A little different from my previous contributions to the On the Spot feature (but that’s what we do here). Earlier this year, this weeks guest debut work was released The Crimson Sword, a High Fantasy offering. It is the first installment of a planned trilogy called The Legend of Asahiel. Mr. Thompson was good enough to accept my request to participate on our On the Spot feature and talk about this debut, and the progress of his forthcoming sequels, presently titled The Obsidian Key and The Divine Talisman, and a little Football!

I want to welcome on behalf of myself and FBS, Mr. Thompson to On the Spot:

Jay Tomio - Mr. Thompson, you just wrote you’re your first novel, The Crimson Sword , for buyers no doubt seeing your books on the shelf now, tell us what they can expect from picking up your first book, the first installment in ‘The Legend of Asahiel’ cycle.

Eldon Thompson - If you were to see it in your television programming guide, I suppose the logline would read something like this:

“A young man is called upon to unite and defend mankind by retrieving a legendary artifact, only to learn that the weapon’s power is not his to control.”

Essentially, it’s a coming-of-age adventure story that will feel very familiar to readers of Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, and scores of others along the way. My goal with this is to establish a seemingly conventional world and hero in order to maximize the dramatic impact of conventions I intend to twist later on. But more on that later…

For now, readers can expect a tried-and-true adventure story about an ordinary person swept up by extraordinary circumstances, who realizes early and often that he is in way over his head — but who must press on as best he can. While so many of us dream of being superheroes or some form of “Chosen One,” rarely have I met such a person in real life. In this tale, I wanted to have a little fun with that.

Based on early feedback, I’m being given high marks on the volume and intensity of my action sequences, as well as the interactions between my characters. And most have expressed delight with some of the twists and turns taken along the way. That said, no one is going to accuse me of trying to reinvent the wheel. Not yet, anyway.

Oh, and I should probably mention that I tend to use a lot of descriptive writing. Part of that is the nature of the story. Part of it is simply a matter of style. I’ve received a good deal of praise from readers who specifically mention this as something they appreciate. But anyone looking to devour this book in a day or two might become frustrated by the extent to which I use language in an attempt to evoke a sense of what the characters themselves are going through. It’s only fair, I think, to let readers know this in advance.

Then again, that’s what excerpts are for, and readers can check out the entire first chapter on my website.

Jay Tomio - You have 3-book deal; thus far the other 2 novels continuing the series are titled ‘The Obsidian Key’, and the ‘Divine Talisman’. What is your progress on these novels, and what can readers of The Crimson Sword expect from these sequels?

Eldon Thompson - The first draft of Book 2 is finished, and is set soon to be reviewed by my editor. I’m sitting down now to finalize the outline for Book 3, and hope to begin writing in earnest by the end of the summer. Assuming that the story doesn’t require any drastic editorial changes, I think it’s safe to say that readers can expect a few surprises going forward. As mentioned above, my intent with Book 1 was to lay out a somewhat traditional tale of a young hero being called upon to serve as something more. Scrapes and bruises notwithstanding, we’ve now reached the “happily-ever-after” portion, which I hope to lay forth in a very untraditional way.

At the heart of this series is my feeling that even heroic deeds should have consequences, and not all of them positive. Secrets will be revealed, and new questions raised. Loose threads from Book 1 will be dealt with, and either tied up or expanded upon for later on. As in any fantasy series, the first volume is just the tip of the iceberg, and while I tried to make it exciting, I think the story really gets untracked in Book 2.

Also, this is a trilogy in the Aristotelian sense. So while Book 1 stands pretty well on its own, Book 2 marks the second act, and ends on more of a cliffhanger. Hopefully, there is resolution enough to provide satisfaction. But once you’ve read Book 2, you’ll really need Book 3 to complete the circle.

Jay Tomio - Is the rest of this series in essence, Jarom’s story, or was he merely the focal character you chose in The Crimson Sword that you felt would best establish the setting of Pentania for future work?

Eldon Thompson - Over the next pair of volumes, Jarom remains a focal character — although not in a manner most would expect. After Book 1, many readers would agree, I think, that he still has a lot of growing up to do. My goal thus far was to present him not as some kind of superhero in hiding, but a conflicted and often hesitant young man engulfed by the unexpected savagery of the world around him. The harsh lessons presented him in Book 1 have only begun to prepare him for the challenges that lie ahead, and he’s no longer going to have the luxury of being so tentative and unsure of himself. Naiveté will only shield a person for so long.

