I was lucky to get an interview with David Heyman, the author of A Donkey, A Stablehand & An Empire, one of this year’s #SPFBO9 entries.

Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
Well, as you hopefully already know by now my name is David, and I’m an ESL teacher from the UK living in Japan. I’ve been over here for seven years now, and, while my Japanese is pretty bad, I think I’m also responsible for making sure the giant volcano near my house doesn’t erupt. So far the sacrificial offerings seem to be working!

I also met my wonderful and supportive wife here, mostly due to the fact that I went the wrong way while trying to find a festival, and ended up being invited to a bbq by a bunch of strangers instead.

Why should I buy your SPFBO9 entry?
You should buy (and read!) A Donkey, A Stablehand & An Empire if you like Discworld style comedy fantasy. Featuring angry housewives, murderous fishmongers and overly complicated assassination plots, it has been described as “highly inventive and amusing” by readers, who are 100% not my mum.

Set in the magical world of Caer Innar, there is never a dull moment when all it takes to become the next Emperor is to kill the current one, then survive long enough to enjoy the new position.

You can also play the fun guessing game of, ‘Is Carson mad, or can that donkey really talk?’ while reading. I’d explain more about that, but, you know, spoilers!

What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
Well this is a tough one. I think one of the main factors was my grandfather being an antique book seller and his house was just packed full of facinating looking books. From there I was pretty much doomed to be interested in books and reading. Combined with the fact that I’ve had a wild imagination for as long as I can remember, writing was the most logical way to let some of the madness escape into the world, and save my poor brain from exploding.

I’m sure like many writers, I’ve been doing it since I was very young. Technically the first short story I ever wrote was when I was maybe six or seven and got bored of writing about what we did on the weekend (something the teacher made us do without fail every monday), so I just made up a story about visiting a city full of robots instead. My first ‘proper’ jump into writing was when I was fifteen and studying drama at school, and started to seriously think about how I was going to tell the stories in my head.

Have you participated in the SPFBO before and where did you hear about the competition?
No, this is my first time. I actually heard about it last year but for some reason got it into my head that it was only for books published that year. Just in case anyone reading this has a similar notion, it is not the case!

Most of my writing world news comes from the Indie Fantasy Addicts facebook page and their connected authors only page, and I believe they were the first place I saw someone talking about the competition. One of the winners from a couple of years back is actually an admin for that group!

Why did you choose to write fantasy?
I think it all comes back to that over-active imagination again. I’m sure it's out there somewhere, but it seems rather unusual for people to pick up billionaire romances where it turns out they are secretly a wizard guarding the lost wand of Glamaphratrix, the demon mage, and have time to hit on their unusually attractive secretary…

For me, fantasy and science fiction are the epitome of creativity and allow the mind to run wild with world building and epic narratives. I think what tipped me into fantasy writing rather than SF was the fact that I get to make up all of the rules, rather than needing to worry about someone pointing out that “that’s not how gravity works”.

I mostly write comedy fantasy, whether that is comedy swords & sorcery, epic comedy, dark fantasy comedy or urban fantasy comedy, there is, as you can see, the common thread of comedy. The reason for this somewhat ties into the next question, but basically my biggest influences used comedy to reveal the ludacrist nature of many real world issues, and I enjoyed the fact that you can use it to tell a fun story while still having a point.

Which other author has had the biggest influence on your writing?
There can be little doubt that Sir Terry Pratchett and Brian Jaques are by far my biggest influences. My books have been very generously compared to the fantasy juggernaut that is the Discworld, and I suppose that’s not surprising since they were the first fantasy series I ever read, then re-read and then once more for fun.

Brian Jaques and his Redwall series introduced me to the concept of how fantasy doesn’t always have to be fast paced high octane action all the time, and I think that has impacted how I create characters and set the pacing in some of my books.

If you were to win the SPFBO, what impact do you think this would have on your writing career?
Hopefully it would expose my work to a much, much larger audience than before and get me a few more fans! I’ve already seen a bit of a spike in interest just from entering, so I imagine winning would go a long way to getting my book into people’s hands / electronic reading devices.

What challenges did you face during the writing or publishing process, and how did you overcome them?
Oh boy, this could be a separate interview all by itself.

