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: H.P. Gildwel, author of the Drunk Wizard Chronicles. From the rags of Arkansas to the riches in Texas, Friend’s and Family come first in his heart. A close second is writing and playing TTRPG’s. If he’s not writing, he’s in the woodshop making sawdust.
Thanks so much, H.P., for joining me!
J. Scott Coatsworth: When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
H.P. Gildwel: I started with fanfiction, honestly. I moved on to writing D&D adventures, and that’s when I hit my stride. Don’t laugh, but I ran a Legend of Zelda campaign in 3.5e for two years. It was a whole lot of fun. I knew I wanted to write after that.
JSC: If you could sit down with one other writer, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you ask them?
HPG: If the incarnation of K.A. Applegate could be questioned, I’d like to ask them what the heck happened with the tiny-ship Animorphs book. That was very cringy, looking back on it today. Unfortunately, K.A. Applegate is/was a shared persona, so I’m not sure how that would work?
JSC: How would you describe your writing style/genre?
HPG: Third-person limited, with descriptors. In any scene, if its important, I try to keep a sense of space that’s consistent. Storytelling with the setting is important, I think. In any book, I have a general idea of what the characters are doing in the background, beyond the main character’s perspective.
JSC: What was your first published work? Tell me a little about it.
HPG: My first published works were articles in the Eagle View newspaper at NWACC. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what they were about, but they made the front page twice. My first published narrative work is Drunk Wizard and the Cowardly Knight.
JSC: What is your writing Kryptonite?
HPG: Oh wow. I’d probably say it’s YouTube. I watch videos about writing, fan theories, and particle physics. Anything edutainment or educational, and I just don’t write, I absorb instead. Conversely, YouTube music is actually great for getting me into the flow state.
JSC: What do you do when you get writer’s block?
HPG: I force myself to write gibberish. I know I’ll throw it away, but it helps with my muscle memory. It reactivates those neural pathways in my brain, and I can crack out of whatever’s seizing my creative juices.
JSC: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
HPG: I’d say that eighty percent of writing is revisions, and that rejection is delicious. Self Editing is incredibly important. The other thing is you must be tenacious – get rejected, improve, repeat. Eventually, someone will like it for what it is, or you’ll move on to something better.
JSC: Do you ever base your characters on real people? If so, what are the pitfalls you’ve run into doing so?
HPG: I based one character on my late mother a bit. There are some pitfalls, however. You don’t want to base a character on a friend and have them find out. I didn’t think of my mom like that, but she wouldn’t know that.
JSC: How long do you write each day?
HPG: As long and much as I can. I’m intentionally desperate to improve. More words, better structure, better word choice, and entering flow-state. Every bit of writing is practice, and sometimes it’s good enough to publish if I’m lucky.
JSC: How long, on average, does it take you to write a book?
HPG: I’m a bad example at the moment, as I only have a sample size of one. So, ten years. But I’m getting much faster, already up to the teens in my next book in the Drunk Wizard Chronicles.
And now for H.P.’s new book: Drunk Wizard and the Cowardly Knight:
All she wants is to drink.
Alone.
Now she’s on an adventure.
When the regent cuts off Cadma’s alcohol shipments, and thus her magic, she must journey with a cowardly knight to the port city.
Sir Thomas Wilhelm drags her into a world of deadly intrigue and
crime. One she’d left behind. Desperate to escape the city’s troubles, she’s tricked into an apprentice and an ever-deepening debt to a talking cat. Not to mention the murderer after her newfound friends.
Can Cadma fight off beasts, gangsters, and sobriety long enough to save them?
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Excerpt
On the second night, the pair made camp in the ashen desert. Not far from the forest to the north.
The wizard set her stave above the wood to help her aim this time. She swigged some whiskey, then pushed energy into the spell. The black diamond blinked red, and it burst into flame. Cadma bemoaned having to waist her rations on fire a second time.
The knight unrolled his bed and set a small brazeer near the flame. Their conversation began, and before long the pink tin-can complained. He just couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
She said, “Tim, you’re going to have to get used to wizards being long-winded, or you’ll hate being here in Rhyla.”
