Genre:
Romantic Fantasy

Publisher:
Books to Go Now

Cover
artist: Jenna White

Length:
31 pages

Heat
rating: Medium

Tagline:
“Long live the Queen!”

Blurb:
The Red Queen is a political thriller set in a world of medieval fantasy,
against a backdrop of political and sexual corruption. The king of Liberi
passes away, leaving his crown to his ambitious son, while his wayward daughter
struggles to deal with her apathy and indulgence. Her old friend, the Cardinal,
reminds the Princess of her sense of duty to her people, who are caught in the
cross-fire of her brother’s machinations.

Buy
links:

Amazon
http://amzn.com/B0088D28X8

What are your main characters’
names, ages, and occupations?

Princess
Amelia, in her early 20s, is the younger sister of the heir to the throne and,
with no responsibilities and a liberal attitude to love, the embarrassing
open-secret of the royal family.

Private
Leroy, 19, is the fresh-faced batman for the esteemed, pompous General Stagg,
and in his own shy way intrigues the Princess far more than his blustering
superior.

How did you get your start in
the industry?

I
have been writing for almost my entire life. I recall on my very first day of
school, before I could even write letters by hand, our teacher gave us simple
words printed on card to slot together to make sentences. I soon ran out and
asked for more to complete my epic tale. Creative writing became my favorite
activity and by the time I was in high school I was writing lengthy fan
fictions and otherwise steeping myself in the process of storytelling. When I
entered the University
of Glasgow,
I started taking things a bit more seriously, and managed to win a couple of
awards for essay writing while also getting a few credits for short stories
under my belt.

What is the most important thing
you do for your career now, as compared to when you first started writing?

It
is still the same really –
write. To keep the momentum going and keep building a profile, I need to have
material out there and I always need to find ways to reach new readers.

What websites do you visit
daily?

I
keep an eye on various blogs through Google Reader, particularly K.M. Weiland’s
Wordplay and the Smashwords blog. I
also check out political sites like Crooksandliars.com and The Young Turks,
because I’m cynical and like to be reminded why. I pop up on Wattpad now and
then, too, but not every day.

If you could change something
about your first book, what would it be?

At
the last moment, I actually changed something quite radically. It is a
generation-spanning fantasy where a teenage girl inherits a tremendous power
from her mother, who survived a cataclysmic explosion that destroyed her
homeland. Essentially it is a tale of a nuclear-powered superhero, in a
steam-punk setting where everyone is trapped underground due to the fallout
from a magical war. I wrote it in perfect chronological order, starting with
the meeting of the main characters’ parents and ending with the main characters’
conflict with her nemesis seventeen years later. Reading through in yet another
final edit, I realized that there was a problem: the main character is not
introduced until about a third of the way through the book. Her mother’s story
is compelling in itself, but she disappears from the main narrative as her
daughter comes to prominence, so I worried that a break in character might be
jarring for the reader. Splitting the novel into two had been my very first
intention during outlining but it never sat well with me to put off the real
story I wanted to tell for a whole other book. So I jumbled up the order,
threading the two characters’ stories together, and found I had a much stronger
piece. The two perspectives provide a counterpoint to one another, and moving
back and forth in time allowed for a subtler hand to be used in foreshadowing
since I did not have to worry about readers remembering little details a
hundred pages later.

If I
could change anything else now that Underworld is available, I might still have
split it up after all. I am proud of how the novel turned out, but I have
trouble leaving characters alone, and now that it’s done I still find myself
imagining new ways to bolster the story and add even more depth to the opening
act. It could have stood alone as a novel, but I am glad I got out the real
story I intended to tell.

What do you enjoy most about
writing?

The
power. Not that I am an egomaniac or anything, honest, but it is a taste of
being a god. The fate of your characters and their world is in your hand,
literally. Yet even when in complete control, some strange things can make it
onto the page, and characters can come up with unbidden ideas that add an
unexpected twist to a carefully crafted story. Writing down what is in one’s
head is still full of surprises, and that is what I love best of all. Like the
reader, I’m dying to find out what happens next.

If you could choose anyone to be
your mentor who would it be?

In
terms of writing, my favorite author of all time is Terry Pratchett, and I
adore the way his stories can be both darkly satirical and side-splitting at
the same time. To be under his wing and learn how to walk that tightrope
between zany humor and deep social commentary would be an honor. I am fortunate
enough to have met him at a book signing for the Discworld novel Going Postal.

