Theft Of Swords: The Riyria Revelations (77 page)

R
OSE AND
T
HORN
, T
HE
: Tavern in Medford run by Gwen DeLancy, used as a base by Riyria

R
OSWORT
, K
ING
: Ruler of Dunmore

R
OYCE
M
ELBORN
: Thief, one-half of Riyria

R
UFUS
, L
ORD
: Ruthless northern warlord, respected by the south

R
USSELL
B
OTHWICK
: Farmer in Dahlgren, husband of Lena

S
ALIFAN
: \sal-eh-fan\ Fragrant wild plant used in incense

S
AULY
: Nickname of Maurice Saldur, used by those closest to him

S
ENON
U
PLAND
: Highland plateau overlooking Chadwick

S
ENTINEL
: Inquisitor generals of the Nyphron Church, charged with rooting out heresy and finding the lost Heir of Novron

S
ERET
: \sir-ett\ Knights of Nyphron. The military arm of the church first formed by Lord Darius Seret, who was charged with finding the Heir of Novron.

S
HERIDAN
U
NIVERSITY
: Prestigious institution of learning, located in Ghent

S
PADONE
: Long two-handed sword with a tapering blade and an extended flange ahead of the hilt allowing for an extended variety of fighting maneuvers. Due to the length of the handgrip and the flange, which provides its own barbed hilt, the sword provides a number of additional hand placements, permitting the sword to be used similarly to a quarterstaff, as well as a powerful cleaving weapon. The spadone is the traditional weapon of a skilled knight.

S
UMMERSRULE
: Popular midsummer holiday celebrated with picnics, dances, feasts, and jousting tournaments

T
ABARD
: A tunic worn over armor usually emblazoned with a coat of arms

T
EK’CHIN
: Single fighting discipline of the Teshlor Knights that was preserved by the Knights of the Fauld and handed down to the Pickerings

T
ENENT
: Most common form of semi-standard international currency. Coins of gold, silver, and copper stamped with the likeness of the king of the realm where the coin was minted.

T
ERLANDO
B
AY
: Harbor of Tur Del Fur

T
ESHLORS
: Legendary knights of the Novronian Empire, greatest warriors ever to have lived

T
HERON
W
OOD
: Father of Thrace Wood, farmer of Dahlgren

T
HRACE
W
OOD
: Daughter of Theron and Addie

T
ILINER
: Superior side sword used frequently by mercenaries in Avryn

T
OBIS
R
ENTINUAL
: History professor at Sheridan University

T
OLIN
E
SSENDON
: Son of Brodric, who moved the capital to Medford and built Essendon Castle

T
OMAS
, D
EACON
: Priest of Dahlgren village

T
ORSONIC
: Torque-producing, as in the cable used in crossbows

T
RENT
: Northern mountainous kingdoms

T
RUMBUL
, B
ARON
: Mercenary

T
UR
: Small legendary village believed to have once been in Delgos, site of the first recorded visit of Kile, mythical source of great weapons

T
UR
D
EL
F
UR
: Coastal city in Delgos, on Terlando Bay, originally built by dwarves

U
BERLIN
: The god of the Dacca and the Ghazel, son of Erebus and his daughter, Muriel

U
RITH
, K
ING
: Ruler of Ratibor

V
ALIN
, L
ORD
: Elderly knight of Melengar known for his valor and courage but lacking strategic skills

V
ANDON
: Port city of Delgos, home to the Vandom Spice Company, which began as a pirate haven until Delgos became a republic, when it became a legitimate business

V
ENLIN
, P
ATRIARCH
: Head of the Nyphron Church during the fall of the Novronian Empire

V
ERNES
: Port city at the mouth of the Bernum River

V
ILLEIN
: Person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord

V
INCE
G
RIFFIN
: Dahlgren village founder

W
ARRIC
: Kingdom of Avryn, ruled by Ethelred

W
ESBADEN
: Major trade port city of Calis

W
ESTBANK
: Newly formed province of Dunmore

W
ESTERLANDS
: Unknown frontier to the west

W
ICEND
: \why-send\ Farmer in Melengar who lends his name to the ford that crosses the Galewyr into Glouston

W
INDS
A
BBEY
: Monastery of the Monks of Maribor near Lake Windermere in western Melengar

