This week, we're welcoming
author D.B. Jackson, whose latest
novel THIEVES' QUARRY is set in America's 18th century
and follows Jackson's earlier novel, THIEFTAKER. The
author will offer a free copy of THIEVES' QUARRY to a lucky
blog visitor. Here's the blurb:
Autumn has come to New
England, and with it a new threat to the city of Boston. British naval ships
have sailed into Boston Harbor bearing over a thousand of His Majesty King
George III’s soldiers. After a summer of rioting and political unrest, the city
is to be occupied.
Ethan Kaille, thieftaker and
conjurer, is awakened early in the morning by a staggeringly powerful spell, a
dark conjuring of unknown origin. Before long, he is approached by
representatives of the Crown. It seems that every man aboard the HMS
Graystone has died, though no one knows how or why. They know only
that there is no sign of violence or illness. Ethan soon discovers that one
soldier -- a man who is known to have worked with Ethan’s beautiful and
dangerous rival, Sephira Pryce -- has escaped the fate of his comrades and is
not among the Graystone’s dead. Is he the killer, or is there
another conjurer loose in the city, possessed of power sufficient to kill so
many with a single dark casting?
Ethan, the missing soldier,
and Sephira Pryce and her henchmen all scour the city in search of a stolen
treasure which seems to lie at the root of all that is happening. At the same
time, though, Boston’s conjurers are under assault from the royal government as
well as from the mysterious conjurer. Men are dying. Ethan is beaten,
imprisoned, and attacked with dark spells.
And if he fails to unravel
the mystery of what befell the Graystone, every conjurer in Boston
will be hanged as a witch. Including him.
Thieves' Quarry is the second volume in
the Thieftaker Chronicles, the new historical fantasy series from D.B. Jackson.
Combining elements of traditional fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery and
historical fiction, the Thieftaker books are sure to appeal to readers who
enjoy intelligent fantasy and history with an attitude.
**Q&A with D.B.
Jackson**
For those who are
unfamiliar with the Thieftaker Chronicles, can you give us an overview of the
series and some sense of what this newest book, THIEVES’ QUARRY, is about?
The Thieftaker Chronicles,
which began with the publication last year of THIEFTAKER, tell the story of
Ethan Kaille, a conjurer and thieftaker living in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The
books are historical urban fantasies: historical for obvious reasons; urban
fantasy because of the mystery element, because of Ethan’s magical abilities,
which help him in his investigations and encounters with Boston’s unsavory
side, and because the setting, while Colonial, is very much urban.
THIEVES’ QUARRY begins in the
fall of 1768, as British troops prepare to occupy Boston. A fleet of
naval vessels is anchored in Boston Harbor, carrying the occupying
soldiers. And all of this is real -- the fleet, the occupation, the
city’s oddly mixed response to the occupation as it began. These things
are part of the historical record. But I have added a ship to the invasion
force, and using a spell of magic that Ethan senses early one morning, I then
kill every man aboard this fictional vessel. Authorities of the Crown
come to Ethan seeking his guidance in solving the mystery of these nearly one
hundred deaths, and Ethan finds himself drawn into political struggles and
criminal dealings that endanger his life and the lives of every conjurer in
Boston.
How has your degree in
history helped you with your writing of this series?
I actually specialized in
20th century U.S. history and wrote my dissertation on the New Deal. But
when working toward my degree I studied all periods of U.S. history, and I
always found the late Colonial Era incredibly interesting. So I came to
the Thieftaker series with some knowledge of the period, of its key events and
issues, and of the sources I would need to consult when researching the
books. That was a great advantage.
But the sort of information I
needed to write these books is actually not the same stuff that Ph.D.
candidates study in preparation for their exams. There were huge gaps in
my knowledge of what everyday life would be like for Ethan and his fellow characters.
For instance, I had to know if the streets of Boston were lit at night in the
1760s. That would be a fundamentally important fact of Ethan’s life on a
daily (or nightly) basis, but it was of little concern to me when I was a
graduate student. (As it turns out, Boston did not get its first gas
street lights until 1774, courtesy of no less a personage than Paul Revere.)
Mostly, my familiarity with history and historical literature provided me with
an understanding of what questions I needed to answer in order to cobble
together an accurate portrait of life in Colonial Boston.
What was the most
interesting thing you learned or found while you were doing your research for
the Thieftaker books?
Actually, I had a number of
fun discoveries along the way. Most of them were small details that
allowed me to add dimension and texture to my setting and historical
characters. For instance, while researching Samuel Adams, I learned that
he was afflicted nearly all his life by a mild palsy of his hand and head.
