Malcolm Campbell
Contemporary Fantasy
(Glacier National Park-NPS Photo)
Come join us in a setting that is right out of Malcolm's book which looks much like that photo. Swiftcurrent Valley in Montana’s Glacier
National Park is a the perfect setting. Pristine, glacier-fed lakes, hundreds of miles of trails,
mountain goats and bears, and sometimes a late summer snowfall. We have hot coffee and hot chocolate, with Bailey's on hand for those who'd like to warm up a little more. Let's gather around the lodgepole porch and chat with Malcolm!
Deanna: Malcolm, thank you for hanging out with our readers all week! Fantasy fiction is growing by leaps and bounds and easily takes the reader away from their daily stresses. Tell us a bit about yourself.
Deanna: Let's have some fun for a moment. For an
evening out, would it be dinner or a movie? What would the dinner be? What
might the movie be?
Malcolm: If dinner, I like Japanese and Thai food a lot.
Nothing beats a meal that begins with two or three cups of hot sake. If a
movie, I haven’t seen “Les Misérables” or “Lincoln” yet. Nothing beats a good
movie on a cold winter night after one has had a hot pot of rice soup with
chicken (Torizosui) and plenty of Sake.
Deanna: I do love Thai food also! Do you prefer
wine, whiskey, scotch, or ice tea?
Malcolm: Scotch, especially a dark, smoky, peaty single
malt.
Deanna: Yum! What do you do to relax when you aren’t
writing?
Malcolm: I used to hike, but then bad knees and bad ankles
made that difficult. Reading and a few interesting TV shows are my current
relaxation methods. Boring TV shows can be made better by sipping Scotch.
Deanna: LOL I agree! As authors, we’ve sometimes been accused of being several people. How many personalities live in your mind?
Malcolm: My sources told me you would probably sneak a
question like this into the discussion in a way that looks innocent but then
the minute the author answers, a bunch of men in white coats show up and cart
the author off to a place they refer to as “the funny farm” even though it’s
probably not funny at all because one is zoned out on heavy meds and doesn’t
know what’s happening until he’s finally “kicked loose” in the middle of the
big city where he believes he’s an insurance salesman or a chiropractor.
Deanna: Thanks for the laugh! I'll have to have a chat with our 'soure' for sure! How many plots do you include in one of
your books?
Malcolm: As many as I can get away with. Of course, writing
fantasy makes this easier because magic allows things to get skewed out into
alternate universes where some of the plots are real and some are only dreams. I
love stories than fold in on themselves and make the reader grab for a bottle
of Scotch to stay relatively zoned out.
Deanna: What one
thing would you pass on to new writers?
Malcolm: I always tell aspiring writers that I have no clue
what they ought to do to become successful because set formulas and advice are
usually a lot worse than figuring out who you are as a writer in your own way.
Deanna: I like that! Do your books
have a common theme or are they all different?
Malcolm: My novels are contemporary fantasies, and that
means that worlds of regions of magic exist and overlap with the world as we
know it. My main characters not only know magic is real, they live their daily
lives using it. I like outdoor settings, especially mountains. “Sarabande” and
“The Sun Singer” are partially set in Glacier National Park as is my upcoming
novel “The Seeker.”
Deanna: Tell us about
your latest book and the type of reader if may appeal to.
Malcolm: “Sarabande” is the story of a woman from a
look-alike alternative universe who needs the help getting rid of a persistent
ghost from a man in our world who knows how to bend time and change the past.
The story is about Sarabande’s journey and the difficult challenges she faces
dealing with bad guys while also trying to figure out how to survive in a world
where science and technology, rather than magic, are behind everything we do. (Her
world is similar our world in the 1870s.) Readers who like strong female
protagonists will identify with Sarabande who, I have to say, is a fighter!
Deanna: I like that. Our fantasy readers should enjoy your books! The author’s
page on your website said you were raised by alligators. Then it said you grew
up in a pack of wolves. Now it says you became a writer because your name is
mentioned in the Mayan calendar. What’s this about?
Malcolm: One way or another, writers write to find out who
they are. Some say we can’t answer that question until we’ve written about it.
I keep trying out different theories on my author’s page to see which one fits
best. So far, they all fit, and I have to say, that doesn’t bode well.
Deanna: Can we figure out who you are through your
characters?
Malcolm: Yes, but you’ll have to decide for yourselves which
things actually happened and which things were dreams my characters lived on my
behalf. Like my characters, I believe magic is real and that we can figure out
how to use it. But here’s a clue: I never did climb the world’s most difficult
mountain (K2) or run a passenger train in Montana, so protagonist David Ward,
in my upcoming “Garden of Heaven,” trilogy does that for me. It’s almost as
good as being there in “real life.”
I'll be around all week to chat with readers who want to share their love of reading fantasy stories like mine!
Deanna: Malcolm, thank you so much for being my guest this week. Readers, let's help Malcolm get the word out about Sarabande and his other books by clicking his links and following him. While you're at Amazon, I hope you 'like' and 'tag' his book so others can find it. If you read it, please consider leaving a review, which will raise it in the ranks for other readers.
Contest: Three commenters who like paranormal short stories will receive the Smashwords code to my haunted bridge story “Cora’s Crossing." Get your entries in on the Rafflecopter plus earn more entries!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I like your mountain setting, porch included. I had a good time chatting about the world of fantasy.
ReplyDeleteMalcolm
Great interview! Loved the fun questions and answers. I'm not entering the drawing because I snapped up Cora's Crossing as soon as it was released and enjoyed it immensely. Someone (or three) is about to get very lucky. :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Melinda,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the visit. Glad you enjoyed my spooky ghost story at a haunted, north Florida bridge.
Malcolm
I enjoyed the interview. Sounds like a tasty dinner.
ReplyDeletebn100candg(at)hotmail(dot)com
Now I'm hungry, bn100, and lunch is a long way away. Thanks for your visit.
ReplyDeleteMalcolm
Hey Deanna and Malcolm, lots of hootch in the first part of the interview. Sake, Scotch,more Scotch, more Sake. And the conversation became more and more amusing. Always fun when writers get together and their fictional characters crowd in with something else to contribute. So here's to good times, good books, good friends and good health.
ReplyDeleteLove from Charmaine
cgordon3atverizondotcom
Thanks for the visit, Charmaine. I've found that hot Sake warms up the muse on a cold winter's night. Actually, one of my creative writing instructors thought a fun class exercise would be to write while drinking, but he didn't think the college would approve of it.
ReplyDeleteMalcolm