W
INTERTIDE
: Chief holiday, held in midwinter, celebrated by feasts and jousts

W
YATT
D
EMINTHAL
: Onetime ship captain, father of Allie

W
YLIN
: \why-lynn\ Master-at-arms at Essendon Castle

After finding a manual typewriter in the basement of a friend’s house,
Michael J. Sullivan
inserted a blank piece of paper and typed
It was a dark and stormy night, and a shot rang out
. He was just eight. Still, the desire to fill the blank page and see where the keys would take him next wouldn’t let go. As an adult, Michael spent ten years developing his craft by reading and studying authors such as Stephen King, Ayn Rand, and John Steinbeck, to name just a few. He wrote ten novels, and after finding no traction in publishing, he quit, vowing never to write creatively again.

Michael discovered forever is a very long time and ended his writing hiatus ten years later. The itch returned when he decided to write books for his then thirteen-year-old daughter, who was struggling in school because of dyslexia. Intrigued by the idea of a series with an overarching story line, yet told through individual, self-contained episodes, he created the Riyria Revelations. He wrote the series with no intention of publishing it. After presenting his book in manuscript form to his daughter, she declared that it had to be a “real book,” in order for her to be able to read it.

So began his second adventure on the road to publication, which included drafting his wife to be his business manager, signing with a small independent press, and creating a publishing
company. He sold more than sixty thousand books as a self-published author and leveraged this success to achieve mainstream publication through Orbit (the fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group) as well as foreign translation rights including French, Spanish, Russian, German, Polish, and Czech.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Michael presently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife and three children. He continues to fill the blank pages with three projects under development: a modern fantasy, which explores the relationship between good and evil; a literary fiction piece, profiling a man’s descent into madness; and a medieval fantasy, which will be a prequel to his best-selling Riyria Revelations series.

Find out more about Michael J. Sullivan and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at
www.orbitbooks.net

When did you know you wanted to be an author?

I was really young, no more than seven or eight, and a friend and I were playing hide-and-seek, and I found a typewriter in his basement. It was a huge black metal upright with small round keys. I completely forgot about the game and loaded a sheet of paper. I swear, the very first thing I wrote was: “It was a dark and stormy night, and a shot rang out.” I thought I was a genius.

When my friend found me, he was clearly oblivious to the value of the discovery I had made. He wanted to go outside and do something fun. I thought about explaining to him that I couldn’t imagine anything that could be more fun than what I was doing. I looked at the blank page and wondered what might come next: Was it a murder mystery? A horror story? I wanted to find out; I wanted to fill the page; I wanted to see where the little keys would take me.

We ended up going alley-picking until my mother called me for dinner. Alley-picking was the art of walking down the alley between the houses and seeing if there was anything cool being thrown away that we could take for ourselves. I had hoped that someone was throwing away a typewriter—no one was, and I went to bed that night thinking about that typewriter, thinking about that page and that first sentence.

What made you start writing? Were you a big reader? Did you ever add to that first sentence?

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I hated reading in my youth. The first novel I tried was a book called
Big Red
, which was about a boy and his dog. I was on my way to my sister’s farm and would have nothing to do for four hours. This was before DSs, DVDs, VCRs—before all the entertainment acronyms. It was also before Sirius, and I knew that twenty minutes after we left Detroit there would be nothing but static on the radio—hence the reason for the book. I finished it out of a sense of perseverance rather than enjoyment. When I was forty I wanted to be able to say, “Yes! I read a book once! It was excruciating, and took half a year, but by god, I did it!” Then whomever I was speaking to would look upon me with awe and know they were in the presence of a learned man. The reality was, the book was boring and put me to sleep.

Then I read Tolkien’s
The Hobbit
and
The Lord of the Rings
. I loved them in a way I never dreamed it was possible to love a book. When I closed the last page of
The Return of the King
, I was miserable. My favorite pastime was over. As I mentioned before, this was before all those letters, before Xboxes and PS 2s and 3s, back when television had only three stations and cartoons were something shown only on Saturday morning. I went to the bookstore with my brother looking for another series like that one and was dismayed to come up empty.

