Theft of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  During the late sixties and early seventies a lot of the movies were pretty depressing. Many of them were tough dramas like Chinatown or were dreary accounts of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, such as Coming Home. For me, it was a terrible time to be a moviegoer. Then I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I really liked the mix of drama and humor. Sometimes at the most tense spots a bit of humor is the perfect ingredient, and to me, far more realistic.

  I also mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that’s another great example. Joss Whedon is a master of mixing drama and humor. I don’t presume to put myself into his league, but the hours of enjoyment I had in watching something I wouldn’t normally be attracted to was definitely an influence on me.

  Royce and Hadrian are a great pair; where did the inspiration for them come from?

  It’s funny, because many people assume I’m a big fan of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but I’ve never read any of those stories. Any similarities are purely coincidental. I already mentioned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and there was a television show called I Spy that I enjoyed while growing up, and I’m sure at a subconscious level there is a lot of that seeping into my characters, but their origins actually go way, way back—more than twenty years. It was when I was living in Vermont, and to help pass the cold, boring winters I started writing a chain story with two other friends. It basically started with two characters walking into a tavern and getting together a crack team to go on an adventure into an ancient dungeon. We would write a few pages and mail it on to the next to add to the tale. Yes, it was long ago … before there was e-mail.

  My friends soon became bored, and not too happy that I would rewrite the parts they wrote, but I really loved the concept of two buddies, each with their own strengths, each very different, but having a relationship that really works for them. My daughter tells me it’s classic bromance, but that’s a term that came into vogue long after Royce and Hadrian came to life. I really like creating characters that I would like to hang out with. Being a writer means you get to create your own imaginary friends.

  How did you decide on the writing style for the series?

  The Riyria Revelations was born out of my trying something new. My last novel before this, even though it was written years previously, was a true literary fiction piece. Short on plot, long on character development, with sentences that were composed with great care and required a tremendous amount of contemplation and polishing. As I already mentioned, I loved the fun of Harry Potter. This wasn’t Steinbeck; it was simple, and light, and just a good enjoyable read. Riyria just flowed from my head to the keyboard. I wrote the first book in a month, the second a month later. Its style was designed to be light. I had a huge story to tell, one of complex themes, numerous characters, and dozens of twists where things are not always what they seem. This idea would be unmanageable in a heavy-handed style. I’m already asking a great deal of the reader—to keep track of everything that happens over the course of six separate novels as if they were one long book. To make the trip as comfortable as possible for my readers I attempted a style I had never tried before—invisibility. The idea is to make the story pop off the page and make the writing disappear. Neither awkward prose nor eloquent phrases should distract the reader from immersion in the action and the world unfolding before them. I have needed on many occasions to rewrite passages that were too pretty, too sophisticated, for fear the reader would notice them and pause to reflect. I have other works that do this. For the Riyria Revelations I wanted to keep it simple. The result, I have discovered—much to my delight—is a book that reads like a movie in the reader’s mind. As you can tell, a lot of my references have been from television and movies, and I think that also sets the tone and pace in these books. I’m not so much trying to create another Lord of the Rings so much as a good old-fashioned Errol Flynn movie or sixties Western.

  This, then, is the “light-hand” approach that some have read about on my website. While I know that I am not the first to employ it, it remains something of a rarity in the fantasy realm. For me, this is a great disappointment, for while I enjoy a beautifully written novel—I love a great story.

  Why did you choose to use such established fantasy tropes in your series?

  For years now I have heard fans of the traditional “Tolkienesque” fantasy novels lament the repetitive themes and exhausted archetypes of the genre. They are tired of the same old hero-vanquishing-evil and want something new, something more real, more believable. Which to me sounds like someone saying they love chocolate, they just wished it wasn’t so chocolaty and that it tasted more like vanilla. Many writers struggle to appease, whether that means turning an old theme on its head or going for the gritty and morbid. During the past few decades this trend has resulted in fantasy going dark: Evil often wins. Heroes don’t exist.

