Kevin Kauffmann: The IAN Interview

Kauffmann grew up surrounded by all kinds of stories, from video games to comic books to movies he probably wasn’t supposed to watch, but all of them instilled in him the imagination to tell weird and genre-bending tales.  Drawing from mythological sources, Kauffmann’s career as an author started with the Icarus Trilogy, a sci-fi series about gladiatorial combat and revolution, before heading onto the Forsaken Comedy, a dark fantasy series which focuses on the Four Horsemen and their attempt to save humanity.  His latest, Ouroboros, is a bit different, but still promises the emotional grip of the other books.

Independent Author Network. Please tell us about your new book.

Kevin Kauffmann. Ouroboros is definitely a different kind of book than I’m used to writing, but I think it will have a much broader appeal.  It’s general fiction, which is a big departure from my sci-fi/fantasy roots, but I was still able to play around with imagery and nightmares because of the content.

The book follows three main characters who are affected by Escape, which is a new hallucinogen which allows the user to see exactly what they want.  Jeremy, my high school outcast, uses the drug to see brand new worlds because he hates the real one.  Lynn is a hypocritical congresswoman who is using a child’s death in order to further her career.  My favorite, Marc, is the creator of Escape, but he becomes addicted to the drug in order to see his dead girlfriend.

Really, the book is all about self-destruction and escapism, and it’s probably the most personal book I’ve ever written.  To say that I relate to these characters is a huge understatement, and there are bits and pieces of my life all over this book.  I was never in such dire straits as my characters, but I know how it feels to want to run away from the world.

IAN. Is Ouroboros published in print, e-book, or both?

K.K. Just e-book for now.  I’ve fallen into a habit of holding off on the print versions in case there are some glaring problems that reviewers notice.  Luckily, that’s become less of an issue, but my first series suffered for it.

IAN. Where can we go to buy Ouroboros?

K.K. http://www.amazon.com/Ouroboros-Kevin-Kauffmann-ebook/dp/B00PAEOTXU

IAN. What Inspired you to write Ouroboros?

K.K. Quite a bit.  There’s a lot of personal flavor all over the book, both Jeremy and Marc represent me at different times of my life, but the book is also very much a product of the times.  I use a hallucinogen to firmly represent escapism in this book, but escapism can be anything as simple as playing games or reading books or just doing anything not to experience the real, present world.  The way our society has gone for the last decade, more and more people seem to be retreating from the world, retreating into their phones and hiding away from real interaction.

I wanted to explore the feelings that come with that, the loneliness and alienation, the feeling that you’re all alone even if you’re surrounded by people, or how the world doesn’t care what you want or how you feel.  These characters don’t feel like they belong in their own life, which is its own special kind of tragedy.

IAN. Did you use an outline or did you just wing the first draft?

K.K. A little bit of both, honestly.  I’ve always fancied myself both an architect and a gardener, as the old comparison goes.  I created enough of an outline that the plot was solid and progressed how I wanted it to, but other than that I just let the characters and visuals lead themselves.  The first book I wrote was shaky with that approach, but after seven books it seems like that’s how I work best.

IAN. How long did it take to write Ouroboros?

K.K. Two weeks, which sounds absurd, I know.  Spent plenty of time on the shelf, however.  The only reason I wrote it that fast was that I was trying to submit a book to Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest and they had changed the rules enough that I couldn’t submit the book I had already prepared for it.

It was too bad I submitted it to the wrong genre.  Didn’t even get past the pitch stage because of it.

IAN. Do you have a specific writing style?

K.K. I like to jump around a lot, that’s for sure.  Both between character perspectives and with my transitions between scenes and chapters.  I’ve always likened it to quick cuts in movies, and most of my readers seem to agree.  I get told quite often that my books are perfect for movie adaptations, and that’s because I try not to linger too much on any particular scene unless it’s instrumental to the plot.  Also, it doesn’t come up very often in Ouroboros, but I’m known for intense action and battle scenes, and that will become increasingly more apparent the further I go in my career.

IAN. How did you come up with the title?

K.K. The title already existed, but it was such an obvious moment once I figured out that it was supposed to be Ouroboros.  In Greek mythology, Ouroboros is the snake that devours its own tail, which is something that happens in Norse and other mythologies as well.  It’s a symbol of both infinity and self-destruction/consumption to me, and it ties in perfectly with the themes and content of my book.  If it’s not clear, that’s supposed to be a snake squeezing the guy’s neck on my cover, which I admit looks very amateur, but that’s intentional, I swear.

IAN. What do you hope your readers come away with after reading Ouroboros?