There was nothing to read. I sat in my room, miserable. I made the mistake of telling my mother I was bored and she put me to work cleaning the front closet. I pulled out what looked like a plastic suitcase.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That? That’s your sister’s old typewriter. Been in there for years.”

I never finished cleaning the closet.

Can you tell us about your background in writing? Where did you go to college? Do you have an MFA?

Usually this question comes from aspiring writers, and they always look disappointed when I tell them the answer: I never took a class in writing or English, beyond those required in high school. I never read a book on creative fiction. I never went to a seminar or a writers’ conference. And I didn’t attend my first writers’ group until after I had published my first book. What I know about writing I taught myself.

My family didn’t have the money to help me pay for college. My father, a crane operator at Great Lake Steel, died when I was nine, and after that my mother paid the bills with the money she made as a gift wrapper for Hudson’s department store and my social security checks (that stopped coming when I turned eighteen). Still, I was pretty good at art and received a scholarship to the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, but it ran out just after my first year. I did manage to land a job as an illustrator/keyliner, though. Then kids came along and my wife made more money, so I stayed home. I was twenty-three.

By this time we had moved to the remote northern corner of Vermont, literally over a thousand miles away from everyone we knew. I had lots of time on my hands, particularly when our daughter was taking naps and the idea of trying to write a publishable book rose to the top of my consciousness. I was teaching myself to write by reading books. I went to the local general store (yes, just like in Green Acres) and looked for the books with the golden seal indicating they were Nobel or Pulitzer Prize winners. These were not the books I would normally choose to read. At the time, I was into Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, and Frank Herbert, but I was trying to learn—so I figured I should learn from the best, right? I purposely forced myself to read
widely, especially the stuff I did not like. They were the ones that always won the awards, the abysmally boring novels with paper-thin plots and elaborate prose.

I would pick a particular author, read several books by them, and then write a novel using what I had gleaned from reading their books. I didn’t just write a short story—I wrote whole novels, then rinsed and repeated with the next author. I found something in each writer’s style, or technique, that I could appreciate, and worked at teaching myself how to do what they did. In a way, I was like Silar from the television series
Heroes
, where I stole powers from other authors and added them to my toolbox. From Steinbeck I learned the transporting value of vivid setting descriptions. From Updike I found an appreciation for indirect prose that could more aptly describe something by not describing it. From Hemingway I discovered an economy for words. From King, his ability to get viscerally into the minds of his characters … and so on. In addition, I wrote in various genres: mystery, science fiction, horror, coming-of-age, literary fiction—anything and everything. I did this for ten years.

My writing improved with each novel. I finally wrote what I thought was something worthy of publishing and spent maybe a year and a half trying to get an agent before I finally gave up. Ten years and untold thousands of hours is a long time to work at something and achieve at least what I thought at the time to be nothing. Ten years, ten books, a ton of rejections, and not a single reader. It was time to give up this pipe dream.

So how did you “get back on the horse” as it were? What got you to start writing again?

It was years later; we had left Vermont and were living in North Carolina. The kids were old enough for day care and I went back
into advertising. I had been a one-man band running an advertising department at a software company, and then I left that to create my own advertising agency, where I was the creative director. As to writing novels, I had vowed never to write another creative word.

Years passed, and my second daughter, Sarah, was struggling in school. She’s dyslexic, which makes reading difficult. Not being good at something means it isn’t any fun. So I got her books—good books—books I loved:
The Hobbit
,
Watership Down
, Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicles of Prydain, and that new book that I was hearing about—that thing about the kid who was a wizard or something …
Harry Potter
. It was sitting around on a table one afternoon. Beautiful, brand-new book—I’m a sucker for a pretty book. I cracked it and started reading and was transported. What I liked the most was how easy it was to read—it was just plain fun.

I started writing again, but this time for the sheer fun of it and with the hopes of making something for my daughter that would help her to like reading. I wasn’t writing in anyone’s style. I was done trying to make the great American novel. I just wanted to enjoy making something I would like to read. Still, the authors I had studied were there, lurking beneath the surface. When I wanted to paint a vivid setting, Steinbeck was whispering in my ear. When I hunted for a special turn of phrase, Updike lent me his hounds, King gave me a road map into the characters’ heads, and when I wrote a run-on sentence, “Papa” scowled at me.

