Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: Assaph has been a bibliophile since he learnt to read at the age of five, and a Romanophile ever since he first got his hands on Asterix, way back in elementary school. This exacerbated when his parents took him on a trip to Rome and Italy -he whinged horribly when they dragged him to “yet another church with baby angels on the ceiling,” yetwas happy to skip all day around ancient ruins and museums for Etruscan art.
He has since been feeding his addiction for books with stories of mystery and fantasy of all kinds.A few years ago he randomly picked a copy of a Lindsay Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco novel in a used book fair, and fell in love with Rome all over again, this time from the view-point of a cynical adult. His main influences in writing are Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, Barry Hughart and Boris Akunin.
Assaph now lives in Tasmania, Australia with his wife, kids, cats, dog, and -this being Australia -assorted spiders. By day he is a software product manager, bridging the gap between developers and users, and by night he’s writing -he seems to do his best writing after midnight.
Thanks so much, Assaph, for joining me!
JSC: When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
AM: I was five when I stepped up to the desk at the public library and argued with the head librarian that even though the minimum age for a library card was six she should make an exception for me because I can read already. I won that argument, but I soon ran out of ‘kiddie’ books. My sister graduated before I reached high-school, so she let me use her card to borrow from the adult section. That resulted in a few nightmares (for a ten-year-old boy, ‘Headless Horseman’ is ninety percent boring romance and ten percent not sleeping for a week), and — once I found the ladder to reach that high shelf — a life-long love for science fiction and fantasy.
Having a book obsession, coupled with role-playing games, meant stories were a big part of my life. But writing? That was for retirement. Until one night a decade ago, when my wife said she read all the things she wanted to read, and had nothing else. So I sat down after she went to sleep and started writing…
I didn’t stop until I had a finished first draft. I sent it to my older sister, the one who fuelled my book obsession in childhood. A few weeks later I got the manuscript back. I opened it and all the red pen marks jumped at me. Editors can be cruel, they take what you’ve worked on for months, and point out every little thing that’s wrong with it.
But on the last page, neatly written with that same red pen, was a comment “I hope you have plans for those characters. It gave me a ‘book-hangover’ and I can’t stop thinking about the story.”
That’s when I knew I might not suck at writing.
JSC: How would you describe your writing style/genre?
AM: Usually with a long sentence. The primary genre I write is fantasy, but really it’s speculative fiction. What if everything the Romans believed about magic was true? How do we interact with technology? Who polices everyday magic?
I usually end up mashing genres. My first series — Togas, Daggers, and Magic — attempts to answer the first question. It’s the cases of a hard-boiled detective in a world based on ancient Rome, solving cases with a paranormal angle. So far, the series has been reviewed by three history PhDs, and even though it’s expressly fantasy I seem to have managed to get the real mind-set of ancient Romans, the way they viewed magic as embedded in everything, and the trivia of daily life, far better than ‘pure’ historical fiction you can see on screens recently.
My current WIP series — Unusual Crimes Squad — is a modern-day police-procedural set in Australia (Sydney and Tasmania), but as you might guess from the title their jobs don’t involve your run-of-the-mill homicide. DI Jacob “Jack” Finkel gets called when the crimes are outré. As one old lady told him, when your dead husband is being haunted, who are you going to call? (The police, of course). Dealing with ghosts and various meta-mundane entities, to use the politically correct term, does usually also involve a lot of history.
In short, when choosing a ‘genre’ I elected not to have the headache of concentrating on fantasy world-building, historical research, or mystery drama, but rather have all three headaches at once.
J. Scott Coatsworth: Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
Assaph Mehr: I do indeed, and react pretty much the same to all – I celebrate any new review. It’s hard enough getting reader to post even a short sentence as review, so anything is welcome.
I don’t see any review as ‘bad’. Reviews are matters of taste, and no book is ever for every readers. Negative reviews, i.e. those that contain criticism, might contain something for me to learn from, or might simply help other readers identify if the book is for them or not. Finding the right readers is better than finding just any reader, and reaching those who would enjoy the novel (while helping those who won’t just skip along) is important.
Then again, there’s always the one-star review from someone who didn’t remember reading the book, or the one who dinged the book (set in ancient Rome) because “all the characters are blond” (at my count, only four out of several dozen encountered). Those are good for a laugh.
JSC: Are you a plotter or a pantser?
AM: The idea of a lock-room mystery in a fantasy world with magic kicked the can around the back of my head for a decade. When I sat down to write Murder In Absentia, I knew the essence of the mystery, a few sketchy characters, and the general world-setting (I was reading a lot of detectives set in ancient Rome at the time), but precious little else. So I had to make up a lot of stuff as I went along. There’s one point where one character reminds the protagonist that he still hadn’t explained how the murder could even take place under the circumstances. That character was also talking to me, reminding me that I, too, still have no clue about it.
