Q: What's with the Pulpanormal tag you gave to the series?
A: It's a catchy marketing gimmick but it also comes out of the Urban Fantasy and Paranormal genres being so beaten down by clones of clones of clones. My attempt to carve out my own niche in the nichey niche. The King Henry Tapes returns to the heart of Urban Fantasy and brings back some of that original spirit. It's pulp, it's got some New Weird blood running through it, but it doesn't go overboard. It's a healthy mix of the old creativity and the new vampire/were/fae/magic school stories that readers want. Hence Pulpanormal.
A: If all goes to plan then there will be 12 books in the series. Actually this number is pretty concrete based on carrying "Session" numbering from book to book. If one did math--which I do not recommend--they'd find that at 8 sessions per...okay, I'm not doing math either.
Q: I did the math and it actually adds up to 13 books worth, so are you stupid or something?
A: Stupid or crafty, you'll have to decide when all this is over.
Q: Are you going to keep up the two storylines of "School" and "Shop" throughout the whole series?
A: Yes, however the "Shop" stories will gain prominence and complexity the further along we go.
A: It's not a mess, it's just coded. Have fun.
Q: Where's my Annie B?
A: She'll return, keep reading.
Q: Are some of the classmates like Welf, Pocket, or Valentine going to pop up in the "Shop" story?
A: Yes!
Q: Where's Susan Price at?
A: Read and find out...
Q: How did you come up with King Henry?
A: There's a lot of influences for this series. Lost for narrative structure, any Tarantino film for absurdity, I went with a straight up Magic System that's Epic Fantasy in style, but the idea for King Henry actually came from a reread of Wheel of Time. Wait, what? Yeah, really. Wheel of Time has these magic items called ter'angreal that have all these weird uses and I thought...gee, a character that was using nothing but a bunch of ter'angreal would be interesting...
Q: But what about the obvious Harry Potter link?
A: Right, that was next. Over ten years and still America didn't have itself an American Wizard. We had Dresden but he has more in common with DnD than Potter. What really worked with Potter was that you begin young and he grows. That's what I wanted. Plus...that meant I got to write a School Story, which are the most absolutely addicting type of story in existence. (Just ask Buffy, Ender, Veronica Mars, Kvothe, Peter Parker, the X-Men, or Percy Jackson to name a few)
Also, outside of the wizard school aspect...Potter is such a classic Hero's Journey Goody Goody that I just had to mess it up with a tire-iron. No kid raised in a cupboard is going to turn out that nice. So I made the screwed-up version of how that character would have actually been. It helps that I live in a part of the United States with a high Redneck to Normal Person ratio and grew up with plenty of kids just like King Henry.
Q: So you're not like King Henry at all?
A: No, it's important for people to realize that just like Christian Bale isn't Batman (we think) no I'm not King Henry. He's a character I put on and kind of perform. We do have some similarities...um...um...well, I'm a 20-something white guy living in Fresno, there's that...Q: Why name him "King Henry" of all things?
A: This starts with the vampires and the realization that I wanted the female vamp in the series to be a famous person from history. I thought about it for a few days... Cleopatra? Too old. Helen of Troy? Even older. Joan of Arc? No, but... Anne Boleyn? Bingo! Once Annie B was in then our hero had to be named King Henry.
A: When it comes out... My goal is one a year. But, I'm an Indie. So my writing time can hugely fluctuate. Cat Killing Coyotes was set for March 2012, then I got a huge respiratory infection and was in bed for four weeks so it got pushed back all the way to May. Then editing went insanely awesome (no rewrites) and we ended up back in March. I can't give you readers exact days, just guesses.
Plus, while King Henry is my current main focus I do have other ideas I like to pursue. I have SIX fully outlined stand-alone highly-awesome Fantasy novels that are just sitting in a queue waiting for me to write them. They deserve loving too.
So, best guess: one a year. Which means Book 3 = some time in 2013. Estimate. No promises. Don't chain me down!
If you're a King Henry fanatic your best bet to get more than one a year is spread the word and actually create more King Henry fanatics willing to buy the books and gnash their teeth along with you when I work on side projects.
If you have any other questions, post a comment already.
Fine, you bastard. I'll suck more folks into your literary world, as long as you keep churning out the KHP. 3 days, 2 shorts and 2 novels. I'm eating these like scrambled eggs but your putting them out like faberge. Dammit man, be more prolific! Also, start working on the storyboards for a movie now. Seeing as your stuff is better than HP, THG or (gag) tweenlite...errr...twilight, i fully expect KHP to make it to the big screen. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for spreading the word. Hopefully one day we get to big screen level momentum, though I imagine that the MPAA will throw a fit over King Henry's language.
ReplyDeleteSo, has anyone unscrambled the bl00dy prophecy from KH1 yet? Got the individual lines sorted, and a couple of them seem to go together (based on events from the various books), but blowed if I can figure out the right sequence!
ReplyDeleteAnyone...?