Why did you decide on a series instead of writing a single book and adding sequels after?

It may seem strange, but two of the biggest inspirations for the Riyria Revelations were the television shows
Babylon 5
and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. The thing about them that I found fascinating
was the layered plots.
B5
in particular was amazing in that the entire five-year series was mapped out before the first episode was shot. I think this might be the first, and only, time that’s ever happened. Yet it allowed for the unique opportunity for viewers to watch episodes and look for clues to the bigger questions that were hinted at from time to time and in small doses. In addition, Straczynski—the show’s creator—layered his plots, something that was mimicked to a lesser degree in
Buffy
. This really impressed me, and I wondered if it could be done in a book series. So I actually mapped out the entire series before writing it. I was never making a series of books, but rather one long story in six episodes.

You use a lot of humor in your books; talk to us about that.

During the late sixties and early seventies a lot of the movies were pretty depressing. Many of them were tough dramas like
Chinatown
or were dreary accounts of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, such as
Coming Home
. For me, it was a terrible time to be a moviegoer. Then I saw
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. I really liked the mix of drama and humor. Sometimes at the most tense spots a bit of humor is the perfect ingredient, and to me, far more realistic.

I also mentioned
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and that’s another great example. Joss Whedon is a master of mixing drama and humor. I don’t presume to put myself into his league, but the hours of enjoyment I had in watching something I wouldn’t normally be attracted to was definitely an influence on me.

Royce and Hadrian are a great pair; where did the inspiration for them come from?

It’s funny, because many people assume I’m a big fan of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but I’ve never read any of those stories. Any similarities are purely coincidental. I already mentioned
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
, and there was a television show called
I Spy
that I enjoyed while growing up, and I’m sure at a subconscious level there is a lot of that seeping into my characters, but their origins actually go way, way back—more than twenty years. It was when I was living in Vermont, and to help pass the cold, boring winters I started writing a chain story with two other friends. It basically started with two characters walking into a tavern and getting together a crack team to go on an adventure into an ancient dungeon. We would write a few pages and mail it on to the next to add to the tale. Yes, it was long ago … before there was e-mail.

My friends soon became bored, and not too happy that I would rewrite the parts they wrote, but I really loved the concept of two buddies, each with their own strengths, each very different, but having a relationship that really works for them. My daughter tells me it’s classic bromance, but that’s a term that came into vogue long after Royce and Hadrian came to life. I really like creating characters that I would like to hang out with. Being a writer means you get to create your own imaginary friends.

How did you decide on the writing style for the series?

The Riyria Revelations was born out of my trying something new. My last novel before this, even though it was written years previously, was a true literary fiction piece. Short on plot, long on character development, with sentences that were composed with great care and required a tremendous amount of contemplation and polishing. As I already mentioned, I loved the
fun
of
Harry Potter
. This wasn’t Steinbeck; it was simple, and light, and just a good enjoyable read. Riyria just flowed from my head to the keyboard. I wrote the first book in a month, the second a month later. Its style was designed to be light. I had a huge story to tell,
one of complex themes, numerous characters, and dozens of twists where things are not always what they seem. This idea would be unmanageable in a heavy-handed style. I’m already asking a great deal of the reader—to keep track of everything that happens over the course of six separate novels as if they were one long book. To make the trip as comfortable as possible for my readers I attempted a style I had never tried before—invisibility. The idea is to make the story pop off the page and make the writing disappear. Neither awkward prose nor eloquent phrases should distract the reader from immersion in the action and the world unfolding before them. I have needed on many occasions to rewrite passages that were too pretty, too sophisticated, for fear the reader would notice them and pause to reflect. I have other works that do this. For the Riyria Revelations I wanted to keep it simple. The result, I have discovered—much to my delight—is a book that reads like a movie in the reader’s mind. As you can tell, a lot of my references have been from television and movies, and I think that also sets the tone and pace in these books. I’m not so much trying to create another Lord of the Rings so much as a good old-fashioned Errol Flynn movie or sixties Western.

This, then, is the “light-hand” approach that some have read about on my website. While I know that I am not the first to employ it, it remains something of a rarity in the fantasy realm. For me, this is a great disappointment, for while I enjoy a beautifully written novel—I love a great story.