I’ve had similar experiences with my other novels. I know the gist of the thing, a few highlights, and the rest I discover as I go along. Then comes editing, fixing up foreshadowing and red-herrings and generally polishing the story. That first draft is just a hyper-detailed outline, but I can’t write an outline without knowing — by writing — what actuallyhappens in each scene. For example, in my latest novel there is a scene I named “road-trip” because the characters were supposed to make a strategic repositioning out of town when the heat of violence was on. Then one stood up, said ‘absolutely not’, gave some very good reasons, and now the scene is titled “Not a road-trip.”
With characters like these, how could I possibly plot? This possibly makes me an 80% pantser, despite my best intentions.
JSC: What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?
AM: Comfortable pants. There is just no getting around sitting down for hours and writing words. Whether you’re a moleskin-notebook-and-fountainpen kind of writer, a typewriter-in-a-cabin, or a laptop-and-café kind of writer, or even a standing-desk-and-treadmill, you still need to spend hour putting words on the page, adjusting commas, putting other words, removing words, restoring the words… On short, you spend hours mostly sitting and writing. Sos a comfortable pair of pants is a must.
Other than that, a winning lottery ticket so you can buy a secluded abandoned manor in the woods, renovate it into a posh writing retreat, and pay people to deal with the little annoyances of life so you can have more time to write is also recommended.
But really, comfortable pants and something to write on is all you need.
JSC: If you had a grant to write any book you wanted as a freebie without worrying about sales, what kind of story would you like to tell?
AM: Exactly the same books I’m already writing. Like many similar things, book and author popularity is controlled by a power-law distribution — a very small minority accounts for the majority of sales and fame. There are scientific experiments that show the “rich get richer” effect in such systems, where popularity grows exponentially.
Once you do all the math, the inescapable conclusion is that art, unless you’re stupendously lucky, isn’t going to make a meaningful contribution to the mortgage. Given that, I write the stories I want to write exactly because I want to read them. That others read and enjoy them just as me is mind boggling in itself. I’ve made friendships this way, and my desire in “reaching readers” is to find others with similar interests.
I plan to keep writing, because to create is fundamentally to be human.
JSC: Who has been your favorite character to write and why?
AM: Almost without a doubt Araxus, the protagonist’s friend. He had some magical mishap in his youth, and as such lost his mind. Time and space don’t quite mean the same things to him, and he drifts in and out of focus on reality. Writing his dialogue is a hilarious for me, and migraine-inducing for my protagonist.
JSC: Let’s talk to your characters for a minute – what’s it like to work for such a demanding writer?
AM: Funny you should ask, they speak up about it fairly regularly. The subject of commission and royalties for the their stories keeps coming up.
I run a blog dedicated to interviewing the characters out of books (TheProtagonistSpeaks.com). As such, I’m used to characters breaking the fourth wall. I’ve asked Felix, the protagonist of my first series, to interview Jack, the protagonist of the new series. I ended up regretting that, as they got on very well, and starting gossiping about me in entirely inappropriate ways.
This interview will be published in time with the launch of Jack’s first novel.
JSC: If you could create a new holiday, what would it be?
AM: “I Wrote A Line” day. You know, where you don’t have to go to an actual job if you wrote a line, painted, sculpted, or otherwise made progress in your creative endeavours.
Note that this day isn’t a specific day in the calendar, but rather applies to any day you made progress, up to 365 per year (366 on leap years).
No that would be some motivation to get on with the WIP…
JSC: What are you working on now, and what’s coming out next? Tell us about it!
AM: The current work-in-progress are the paranormal cases of Detective Inspector Jacob “Jack” Finkel, head of the Unusual Crimes Squad at Tasmania Police. You see, I don’t like the whole secret-societies / magical-underground conceit. If something like magic existed, people, like with everything else in life, would have figured out how to exploit it. And, of course, would have used it to exploit other people, because that’s what some humans are.
So how do you deal with the criminal element of magical crimes? Well, same as you would with homicides, cybercrimes, drugs, financial, and other creative endeavours humans had throughout the ages to end up with their neighbour’s property. You have specialised squads within the police force that deal with those (human and otherwise) who step beyond the boundaries of the law. Hence a police-procedural, but where the crime might involve pixie dust.
Formerly Jack was in Sydney as part of NSW Police, and you can read a few short stories of his cases on my newsletter archives here: https://assaph.substack.com/. These cover earlier episodes in his career, up until the move to Tassie (where the first full-length novel takes place).
And now for Assaph’s new book: In Victrix:
The Fast and the Furies: A tale of Chariot Races, Politics, and Mysteries – both Womanly and Occult!
What starts as a curse on the people’s sacred institution of chariot races, soon spirals out of control. From women’s mysteries and place in public affairs, to the whole fabric of politics and society itself.
Felix, dressed in a toga and armed with a dagger, is neither a traditional detective nor a traditional magician – but something in between. Whenever there is a foul business of bad magic, Felix is hired to sniff out the truth. What starts as curses by rabid fans soon involves everyone from politicians to organized crime, and Felix must explore the mysteries of secret cults and of the place of women in society. Now he must separate fact from superstition – a hard task in a world where the old gods still roam the earth.
