✨ Author Interview ✨
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An author, always an author. I really should be farther along by now. I was talking about it before kindergarten [laugh]. There was a time in elementary school when I wanted to be an archeologist, but writing was always my primary passion.
What is in your writer’s toolbox? For example, what computer and software do you use? Do you write longhand?
I’ve found I’m able to be more creative when writing by hand, so for a long time, I wrote with pen and paper and then typed it into the computer. Now, I use a tablet called a reMarkable. It’s made to feel like pen and paper, so I really like it. After that, the reMarkable converts the handwriting into text, and I copy and paste it into Scrivener, which is an app on my computer specifically made for authors. It would take too long to explain Scrivener, but it’s a great app for organizing a whole novel.
I do a few rounds of editing in Scrivener, writing more on the remarkable and adding it, until finally I export out a pdf version and put it back on the reMarkable. There I do more edits, but it’s more like one would do on paper, but without the wasted paper—crossing out things and writing in the margins. I type all changes from that into the Scrivener.
Finally, I export from Scrivener as a .doc and send it to the human editor. My editor uses the track changes feature in Word to show all the changes made and to make editor notes, so, of course, I have to also use Word to go through those changes and either approve or disapprove them plus make changes based on the notes. And then I put it back into Scrivener.
So, reMarkable to Scrivener to reMarkable to Scrivener to Word and back to Scrivener. It sounds like a lot of moving around from app to app, but this is over a long timeframe.
Would you visit the future or the past, and why?
Definitely the past. And with a big notebook and a pack of 21st-century pens. I’d love to explore multiple stops, including Celtic Europe and Europe in the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire, the Aksumite Empire—too many to list. It would be so great to just see the people and how they lived their lives. And, of course, take tons of notes, thus the notebook.
When you research history, there’s a lot about King Such-and-such doing this-and-that, but when you really start to delve into the details of the daily lives of normal people, the search becomes a lot harder. A lot of it is just lost. It would be so great to experience all that, walk the streets, and interview people. Granted, I’d also want a button on my wrist that sends me straight back to a 21st-century hospital if needed.
What are you working on now, and when can we expect it?
Thorns of Chaos is a standalone that’s heavily tied to the upcoming series, The Encroaching Chaos—think The Hobbit as it relates to The Lord of the Rings. Thorns of Chaos is, of course, out now. A Plague of Hatred, the first in The Encroaching Chaos series is also finished and is on preorder for a June publication. So the answer would be: I’m working on the second book in The Encroaching Chaos. I’m actually pretty far along with that book too, so if all goes right it could potentially come out late this same year. But that really depends on how long it takes to finish it and get it up to the level that it’s ready for release. I’m looking at October, but I can’t say for sure right now. For an exact answer, you’d have to join the mailing list on jeremiahcain.com, and I’ll send that out when I know for sure.
Thorns of Chaos by Jeremiah Cain
Release Date (Paperback/Hardcover): Monday, March 13 2023
Release Date (eBook): Tuesday, April 11 2023
Publishing Company: Vyletra LLC
Primary Plot Arc: Speculative Fiction
Genres: Fantasy
Pairings (if a romance): M/M
LGBTQ+ Identities: gay
Length: Novel / 97,000 Words / 373 Pages
Keywords/Categories: queer grimdark, winged humanoids, dark fairies, queer, grimdark, fantasy, speculative fiction, mm romance, gay romance, mm, gay, romance, new release, announcement, giveaway
Book Blurb
“Cain crafts a vivid world … rich with detail and myth-lore that traipses brightly through the darker themes of oppression and suffering.” —BookLife Reviews
Queer Grimdark Fantasy: Finn is no hero, chosen born, or noble. Despite escalating tensions from the Dayigan soldier’s occupation of Feah lands, the happy-go-lucky twenty-five-year-old is content to spend his days fishing and flirting with the other men in his Celtic-like village. But everything changes at their midyear’s eve festival when an angry Dayigan commander catches Finn in the arms of another man. Suddenly framed for murder, he must flee his village or face death.
However, Finn isn’t the Dayigans’ only target. They believe all Feahs are wicked and intend to destroy them by any means necessary. The Feahs’ one hope of stopping the reign of terror is to find a relic forged by dark faeries and able to control chaos magic-and claim it to protect themselves. With the fate of the Feah lands resting on his shoulders, Finn seeks out sorcerers who practice ancient, forbidden magic.
Instead, he finds love with the handsome but fierce head of the sorcerers–and a power he never knew he could possess.
But when the Dayigans strike, can Finn harness the perilous magic to save his people without losing himself in the process?
Warnings: violence, sexual content, harsh language, homophobia, major character death
Excerpt
He kept a low flight of about thirty feet and could see their village as he passed.
A dozen rowboats—wicker frames covered in skins—lay inverted in a line on the shore. Just past where sand turned to grass, but before turning to forest, a small cluster of homes stood within a fence of long, thin branches woven horizontally between rough posts. Each of the houses had low mud walls and tall conical roofs of thatch.
Finn saw that all the villagers had gathered outside around the houses. Many held torches. A few children chased each other just above the roofs in aerial frolics.