If you could give the younger
version of yourself advice what would it be?

I
would remind myself to always keep going. I have had some setbacks, not least
of which is losing the capacity to hold a pen for any length of time, and have
become my most crushing critic. I achieved more in my youth than a good number
of aspiring writers, but I wish I had not wasted so much time lamenting what
could not be helped and had channeled more energy into more output. My best
advice to my younger self would have been to keep writing.

What is your work ethic when it
comes to writing?

I
would love to take the Douglas Adams approach and enjoy the sound of deadlines
as they whoosh by, but that does not pay the bills. Still, being a creative
process there are times when writing simply cannot be forced. I’m not too
strict with myself; I know some people who write with their Internet cable
unplugged just to stop them getting distracted by checking just one more tweet,
but that sort of thing seems overkill. I just take what chances I get – whenever there’s time and
space, I turn on my word processor, put on my headphones and see how far I get
before something else gets in the way.

How do you cope with stress as
an author?

Writing
actually helps me cope with stress. When I am dealing with my own characters
and their world and their problem, my own tends to fade into the background.

Do things your family or friends
do ever end up in a book?

Never
directly, though once or twice I have had friends who are certain they have
spotted someone based on them. As any introvert writer I am an observer of
people, and usually observe them a bit more closely than they realize, but it
is all in aid of learning about how people work and what drives them so I can
translate that into realistic characters who seem to move themselves through
the plot.

What are some jobs you’ve done
before (or while) you were a writer?

My
day job is in Information Technology, so I generally work with computers all
the time anyway, so sitting in front of a keyboard for far too long is not a
stretch for me. My education was initially in archaeology, which unfortunately
I could not pursue due to injury, but the skills remain valuable as a writer
who must piece together the puzzle of a story and bring skeletal characters
from my head to life on the page.

Which of your books would you
recommend to someone who doesn’t normally read your genre, and why?

I
would recommend Good Enough (available
on Smashwords and Amazon), a short fantasy set in the same universe as
Underworld. It’s a tragic romance between a countess accused of treason and her
confessor, a young monk who is torn between temptation, compassion and duty. It
gets a little erotic but by no means lewd, and there is enough political
intrigue and medieval fantasy trappings to make it a gentle introduction to
romantic fantasy. If you were interested in giving romance a shot and want to
raise your heart-rate while reading a substantive fantasy-world plot, I believe
Good Enough would be a great start.

What kind of books do you read
when taking a break from your own writing?

I
read all sorts of things –
biographies, horror, contemporary fiction, fantasy/science fiction and far too
many books on writing. As I mentioned earlier, I am a huge fan of the Discworld series, and enjoy other work
in a similar vein. Surprisingly, for a fantasy writer I am not so fond of
traditional high fantasy. I loved The
Hobbit, but I found Lord of the Rings
a chore, and avoid things like the Wheel
of Time series and Dungeons and
Dragons novels. Too many silly names and mountains of needless description
seem to get in the way. It is a bit difficult to become intimate with
characters when there’s fifty of them, all with three apostrophes in their
name. It might be why I cannot help but smile at Pratchett’s lampooning of this
tradition with giving his main characters bizarre names like ‘Moist’.

What do you think is the future
of traditional publishing?

Like
Dibbler of Ankh-Morpork, I fear that in their effort to stay in the market they
are in danger of cutting their own throat. While independent publishing and
e-books have risen to prominence, I have seen the traditional gatekeepers
merely redouble their efforts to remain an almost impenetrable fortress in the
face of aspiring authors. When I can upload my story to Smashwords the day I
finish it – or have a company like Books To Go Now turn it around in a month
for electronic publication – and my work is in front of millions in an instant
and at a very reasonable price, why would I wait six to twelve months for an
agent or editor to even read the manuscript?

Traditional
publishing seems to believe it is in their interest to put every hurdle they
can imagine in front of an author. Many agents and publishers do not want
simultaneous submissions, but they take so long to wade through the hopeful, if
you play by the rules it could take a decade just to get a dozen agents to
glance at your work. Then they treat customers no better, insisting on DRM and
unreasonably high prices for electronic media that costs essentially nothing to distribute. Books themselves remain significantly expensive, running up to $30 for
a new fiction novel, which is seriously off-putting to anyone not entirely
confident they’ll enjoy it. It is a system that seems designed to maintain the
status quo and avoid anybody taking risks, even readers, and I worry that with
infinite space on Kindles yet finite time in customers’ schedules, eventually
traditional publishers will find their wares just are not in demand. We already
lost Borders because browsing a book store and picking something out is
becoming an increasing gamble at higher and higher price points and with less
innovation making it to the shelves.