The knight’s frustration broke. He declared, “I’m Thomas, and I already do!” He threw the last bits of his meal in the fire and prayed spitefully to Lunara.
Cadma enjoyed her teases, but her curiosity was peeked. With a gesture to the scorched leftovers, she asked, “Why do you do that? Throw good food in the fire? Meat rations are top of the crop. Can’t have been cheap.”
Thomas offered a puzzled look in exchange for the wizards. He asked, “Surely you know of Lunara, the Moon Goddess?” If he’d had a tail, it surely would wagged it like an eager pup.
“Hey I know she exists,” she snapped before he could start to convert her, “But that’s not what I asked you, now is it?” She eyed her whiskey-skin on the ground beside her. Thirst tempted her again, but her next ration was not for an hour yet.
“Well, when I sacrifice the food and pray to her, she’ll protect me. As the greatest star in the sky, she’ll light the way,” he quoted his scripture.
Cadma shook her head and bade him with a ‘taki-taki’ for more information.
He thrust his arm upward to the waxing crescent moon as it silently floated in the sky. “The Biggest Star? The Moon?” He believed the matter settled and tilted up his waterskin.
Words failed to find Cadma’s tongue. She didn’t know where to even begin. The wizard shook loose the contents of her mind and said, “The moon’s just a shiny rock in the sky. It circles the whole world, always falling but missing the ground. The brightest star in the sky is the Sun.”
The wizard held up her hand to silence his protest. From her mouth she imitated his voice clearly and in his fancy accent, and said with it, “But hark, lo’ the stars glow within the nightly sky!”
The knight spat out a mist of water over the campfire and caused it to hiss its complaint.
She replied to her own echo, “Sun might well be a rock or something else, but it’s on fire. The Sun puts light into the moon, it does.”
Without hesitation, the knight snapped back, “Of course he does! They’re married!”
Again Cadma wrapped her face in her hands and lay down. She muttered, “I’m too tired for this shite,” then louder, “Wake me up if there’s a dragon.”
It had been a long day quickly she fell to sleep.
The campsite was dark and the night air had a chill. The ashen sand was still warm beneath them. The fire’s embers whimpered near cold death, and the night sky above them was an empty black. The knight’s pack had been tossed near the fire and the bedding kicked near it.
“Wizard!” the knight hissed. He shook her roughly with his gauntleted hand on her bicep. Thomas brandished his sword toward the darkness around them.
IRON! Arm!
Cadma violently broke away from his grip and bolted straight up. She hissed and squeezed where his grip had been. Quickly, she rubbed to stamp out the pain.
She regretted her sudden ascent. Her eyes felt like they were set too deep, and one of her ear-tips felt heavier than the other. “What’s the big dumb bloody idea, Tim?!” she slurred. Even her eyes struggled to see under the cloud cover.
The helmed head looked down at her, then back to the darkness and re-leveled his sword against it. “There are some things out there. I count at least two,” he reported in a hiss. Suddenly he swung his sword to the left and it whistled through the air. He finished, “They’re c-circling.”
Adrenaline rushed into her veins. The wizard’s arm could wait. Her predatory eyes shined and scanned the dark, but her ears told her more than the murky black around them.
The ground shook with each of their heavy thuds. A four-legged gate. Beneath her hair, her ears turned forward, then left. They followed the sound and tuned out the panicked breath beside her.
Paw-pads. Claws scraped sand. The gentle rustle of bony scale on scale. The slick glop of a canine maw.
“Avatsi!” She swore under her breath in the old tongue. She rolled over to the near dead coals and gawked. The dumb arse killed the fire! she seethed to herself.
Cadma shuffled down on her knees and frantically swiped the ground for wood, paper, or anything still alight.
Thomas glanced down at her, then to the dead fire. “I didn’t want to yield our location to bandits!” he hissed. He waggled his sword against the unseen things and rattled his armor with shivers, despite the warm night. He held his shield close. Close enough to climb inside it.
