I was lucky to get an interview with Cal Black the author of the fantasy western novel No Land for Heroes.
Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
Hello! I’m Canadian, and my day job involves writing code for an IT company that’s very boring and corporate. As a result, I find meaning in hobbies and other pursuits outside of work. I have a small business making ttrpg dice and dice accessories, which lets me work with my hands when my brain is frazzled from work and writing. While I love being outside, I got hit with long covid this year and it’s been a slow return to normal life.
Why should I buy your book?
If you like character driven stories with real consequences and strong themes of found family, you’ll like reading about Millie and her ragtag group of ladies in No Land for Heroes. The book is a fantasy western, and is a true mix of the two, with western tropes embedded in contemporary fantasy prose and a second world.
While the story follows multiple POV characters, our titular non-hero is Mildred Berry, a deputy with a dark past who will do anything to keep her history buried. This is a story about growing beyond one’s trauma, and how important the role of family (found or blood) can be in that situation.
“Most of my stories start out with my messaging a friend “OKAY BUT WHAT IF…” followed by a strange situation or genre combination.”
Subgenre: Gaslamp & Fantasy western
Pages: 324
Self-published: 2022
Cal Black links:
Twitter
Book website
Shop (reopens October 22)
What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
I’ve always been writing, even before I could spell. I used to dictate stories to my mother, who would write them down in a booklet I’d made of paper stapled together. When I was 8, I submitted my first horror story to the local library who had a contest for kid’s spooky stories. It was terrible, but I still have the chapbook they put out with all the stories they received. So basically, writing forever, though I only started to actively seek publication in 2013 with short stories. I did that for a while but I was trying to write to market and I wasn’t happy with the literature vibes that I was struggling with. I took a break for a while and wrote what would become no Land for Heroes for myself and a bunch of friends, and it turns out I just like writing longer stories. I want that room to explore what makes characters tick.
Why did you choose to write fantasy western? And why pick this particular subgenre?
I’ve always gravitated toward the speculative genres. Most of my stories start out with my messaging a friend “OKAY BUT WHAT IF…” followed by a strange situation or genre combination. Those always end up being the strongest ideas, though I do hope to write some mundane thrillers in the future. I’m bad at sticking to one genre, is what I’m saying here.
Why western? Well, I watched the trailer for Netflix’s Godless on loop the day it was released. The premise had me, heart and soul. A western that wasn’t about a white guy with father trauma, and instead one about a town full of ladies doing their best to survive out on the predatory frontier? Sign me up! Then, unfortunately, the show was about a white gunslinger who had father trauma, who just happens to stop by this awesome town. I decided I was going to write the story I wanted. A town full of women on the frontier, which is typically a place where people could go to disappear and take on new identities. At the time I was writing it, Westerns weren’t really a thing in fantasy, let alone one that was openly both.
Which other author has had the biggest influence on your writing?
I think the biggest influence has to be Pratchett. I love the way he wove satire with fantastical stories. I started reading the books when I was around 12, but every time I look back at them, I find new themes in them that I didn’t recognize until I was an adult. It’s funny, I didn’t realise how much social commentary I was writing into No Land for Heroes until I went back to revise it.
What’s the best thing about being a writer?
I think the best part of being a writer is that I never get bored (outside of work). I’m always thinking about this plot or that one, how to make a scene more resonant with readers or a joke that I want to include in a future chapter.
What’s the hardest thing about being a writer?
I don’t have enough time or energy to write all the things I want to. I have a significant backlog of stories just waiting for me to get to them.
Do you have any tips or an author app, tool, or resource that you can really recommend we try?
Read books. Read books in your genre and out of your genre and read books that you don’t end up liking and ones that you love. The more you read, the more you’ll be able to see what works in a story and what doesn’t. I find that when I hit ‘writer’s block’, I’m usually tired or burnt out from other aspects in my life. Reading helps recharge my creative battery, and I’ve noticed that the prose I write is drastically improved when I’m reading regularly. When I don’t, it can get stilted and clunky.
And now it's time to yank out your Palantir! Let’s talk about the future. What new projects are you working on?
Right now I’m in the weeds, drafting the sequel to No Land for Heroes, which will be called No Port in a Storm. After that’s complete, I might take a break from the world of Amelior to write an Urban fantasy I’ve been sitting on for about 5 years. Tentatively called Taking Names, it follows a young woman who finds out her mother’s been murdered in a professional hit. When she investigates who is behind it, she discovers her mother had been hiding her from a very wealthy family. A very powerful family, who is normally considered untouchable in the city.
Do you expect new technologies to come along soon that will have a huge impact on self-publishing? For instance, when will we see a decent novel written by an AI author?
I think Machine Learning will have an impact on the tools we use to write, but I don’t think ‘AI’ will replace human creativity for a few reasons. The first being that in the United States, you cannot copywrite anything that has been created by a non-human. There was a whole court case about a chimp who took a selfie, and the photographer who wanted to claim royalties even though he hadn’t been the one to take the photo. If you can’t copywrite something, it will be open-source by nature. The second reason is that AI systems are trained using data pulled from somewhere. While predictive text is getting better and better, it will always be derivative by nature. Code lacks the human imagination to spin an idea from nothing. While certain AI art programs are producing interesting and higher quality images, it is still less flexible than working with an artist directly.
Do you have any dreams you’d like to share?
My dream is to be able to keep doing what I’m doing. I would love to expand my reach and have more folks read my books, but I wrote for just myself for years and I will continue to write even if I need to take a break from publishing. That said, if Netflix came calling, I think No Land for Heroes would make a stellar animated series.
Anything else you would like to say before we close?
Thank you so much for this opportunity!
Thank you for some interesting answers, Cal. I wish you the very best of luck getting Netflix interested, finding more readers and dice buyers, and, “oh, can you make dice with flaming runes engraved on them?” I wrote about just such a magical die in my latest :-)