Down the shoreline, Finn continued flying toward the Dayigan fort.
Ominous walls of thick logs, standing two stories high and sharpened, surrounded the roughly square fortress at a hundred and fifty feet across.
When the Dayigans had first arrived four years ago and built their walls, Finn’s people were aghast that they would rip down so much of their forest for such a pointless thing. The structures inside the walls were wooden too, with roofs shingled with green-painted wood. Wooden docks extended from the fort out into the river. Three large sailing ships—not built from these forests but from some forest somewhere—rocked within the tide.
At each corner of the fort, a tower extended higher, and from the center of each, a mast held a smaller horizontal pole at its peak. From each, an emerald green banner hung like a warning in the wind. In gold thread, it bore the sun and both moons in an upward-pointing triangle. A downward-pointing triangle, below the first, represented the distant island city of Dayigo. It screamed, “This is ours now, not yours,” a sentiment echoed by the fort’s inhabitants.
Finn knew better than to enter the fort. Instead, he landed on the shore just outside the wall.
There, the ground was planked over in a level boardwalk. Stalls ran along the edges. The area should have been bursting with goods from all across the continent, but it was empty.
Holding his salmon like a smelly newborn, Finn stared, disappointed and unsure what to do.
Lann landed beside him. “Won’t get much trading done here.”
“’Tis market day, is it not?”
“Aye, it were market day when it were day,” Lann said. “But ’tis not day no more. Come on then, let’s go back. Chief Kaie will have enough gifts without yours, so.”
“I’ve come this far, though, haven’t I,” Finn said. “Might as well see if someone’s about.”
Finn walked forward and stepped up on the boardwalk. He stopped and gasped, clutching his fish to his chest.
A Dayigan soldier stood guard. He was Human—a race like the Terovae, but without wings. They had hairy faces, and though some were thin, like Terovaes, others could grow wider with either muscle or fat. This soldier was larger in the muscular variety, and a suit of chainmail, covered by a green tabard, armored him.
The soldier eyed Finn but didn’t turn his way.
Finn had also found Humans to be a little angry all the time.
“Go on then,” Lann prompted behind Finn. “’Twill be midnight ’fore you’re done.”
Finn breathed deeply and approached.
“Good evening to you, Dayigan friend,” Finn said. “Hate to be a bother, sir, but I’ve come for a quick trade, and I’ll pop off.”
Maintaining his rigid posture and staring forward, the Human replied gruffly. “The market’s shut for the month.”
“Aye, that be true,” Finn said. “And I hate I missed it, but ’tis a special night, this. Tonight, my people—the Feah, well, all the Five Tribes really—celebrate Midyear’s Eve. That’s the end of the dark season and the start of the light season. I’m sure your God Déagar would have a special place in his heart for that, right? Light season, like. And you see, there’s this tradition where we all get a gift for the chief druidess, and I, fool I am, forgot. And to make things worse, me brother’s a temple guardian and his wife—my sister by marriage—she’s not only a druidess, herself, but no less the second-in-command of our whole fecking tribe.” He breathed. “So, ’twill go well noticed if I show up with naught but empty hands and shrugged shoulders, won’t it now?”
The soldier said nothing.
“Right,” Finn said. “What can I get for this then?” He held up the salmon. “A basket of eggs would be lovely. The druidesses use them for the beernog.”
“There’s plenty of fish in the river. We can get our own.”
“That be true, yes. But this fish isn’t in the river, is it? No, this fish is ready and waiting for yourself. And that saves you all the bother of fishing it out.”
The Human turned his head toward Finn and glared a moment. He snatched the fish by its tail. He held it, looked at it, and threw it.
The salmon flew a limp and uneventful flight to hit the boardwalk’s edge, head slapping wood with a spray of blood. It fell to splat on the beach at the water’s edge.
The Human chuckled. “Looks like ’tis in the river to me.”
“Fucking Human!” Lann charged forward to fight.
The soldier drew his sword. “You want to fight me, savage? I’ll gut the both of you before you can—”
“No call for that,” Finn said. “We’re all friends having a chat like.”
Lann stopped but glared.
Finn walked to Lann and patted his chest, now flexed along with the rest of his tense body.
“I don’t think he wants to trade at all,” Finn said. Turning back to the soldier, he added, “We’ll be on our way then. Good night to you.”
The soldier didn’t lower his sword, and Lann didn’t relax.
“The village’ll be waiting for us now,” Finn insisted.
Lann spit on the plank-covered ground.
Finn pushed Lann’s shoulder to turn him.
The Terovaes flew away.
🛒 Purchase Links
Release date of hardcover and paperback is Mar 13, 2023
Release of ebook (only on Amazon for now) is Apr 11, 2023
Author Bio
Jeremiah Cain is a dark epic fantasy writer of a vivid world that BookLife Reviews called, “rich with detail and myth-lore that traipses brightly through the darker themes.” He served as an army medic and has a BA in Communication with a minor in English. In addition to reading and writing, he loves video games, particularly RPGs.
Author Links
Giveaway
Jeremiah is giving away a
$20 Amazon gift card with this tour:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