“We see how well that worked!” she screamed at him and slapped her head to indicate his idiocy, “Now we have bladewolves!” Fire was the universal wolf-repellent.
Dark shapes circled and blocked stars that peaked between the mountains. Each was half the size of a horse with jaws that crunched bone and armor easily. Scales that repelled spears. Ambush predators.
She could give a dissertation on bladewolves. They were damned smart, with a five thousand-word vocabulary. The beasts used all that intellect to set traps for prey. They were happy to crack swords in their teeth to get to their next meal. Always in a pack of four.
Death came in fours.
The wizard summoned an island of furious calm within her mind and sank into herself for a blink. Fear fell away and her mind-self stood at the well. She scooped with the thimble, but the vessel came back dry. From the deep dark well, whispers filled her ears instead. Thirsty whispering, the child’s hoarse incoherent demands echoed against stones and into her mind.
Her eyes snapped open. “Throw me a drink!” she yelled at the knight, “Now! I need a drink!”
Thomas leaped over the ring of fire and rolled to his feet. Mid-roll, he scooped up the skin and tossed it to wizard across the embers.
Her hand clapped around around the leather, but the weight of the skin turned bad her arm to needles and pain. The damned iron had poisoned her. It would fade in minutes, she’d only been touched. But minutes were in short supply, just now.
Cadma’s other hand snatched the skin from the ground. She tried to gully the entire skin of whiskey. Live now, ration later.
Stale water rolled across her tongue.
She didn’t wait for air. Her first two words were garbled as water rolled out of her face. She yelled, “No! The whiskey. These are bladewolves. The whiskey!”
The wizard lifted her stave defensively from the ground. It remained a six-foot heavy club with a hard rock on the end. She cradled her bad arm against her stomach twitched her ears in all directions.
Thomas snapped back, “You’ll dull your mind! I need you to be aware!” He hefted his shield and planted his feet. He hissed, “We need your magic!”
The wizard whipped her stave out and circled it over her head in a savage kata which ended in the crook of her good arm. It would have been impressive if she weren’t stranded with the dumbest arse in Rhyla. She only counted three shadows. Death comes in fours.
“Throw the whiskey!” she demanded. It would silence the thirsty whispers.
“Why are you still on about it?!” He stepped to put his back against hers, to which she stepped away. His addled mind reached for an answer and he asked, “Is the liquor magical?”
She couldn’t tell him. The truth would be a huge problem, even if he weren’t a knight from an unallied nation. If he knew, if anyone knew, it would be unacceptable.
“Throw! The! Whiskey!” she demanded. Even if she drank it now, it wouldn’t hit her for at least a few minutes. Sobriety loomed over her, and desperation honed her knife-sharp mind.
Knives. Now that was a thought. The wizard threw her stave down and dived for her hat next to her bedroll. Her arm disappeared into its open hole and ripped out her cutlery box.
The silverware inside rang against itself and she dumped the contents on the sand. Her fingers glided in the box quickly until her hand triumphantly ripped a sifting spoon from its holster. She said, “Keep them away! I’ve got an idea!”
A wolf surged low and fast from the dark at the knight. His sword moved automatically and hammered the wolf’s head. The panicked blow knocked some caution into the beast.
It yelped and rejoined the pack in the dark.
The edge of the sword was bent and glinted in the starlight. The knight yelped, “What!? I’ll do it!”
Thomas’s sword shook and his armor rattled as he flailed against another pass. He gulped and leaped across the campsite to fend off a pass that neared the wizard. “Are you ready yet?!” he asked impatiently
Cadma only counted three wolves and gritted her teeth at the uncertainty. But she trusted the knight to defend her and threw herself into the task at hand.
The woman frantically shoveled hot coals from the sand with her spoon and ignored a couple burns. The pile grew enough and she stacked a cage of kindling around the cinders.
The flame refused her offering. It wasn’t enough. With a knife from the cutlery, she slashed a tuft of hair from her head and threw it atop the coals.
