Realm Raiders Author Interview: Simon Kewin

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

I’ve been writing science fiction and fantasy (and sometimes what we laughably call realism) for many years. In fact, now that I think about it, half of my life. How did that happen? I started with poems and short stories and basically wrote longer and longer things as I got into my stride. I’m well over a million words in by now. Probably two million, I stopped counting. I retain my fascination for the otherworldly and the fantastical, whether it’s a magical realm or a far-flung planet. As a boy, I fell in love with such books as an escape from the mundane, and that’s absolutely stayed with me.

You’re a member of the British and Irish network of authors, the Creative Commune. What made you want to join the group and what are its benefits?

Writing can be a lonely business. In fact, it mostly should be a lonely business – that’s something most writers probably crave. But it’s so good to meet up with likeminded folks who share the same loves and also the same challenges and difficulties. Groups like the Creative Commune give you the village you need to carry on writing. 

What have you learned from collaborating with other authors? Is it a helpful process? Challenging? Has it affected your own writing in any way?

The Realm Raiders story has leapt off in directions I would never have come up with. Similarly, we have characters that I would never have written in quite the same way, and I’ve learned new ways in which I can create characters and write stories. I think my fiction tends to be quite considered and controlled, and I get the impression other writers are a bit more, Fuck it, this’ll be fun. I think that’s an approach I should embrace more. Collaboration is challenging too, of course, because most of the characters aren’t your own and you have no idea beforehand what mess the previous author is going to leave you in…

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.

I wanted to strike a balance between three things: moving the story along; introducing an engaging character who has some knowledge vital to the plot and also explaining a little about the wider universe that is the setting for Realm Raiders. So, the normal stuff for a writer: develop the plot while trying to hide that you’re doing it from the reader. Mainly, I tried to have fun bringing “my” character in part one of the story to life.

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.

My first chapter covers the origin of Lute, a blacksmith who lives in a small village and dreams of better things for himself. I wanted to write – building on the great writing of H L Tinsley who started the chapter I should add – a chapter that was at once comic and witty but also full of the yearning sense of wanting to explore the wider world and not be confined to one place your whole life. My second chapter is completely mad and full of death and rubble and I’m not telling you anything about it.

Discipline, deadlines and drafts – the 3 Big Ds that makes an author’s life so challenging. Which one has been the greatest challenge and why?

Discipline: I’ve written before that writing is like running: it seems like an enormous effort at first, but once you get your stamina up, it becomes something you do without really thinking about it. You can go further and further for the same effort, and it all becomes easier. Deadlines I quite like as they focus my mind, and I quite enjoy redrafting because all the hard creative work is done.

Marketing and promotion – the bane of every author. Give us a few tips that work for you.

Don’t do it; the readers will magically find you. Hah, so I naively thought when I started writing! Actually, there is maybe some truth to that: write good books and hope for word-of-mouth marketing, surely the best type. I think the best thing to do is to keep trying different things when it comes to marketing, as it’s often surprising what works. And, don’t be too spammy. I try to keep my newsletter, for example, informative and fun. I think people switch off when they’re sold to (I know I do), but readers are interested in writers as people. I always engage if a reader takes the trouble to get in touch.

You’re left with a cliffhanger in the previous chapter – how do you pick up the narrative thread in the next one?

“Then he woke up to discover it was all a dream.” Seriously, this is part of the fun of writing. I’ve done this to myself, more than once. In the first book of my Cloven Land fantasy trilogy, for instance, I deliberately marooned some characters in a sealed bubble universe, partly to provide a cliffhanger and partly to see how I’d then get them out of it. The trick is to make the escape believable and surprising at the same time.

Give us three of your best tips when it comes to world building. Have you used any of these tips in your Realm Raiders chapters? What do we need to look out for?

I do love a big, fun, cool idea, something that is impossible in our boring old world – for example, I put a tower in my chapter that is just a tower in many ways, but that behaves in one impossible way. In fantasy and sci/fi especially, the trick is often to give the world a bit of a wow factor without it being too bonkers. The reader has to accept this could work given suitable magic or technology. The world-building is helped if the characters just accept what they see as perfectly reasonable. Other than that, consistency is vital: you can have big, mad ideas and readers will accept them, but tiny inconsistencies can spoil everything, jarring the reader out of the illusion. Adding in tiny details as well as broad brushstrokes is good, too: it gives the reader the illusion that you, the writer, knows everything about the world but choose not to bore them with too many facts.

What’s next for Simon Kewin? Do you have more books in the pipeline?

One or two! The fourth novel in my Office of the Witchfinder General series (urban fantasy mystery books set in the UK) will be out this year. This one is called The Order of the British Vampire, and it wraps up a major story arc from the first three books. I also have a sci/fi book called The Twisted Road coming out soonish – this year or next. It’s a political thriller set a few hundred years after humanity’s first tentative push into the stars. That book is written, and the one I’m actually writing right now is the prequel called The Infinite Road.

In 50 words or less, give us a tag line that will encourage people to read Realm Raiders!

One ancient evil. Nine prophesied heroes who have no idea what they’re doing. What can possibly go wrong?

Find Simon’s work here: https://spotlightindie.co.uk/simon-kewin/