Imagine you get to go on a dream
vacation, but you have only one hour to pack and leave, and it starts as soon
as you finish this interview. What will you take with you and where will you go?

Have
laptop, will travel. I guess I’d stuff some underwear and socks and things in
my bag too, and some pain pills. Beyond that, what more do I need? I would
probably hop on the first plane to JFK and find myself a nice hotel room
somewhere in New York City, and spend my days wandering and absorbing the
atmosphere of such a lively and historic place before spending my nights
writing while sitting up in bed and trying not to be distracted by HBO.

What is your favorite holiday
and why?

Christmas.
I’m not a Christian myself but that doesn’t stop it from being a very special
time of year and a great reason to get together with family and share stories
and food and drink with people I should not really have to find excuses to
visit.

What good book have you read
recently?

I
just finished She’s Come Undone by
Wally Lamb. Not a recent book by any means, but a tremendous story of quiet
triumph over enormous personal tragedy and trauma. It’s an unusual one for me
since I tend to feel more affinity with the hopeless than those who struggle on
for decades as Delores Price does, but Lamb avoids easy answers and any sense
of happily ever after. Delores might get better, to an extent, but that doesn’t
undo who she was and what was done to her.

Where were you at midnight, on
December 31st when the new century started?

I
was at a relative’s house, watching fireworks exploding over the river Clyde. I think I stayed up until every time zone had hit
the year 2000, and I annoyed people by pointing out that the 21st
century technically did not begin until 2001.

What do you like to do when you’re
bored?

Play
video games. I don’t own a console and I am long burnt out on all the shooters
that seemed so cool and exciting in my youth, though, so I tend to play a lot
of indie titles and RPGs. I love any game that tells a story, especially if it
has a quirky style to it. I adore the scope of something like Skyrim, where I
have an entire country to wander and forge my own myths within, but that doesn’t
stop me enjoying something so much simpler, like Cave Story.

If your life became a movie, who
would you want to play you?

Ed
Westwick (Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl) strikes me as the right choice. Aside from
me being not nearly as tall and handsome, his time on Gossip Girl showed how
well he can portray a haunted, pained character. And, being from the UK,
I imagine he would have little issue with my faint trace of a Scottish accent.

If you were a color, what color
would you be?

Black.
Call me Emo, morose, macabre, whatever, but black is starkly simple while
unnervingly mysteriously, so that has always been my color. Even if my art
teacher swore it’s not a color, but a shade.

What do you wish I had asked
you? Please ask and answer it now.

I
wish you had asked where I get my ideas; that seems to be the stock question
writers face. I often come across people who are enthused about writing but
lack the energy or commitment to follow through, and they seem so surprised
that I am able to uncover not just one but many stories. To them, it’s as if I
can summon my muse at the drop of a hat, and that can seem intimidating to a
wannabe who has trouble fleshing out a single skeleton of a story. As boring as
the question may seem to writers who have heard it over and over, I think it is
valuable to encourage would-be storytellers that coming up with ideas is both
harder than it seems and easier than you might think. Every author has their
own way to drink from the well of imagination, but for myself, I tend to use
music. If I close my eyes and let myself be carried away by a track or an
album, my mind can dump me on some very strange shores and I often find the
basics of an idea bob along into my imagination, like a message in a bottle.

Please underline which
statement is more like you:

“I
am a vacation spa because I am laid back and relaxed.”

“I
am a ten-countries in ten-days tour vacation, because I do things as fast as
possible.”

I
love pizza with friends.

I’m
always ready for a drink.

When
I’m alone, I procrastinate. It’s only when people are around that I seem to find
the will to write.

You’d
never be able to tell, but I’m a grumpy misanthrope.

If I had a halo it would be sitting in a pawn shop window,
traded for a spiffy cane.

If I could, I would. At least once.

I
can never hear myself think because my parakeets won’t shut up.

Underworld

Good
Enough

The
Red Queen

Fall
to Climb

And
others…

Portman Island Counter Terrorism

Tramp
The Dirt

The
Hellfire Club

Website:
http://smashwords.com/profile/view/MJMcDonald

Blog:
http://themikewrites.blogspot.com

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/themikewrites

Amazon Author Page: https://amazon.com/Michael-McDonald/e/B007MB1YWS