Glynn is currently writing the sequel to Nemesis of Mars, the next book in Starship’s Mage. Here are seven questions he recently answered about his work in progress. Click here for Part 2.
Q: What do you do if your MC shows up at your door?
Mage-Captain Roslyn Chambers of the Royal Martian Navy showing up at my door would be… extremely concerning.
I mean, probably feed her dinner and ask her about magic and how she got here.
Assuming she didn’t, you know, show up with her cruiser and thousand-odd subordinates…
Q: Do you think readers will find your MC likeable? Why or why not?
Roslyn has been in half a dozen ish books so far and seems to have done well with the readers.
Of course, part of the arc of said half-dozen books was Roslyn finding the balance between competence and self-confidence while having been promoted repeatedly for surviving things going pear-shaped 😀
She’s been a touch divisive among readers, but I think that’s inevitable when switching main protagonists. Personally, I think readers who read Roslyn on her own merits find her quite likeable.
She’s spent most of the last few books out of her depth, dealing with both external and self-created problems, and in both Nemesis of Mars and now Chimera’s Star we see her with a solid sense of who she is and what she’s doing. She’s not the original POV character of the series and some of the readers dislike that. But I needed a POV in the field. So Roslyn it is.
I am…let’s say amused, that a character (Damien Montgomery) reaching the peak of his field and being promoted into a desk job with an adoring family and a silly cat is somehow a bad thing 😀
Q: Do you think it’s important for a main character to be likeable? Why or Why not?
It depends on the genre and the type of work. The MC needs to be engaging and compelling to the reader – likeability can certainly help, but it’s not required.
That said, I don’t overly enjoy writing unpleasant people, so most of my MCs are honorable and kind people who I hope folks find likeable.
Q: Would your MC ever work with one of their enemies? Why/why not?
Mage-Captain Roslyn Chambers has seen the last decade of her life shaped by warfare.
For all of that, she has very few people she would actually call “enemy.” It helps that the biggest conflict was a civil war where reconciliation has been a major focus.
Her only enemy is the organization known as Nemesis…who already betrayed her trust once. (She didn’t know she was giving it.)
After accidentally working with and being betrayed by one of Nemesis’s leaders and now being fully briefed on their activities, mission, and plan…It would take a lot to get Mage-Captain Chambers to work with them.It’s not impossible, but she’s a lot more likely to, say, work with people of the former Republican Interstellar Navy.
(You know – the folks she fought a major war against)
Q: Has your MC ever been involved in a physical altercation? If so, why?
Multiple times. Mage-Captain Chambers is an officer in the Royal Martian Navy. She’s fought a war, saved a planet from a nanotech zombie plague, and took her own ship back from a conspiracy with her own hands.
Why… because it’s her job, someone has to do it. Someone has to take a stand against evil. Why not her?
Plus, at least twice, because Damien Montgomery asked her to.
Q: Name one thing that is guaranteed to make your MC angry? Why?
Slavery.
Particularly the particularly grotesque version of it inherent in the Prometheus Interface jump drive, where a Mage is killed and their still-living brain is installed in a machine that can force them to cast the teleport spell on a ship.
Mostly because the Mages used in her enemy’s Prometheus Interfaces were kids. Younger than her.
She’s also collided with human trafficking one time too many…
Q: Favourite part of the writing process and why.
Writing the scenes that stick in my head when I’m planning the book.
There’s always one or two, where key lines or movements have been blocked out in my head from the moment I wrote the outline. Reaching their point in the story and getting them out into electrons is always fun. Especially because they’re never quite what I originally planned them on being.
Chimera’s Star, the next book in Starship’s Mage is due out in January 2024
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