on their "distance" from the world of Ebulon, or their orientation in some arcane plane or dimension, and there would be different physical or magical laws at play in some of these universes, so really anything was possible.So for my characters it was more of a charm or compulsion that drove them to accept the Call, provided the psychological requirements existed in that character. Did I overthink this? :P

What intrigued you to take part in this collaboration?I have a confession. The first time I saw a posting for the collaboration, I didn't give it much conscious attention, but then a good chunk of time later, an hour perhaps, I found myself dwelling on the idea. Thinking about it now, it's almost as if I felt Shane's "Call" and was powerless to resist. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. I knew I didn't want to limit myself to characters that survive my fantasy saga unscathed (oops - is that a spoiler?) so I wanted to bring them from just before the real beginning of my fantasy story. As soon as I thought of the Call as triggering an alternate timeline in my fantasy universe, I was hooked, and my mind went off on first one tangent, and then another.I have to say also, that right from the beginning there was a lot of vocal enthusiasm from some of the authors on that first Goodreads thread I'd seen, and it felt like we fed off each others' excitement in a way that made us, made me at least, feel really engaged with the project very quickly.

What about this collaboration was the most fun?On a personal level, it was the feeling of liberation that I could take completely new directions with characters who already have a destiny and a path in my existing story's timeline. I loved having the chance to give them another existence, a new place to explore, and new experiences.But my favourite part of the collaboration was getting to see the early drafts of some of the other authors involved, and some of the ideas that were going back and forth. I think some of them have even had characters cross over between stories, and that would have been a fun idea to work on.

Least fun?I don't think any part of it really wasn't fun. Shane was the coordinator, and he had to juggle the 14 other authors, enlist an artist (Tom, one of the authors), and then format all our words together for publication, so I think that might not have been fun for him. But really, this whole experience was a blast, and really inspiring for me, creatively speaking. The novel I'm working on wouldn't exist if my characters hadn't been pulled together for the sake of Ebulon and King Yadi, so I have no complaints at all. I hope we get to do it again, one day!

Where can we learn more about your book(s)? (website/facebook/twitter/etc?)I have an author page of Facebook.Here is my Goodreads profile.And here is my Smashwords profile.Don't be shy - say hi! I'm usually reasonably friendly :)