I was lucky to get an interview with L. James Rice, the author of Eve of Snows, one of this year’s #SPFBO8 entries.
Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
I was born and raised in the Midwest of the United States and since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by knights—what I called “darkness men” as a tot—but there was a life-altering event that struck early in my life. In one beautiful day at the cinema, I watched Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards and The Lord of the Rings back-to-back. Within days I was nose deep in Middle Earth, never wanting to leave, and by the time I was twelve, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Despite this proclamation, I took a long and winding road to get there, studying English Literature and later Screenwriting, as well as opening a small winery and other life events. No matter where I was on the road, however, the final destination was always going to be writing Epic Fantasy.
“... Eve of Snows won the 2020 Next Gen Indie Book Awards for Fantasy and took home a Grand Prize for Fiction at the same time. It also won the 2019 Epic Fantasy Fanatics Readers Choice Award ...”
Why did you decide to take part in the SPFBO?
In short, it’s because so many readers told me I needed to enter Eve of Snows into SPFBO. I received emails, private messages, and tweets from around the world and figured they might be on to something, but every time I checked, the contest was closed to entries. With all the stories and world-building rattling around in my skull, I am notoriously absent-minded. Without autopay, my electricity might just be shut off on a regular basis. Come 2022, it turned out that the entries for SPFBO would open while I was in the air to Chicago on my way to Florida, so with this reinforcement, I was able to make sure that the next time someone asked if I had entered SPFBO I could say, “Yes, dang it, yes!”
Why should we buy your SPFBO8 book?
In seventeen days the stars will align, and a religious cabal will summon the gods back to the realms of men. A young priestess named Eliles stands in the heart of this conspiracy, on her shoulders rest decisions that could prevent a holy war or demonic genocide. Through lies, manipulation, and murder, everyone is on a seventeen-day march to fulfill or defy prophecy; the world will end or begin anew, come the Eve of Snows.
That’s the quick pitch, now here’s a little behind the scenes… Eve of Snows is an Epic Fantasy rammed (mostly) into a seventeen-day period. When writing it, I reckoned my biggest challenge was to make six hundred pages feel like a short amount of time had passed, so I streamlined, leaving out everything I deemed unnecessary. At the same time, I needed to balance adequate world-building and detail for a fulfilling Epic feel. Everybody won’t agree whether I succeeded or not, but if you love multi-POV epics with rugs flying from beneath your feet, you might just find yourself agreeing with those who’ve found that Eve of Snows lays the foundations for a sweeping epic saga to sit on their shelves beside the greats of the genre. That’s my hope, but I’d be happy as heck with your just enjoying the ride.
Oh! And if you’re into checking out prize winners, Eve of Snows won the 2020 Next Gen Indie Book Awards for Fantasy and took home a Grand Prize for Fiction at the same time. It also won the 2019 Epic Fantasy Fanatics Readers Choice Award (a smaller version of SPFBO) and took a Bronze Medal in the 2020 Independent Publisher Awards.
What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
From the moment I learned to write I was into writing stories. My earliest (positive) school memories revolve around writing and spinning stories about intelligent mice and fireflies. By middle school, I was developing a fantasy world that was the seed that grew into the Sister Continents I’m writing in today. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings got me into fantasy, and after life got busy and my reading turned more to classic literature, stumbling on Martin’s Game of Thrones in ’98 brought me back. Due to this, I list these authors as my greatest influences along with Monty Python. Eve of Snows was my debut novel.
Why did you choose to write fantasy? And why pick this particular fantasy subgenre?
Or did it choose me? In the height of my literary phase, my creative brain was still trapped in a world of monsters and magic. During my screenwriting phase, before and after I studied screenwriting at UCLA, I wrote in a variety of genres, from Vampire Comedy to Western to Cozy Mystery, but the simple truth of the matter was that when I returned to novels, I’d be writing Epic Fantasy. It might be a form of madness, but if so, I’d rather not be cured.
What’s the best thing about being a writer?
There are two.
Creation! I love building things, and the written word can realize an entire world in a reader’s mind. Awesome.
Right there with creation is hearing from readers around the world, seeing how closely they read the words I’ve written, and being amazed by their insightful questions and observations. That people have enjoyed my work enough to reach out to me is incredible and entertaining.
What’s the hardest thing about being a writer?
Finding the time. Life always gets in the way of writing.
Do you have a tip, app, tool, or resource you recommend to authors?
First: Brandon Sanderson’s BYU lectures, available free online.
Second, advice about advice: Back when my Grandma was alive, she would be working on a project and someone would suggest a better way. She would smile and say, “You might be right.” She then proceeded to finish the project exactly as she planned. The moral of the story is to be polite, consider every piece of advice folks offer, but realize that even advice with the best intentions can be wrong. As an author, you’ll hear a lot of it, and the trick is picking out which is right.
What new projects are you working on?
The Contessa of Mostul Ûbar is my next novel and is a stand-alone (or perhaps stand beside spinoff?) in the same world as Eve of Snows. It should be heading to the editor in July, and then I’ll be working on the sequel to Eve of Snows and the Sundering the Gods Saga.
Interesting answers! Best of luck with the competition, L. James Rice, and with sales.
Thanks for doing the interview.