K.K. Honestly, this book is all about perspective to me.  All of my characters are flawed and focus on either their past, their fears and pain, their loneliness, or something trivial like their career.  They’ve all lost sight of what’s really important in their life, what makes their life worth anything.  There are plenty of moral lessons and structures in my other books, but when it comes to Ouroboros, I really just want readers to think about what’s actually important to them.  In a way, our biggest obstacle to enjoying our life and getting the most of it is our own perspective and desires.

So, I guess, just get out there and do something.  Anything.

IAN. How much of Ouroboros is realistic?

K.K. Certainly not the drug itself.  That thing can’t exist.  I did what I could to justify it within the context of the story, even researched plenty of hallucinogens to make it sound alright, but Escape is definitely fictional.  As far as the characters, however, they’re all about as true-to-life as I could make them.  I’ve felt what Jeremy felt, been through a lot of his situations; I’ve wanted the same things as Marc, to just not exist for a while.  I’ve felt external pressures to change and compromise myself just like Lynn.  Her job might not be so realistic, I went for a House of Cards style with her storyline, but how she feels was real to me.

And as an author, that’s my main focus.

IAN. How is Ouroboros different from others in your genre?

K.K. Well, technically it’s just regular fiction, nothing incredible or otherworldly happens, but there are sci-fi, fantasy and horror aspects throughout the book because of the hallucinogen theme.  However, the existence of Escape and what it does is also technically sci-fi, so Ouroboros exists as part of and doesn’t belong to either genre, really.  Sci-fi fans might like it more, but I could see fictions readers enjoying the real aspects as well.

However, I’m used to that.  None of my books have ever really fit into one genre.

IAN. Who designed the cover?

K.K. I did this time, and it shows.  However, this cover is exactly how I had seen it in my head.  Because of the tragic content and malaise of the characters, I wanted to call back to Picasso’s blue period, and the shaky and thick lines are likewise supposed to be a reference to a series of self-portraits drawn under the influence of LSD.  Also, since this book was so personal for me, it just felt appropriate to be entirely responsible for the book, including the cover.

So yeah, that’s my excuse for it looking so amateur.

IAN. What was the hardest part of writing Ouroboros?

K.K. Feeling everything that happens to my characters.  I’m used to it by now, but I’m a bit of a “method writer.”  I stop existing while I write and my characters fully take over.  Every time one of my characters die in my other books, it hits home and I’m a trainwreck, but it’s expected in those series.  Ouroboros, however, is all about these characters destroying themselves and coming to these tragic moments, and I felt every little bit of it.  Readers might be driven to tears when they read my books, but I promise, I get hit harder every time.

IAN. Do you have to travel much concerning your books?

K.K. Not as much as I’d like to, but that’s just because I can’t afford it.  If I could justify a book tour, I would, but most of my traveling happens when I go to comic-book and geek conventions along the East Coast.  Lately I’ve been dressing up as the Merchant from Resident Evil 4 to lure people into talking to me, and then I’ll launch into a character-driven spiel ending with a promotion for the book I’m currently trying to push, usually for free.  Engenders good will, certainly, but there hasn’t been too much turnaround on the word-of-mouth yet.

IAN. Do you see writing as a career?

K.K. I’m certainly trying.  After seven books, it’s disheartening to still be relatively unknown, but I know that has nothing to do with the books.  Nine times out of ten, people tell me that they love my books and how they inspired them.  That’s enough for me to still keep going and believing that I’ll make it, but luckily, I’m going to write my books either way.  It’s not even a question. 

Hopefully it will all pay off.

IAN. Tell us about your next book or a work in progress.  Is it a sequel or stand-alone?

K.K. I’m actually working on two projects right now.  Until I started my newest book, The 616 Diaries, I had been releasing a short story every Sunday for my Misadventures of Rumplestiltskin III, which is my goofy side-project about an immortal, insane imp who meets gods, demons, heroes, villains and everything in between.  I’ll eventually collect them all into a book, but If you want to check out some of the stories, they’re all on my Facebook page for now: https://www.facebook.com/TheIcarusTrilogy/notes.

As for The 616 Diaries, I’m not sure I’ll ever sell it because of the style, which is first-person and starts off as a blog.  I’m starting to enjoy it more because I’m finally in the meat of the story, which is all about a man devolving into madness because the number 616 shows up everywhere in his life, but it definitely needs some polishing.

Technically they’re both standalone, but, well, I need to write more books before I can talk more about that.

Paul Morgan: The IAN Interview

Paul was born 1954 in Pontypridd, South Wales, which is also the home town of Sir Tom Jones. He currently lives in (the original) Washington in North East England. He read law at Jesus College, Oxford and after a spell in private practice in London spent most of his career in Industry.