  This happened before.

  The motion-picture industry turned out happy endings for decades, then in the sixties things began to change. Gritty, realistic films began to pop up, and antiheroes like The Man with No Name arrived in the Italian Western. The trend solidified in the seventies, with moviemakers like Scorsese, De Laurentiis, Coppola, and Kubrick, who often focused on complex and unpleasant themes. It was theorized that the public was tired of the old good-triumphs-over-evil stories because it was so out of sync with the realities of the American experience during the age of Watergate, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the Sexual Revolution.

  Then Star Wars debuted in 1977 and everything began to change again.

  I remember seeing Star Wars the weekend it opened. I wasn’t expecting anything, and I was debating between it and the cartoon movie Wizards. Only one early review for Star Wars was out, a small block article in the Detroit News that slammed it for being unoriginal and using just about every movie cliché that existed, but the review did add that it was surprisingly entertaining. It was the comment about movie clichés that tipped the scales for me. I never cared for the gritty realism of Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver. I liked the old films, the ones I saw on television that I was too young to have seen at a theater. When the movie ended and the credits were rolling, I had one thought—so that’s a movie.

  I saw the same scenario play out to some degree in the fantasy book world. This time it was a novel series by a new author who made the unforgivable mistake of writing a hero story using every clichéd trapping available. It was actually the tale of a young boy destined to defeat an evil dark lord and save the world from destruction. It even had an old mentor wizard guiding him as well as a motley crew of humorous sidekicks (not unlike Star Wars). According to the professed mentality of the consumer, the books should have been laughable. In serious times, people don’t want trite tales of do-gooders with happy endings. They should have been panned as the worst kind of old-fashioned echo. Instead, there is a Harry Potter theme park in Florida now.

  So I have to wonder—what’s the deal?

  An aspiring writer friend of mine was working on a book in which a talking cat plays an important role. He presented part of his story to a writers’ workshop and the overwhelming response was that the talking cat was cliché—a tired device as old as Alice in Wonderland. He was depressed afterward, and over drinks he asked me if his story was even worth pursuing anymore, as it wouldn’t work without the cat. I told him that the cat doesn’t matter. All that matters is if the story is good and if it is well written.

  You see, I don’t think people so much hate to read the same type of story, they just hate to read bad stories. There are an infinite number of ways to combine old ideas to create new books. If the plot is good, if the reader cares for the characters, if the setting feels real, then it doesn’t matter if it’s about talking cats or boys destined to defeat an evil dark lord. And trying to write a completely original story is sort of like trying to compose music with all original notes. It’s not necessary, and I’m not even certain it’s possible.

  Some people have told me that I should alter the names of
things to make the world more unique, less generic, but I chose to use elves and dwarves, kings and queens, castles and churches, precisely because everyone knows what they are—I don’t have to explain them. The less time I have to take explaining the basics of my world, the more time I have to tell a great story and the less work readers have to go through to imagine themselves in the world.

  How did you get published?

  Well, as I mentioned, I wasn’t planning on publishing. I had put that aspect behind me. But I did want my books to be read … Heck, all authors do. Originally I gave it to a few friends and they, not surprisingly, expressed their enjoyment … but, hey, they are my friends so I wouldn’t expect less.

  I mentioned that my daughter is dyslexic. This means she has a few strange quirks. She is easily distracted by the color of the background on a computer screen, whether a door is left ajar or a light is on in another room. When I finished The Crown Conspiracy I presented her with a stack of double-spaced 8½ " x 11" pages, and she looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “I can’t read it this way … you said you were writing me a book … I need binding; I need a smaller page size.”

  I just sighed.

  For anyone who has read my blog, or read or listened to any of my other interviews, you know that my wife is the engine behind my writing. She is an extremely competent person who will break any door and rise over any challenge—even something as daunting as publishing. And she is a great businessperson. So when I finally resigned myself that I should give publishing one more chance, I laid my plan well. I wrote a terrible query letter and presented it to my wife, along with my inept plan of mailing it to one agent a month for the next twelve months.