I won’t go into all the gritty detail, but as you can see on the goodreads page, A Donkey, A Stablehand & An Empire has gone through a few transitions. After being first published in 2008, I realised that I’d be caught in the scam of vanity publishing. They released an unedited earlier draft of the book, and given this was before the days of ebooks really taking off, I pretty much gave up on novel writing for a while after that since agents and publishers were quite daunting prospects.

Then I moved to Japan and got some fresh inspiration to try again. Unfortunately I then hit the issue of money and covers. Obviously everyone wants to have a good cover for their book, but after just moving to a new country I wasn’t exactly rolling in money and an editor felt more important. Take one - try to do it myself with little to no support and made a sort of alrightish cover, given the situation, and self published it. I then tried to hire a cover designer a year later, and got two wonderful covers from them for the series before they disappeared into thin air, leaving me stuck with seven other books and no covers…

Finally I went back to the drawing board, found the Indie Cover Project on facebook and went through a lot of tutorials and had a lot of super useful, if not sometimes brutal feedback from people in both the cover project and IFA groups, which eventually allowed me to put together the covers you see on the series today. All I can say is if you keep trying and are willing to listen to feedback you can come a long way.

Do you have any tips or an author app, tool, or resource that you can really recommend we try?
Two things really. First of all, perfection is your enemy. While you obviously want to have a great story and final product, you will never hit that publish button if you aim for perfect. Craig Martell from 20booksto50k puts it best as aiming for a ‘minimum viable product’ (also, join that group if you want a wealth of information about publishing). I might not be a best selling author, but the people who read my books enjoy them, judging by the reviews and comments, and I’ve sold thousands of copies more than if was still sitting here trying to make them perfect.

Secondly, make friends. It may seem counter intuitive, but join reader and writer groups without the goal of trying to sell your book to people. Become an active and valued member of those communities and then take part in self promotion when it is offered to you. People will respond much better to someone they know is an active part of their community than to anyone attempting a drive by posting to buy their book.

And now it's time to yank out your Palantir! Let’s talk about the future. What new projects are you working on?
I’ve got two series on the go right now. I’m writing book two in my litRPG series ‘Dragons in Dungeons’, which is a bit of a break from the typical litRPG style in that the Dragons are playing their own version of D&D by shapeshifting into the characters and running about in the mortal world. I’m also writing book six in the Three Crowns series, meaning that one is drawing close to being finished! I’m very excited about that as it feels rather strange to have written eight books and not written ‘the end’ yet.

On top of all that, I’ve got plans for a big futuristic fantasy series which will be mostly stand alone stories set within that universe, but that won’t be properly put into action until 2025 and the Dragons in Dungeons series is finished.

Apps that are based on artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGTP and Midjourney, along with apps aimed specifically at authors, have caused quite a stir. Do you expect these new technologies will make your life as a self-published author easier or harder, and do you expect that they’ll mean you’ll earn more or less?
We have a history of being terrified of new technology, and then slowly calming down as it becomes a normal part of life. I think AI, although it’s not really AI since it can’t do anything unless you ask it to, will find its place within the creative world. I imagine that with the recent legal issues, and I’m sure that more will follow, we will hopefully end up with something that will aid in the creative process without taking away from others hard work.

Like any tool, if used correctly and ethically, they will probably make things much easier for everyone. Need a blurb or plot idea? Just feed what you have into an AI and look at the suggestions. This will speed up everything, and, in theory, allow us to spend more time actually writing and selling books.

Do you have any dreams you’d like to share?
I suppose ultimately I would like to be a full time writer, if for no other reason than it would let me spend more time at home with my family. The fact that I really enjoy writing is a bonus! For more short term goals, I’d love to get 100 reviews on my books, so, I guess if you are reading this, read my book and review it, please?

Anything else you would like to say before we close?
First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to share my thoughts and my writing with everyone here. I’d actually like to take this opportunity to offer anyone reading this a free copy of A Donkey, A Stablehand & An Empire. Visit my webstore and use the code BONUSRUNE to claim your discount. This coupon will work until August 31st 2023.

David, if your book is even half as good and funny as your answers, I’m sure you just made a lot of people very happy to receive this gift!!!

I wish you the very best in the SPFBO. I hope a lot of readers discover your writing. Thanks for doing the interview.