He has written for most of his adult life and published works include poems and short stories. He has also written a stage play and a screenplay (which received development funding from Northern Film & Media and was long listed for an Orange prize in 2000).

He is opposed to the death penalty except in the case of users of the word ‘awesome’.


IAN. Please tell us about your latest book.
P.M. The Slipkin Papers. Eric Slipkin is not a superhero or master criminal. He is an ordinary young man living in London who generally prefers to just go with the flow. He does however have a job which is rather unusual. He works for an organisation called the Animal Rescue Service, run by a Mr Greenberg. His work involves rounding up exotic animals that have arrived mysteriously at the homes of clergymen and taking them to his contact Mr Redhead at London Zoo. Occasionally, in the middle of his animal collection duties, he gets an overwhelming compulsion to deliver cakes of all sorts to distant locations, including on one memorable occasion a cheesecake to the lower slopes of the Matterhorn. 

Other than that nothing much has ever happened to Slipkin, except for the time he was run over and the other occasion on which Mr Holyoak, his

adoptive father, blew himself to pieces in his garden shed.

One day Slipkin has just retrieved a strangely cooperative penguin from the home of a vicar in Pimlico when he is compelled to head to Northern England, his little white Citroen car laden with seventy-five boxes of chocolate éclairs. He does not know exactly where he is going or who the cakes are for; he just drives. He will know the right place and the right person when he gets there. On a high and dark Cumbrian moorland road Slipkin has an unfortunate accident: his car skids and leaves the road.

What happens from that point on demonstrates to Slipkin why it is that, when asked to explain the nature of reality, Nobel Laureate physicists laugh and shake their heads. He takes a very surprising journey in his little white Citroen into a world where the living and the dead mingle together. There he meets not only present and deceased members of the British Royal Family but also such fellow dinner guests as John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and V. I. Lenin. This would be a disturbing enough turn events even if Adolf Hitler was not the butler.

Soon Slipkin, who has acquired a heart-bursting girlfriend, a huge fortune and some unexpected allies, including Winston Churchill and Laurel and Hardy, has to go on a hazardous journey through time and space in an effort to prevent Hitler from leaving domestic service and returning to the real world, even though Slipkin is no longer sure that there is a real world to return to. 

IAN. What inspired you to write The Slipkin Papers?
P.M. I wanted to write a full length work and as challenge I took the oddest premise I could come up with at the time. Slipkin’s animal collection job and his cake-delivery obsession were the starting points I chose.

IAN. Did you use an outline or do you just wing the first draft?
P.M. I winged it. I originally published the first draft a chapter at a time weekly on the www.ukauthors.com website so I could get some initial reaction.

IAN. What do you hope your readers come away with after reading The Slipkin Papers?
P.M. The realisation that maybe reality is a little more complicated than it may appear to the naked eye. As Mr Heisenberg said “Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

IAN. How is The Slipkin Papers different from others in your genre?
P.M. It fits into the very broad category of comic fantasy but is set firmly on Earth and is a bit lacking in vampires, spaceships and zombie babes.

IAN. What was the hardest part of writing The Slipkin Papers?
P.M. The re-writes and the abandoning of cherished episodes and ideas that in the end didn’t fit in to what passes for the plot. The re-writes took longer than the original draft.

IAN. What books have most influenced your life most?
P.M. Like most folks I guess, a strange mixture, ranging from Orwell’s 1984 and Kafka’s The Trial to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and most books by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett

IAN. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
P.M. Douglas Adams. His Hitchhikers books are the funniest I’ve ever read. I would dearly love to be a quarter as funny as him.

IAN. Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
P.M. I’ve been a constant reader since childhood and eventually I realised that writing was the only medium through which I could be creative.

IAN. Who is your favourite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
P.M. It’s a close call, but it has to be Terry Pratchett. He has invented a completely off the wall fantasy world which makes you think almost as much as you laugh.

IAN. Tell us about your next book or a work in progress. Is it a sequel or a stand alone? 
P.M. I am currently working on a short parody of the Janet & John books so beloved of generations of British children learning to read. Following that I think Mr Slipkin wants to take me on the next stage of his adventures.

IAN. Is The Slipkin Papers published in print, e-book or both?
P.M. It is available in all e-formats but not in print.

IAN. Where can we go to The Slipkin Papers? 
P.M. It can be found on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BEYEFAW   
and on Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/293177

The Singapore Werewolf by Thomas Mackay King

The Singapore Werewolf 

Jacky Wu is a laid back happy go lucky guy, he is a fairly average and slightly timid young man, he has a decent job, he has his own apartment and he is about to buy a new car after saving for months. Life is okay, neither too good nor too bad, although his boss regularly bullies him, but he likes career and his colleagues at State Bank,

While on a week of National Service training in Western Australia Jacky is bitten by a feral dog. The incident takes place at The Pinnacles a strange Limestone formation dating back millions of years, there is something eerie about the place and this encounter takes place under a full Moon.