  “Seriously?” she told me with a raised eyebrow. “Send me a copy to rewrite and go back to your editing … I’ll take care of this.”

  Yes! I thought. Now I just might have a chance.

  Robin was the one who, after a hundred or so rejections, got Aspirations Media (a small independent press based in Minnesota) to publish my first book. They had planned on putting out the second book in April 2008, but in March they informed us they really didn’t have the cash for the printing. We negotiated the rights back and published the next four ourselves under the Ridan Label, a publishing company Robin set up. When the original print run of The Crown Conspiracy sold out, that reverted to us as well. By October 2010 we had kept up the breakneck pace of releasing one book every six months and saw a nice following both from readers and book bloggers.

  With the release of book five the sales went up exponentially. For the first time in my writing career I was actually contributing some money to the household. And I was even able to pay off some pretty high credit card debt we had built when my single-income wife had been laid off not once but three times over a two-year period—OUCH!

  A few months earlier, we had several publishers in the Czech Republic asking for foreign rights. Knowing that there was no way she could handle this on her own, Robin went in search of an agent to broker this deal. And landed Teri Tobias (who had sold foreign rights for Dan Brown and Patrick Rothfuss). She had left her position as foreign rights director at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates to start her own agency.

  The books were doing so well by the fall of 2010 that Robin got thinking there might be an opportunity to try New York again. Neither of us thought it would happen, or so fast, but to our amazement we received an offer from Orbit in just a couple of weeks. So Riyria has taken a strange path. It has been published through a traditional small press, self-published (primarily as e-books), and now through a big-six publisher.

  if you enjoyed

  THEFT OF SWORDS

  look out for

  RISE OF EMPIRE

  Volume two of the Riyria Revelations

  also by

  Michael J. Sullivan

  Amilia made the mistake of looking back into Edith Mon’s eyes. She had never meant to—she had never planned on raising her stare from the floor—but Edith startled her and she looked up without thinking. The head maid would consider her action defiance, a sign of rebellion in the ranks of the scullery. Amilia had never looked into Edith’s eyes before, and doing so now, she wondered if a soul lurked behind them. If so, it must be cowering or dead, rotting like a late-autumn apple; that would explain her smell. Edith had a sour scent, vaguely rancid, as if something had gone bad.

  “This will be another tenent withheld from yer pay,” the rotund woman said. “Yer digging quite a hole, ain’t you?”

  Edith was big and broad and missing any sign of a neck. Her huge anvil of a head sat squarely on her shoulders. By contrast, Amilia barely existed. Small and pear-shaped, with a plain face and long, lifeless hair, she was part of the crowd, one of the faces no one paused to consider—neither pretty nor grotesque enough to warrant a second glance. Unfortunately, her invisibility failed when it came to the palace’s head maid, Edith Mon.

  “I didn’t break it.” Mistake number two, Amilia thought.

  A meaty hand slapped her across the face, ringing her ears and making her eyes water. “Go on,” Edith enticed her with a sweet tone, and then whispered in her ear, “lie to me again.”

  Gripping the washbasin to steady herself, Amilia felt heat blossom on her cheek. Her gaze now followed Edith’s hand, and when it rose again, Amilia flinched. With a snicker, Edith ran her plump fingers through Amilia’s hair.

  “No tangles,” Edith observed. “I can see how ya spend yer time, instead of doing yer work. Ya hoping to catch the eye of the butcher? Maybe that saucy little man who delivers the wood? I saw ya talking to him. Know what they sees when they looks at ya? They sees an ugly scullery maid is what. A wretched filthy guttersnipe who smells of lye and grease. They would rather pay for a whore than get ya for nothing. You’d be better off spending more time on yer tasks. If ya did, I wouldn’t have to beat ya so often.”

