James Maxey drops by to chat about his forthcoming novel Bitterwood, about dragons, about being told off by Harlan Ellison, and about the Mountain Goats. Bitterwood is already on it’s way to a bookstore near you...

We’re at the bar at a convention buying you a drink—what’s it to be?
I'm very seldom disappointed by a Bloody Mary.

Why should we buy your book over all the other books out there?
Bitterwood is, I hope, a fresh take on the epic fantasy adventure. I pay tribute to the fantasy genre that I love, but try to ground it in some of plausibility requirements of science fiction. My setting, my magic, and most especially my dragons, are things that wouldn't break any rules of physics or biology if we encountered them in our own world. If a scientist tagged one of my dragons in the heart of some jungle, he'd be able to take one look at it and recognise it as a creature that shared a fair amount of DNA with existing animals, including ourselves. One reviewer has commented positively on this effort at making my dragons believable, and I hope that readers will as well. You can imagine the dragons of some fantasy books lurking in magical far away kingdom. You'll be able to imagine my dragons hiding in the thick patches of wood out behind your house.

Which of the characters are you most like and why?
There's a little of me in all my characters. With Bitterwood, the human protagonist, I share an ability to draw power from my demons. There's a young human wizard named Jandra, and I see in her my hope and optimism that the world can be made a better place. With an old dragon named Zanzeroth, I share a complex mix of self-assurance and self-doubt. And my dragon wizard, Vendevorex, possesses a coolness and steadiness I wish I had more of.

Of course, if the ease of writing a character is any clue to his similarity to me, then I should be worried. The easiest character for me to write was a dragon named Blasphet. Blasphet is sadistic, spiteful, and treacherous, and easily the most enjoyable character to write. I think he hogs many of the book's most memorable lines. His dialogue just flowed out of me.

What would you like people to get from your novels?
Entertainment, first of all. I'm easily bored as a reader. If I'm going through a book and I suddenly discover myself bogged down in twenty pages of back-story, I just skip them. I'm engaged by a sense of immediacy, a feeling that important events are unfolding at a rapid pace, and so, naturally, I've attempted to write a book that I would enjoy reading.

Was there a specific message you were trying to convey in your novel?
While the reader is having fun, I'd also like to make him or her think. Bitterwood takes place in a world without clear moral absolutes. There is no evil overlord who is the embodiment of supernatural malice, and there are no heroes who have a pipeline to some higher moral power who clearly defines right from wrong. I find that labelling the choices of characters as good and evil tends to lead to simpler moral choices in fiction than we have in real life. I try to ask some tough questions in my book and avoid easy answers. Is Bitterwood a hero fighting to rescue mankind or a sadistic terrorist driven only by hatred? Albekizan, the king of the dragons, declares a campaign of genocide against the humans, but I don't define him as a villain. He's as complex in his emotions and decisions as Bitterwood is. If this book were being read by dragons, would he be the hero? Bitterwood's main redeeming attribute in this whole conflict is that he's human, and that will probably give him something of a home-team advantage among readers.

How did you get your start?
I'd been writing for years, but finally decided to get some professional help. I went to the Odyssey Fantasy Writer's Workshop back in 1998, and Orson Scott Card's Writers Boot Camp in 2000. At Odyssey, Harlan Ellison scribbled on one of my stories that I wrote like a "goddamn illiterate redneck." He's really sensitive about the misuse of apostrophes! Fortunately, I'm found this more motivational than discouraging. Of course, I've always been good at finding some slender straw of motivation to grasp at. I penned four novels and fifty short stories before I ever broke into print. I won a Phobos Award for my science fiction short story "Empire of Dreams and Miracles" in 2001, and since then I've sold over a dozen short stories, including a couple to Asimov's. Bitterwood is the eighth book to go on my bookshelf since 2002, seated beside six anthologies and my first novel, a quirky superhero tale called Nobody Gets the Girl. I've got stories in three more anthologies that will see print within the year, including a Bitterwood-based tale in the upcoming Solaris Book of New Fantasy.

Do you ever draw inspiration from current events?
Some reviewers have commented that events in Bitterwood have parallels to events in today's world. This is probably true, but I'm hard pressed to say what events on the world stage are unique to our time. Genocide, unjust wars, and violent cycles of reprisals date back to Biblical times and probably far before.

What inspires you to write?
Fear of oblivion.

What non-literary influences can be seen in your work?
I'm a big fan of science. For my leisure reading, I'll settle down with a good non-fiction book on quantum mechanics, or evolution, or nanotechnology. I'm also fascinated by religion. There's no question that religion has been a driving force behind human history, for good and ill. So, of course, a lot of my work to date has mixed my thoughts on science and my thoughts on God.