Either way, you seem to have caught on to one of my fundamental conceits in that this world — like ours — is much bigger than any single individual. For now, we are looking at things primarily through Jarom’s eyes, and in so doing, are witnessing characters and events that are much more interesting than our narrator. This is a well-worn literary device that serves its purpose in highlighting the extremes around our level center. The trade-off, of course, is that our narrator himself can quickly grow tiresome unless A) he grows in complexity, or B) we switch our primary point-of-view elsewhere. Hopefully, being aware of these potential pitfalls will help me to avoid them.

Jay Tomio - I read at your site that The Legend of Asahiel came about from advice to not deviate to much from prescribed traditional elements, that noted, is this series encompassing all your creative time, or do you anything else in the future your working on or devising, and if so what shape would it take?

Eldon Thompson - Time? What time?

What comes next is still very much up in the air. While I’ve been cautioned more than once about some of the ideas I would like to explore, I’ve taken this to mean that those ideas must be re-evaluated, not necessarily discarded. I can be pretty stubborn in my belief that any almost any theory can be made to work if executed properly. So to answer your question, I still have a number of ideas floating around in my head — stories which may or may not tie into this one. It will depend largely on what my editor and/or readers want.

Ordinarily, fantasy readers want to continue exploring a particular world once they’ve invested their time in it, and would rather not start all over with something new. Knowing that, I’ve designed a world that is very much expandable in scope. My early guess would be that any future series will use this world as its backdrop, but shift in both time and setting. I don’t think I’ll ever write a series, for instance, in which the same protagonist ventures on over the course of a dozen volumes. I need new blood to keep things fresh, while allowing the world itself to provide the necessary sense of familiarity. To me, longevity is all about juggling readers’ demand for something “new, but the same” — fresh and yet consistent with what they already know and have grown to love.

Then again, for me to even be talking about this is putting the cart before the horse. Right now, I’m mostly concerned with making this first series work well enough in order to have a foundation to build upon.

Jay Tomio - You openly praise Terry Brooks as an influence on your work and for his direct advice he gave you. Who are your influences, and what is the significance of Mr. Brooks on you especially?

Eldon Thompson - First off, Brooks doesn’t always get the credit he deserves for helping to grow the fantasy genre into what it is today. People tend to forget that when he was starting out, the publishing world believed that fantasy was not a genre, but a single story by the name of The Lord of the Rings. It was Brooks, under the stern direction of Lester del Rey, who proved that theory wrong, demonstrating the vast hunger for additional fantasy tales and paving the way for the scores of authors who have followed. One might argue that had Shannara not been such a phenomenal commercial success, that someone else would have eventually exposed that void in popular demand. But the same might be said of any landmark achievement — Tolkien’s included. I believe in paying my respects to those who made today’s fantasy fiction market what it is, and Brooks is very near the top of that list.

From a writing standpoint, I give Brooks a lot of credit for exemplifying the cardinal rule: Show, Don’t Tell. As much as I loved reading Tolkien in my youth, I must admit that I’m one of those who struggles to read him today. By today’s standards, he writes what I would call “encyclopedia fiction” — a recitation of events that while engrossing, does little to grab me emotionally. It would be like watching a documentary on the sinking of the Titanic versus James Cameron’s feature film: every bit as interesting, but no one in the audience is crying at the end. Although there are countless others, Brooks was one of the first authors I read whose use of language caused me to feel what the characters were feeling, eliciting in me a strong emotional response. If that’s not the most important aspect of storytelling, I don’t know what is.

Finally, you have to admire a guy who has attained the level of success Brooks has and yet is still willing to give of his own time and money and patience to help teach aspiring authors the basic tools that they need in order to realize their own storytelling dreams. There are a great many more authors, I think, who wouldn’t spare someone like me the time of day.

Other strong influences within the genre would be: Lloyd Alexander, whose Pyrdain Chronicles were among my favorite epics early on; R. A. Salvatore, for his ability to mesh stunning action sequences with emotionally conflicted characters; and more recently, George R. R. Martin, who has the skill and reputation to bend conventions in a way that I can only dream of. Naturally, there are scores I could mention by going outside the modern genre — from Homer to Sophocles to Chaucer to Shakespeare — but if we go down that road, we may never come back.

Jay Tomio - I knew you had a website before I knew about your book. It seemed very much a priority for you. Do you think it’s important for a new author to use the web as a tool, and how if at all has it benefited or affected you at all?

Eldon Thompson - Credit for that goes to my agent, who insisted that it be up and running by the time the book was released. But I definitely agreed with him in that the sooner we started building a web presence, the better. There are a lot of books out there, so many, in fact, that a new author has almost zero chance to gain a following without some form of marketing. And the Internet, of course, is one of the easiest ways to let people know you exist. It’s much less expensive, for instance, than taking out ads in print or visual media, and much less time-consuming than knocking on people’s doors. I’ve received as many compliments on my website, I think, as I have on the books themselves, so for me, it has been a wonderful asset.

Obviously, a website gives newcomers a chance to test the waters before taking that initial plunge. More important, I think, is that it helps to establish a sense of community. If you’ve done your job as a writer, readers will be just a little disappointed when your story has come to an end. A decent website gives them a chance to interact not only with you the author, but with others who have experienced your tale. It can become then a sort of virtual water cooler around which to gather and share their enthusiasm. Oftentimes, this sharing of feelings and reactions can be more rewarding than the story that spawned them.

Jay Tomio - Can you please recommend some author or books that you are either currently enjoying or have enjoyed in the past?

Eldon Thompson - That would depend, of course, on what sort of stories the individual most enjoys. Given that this is Fantasybookspot.com (and because I must be wearing thin my welcome), I’ll once again stick to fantasy — even though every story has something to offer. Would-be writers in particular would do well to read outside the genre in order to add to their bag of tricks.

That said, I love the gritty, unpredictable work that George R. R. Martin is doing with A Song of Ice and Fire. While I’m not accustomed to stories that lack a clear central hero, I’d love to write one — as he has — that keeps you guessing as to who is good, who is evil, and whether or not morality has anything at all to do with the hand life deals us.

I also enjoyed Greg Keyes’ The Briar King — which I would place in much the same vein as far as its epic scope and its twisting of conventions. Heck, we don’t even know who our real villain is by the end of the book, and yet Keyes makes it work. Not to mention, he has a very clean and crisp writing style, saying in three words what might take me thirty.

Another author I greatly admire would be Christopher Paolini — not only for his precocious talent, but for the hard-fought way in which he has amassed an audience that even the most esteemed author would envy. For those seeking a more traditional, hero-based fantasy tale that shows plenty of promise, you could do a lot worse than his breakout debut, Eragon

Those are the big three, of late, that have captured my interest. Doubtless, there are many others deserving of recommendation, but I’m not nearly as well read as I used to be, and haven’t kept up like I probably should. That’s where websites such as yours come in. And I’m thankful for it.

Jay Tomio - You played Quarterback in college, and had aspirations to play football in the NFL, the greatest sport and greatest league mankind has ever conceived (you hear that Soccer Moms!). I noticed your favorite NFL team, why can’t such otherwise talented receivers catch the ball, and what do you feel about cutting of Koren Robinson?

Eldon Thompson - Pretty amazing, isn’t it, the problems they had this past season with dropped passes? Maybe it’s Hasselbeck who has greasy hands or something, and is making the balls slippery. I know that Yards After the Catch is a key component in the West Coast offense, but it is after the catch. The addition of Pathon and Jurevicious should help, but hopefully, Jackson and Engram worked hard this off-season to overcome that issue, because that’s only one of the wrinkles the ‘Hawks need to iron out.

Whenever a player of Robinson’s caliber is let go, it’s obviously disappointing. However, I’ve found that the coaches and managers sitting there on the inside know a lot more than I do as a fan looking on from afar. Almost always, their rationale becomes apparent to everyone later on. What’s most frustrating, I guess, is that Koren’s departure was due not so much to an issue of declining talent, but a lack of discipline. As a guy whose skills were never quite up to snuff, I’m especially disturbed by any player who has talent, but who insists on squandering it through self-destructive behavior. While I hope the Seahawks do well without him, I also hope Koren is able to get his act together, regain focus, and salvage his career.

Jay Tomio - I want to thank Mr. Thompson for taking the time out to join us here On the Spot. Be sure to check out his debut novel The Crimson Sword, and be on the look out for Book II next year, ‘The Obsidian Key’. Mr. Thompson has been most generous during the interview process and we hope he decides to visit us again as his series and career progresses. Good luck!

Eldon Thompson - No trouble at all. My thanks to you! Here’s hoping I’ll get to meet you and some of your readers on the road…

Jay Tomio - Mr. Thompson regularly updates his website with information and appearance scheduling, and also has a forum available for fans of his work at EldonThompson.com. be sure to check that out.

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