The Book Plank

Darker Gods by James A. Moore Religion as a Dark Force in Fantasy It’s an interesting thing, religion. In the right hands and mindset it can make amazing things happen. Communities can get together and build villages in pretty quickly. Homes and farms ruined by natural forces can be restored in short order because neighbors and friends can gather together and work as a unit. Often times those units are started by the religious leader in an area. The Amish raise barns in a day that no single person could manage in a month. But then we have to look at the other side of that coin. Atrocities have been committed in the name of God or gods. The witch hunts in Europe devastated tens of thousands. Wars were fought in the name of God, not because it was a different god, but merely because the ways of worshipping said god did not match up. Well, okay, and because there was land and gold to consider, but it was all done in the name of the one god. The Crusades. The Holy Inquisition....

Flash Author Query with James A Moore If you have followed this blog you know that I am a big fan of the Seven Forges series of James A. Moore, having read the first two books and the featured the short stories in my Short Fiction Friday feature. The City of Wonders was released earlier this month and therefore it was time to catch up with James.  Hi James, welcome back to The Book Plank for another interview! BP: first off can you give us a short introduction as to who James A. Moore is? What are you hobbies likes and dislikes? JM:  Thanks  for having me back! Well, to start off, I’m a voracious reader. That is to say I love reading and if I had the time in the day I would read a book a day. As it stands it’s more like a book a week because I have two jobs. Aside from that I occasionally like to sculpt, I like watching TV and I have a full time day job, partially to stop me from becoming a hermit. BP: Your Seven Forges series is doing mightily...

Media Alert: Cover Reveal City of Wonders  Two years ago Angry Robot published the first Epic Fantasy book of James A. Moore, The Seven Forges , last year the spectacular sequel, The Blasted Lands was released. And this year we will see once again a new book in this amazing series, City of Wonders ! Yes! Below you can find the cover of this book, and contrary to the first two books it doesn;t feature a male person on the cover, intrigue, intrigue!  All credit for this cover goes to Alejandro Colucci! A fine piece of art. Old Canhoon, the City of Wonders, is having a population explosion as refugees from Tyrne and Roathes alike try to escape the Sa'ba Taalor. All along the border between the Blasted Lands and the Fellein Empire armies clash and the most powerful empire in the world is pushed back toward the old Capital. From the far east the Pilgrim gathers an army of the faithful, heading for Old Canhoon. In Old Canhoon itself the imperial family struggles against en...

Making The Transition From Horror To Fantasy (Or, Shifting Gears).   I have said on more than one occasion that I don’t really believe in genres. I write what I want to write and I worry about selling it later. That’s true. But it’s not a complete truth. There are differences in the genres. Both from a writer’s perspective and in the market. So now that I’ve offered up a paradox, I’ll try to explain. I do not consider what genre a story is when I’m writing it besides the necessary aspects. If I’m writing a horror story set in the modern world, it will, by nature, require less world building than a straight fantasy novel. Why? Because the world is already there. I might tweak it a bit, adding an occasional ghost or zombie or demon, but the world remains the same as the one I live in. In a fantasy setting such as SEVEN FORGES, there’s a great deal more effort involved. I don’t have a world yet. I have to create one from scratch. Now, that isn’t always the case...

Author interview with James A. Moore Author Bio: James A. Moore is the author of over twenty novels, inlcuding the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under the Overtree, Blood Red, Deeper, the Serenity Falls trilogy, and his most recent novel Blind Shadows. He has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker award and spent three years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association, first as Secretary and later as Vice President. He cut his teeth in the industry writing for Marvel Comics and authoring over many role-playing supplements for White Wolf Games, including Berline by Night, Land of 1,000,000 Dreams and The get of Fenris tribe. He also penned the White Wolf novels Vampire: House of Secrets and Werewolf: Hellstorm . He currently lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia.  Hi James, welcome to The Book Plank and thanks for taking your time to answer these few questions.   BP: First off, could tell us more who James is: what are you hobbies, how did you became ...

Seven Forges by James A Moore The people of Fellein have lived with legends for many centuries. To their far north, the Blasted Lands, a legacy of an ancient time of cataclysm, are vast, desolate and impassable, but that doesn’t stop the occasional expedition into their fringes in search of any trace of the ancients who once lived there… and oft-rumoured riches. Captain Merros Dulver is the first in many lifetimes to find a path beyond the great mountains known as the Seven Forges and encounter, at last, the half ‐ forgotten race who live there. And it would appear that they were expecting him. As he returns home, bringing an entourage of the strangers with him, he starts to wonder whether his discovery has been such a good thing. For the gods of this lost race are the gods of war, and their memories of that far-off cataclysm have not faded. Seven Forges is written by James A. Moore, who has written to date over twenty novels in different genres and several of them...