Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi, my name is Brian Lang. I’m a husband, father of two teenage boys and work full-time in software development. Writing has been a hobby of mine since high school, lo these many years. I’ve written several books, but so far only published one of them. Early on I read a lot of Ian Fleming and Robert B. Parker, so my writing was in that vein: thrillers, mystery. I may pull one of the mysteries out of mothballs and work on it again, because I liked the character I created.
But at some point I picked up Tad Williams’s Dragonbone Chair and my perspective changed. So much of what I considered a restriction in general fiction could be lifted in a world of fantasy. Rules could be broken, or at least bent, and that let my imagination loose.
AHVARRA: THE HEART OF THE WORLD is my current one published book.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
AHVARRA: THE HEART OF THE WORLD is my latest, and only, published work to date. It was inspired really by a couple of things. One, I wanted to write a stand-alone fantasy. When I started AHVARRA, I was reading a lot of Guy Gavriel Kay’s works, and I love that books like TIGANA and A SONG FOR ARBONNE are self-contained stories. I wanted a beginning, middle and end without requiring the reader to be hooked into a series stretching over multiple books. I also wanted to tackle the nature of man in some sense. So much of fantasy is heavily focused on good vs. evil. I wanted to take the perspective that even the bad guys have objectives and ambitions, and while the good guys think the evil guys have chosen their objectives poorly, that’s not necessarily how the evil guys look at it. In short, I wanted to create real people making hard decisions, sometimes good, sometimes bad, rather than the standard archetype.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not really. Pretty standard stuff. Sit at the laptop, open Scrivener, write write write. I’ll drink the occasional scotch but it’s not a required tool!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I mentioned a couple of them earlier, but clearly Tad Williams got me thinking that fantasy was a genre to pursue. Guy Gavriel Kay is amazing, quite frankly. His use of language is almost lyrical. I typically get his novels in hardback on day one and then slowly read them, wanting to draw out the experience. As I head down a darker path with some of my newer writing I am learning quite a bit from Joe Abercrombie, who writes gritty action scenes better than anyone in the business.
What are you working on now?
Two things actually. One is a book whose events occur on the other side of the Heart of the World. So, the book is not a direct sequel to AHVARRA but the story unfolds in the same world. Several of the early reviewers for AHVARRA pointed out that I’d built a rich world and they hoped to see more stories from there.
The second is a collaboration with a friend of mine from college. She and I were discussing something on Facebook when an idea struck us, and we’ve begun writing a fairly dark origin story/fairy tale.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’d probably have to say NeoGAF. I’m a member there and post regularly in the Writing and Reading threads about my book, when I have sales, etc. I’d wager that a good portion of my sales so far have come from GAF members. Thanks, GAFfers!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I know a lot of writers will say “Write! Write write write!” But I think that’s short-sighted. I wrote a blog about this once actually. You can’t just sit in your basement and write. You need to live. You need to interact with people, actually talk with them, to understand how dialog works. You need to get out and watch people talk to each other. You have to engage, interact, have experiences. And then go home and write about them. The more you live, the more true-to-life your writing will be, and that typically makes readers happy.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I went to college in a small liberal arts school on the eastern shore of Maryland, called Washington College. I went there because I’d been writing for a couple of years and I wanted an English degree and to focus on Creative Writing. And they have a great program for that.
And my mother said, “That’s fine, but you better minor in something that’s a bit more practical!” So I got a business management minor. Those two things combined helped me become a technical writer and got me into the software development industry, which has been a nice career to have while continuing to write for fun.
What are you reading now?
I’ve actually just started reading The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. A bit of an older work and along the lines of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but it was highly recommended by several of the members on GAF. And so far so good!
What’s next for you as a writer?
Learning how to prioritize a little better. When I was writing AHVARRA, I knew there was time for writing, incorporating comments, edits, etc. But now that the book is out, I need to balance how to market AHVARRA while also getting time to write the new books.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
TIGANA and A SONG FOR ARBONNE would be definites. Easily my two favorite fantasy novels. I’d probably go with something from sci-fi to balance that out, like Jack McDevitt’s A TALENT FOR WAR. And finally something like Nelson DeMille’s THE GOLD COAST, which I found to be a marvelous Gatsby-like story.
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