Realm Raiders Author Interview: Damien Larkin

Welcome to Spotlight Indie! First of all, tell us more about Damien Larkin, the author. 

I self-published my first novel Children of the Dying back in 2017. There’s no point searching for it – I unpublished it a few months later when I realised I’d made a lot of silly mistakes from the cover design to the execution. I learned a lot from the experience, thankfully, and penned my next novel Big Red. I ended up getting offers for it from a variety of indie trad publishers on the back of a Twitcher pitch even run by the IWSG (Insecure Writers Support Group). Two more books in the series followed until I decided I want to go back to my indie roots and self-published Lizard Skin and Sharpened Steel which, to my amazement, made it to the semi-finals of SPFBO 10. The sequel to it is coming later this year alongside Motherland Climax by Vlad Puting (a satirical alternative history novel) and The Truceless War (a SF retelling of the First Punic War).

It must be quite a challenge, writing a story in collaboration with eight other authors. Why did you get involved? 

I had a lot of fun collaborating on the Sky Breaker: Tales of the Wanderer anthology with some great authors, most of whom followed us over to the Creative Commune. For my particular team, I’d worked with Derek Power on Sky Breaker and I’m a big fan of Phil Williams’ Ordshaw series, so I figured we’d be a great fit. I really enjoyed how we worked together via group chat, creating character profiles, throwing out ideas, reviewing each other’s work etc. until we had one finely polished story spread across three chapters that all knitted so well together.

What have been the benefits of collaborating in this way? Likewise, what have been the challenges? Has one outweighed the other?

I can’t think of a single challenge when it comes to collaborating on this project. Phil and Derek are both fantastic writers and great people in general. I enjoyed seeing how they crafted their stories and how we all helped each other to refine our respective sections until they were as sharp as could be.

Without spoilers, tell us a little about what happens in the story that you’ve written so far and what you wanted to achieve in it.

From the start, we knew our team were going to do the opening chapters, so we wanted to start with a bit of a bang to let readers know what they were in for. Our chapters follow three distinct characters on a mission to retrieve an artefact to halt the rise of an ancient evil power. Each one faces adversity spread across multiple realms and as a team, they’re pushed to the absolute limits, harnessing powers they don’t quite understand and dealing with all sorts of threats while battling to stay alive. 

Your stories have a strong emphasis on military action, did this prove useful or create a problem for you and your team?

If anything, I’d say it helped since I was tasked with the opening chapter. From my own experiences as a writer, I’ve learned it’s important to build tension in between action scenes, so it’s not a full-on battle start to finish. There are moments of violence, followed by scenes where the characters try to figure out what to do next, catch their breaths, deal with injuries etc. before it all flares up again.

Some writers might assume collaborative projects like this provoke tensions, where personalities and writing styles clash. Has that been the case in this project? (Be honest!)

I can’t say we clashed once or there was any tension at all. We’re all professionals and level-headed people, so the overall project went smoothly start to finish. There might have been delays with responding to each other or reading early drafts, but we were all aware we have responsibilities outside of the project (work/family etc). I think we all had a lot of fun in our group chat and shared plenty of laughs!

What’s next for you? 

I’m aiming to self-publish three books this year (all written and edited – I just need to format them and get covers made). At the moment, I’m aiming for a June/July release of Motherland Climax by Vlad Puting, potentially September for book two in the Lizard Skin series, Lizard Skin and Shattered Steel and early November for The Truceless War. Plus, I’ve an in between project called The General’s Body which I’ve been working on and off for the last two years. Too many stories, too little time!

Find Damien’s work here: https://www.damienlarkinbooks.com