Who would you most aspire to write like and why?
I've spent a fair number of years learning to write like James Maxey. For now, that will do.

What made you choose SF/F over any other form?
When I'm reading good speculative fiction, I'll stumble onto moments where my mind will just be swept over with this sense of wonder that I seldom get from other literature. I like big ideas and bold imagination. What I enjoy as a reader, I try to recreate as a writer. Also, I like that you can sneak philosophical arguments into the genres without being preachy. A straight story in which a man whines for several long paragraphs about how he's lost faith in the existence of God can be tedious. But if a monkey in a spaceship delivers the same speech, it's entertaining. Interstellar nihilistic monkey angst is a literary movement waiting to happen.

Five minutes with an author of your choice—who would it be and what would you ask?
Hunter S. Thompson. I'd probably ask, "I'm at the bar at a convention buying you a drink — what’s it to be?"

What is your opinion on the state of publishing today?
Given that my book is about to hit bookshelves, I would have to say this is a shining moment in the history of publishing. Indeed, we may look back at this time as the golden age of publishing, and the pinnacle of Western Civilisation in as a whole.

If you weren’t a writer what would you be doing?
Well, if I weren't typing up stories, I'd probably use my computer mostly for solitaire and searching for dirty pictures on the internet. So I guess my life really wouldn't be different at all.

When was the last time you didn’t finish a book and why?
Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I started reading it back in April. Made it about half way through. It's still next to my bed. If I'm having trouble sleeping I pick it up and "yaaawn," I'm down by the end of the page.

What books have had an effect on you—for better or worse?
Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden changed my life. I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, but I read this book as a teen and by the end I firmly believed that science was a superior tool to religion for understanding the world. I was tilting atheist anyway, but this book really sealed the deal.

Do you think there’s anything truly original left to say in the genre?
I'm not convinced there's anything truly original left to say in the world, and there probably hasn't been for centuries. If literature is seen primarily as an attempt to explain the human condition, I'm not sure the human condition has changed that much.

What has real staying power is myth... and myth is almost the precise opposite of originality. Myths boil down the human drama into a series of familiar challenges and solutions to those challenges. Men have been slaying dragons in stories since the earliest recorded words, and probably long before then. So when Bitterwood stares into the eyes of a dragon and the dragon stares back, they are just continuing a story line that has lurked in the human psyche as long as we've been walking upright.

On the other hand, just because there are probably no new ideas for stories, an author still should take as stab at banging together old elements in new and unusual combinations. I've read a lot of stories with dragons, and a lot of stories with serial killers, but I don't think I've ever read a story with a dragon who was a serial-killer, like Blasphet.

What are your most favourite or unusual non-writing jobs you’ve had?
My most disturbing job was as the person who had to go and verify a repossessed mobile home was empty before it was towed off. I essentially was paid to drive around and break into homes that were reported to be empty. Usually they were, but other times they weren't, the people were just hiding, and things could get awkward. I'm really lucky I wasn't shot. Other times, the homes would be empty, had been empty for months, and when I would go in it would look as if the residents had just disappeared. Plates of food would be on the table as if they'd got up from breakfast and went for a walk, only now everything was covered in a three month scum of mold. Very eerie. My big fear was that I'd break into one of these places and find a corpse. I didn't, although I did discover a 12 foot python curled up in a living room once.

What are some of your hobbies?
Geek ones, mostly. I read comic books. I used to play a lot of D&D. I still play the occasional game of Magic. And I quote Simpson's episodes with probably the same frequency that the Pope quotes the Bible.

Tell us your most embarrassing moment.
Well, there was this time, in an interview read by God-knows-how-many-people, when I slipped up and admitted to looking at dirty pictures on the internet. How embarrassing.

What are some of your favourite song lyrics?
My favourite lyrics are by a band called the Mountain Goats. I've heard over 300 songs by them, and 299 are brilliant. MG songs are funny, wise, sad, life-affirming, and haunting, often in the same song. Narrowing down a single lyric is tough. The song that first caught my attention was called "Alpha Desperation March." It's a song about a guy chasing his former girlfriend through the house, busting down doors, overturning furniture. And, while the guy is obviously being a jerk, you can't help but feel a bit of sympathy at the line:

"In the full heat of the summer's day
you're telling me to go away
but you owe me 8 thousand dollars,
and I could use it."

Brother, I've been there.

What are you listening to now?
Since I've already plugged the Mountain Goats (go buy one of their CDs right now), I'll give a shout out to Sufjan Stevens for the brilliant Illinoise.

Do you have any pets?
Two cats, Sarah and Isosceles. They are sweethearts... the least aloof cats in the world.

Do you prefer happy or depressing endings, and why?
I don't see why an ending can't be both.