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Author: Tim Akers

Indrajit and Fix Up

Indrajit and Fix Up

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In the Palace of Shadow and Joy, Between Princesses and Other Jobs, and Among the Gray Lords
(Baen Books, July 2020, July 2023, and January 2024). Covers by Don Maitz and Kieran Yanner

Dave Butler first came to my attention with the Witchy Eye series. It was pitched to me as epic fantasy set in Colonial America. I took this to mean Alternative History, which is interesting but not really my cup of tea. After several rounds of recommendations from people I trust, I finally took the leap. And that’s when I read this line right here:

Not since St. Martin Luther nailed the skin of the Eldritch ’eretic Cetes to the church door in Wittenberk an’ cried ‘’ere I stand!’ ’as such powerful preachink been ’eard by Christian ears, I trow!

Saint Luther? Nailing the skin of a heretic to the door of Wittenberk, rather than the Theses? Brother, if you know me, you know how all in I am at this point. By the time I was done with the book, David Butler had entered the hallowed halls of authors whose books I buy the day they drop.

Which brings us to the Indrajit and Fix novels.

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In Defense of Elves

In Defense of Elves

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hornsofruin1I’m in the middle of another book, this one my fourth, and the first in a series of four. But writers are always in the middle of a book, always writing the next book, always revising the current one. And, worst of all, always reviewing and revising and dwelling endlessly on the books of the past.

One of the great things about the Arts is that you create specific works that are pretty much a time capsule of who you were and what you were capable of doing at one discrete point in your life. Each book is a little piece of you that you leave behind in the time stream, and every time you open it you get to re-live and remember what it was like to write that book. It’s a little bit like having a conversation with a younger self.

I don’t mean to sound pretentious when I say things like that. I think too much about what it means to be a writer, how we go about coming up with worlds and gods and believable characters, and then translate those ideas into words in such a way that a reader can experience them as well. Let’s be honest, words are probably the crudest, clumsiest, most difficult to wield of all the creative arts. We depend so much on the imagination of the reader. A writer doesn’t even get to read the book to the writer, and instead has to depend on the reader’s ability to pace the sentences correctly, read the dialogue with the right tonality… everything. It’s troublesome, when you really think about it. This is why I encourage you to go to readings when you get a chance, if only to hear the words in the writer’s voice.

Anyway. One of the books I’ve written is The Horns of Ruin, which was published by the fine folks at Pyr Books in 2010. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently because what I was trying to do when I started that book is similar to what I’m trying to do with the current work. But at some point I changed my plan and went in a different direction.

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