She sucked in a deep breath and blew for her life. The hair burst into flames and the dried wood followed. A moment later, a thicker stick took the light. Again and again, she bellowed breath into the coals to accelerate the hopeful firelight. She moved a longer branch’s end into the fire’s heart to make a torch.
Behind her, a loping gate shook the earth and rustled sand. Her heart hammered her throat, and she grabbed the torch. She whipped the flaming end around with panicked fury. With blind luck, she hit solid muzzle. Sparks flew out from where torch met snout.
The bladewolf bitch yelped a high-pitched whine. Their teets were large with milk and swung above the sand as she retreated back into the darkness. Two glinting green eyes backed away into the night.
Cadma stood up and brandished the fiery club. The wizard advanced on the three remaining beasts. They were chasing the knight as he—
A cold, logical part of the woman’s mind logged what she saw. Tears and snot ran down his face. Arms flailed and a warbled wheeze escaped the knight’s throat. The bladewolves tried to hamstring and eat him, but he had ran away.
He’d left her to die alone. He was something far worse than the beasts that chased him. In Cadma’s eyes at least.
A coward. He was a bloody cowardly knight. Cowards have light feet, she thought with vitriol. His speed was impressive. Any pride she’d felt from her intimidations evaporated, only to be replaced by pity and disgust. But even cowards deserve to live, an old memory reminded her.
Thomas was human, and humans were not sprinters. He could not keep the pace indefinitely, nor would her lone torch drive away all four beasts.
Just one thing to do. Damn it. The wizard stepped back to the firepit called out, “Thomas, you idiot! Get back here if you want to live ‘til tomorrow!”
Her torch gave enough firelight to find her whiskey, kicked between their bed rolls. She tore the cork out with her teeth and took a farewell swig.
Then she drenched the firewood. Tears welled up when she tossed her torch into the pile.
It ignited instantly into bright blue flame. Droseergala. Cadma dropped to her knees and sobbed into her hands over the bonfire.
The knight sprinted into camp and skidded to a halt in the bright firelight. Thomas picked up a branch, and the torch roared with his wild swipes.
The bladewolves peeled off their pursuit and retreated into the night.
The knight’s persisted, a few more minutes of fiery swats gave him more comfort.
The sight of the weeping woman reminded the knight. He was not the only one in need of comfort. He approached her slowly.
With the light, he spotted the hand-shaped bruise on her arm. His eyes matched it to his own hand, and he removed a gauntlet. Thomas came up over her and said, “There, there. They’re all gone now. You’re safe now. We’re safe now.” He reached out to rub her back, to console her.
The wizard woman slapped his hand away with her weakened arm, which sent another wave of needles up to her shoulder. “The whiskey’s gone!” she wailed. Her tears welled up underscored the frustrated scowl, and overflowed. “That half-pint of whiskey was older than your whole kingdom, you fool of a coward!”
The wizard pantomimed wringing the knight’s neck while on her knees. Her finger aimed at the fire and she said, “And I had to use it to light a damned fire cause you felt like suicide by wolves!”
The scant wind shifted. The smoke of the growing fire wafted over her. “The smoke smells soooooo good!”
The wind gusted and grew stronger, until it dispersed the smoke. A rhythmic thrust sounded from the night, followed by another louder one.
No, Cadma demanded of the world, Mountain’s Beard, No!
Another louder thrust.
The roar of the fire settled into the back of her mind. The rhythmic thrust grew ever closer. Against the wind.
The wizard’s eyes rose to the dark sky and she cursed beneath her breath. Through gritted teeth, she sucked in a breath to calm herself. The next challenge was upon them.
In the dark, the thrust-beats silenced. The great beast slammed its wings down to break its fall before it hammered the hard sand. Its claws sank in like stakes. Its throat growled like an earthquake. Each step it took made the grains scurry.
The knight cowered before the leviathan of the skies.
Cadma forced her face from a sorrowful scowl to a stern facade. She calmly brushed sand off of her hat and placed it on her head. With a short twist, she sealed it to her brow.
She turned to face the dragon.