Author bio:
Ari Marmell was born in New York, moved to Houston when he was a year old, moved to Austin when he was 27, but has spent most of his life living in other worlds through a combination of writing and roleplaying games. He has been writing more or less constantly for the last dozen years, though he has only been paid for it the past five. He is the author of multiple roleplaying game supplements including work on Dungeons & Dragons. Ari lives in Austin with his wife, George, and two cats.
Hi Ari welcome over
at The Book Plank and for taking your time to answer these few questions for
us!
BP:
First off could you give us a short introduction as to who Ari Marmell is? What
are your hobbies, likes and dislikes?
AM: Well, I’ve been a sci-fi/fantasy fan for as long as I can remember. I’m
a die-hard gamer—not computer games; I have no problem with them, I’m just not
terribly into them—but the tabletop stuff. Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: the
Masquerade, those sorts of things. I’ve been gaming since I was about nine.
Likes cats, sci-fi,
fantasy, horror, and torturing people with truly awful puns. Dislikes spending
too long in large crowds, large swathes of modern music, anything remotely
approaching most reality shows, and not already being rich and famous.
BP: What gave you the idea in the first place to become a writer?
AM: I’m not sure I
ever actually had the idea. I’ve been a storyteller all my life, either via
gaming or writing. (In fact, the bedtime stories my father told me always
involved me going to meet my favourite characters—Luke Skywalker, Spider-man,
etc. So even from four years old, I had the idea of original storytelling in my
head.) I think, rather than saying I “decided” to become a writer, I simply
realized one day in college that I already was one—I just didn’t yet have the
skill to do it professionally.
BP:
You have been involved with your own series as well as writing for Magic the
Gathering and The Iron Kingdom. Do you like writing your own ideas more or do
you have a lot of freedom of writing those tie-in books?
AM: There are certainly restrictions involved in writing tie-in fiction,
but there’s still a lot of room for creativity. I’ve enjoyed doing those, and
I’d love to continue doing them on occasion. That said, though, I think it’s
more rewarding to work on my own material. I want to do both, but if I was
forced to choose, it would be my own stuff.
BP:
Last year Hot Lead, Cold Iron was released, and was very well received with
lots of starred reviews, had you thought that would happen?
AM: I HOPED it would, certainly. Had I thought it would? Well, we authors
are a neurotic bunch. So on good days, I thought it would; on bad days, I
expected to see the book being used to balance uneven table legs, or perhaps
used to stone me to death for one of my particularly egregious puns.
BP:
Urban Fantasy is there is many different ways. What gave you the inspiration
and idea behind the Mick Oberon series?
AM: Mick Oberon was what you’d call an “Athena character.” By that, I
mean—like Athena from Zeus’s forehead—he sort of sprang full-grown from my
brain one evening. I hadn’t set out to come up with a historical urban fantasy,
or to combine fantasy with gangland noir. It just sort of happened, on a basic
conceptual level. Once it had, it was all a matter of coming up with stories
and setting details to match.
BP:
Hallow Point, your latest book, will out August 20th, if you would
have to sell the book with a single sentence, how would it go?
AM: The fae-driven, hidden-magic version of The Maltese Falcon.
BP:
Even with having a lot of writing experience, did you still encounter any
problems when you were writing Mick Oberon?
AM: It’s a different style, a different voice, than I’m accustomed to.
Trying to make things historically and mythically accurate while also keeping
the book accessible to people who lacked familiarity with those myths, or that
historical period, was certainly a challenge. And it’s very easy to make a
mystery TOO complicated. With Hallow Point, it took a few drafts of working
with my editor to make it come out as well as it did.
BP:
Besides the difficult parts that accompany writing a book, which chapter, scene
or moment did you enjoy writing about the most?
AM: Oh, there were quite a few scenes in Hallow Point I enjoyed writing.
Just to name a few, I had fun with the encounter between Mick and Herne the
Hunter; Ramona’s introduction; and anything to do with the representative of
the Wild Hunt.
BP:
Now that Hallow Point is published, what else can we expect to see from him,
have you mapped out how many additional book there will be?
AM: Oh, I have lots of plans for Mick. I’m about to start writing book
three. After that? Well, obviously it depends on how well the books sell.
(Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.) But if I’m allowed to do so, I have quite a few
more stories of his I’d like to tell. Maybe somewhere between eight and a
dozen? (That’s a guess—and again, it assumes I’m given the opportunity—so don’t
hold me to that.)
BP: do
you have any other writing plans besides Mick Oberon?
AM: About a zillion ideas. Currently my agent is shopping around a book
that’s sort of half dark urban fantasy or supernatural horror, half
Terminator-style post-apocalypse. After I write the next Mick Oberon, I might
work on a book I have brewing that’s sort of “epic fantasy with a touch of
supers.” And quite a few others.
BP:
Everyone enjoys reading fantasy and science fiction in their own way, what do
you like most about it?
AM: The imagination. The fact that you can do almost anything in sci-fi or
fantasy as genres, but that each specific work still has to be cohesive. That
you can play with the rules, but there are still rules. That you can tell so
many different kinds of stories. That you can escape, but into something
that—if written well—still feels like it has meaning.
BP: if
you would have to name your top 5 favorite books, which would they be?
AM: Oh, yikes. Um… I’m going to cheat and name series, rather than books.
And even then, I don’t know if they’re my absolute favorites so much as among
my favorites.
The Vlad Taltos
series, by Steven Brust.
The Elenium, by
David Eddings.
The Chronicles of
Number 10 Ox, by Barry Hughart.
The Alex Benedict
series, by Jack McDevitt.
And finally,
because I do love the combination of mystery and fantasy, the Hawk & Fisher
series, by Simon Green.
BP:
And just lastly, can you tell us a bit more as to what will be in store for the
readers of Hallow Point and the possible continuation?
AM: Debts repaid and debts reneged; friendships broken; mobsters who know
far more about magic than Mick’s comfortable with; new companions and some VERY
old enemies; some answers regarding the changeling Adalina that Mick might wish
he never learned; and maybe a few equally disturbing answers about himself.
And if I get there,
possibly a wendigo, a few vampires, and a one-legged assassin.
BP: thank you very much Ari and good luck with
your future writing!
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