I believe it was something like what we today call “essential tremor” or
“benign essential tremor.” At one point I was searching for a physical
description of Stephen Greenleaf, the Sheriff of Suffolk County, who was
Boston’s lone law-enforcement authority, and who was charged with keeping the
peace in the city though he had no police force at his command. He is one
of my hero’s antagonists throughout the series -- a very important character --
and I had no idea what he looked like. And then one day, I was looking
through an old, old volume on Google Books and there, suddenly, was a pen and
ink sketch of the good sheriff. That was an exciting day.
Another time, I was trying to
find contemporary descriptions of the inside of King’s Chapel, one of Boston’s
oldest houses of worship. The information was hard to come by until I
found a document that had been posted by an architecture firm that specialized
in historical renovation. This firm was working on a renovation of the
chapel and had taken bore samples from the walls that allowed them to determine
what color the interior walls had been painted at various times in the chapel’s
history. That was invaluable.
Are there more Thieftaker
books in the works? What do you have in store for Ethan next?
One of the challenges in a
series like this one is to keep each book fresh and avoid giving readers the
sense that the books are formulaic. Of course, there are certain
recurring elements to the stories: the historical background, the character
relationships, the magic system, the fact that each book is a mystery. But each
story also needs to be different. And so in the third book, A PLUNDER OF
SOULS, I introduce a new character, who is to Ethan something like what
Moriarty was to Sherlock Holmes. To be more accurate, I reintroduce
him. This character, Nate Ramsey, first appeared in “A Spell of
Vengeance,” a short story I wrote last year and published at Tor.Com. In
that story, Ramsey, who is also a conjurer, gets the best of Ethan. Well,
in book III, Ramsey is back. It is the summer of 1769, and Boston is in
the midst of an outbreak of smallpox (as it really was that summer). I
won’t reveal more, except to say that Ramsey is an even more formidable foe for
Ethan now than he was when the short story took place, in 1763.
The fourth Thieftaker book
will be called DEAD MAN’S REACH. I don’t want to say too much about it
except that it is set in March 1770, at the time of the Boston Massacre.
Can you tell us a bit about
your creative process? What is a typical work day like for you? Do
you outline, or do you prefer to “wing it?”
I tend to be fairly boring in
my approach to my work. I work slowly, steadily, systematically.
With the Thieftaker project I began by jotting down questions I had about
Boston in the 1760s and then organizing my research around answering
them. When I had done enough research to feel comfortable starting to
write, I outlined the whole book, as I usually do. But as usual, by about
chapter ten I had strayed from the outline enough that the rest of it was
useless. So I outlined the book again, this time from chapter eleven
onward. And then at about chapter seventeen, when that second outline had
also outlived its usefulness, I outline the remainder of the book.
As for my typical day, it’s
also pretty boring. I get to the gym first thing in the morning. I
spend the rest of my day sitting in front of my computer, so getting a workout
in first thing is good for my mood, my mind, and my waistline. After
that, I work through the morning, taking a couple of quick breaks. I have
a lunch, and then work through the afternoon until my wife and daughters get
home and it’s time for dinner. I tend to leave my evening hours and
weekends for family and household stuff. But otherwise I treat writing as
a full-time job, because really that’s what it is for me.
What advice would you give
to writers who are just at the start of their careers?
I think that the best advice
I can offer to young writers is to love what they do, and I mean that on a
couple of levels. The writing business is hard. The pay isn’t
always good, publishing can be frustratingly slow, a writer’s future is only as
solid as the sales numbers for his or her most recent book. So, if a
writer doesn’t love to write, if he or she isn’t driven to craft stories and
books by love of the written word and devotion to the characters clamoring for
attention in his or her imagination, there really is little other reason for
doing it.
But “love what you do” also
means love the stuff you write. Young writers will quickly find that the market
is constantly shifting, moving from one “hot new thing” to the next.
Sometimes we get lucky and catch a wave at the perfect moment.
Occasionally we can respond to the leading edge of a trend and get in on
it. But most of the time, it’s a bad idea to try to write to the
market. Young writers are far better off writing the story they want to
write, the story for which they have passion. Love the book, because
there is usually no telling if you can match the market exactly or not.
If a writer tries to write something just in order to be commercially viable,
chances are the book will suffer. Write what you love and regardless of
the market, you’ll turn out the best book possible.
D.B. Jackson is also David B.
Coe, the award-winning author of more than a dozen fantasy novels. His first
book as D.B. Jackson, the Revolutionary War era urban fantasy, Thieftaker, volume I of the
Thieftaker Chronicles, came out in 2012 and is now available in paperback. The
second volume, Thieves’ Quarry,
has just been released by Tor Books. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with
his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he
is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When
he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image
with his camera.
Learn more about author D. B.
Jackson at:
