My guest today is Brent Nichols, nominated in the Novel category for the 2018 Prix Aurora, the fan award for the best in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Brent is a full-time novelist, writing self-published military science fiction under the pen name Jake Elwood. He lives in Calgary. He has two novels with Bundoran Press, published under his own name, Stars Like Cold Fire and the sequel, Light of a Distant Sun.
How long have you been writing SFF, and what forms have you explored besides the one you’re nominated for?
I wrote my first novel, a high fantasy epic, in 1989. I was 19 years old and certain I was brilliant. It turns out I was mistaken.
Since then I’ve written a bunch of novels, novellas, and short stories. Mostly I alternate between fantasy and science fiction. I’ve also written some steampunk, horror, crime fiction, and some hard-to-classify miscellaneous.
A few years ago I wrote a comedic horror play about zombies, a one-woman show that my sister performed in the Vancouver Fringe.
Is this your first nomination? If not, what other title/category have you been nominated for (past or present)?
Last year, Stars Like Cold Fire earned me my first Aurora nomination. Now, the sequel has been nominated again.
Tell me about your process of creating this work: how long did it take to write? Speed bumps along the way?
It took me two months to write Light of a Distant Sun. I had a deadline, and I worked on the manuscript right up until the final hour. Some amusing typos survived this process, like NAME appearing as a placeholder for someone’s name. Still, the manuscript was in pretty decent shape.I knew well in advance that I’d be writing a second book in the series, so some ideas rolled around in my head in the preceding months. But actual writing didn’t start until two months before my deadline. In retrospect I would have liked more time, but it would have brought me a reduction in stress, not an increase in quality. By the time I sent the manuscript off it was as good as I could make it, name placeholders notwithstanding.
What’s your favourite thing about this nominated work: a character, a scene, a setting/world?
The book has a gut-punch climax where my protagonist has to make a brutally difficult decision. I give him no easy options and no way to evade responsibility. When I think of the book, that scene is always what comes to my mind first. I feel a bit bad for Jeff Yi, who doesn’t deserve this sort of shabby treatment from me. But I’m proud of how the scene turned out.
Name a couple of authors you find inspiring, and tell me what calls to you about their works.
Melissa Scott and Jo Graham write a series called the Order of the Air. It’s sort of urban fantasy set in the world of aviation in the 1930s, and it’s beautiful and haunting and tragic and utterly riveting. I don’t think the books are particularly successful, but they deserve to be, because they’re wonderful. There’s a subtlety of characterization, a richness of setting, that I find completely irresistible. There’s also no shortage of fun genre elements as a group of magician pilots protect the world from supernatural threats.
Book blurb:
Barely recovered from his injuries and still in the sights of the fascist traitors in the Wukan navy, Jeff Yi is again placed in command of his own ship and sent on a dangerous mission deep within enemy territory.
Haunted by memories of those who died under his command, Yi struggles to come to grips with the reality of war and the possibility of betrayal from within his own ranks. If he fails to uncover the Ryland plot, more than his life may be at stake.