In Victrix is set in a fantasy world. The city of Egretia borrows elements from a thousand years of ancient Roman culture, from the founding of Rome to the late empire, mixed with a judicious amount of magic. This is a story of a cynical, hardboiled detective dealing with anything from daily life to the old forces roaming the world.
This is the third Story of Togas, daggers, and Magic – for lovers of Ancient Rome, Hardboiled detectives, and Urban Fantasy.
Amazon
Excerpt
Publius Clodius jumped on the stage of the rostra in front of the gathered citizens, hitched up his tunic despite the November morning chill, grabbed his manhood, and yelled “This is my veto!” to the cheer of the crowds.
I shouted with them, though I suspect most were captivated by his antics rather than his populist agenda. I was glad I had chosen the Forum for my entertainment that day, having no doubt the shows held as part of the Plebeian Games were less amusing than the political circus. The day after tomorrow was reserved for the final chariot races, and I wouldn’t miss them for the world, but today I could spare myself the crowds of country bumpkins in favour of more refined civic amusement.
As for Clodius, while his family always took efforts to appeal to the masses of our city by supporting populist causes, some generations were more flamboyant than others. He pranced around the stage, shouting “Veto! Veto!” with each flick of his manhood, while the magistrate’s face turned purple in his attempt to make himself heard over the noise.
To be fair to the magistrate, Clodius hadn’t even entered his tribuneship proper. Born of the patrician Claudii Pulchri, he got himself adopted into a plebeian family — by a man younger than he, I should add — so he could be elected as a tribune of the plebs. The fact he would not enter office until December did not seem to deter him from causing havoc in our sacred assemblies. This boded well for entertaining diversions during the coming year for the politically-minded amongst us.
Nonetheless, it was time to leave. It was more likely Clodius would encourage a civil brawl than let mere details about his inability to cast a legal veto stop him, and no laws would be passed that day (my interest in the magistrate’s proposed restrictions on sodalities was marginal at best — there are no funeral clubs for investigators).
Borax cleared the path for me out of the Forum, and the noise dwindled as we skirted around a basilica. Unfortunately, that did nothing to improve my mood. Following the events of a recent case, my life had become decidedly more dangerous. Apart from a brief sojourn at sea during a minor investigation, supporters of the sore loser from my last court appearance followed and heckled me continuously. Their patron — a man named Numicius — was a senator which, regrettably, did not preclude him from being a vile miscreant; a thug who employed other thugs.
As though in answer to my silent brooding, a rotten cabbage splattered on my chest. A gang of toughs jeered at us, juggling more projectile produce.
“The brawl is that way,.” I hooked my thumb towards the Forum. “I’m sure Clodius is awaiting your agricultural support with bated breath.”
I turned on my heel when a turnip — luckily overripe, rather than stone hard — smashed into me from the other direction. There were too many of them, enclosing us on both sides.
“Quick!” I nodded at Borax, and we sprinted around the columns of the basilica. The hooligans whooped and gave chase. I wanted to lead them back to the Forum, to lose ourselves in the crowds eager to fight anyone, but they had spread out to prevent us returning.
We increased our pace, zigzagging amongst the columns till we came out on the other side. Without much thought, we sped across the street and down the next alley to lose our pursuers. They kept up, and we could hear their cries behind us like hounds baying for blood. More of them seemed to appear from around a corner to pelt us with rotten fruit, forcing us to change direction — we had no clear getaway.
Our hasty retreat came to a sudden stop when we made a wrong turn and found ourselves in a blind alley. The toughs piled in and blocked any possible escape. Their grins were no longer jeering, but teeth bared in evil intent. They picked up sticks and stones instead of rotten fruit. I drew my knife from my tunic, and Borax clenched his metal fist in anticipation of a bloody brawl. I gave us even odds. Borax was even more accomplished than his large size indicated, but the thugs didn’t know that.
Their leader said, “Numicius sends his regards,” as they advanced slowly. Before they could rush us, a commotion started behind them. Yelps of pain turned into gasping whispers, followed by a quick shuffling of feet.
A woman placed her hand on the leader’s shoulder and swept him aside. There was no mistaking her — seven feet of dark skin and rippling muscles had made Hippolyta a gladiatrix of city-wide renown in recent years.
She faced our assailants.
“Now, then,” she said, “I have business with Felix here. So, unless any one of you droopy mentulae care to take it up with me, I suggest you disappear.” A short sword slid into her hand as if by magic.
We have all seen her in the arena. Her exploits were legendary, including the bout when she bested three other gladiators with that same gladius. She made a menacing half-step forward, and the hooligans decided to heed her advice. The alley emptied in record time.
“Useless filth.” She sheathed her sword and adjusted the scabbard to hide it under her cloak. “Now, then. Not that I mind doing a good turn, but you are Spurius Vulpius Felix, known as the Fox, are you not?”
“Indeed, I am,” I answered. “To whom do I owe the pleasure?”