Jacky begins to feel stronger in both mind and body and changes quickly envelop him, with both positive and negative consequences. He grows in stature but something is also growing inside of him. Jacky will need to fight for his own life, fight against the horrible wrath that the stray Australian dog has brought upon him while trying to live a normal life. His life begins to turn into a living hell and he tries to cope. He has to battle internal demons and has terrible dreams that are hard to understand.

When the full moon rises in Singapore Jacky Wu is in trouble and so are the islands females; Singapore a safe place for women to walk at night is plunged into a crisis as the mutilated young female bodies appear. Jacky morphs into a seven foot tall beast although he does not recall his transmutation until he cannot ignore it.

He is sent to other places in Asia to work and during the full moon he again morphs and takes innocent life. While in Hong Kong he slaughters and when working in Bangkok he once more slaughters.

Jacky changes in his daily life becoming withdrawn and ill tempered, he blows up at work and becomes the focus of police attention. The hunt is on and Jacky is the target as he is relentlessly hunted down in a dramatic end spread out across the main landmarks of Singapore. 

Amazon.com 

Thomas Mackay King

I was fortunate to have been born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, a wonderful city with deep artistic and cultural roots, all of which I fully absorbed.

The pleasant, positive aspects of Edinburgh were equally balanced by the darker, bleaker, sinister side, both past and present, of which I enjoyed, and endured, my quota.

I have since lived across the world for over twenty eight years, and am now, tapping into the subterranean recesses deep inside my cranium, to expound and elucidate, through both fact and fiction, upon the people, and the wide, heterogeneous, varied life experiences, these years and some unforgettable years before, wrought out of me.

I love writing; it stretches me to reflect, to delve deeper, and perhaps, hopefully, to even darker places.  Thomas Mackay King.com   

Cold hearted Son of a Witch by MR Mathias

Fantasy Author M. R. Mathias announces the September 15th, 2011 release of the long awaited Dragoneers Saga Book II Cold Hearted Son of a Witch.

The eBook version is now available.

The First Dragoneer, a 43-page novella, available FREE almost everywhere online, begins with just a small part of the grand tale.

The Royal Dragoneers is the first full length novel of the saga. It was deemed a top indie release of 2010 by esteemed Fantasy Book Critic, and it was featured in the first ever Publishers Weekly - "Indie Showcase."

Now, Book II - Cold Hearted Son of a Witch brings The First Dragoneer and The Royal Dragoneers together. Zahrellion and Rikky and their dragons go on a quest to find the special mushrooms Mysterian needs to save Prince Richard from Gravelbone’s poison. Meanwhile, Jenka and his loveable dragon, Jade, escort the King's Rangers back to Kingsmen's Keep. When Jenka and the half-elvish mute, Lemmy, find a map at the Temple of Dou, they follow it and find more trouble than they bargained for. Ultimately, the five Dragoneers come together as they are forced to stand and face a terrible threat that is only just revealing itself. Mathias' fans will find grim and pleasant surprises in this novel-length action fantasy. The best surprise of all is that The Dragoneers Saga Book III - The Confliction will be available for Christmas 2011.

Reviewers respond to The Dragoneers Saga

Mathias is a master at characterization. The dragons are magnificent in the story. The plot is action is fast, furious and never ending. The plot is intricately woven with twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing. The story has a mythical quality. Fans of fantasy will not want to miss this one.

The author draws you into his fantastical vortex from the first chapter of The First Dragoneer and you are compelled to read on whether you want to or not. The characters are believable and engaging. It's obvious to me he either researches a lot or is very knowledgeable in archery, hunting and just plain survival. I left feeling I learned a thing or two. I highly recommend this pre-cursor to 'The Royal Dragoneers.'

Mathias is an absolute pleasure to read. Unique storyline, fascinating characters and a fast paced novel that practically reads itself. The Royal Dragoneers easily lived up to the promise shown in the prequel. Lovers of fantasy everywhere this is a fresh, new talent with plenty of truly original ideas. Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to this book.

M. R. Mathias is the author of the bestselling Wardstone Trilogy, The Dragoneers Saga, and the Crimzon & Clover Short Story Series. He lives in the Big Easy with his tweeting dog, Mr. Stubby Freckle Butt. You can follow M.R.'s tweets @DahgMahn.

A .pdf with the first three Chapters is available here: http://www.mrmathias.com/Dragoneers.html

For ARC copies or interview requests: michael@mrmathias.com