  Amilia felt Edith winding her hair, twisting and tightening it around her fist. “It’s not like I enjoy hurting ya.” She pulled until Amilia winced. “But ya have to learn.” Edith continued pulling Amilia’s hair, forcing her head back until only the ceiling was visible. “Yer slow, stupid, and ugly. That’s why yer still in the scullery. I can’t make ya a laundry maid, much less a parlor or chambermaid. You’d embarrass me, understand?”

  Amilia remained quiet.

  “I said, do ya understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say yer sorry for chipping the plate.”

  “I’m sorry for chipping the plate.”

  “And yer sorry for lying about it?”

  “Yes.”

  Edith roughly patted Amilia’s burning cheek. “That’s a good girl. I’ll add the cost to yer tally. Now as for punishment …” She let go of Amilia’s hair and tore the scrub brush from her hand, measuring its weight. She usually used a belt; the brush would hurt more. Edith would drag her to the laundry, where the big cook could not see. The head cook had taken a liking to Amilia, and while Edith had every right to discipline her girls, Ibis would not stand for it in his kitchen. Amilia waited for a fat hand to grab her wrist, but instead Edith stroked her head. “Such long hair,” she said at length. “It’s yer hair that’s getting in the way, isn’t it? It’s making ya think too much of yerself. Well, I know just how to fix both problems. Yer gonna look real pretty when I—”

  The kitchen fell silent. Cora, who had been incessantly plunging her butter churn, paused in mid-stroke. The cooks stopped chopping and even Nipper, who was stacking wood near the stoves, froze. Amilia followed their gaze to the stairs.

  A noblewoman adorned in white velvet and satin glided down the steps and entered the steamy stench of the scullery. Piercing eyes and razor-thin lips stood out against a powdered face. The woman was tall and—unlike Amilia, who had a hunched posture—stood straight and proud. She moved immediately to the small table along the wall, where the baker was preparing bread.

  “Clear this,” she ordered with a wave of her hand, speaking to no one
in particular. The baker immediately scooped his utensils and dough into his apron and hurried away. “Scrub it clean,” the lady insisted.

  Amilia felt the brush thrust back into her hand, and a push sent her stumbling forward. She did not look up and went right to work making large swirls of flour-soaked film. Nipper was beside her in an instant with a bucket, and Vella arrived with a towel. Together they cleared the mess while the woman watched with disdain.

  “Two chairs,” the lady barked, and Nipper ran off to fetch them.

  Uncertain what to do next, Amilia stood in place watching the lady, holding the dripping brush at her side. When the noblewoman caught her staring, Amilia quickly looked down and movement caught her eye. A small gray mouse froze beneath the baker’s table, trying to conceal itself in the shadows. Taking a chance, it snatched a morsel of bread and disappeared through a small crack.

  “What a miserable creature,” she heard the lady say. Amilia thought she was referring to the mouse until she added, “You’re making a filthy puddle on the floor. Go away.”

  Before retreating to her washbasin, Amilia attempted a pathetic curtsy. A flurry of orders erupted from the woman, each announced with perfect diction. Vella, Cora, and even Edith went about setting the table as if for a royal banquet. Vella draped a white tablecloth, and Edith started setting out silverware only to be shooed away as the woman carefully placed each piece herself. Soon the table was elegantly set for two, complete with multiple goblets and linen napkins.

  Amilia could not imagine who could be dining there. No one would set a table for the servants, and why would a noble come to the kitchen to eat?

  “Here now, what’s all this about?” Amilia heard the deep familiar voice of Ibis Thinly. The old sea cook was a large barrel-chested man with bright blue eyes and a thin beard that wreathed the line of his chin. He had spent the morning meeting with farmers, yet he still wore his ever-present apron. The grease-stained wrap was his uniform, his mark of office. He barged into the kitchen like a bear returning to his cave to find mischief afoot. When he spotted the lady, he stopped.