JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Tracy Falbe, author of Rys Rising: Book I
(Falbe Publishing)
Onja is a young rys increasingly aware of her colossal magical talent. She hates the tabre that rule her homeland of Jingten. They revile and oppress the rys, and Onja dreams of overthrowing them.
Among the humans, she recruits the young rogue Amar and sets him on a path to becoming a potent warlord. In Jingten, she reaches out to Dacian, whose power is outmatched only by his idealism.
In the tabre homeland of Nufal, the tabre scheme against each other and underestimate the threats brewing against them. Rys Rising is a complex character-driven epic told from many angles.
Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write Rys Rising: Book I?
Tracy Falbe: All kinds of things inspire my writing like personal frustrations, ancient and primitive cultures, the suffering throughout the modern world, and my ponderings of good and evil and how it can be hard to be aware of the differences.
JP: What sets Rys Rising: Book I apart from other books in the same genre?
TF: Although I write fantasy, I don’t focus solely on the wholesome heroic side of things, as some would expect. I also delve into the less savory side of humanity.
I let readers imagine lives driven by resentment and lust for power. Writing some characters this way is fascinating for me. So little attention is ever given to analyzing sinister motivations. People like to think that no one has bad intentions, but I say some people obviously have bad intentions whether they recognize it or not. Just look at our world!
So as a fiction writer, I explore those things. The characters in Rys Rising let readers experience a wide range of experiences from lofty ideals to tragic corruption. I’ve created an epic revealed through many points of view. The whole of my fantasy world is the sum of many conflicting parts. Servants are sometimes unaware of the true motivations of their masters.
I also let my characters be real. A bad guy can joke around, right? A good guy must struggle with his darker side.
JP: As an author, what are the keys to your success that led to Rys Rising: Book I getting out to the public?
TF: Persistence is the highest card I have in my deck. I just never give up. I always write. I publish as often as I can. I’m always doing something to engage people. Readers have hundreds of thousands of books to choose from, so simply getting noticed is the biggest challenge to overcome.
Every week I try to write for my blog. I try to tweet consistently. I seek to be in as many retail outlets as possible. I publish guest posts by other people. Mostly I work at writing and editing more novels. The more stories I get out there, then the more chances I have to be noticed and hopefully entertain people.
JP: As an author, what is your writing process? How long did it take you to start and finish Rys Rising: Book I?
TF: When I’m composing a novel, I try to write every day, usually about 800 to 1,200 words. I also spend a lot of time reading what I write and editing and rewriting it. Typically I’m in the middle of writing one novel while editing another.
I do a lot of reading meant to inform my inspiration. I read history, mythology, sociology, and anthropology. Nonfiction provides me with raw material for inspiration.
With my fiction writing I am trying to process all of my thoughts and feelings and knowledge and dramatize it all in some kind of metaphorical way. A novel typically takes me about 18 months to draft. Then there is another 3 to 6 months of editing. So each novel represents about 2 years of effort.
JP: What’s next for Tracy Falbe?
TF: My next immediate projects are to publish New Religion: Rys Rising Book III, and then finish writing and publish Love Lost: Rys Rising Book IV. Savage Storm: Rys Rising Book II was already published in October 2011.
After I complete the Rys Rising series, I’ll need to dream up some new projects. A few ideas are kicking around in my mind, but I have not settled on one yet. To be honest, I can’t predict entirely what will work for me. Sometimes, I start a novel and decide I’m just not feeling it. Then I abandon it and start working on another idea.
http://falbepublishing.com/rys-rising/
http://www.herladyshipsquest.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Brave-Luck-Books-TM-Epic-Fantasy/41583881478
http://www.wattpad.com/user/Braveluck
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1157194.Tracy_Falbe
Thank you for the opportunity to be interviewed.
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