For this morning’s post I have an interview with A. Christopher Drown, author of A Mage of None Magic. He won the 2010 Darrell Award for Best Novel.
My friends and I had the pleasure of sharing a banquet table with the author and his lovely wife. So we all felt a measure of pride for him upon hearing the announcement regarding his award.
Yes, I’m aware the title of my interview says ‘Ten Questions’ and that there are actually eleven questions. That was an accident on my behalf, and I thought it was funny when he replied:
Hi Madison.
Just sent my answers to your eleven-question Ten Question Interview.
Such a quiet sense of humor 
So henceforth, all of my author interviews will be eleven question Ten Question Interviews.
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Ten Question Interview
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1. I’m always interested in the writer’s process. How often do you write? Do you have a daily word count goal? Give me an overview (or detailed if you really want to go there) of your writing life.
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I should get this out in the open right off the bat, for the sake of candor and starting off on the right foot: When it comes to writing, I procrastinate — and procrastinate huge. If my total capacity for putting things off could be piled into a single mass, you’d have something comparable to Olympus Mons. Now, that admitted to, I sincerely believe there is more to writing than clacking words onto a page, and for that matter, more to it than one’s word count at the end of a day. A great deal of my process is internal, and I perpetually have something simmering on the proverbial back burner — which is also a handy excuse for not paying attention to anything being said around me. When a given idea is cooked-through enough, then it’s time for me to sit down and commit it to paper. That’s not to say every passage I write comes about this way, but certainly most if not all of my outlining, plotting and through lines. So, in regard to word counts, depending on where I am in that ebb and flow, the tally at the end of a week can be several thousand words, or several dozen.
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2. Do you also work a full-time non-writer job or career?
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I make my living as a graphic designer, and am the art director for “The University of Memphis Magazine.”
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3. How supportive has your family been of your writing time? Have you ever had to fight for your right to write?
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The fact that writing is more often than not a very solitary endeavor isn’t always the easiest thing for loved ones to contend with, but I’m lucky to have my family’s full support and encouragement in my work. There were prickly moments early on when a response of “I’ll do that later, right now I’m writing” took me out of the running for Husband of the Year, but since then I’ve managed a pretty comfortable equilibrium.
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4. How long did it take to write (from start to finish) A Mage of None Magic?
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Well, it was by no means an A to B journey. I wrote the first paragraphs of what would become “A Mage of None Magic” in the summer of 1992. And, following what at the time felt like an auspicious beginning, proceeded to make every single mistake an amateur writer can make, as well as invent a few of my own. After starting and stopping work on the book countless times, finally accepting my woeful lack of progress, I set it aside for a good, long while and dedicated myself to learning the craft. I read every advice piece I could find by authors I knew and loved, and even some from authors I didn’t think were all that great. Eventually, I put their tutelage to work and wrote and placed some short stories. Buoyed by that success, I picked up “Mage” again. The first thing I saw then was how laughably vast the scope of the tale I’d first wanted to tell actually was. So, I broke the overall arc into more manageable sections, did a great deal of purging and weed-pulling, and ended up with a much more realistic, and much more mature, concept — a three-to-five book saga that would be my personal spin on classic hero myth, among other things. This was 1999. I finished the rough draft of “Mage” in mid-2002 — a bloated, 140,000-word monstrosity that would be pared down to a svelte 90,000 words during the editing process.
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5. How long did it take from finish to publication?
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In late 2007, following all the rewrites I could stomach, I submitted “Mage” to a handful of publishers, including Tyrannosaurus Press, with whom I’d developed a relationship via some short stories that appear in two of their anthologies. TPress made a proposal in the spring of 2008, and the contract was signed that summer. Final edits took about nine months, mainly because we decided neither of us were in any particular hurry, and the book had its official release in September 2009. My ardent goal is for the second book of the series not to take seventeen years as well.
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6. Is there a theme, or premise you’d really like readers to connect with in AMONM? Was the book written purely for entertainment, or is there a deeper message?
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I’ve got a few themes winding their way through the story, actually. One is the idea of magic itself being the primary reason the typical fantasy setting is medieval in nature — that the presence of magic hinders technological development. Another is the chicken/egg relationship of messiah and legend; if a person comes along who fits the description of a foretold figure, does the fact that others believe he is that figure make him so, or is it that he is that figure which makes people believe in him? Yet another is actually stated on the book’s back cover blurb: What’s unbelievable when magic is a fact of life? In other words, what role does skepticism play among rational, educated people who deal daily with things you and I would consider miraculous and impossible?
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7. Where are you going now, are you working on a second book as sequel, or something entirely different?
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The follow-up to “Mage” exists as a vague outline and a couple hundred rough pages. I’ve been focused on finishing an unrelated novel, tentatively titled, “A Sister to Butterflies,” the first draft of which I hope to have done by fall.
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8. Where do you find inspiration for your stories and novels?
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A long-standing point of contention between my wife and me is that when she and I go on a trip, my vacation photos invariably consist of shots not of the big, obvious touristy things that everyone else waits in line to stand in front of to have their pictures made. I choose instead to record all the little details I know I’d otherwise forget all about — a sign, a window, a patch of flowers, an interesting crack in the wall, and so forth. For me, that’s where the interesting stuff lies, where the more satisfying stories come from — the man who wrote the sign, the people who’ve gazed through that window, the woman who planted the flowers, the terrible violence that caused the wall to crack.
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9. With all the focus lately on authors providing a lot of their own self-promotion, what are you doing in this respect?
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Robocalling turned out to be way too expensive, so I decided to trudge the more feasible, common roads available: Book signings, review solicitations, reading groups, imposing on hapless bloggers, and so forth. I genuinely feel the viral nature of online word-of-mouth can rival even the most lavish marketing budget.
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10. Who or what would you say has been the biggest influence on you as a writer?
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The novel that woke that creature all writers have burrowed their guts and inspired me to sit down and write a book of my own is “The Sleeping Dragon” by Joel Rosenberg. The book that taught me the most about being a writer is the incomparable “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King. The storyteller I most want to spend an afternoon talking with on a park bench is Ray Bradbury.
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11. Where can we find your book? Is it available in e-format as well?
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An e-book of “Mage” is being prepped now; there are some graphic elements important to the storytelling that took some time to make work properly. Hard copies of the book can be ordered through all the usual online venues — Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. However, the best price I’ve seen is straight from the publisher, Tyrannosaurus Press (www.tyrannousaurspress.com). Autographed and inscribed copies can be ordered from Burke’s Book Store (http://www.burkesbooks.com/shop/burkes/062254.html). Tell them you’d like me to swing by and jot a little something inside, and they’ll be happy to contact me when the order’s in.
