Hi again! For this half-way mark of August, we have another Self-Published Fantasy Blog-off Author with us! Tim Peers has been a singer in several bands and aspires to see the humor in common fantasy tropes without mocking them. His SPFBO 9 entry is appropriately titled …
The Zero of Destiny
There was a prophecy. There usually is, in these kinds of situations.
Invictus Kul is an invincible hero, destined to save the world. He even has a piece of paper that says so. But it turns out that knowing you’re invincible rather takes the shine off winning, and life in general.
Death Scream, a wandering barbarian warrior, would like to take rather more than the shine off Invictus’ life. In fact, she’d like to cut it abruptly short, but that can’t happen until he fulfills his destiny and saves the world. Of course, Vic (to his friends, which she isn’t) has no plans to do anything of the sort, so she’s going to have to help him. Or force him.
Along the way she’ll encounter Dark Lords, a nightmarish maid who gets a half-price discount at the opticians, ancient magics, gainfully-employed Orcs, and Union Regulations.
All this and more can be found in “The Zero of Destiny”, a fantasy-comedy that absolutely nobody should take seriously, but everybody should read. Unless you don’t like puns, and/or really like geraniums.
Is this the wrong time to ask why Invictus Kul doesn’t want to save the world? To keep his invincibility – or some other reason?
Well, onto the Questions!
As a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Entrant, you’re not just independently published, but self-published. Can you start by explaining a bit about why you chose that route and how it’s been for you?
I’ve always been what I call an objective-oriented person. A friend of mine once commented that I was the only person he’d ever seen go into a pub, order a drink, drink it, and then stand there looking confused.
I don’t go to pubs much.
In the case of writing, for me the objective was always to create books that people could read. Whichever way I looked at traditional publishing, it invariably came down to a number of time-consuming walls that served no purpose other than to delay the book getting to the reader. So once platforms like Kindle came along that knocked down those walls, I didn’t see the point in doing things any other way.
Of course, having now written six books and achieved… some sales, I’ve come to understand that traditional publishing has certain advantages of its own, like advances. And deadlines, which can be terribly motivating even if, like Douglas Adams, I mostly love them for the noise they make as they go by. My final, or at least current, verdict on being self-pub is that it can be fun and fulfilling, but without a large helping of good fortune and a really, really good book it’s unlikely ever to be lucrative.
I try not to wonder about which of those two I’m lacking.
LOL. I might defer as to whether what you really need is a really, really good book … There’s plenty of popular stuff that I … don’t think is nearly as great as other books hardly anyone reads! 😀
On a related note, why did you enter the SPFBO contest? How do you expect to find it? Refreshing your blog’s page every five minutes, or sit back and chill?
My books, in general, tend to attract about as much attention as a streaker on a nudist beach. There seems to be a bit of a feedback loop in that people don’t generally pick up books with no or very few reviews, which leads to those books not being read, which leads to them having no or very few reviews. Putting a book into SPFBO seems to guarantee that at least one person will give more than ten seconds of consideration into the idea of reviewing it. An infuriating side-note is that those people who have read my books really seem to like them and keep badgering me for the next book in my series, The Thelenic Curriculum, which isn’t exactly ideal when only about twenty people seem to have read Book 1 so far and there’s four of the things.
I’m generally fairly chilled out about the whole thing, except for those ‘culling’ threads. Oh my stars and garters, those annoy me. There was one particular comment which I decided was probably about my entry this year and put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day and I literally can’t type another word about it lest I commit terrible Writer Crimes for which the only punishment is exile.
Of course, I still can’t stop reading the things. It’s like The Kardashians except actually interesting and possessed of a certain wit at times. So nothing like The Kardashians.
I’d also like to take a moment to thank my blogger last year for a lovely review, even if I didn’t progress to the finals. However, by a twist of fate they’re also my blogger for this year, so technically I can’t do that, so let’s just agree that I’d like to.
Just thank them after this SPFBO is over! That should work, I think. 🙂
Book titles. Why did you choose the title Zero of Destiny?
My title this year, ‘The Zero of Destiny’, came about because prophecy, or to be more accurate Prophecy, is one of those ideas in books I find fascinating in its inherent ridiculousness. Predestination causes all sorts of weird narrative issues, like watching a prequel to a movie where they insist in putting the hero in Peril despite the fact that we all know they’re going to survive because they’ve got to be in ‘Extreme Measures’ five years later. I wondered what would happen if Bud Squarejaw (not my character’s name) figured out halfway through ‘Squarejaw: Origins’ that there was absolutely no way he wasn’t going to win regardless of what he did, and how he’d react to that.
In the case of Invictus Kul, the titular Zero, the answer is ‘not very well at all’. There’s also something a bit meta about the meaning of ‘zero’ but that’s so potentially spoilery that I’ve deleted this sentence twice already.
The title was also chosen after asking everyone I could persuade to share an opinion to decide between ‘The Zero of Destiny’ and ‘The Destined Zero’ and then picking the first one because I decided I preferred it after all and what did they know, anyway?
LOL, I can certainly relate to making choices like that!
I won’t ask for your favourite scene since I know some people don’t have those (like me; I never have favourites), but can you share a (non-spoiler) scene you really like and you just can’t believe how awesome it is every time you go back to re-read it? Alternately, you can share something about a character you really like. Or both, if you want.
Here’s something about one of my characters which I really love, and hate at the same time. One of my side-characters is Malapros of Lex, a Dark Lord very much from central casting. However, Malapros has an unusual vocal tic, in that almost every sentence he speaks contains an apparent misused word- or, for those of us who haven’t spotted it yet, a malapropism. Except, no, he doesn’t, because actually every single time that word is actually the word he meant.
You can probably imagine what a colossal pain in the backside he was to write.
Well, you chose to write him, so you probably found it more than fun enough to make up for that ….
What are some elements or themes, or combinations thereof, that really make your book stand out to you?
I think I can say without fear of contradiction that ‘The Zero of Destiny’ contains more footnotes than any other book in the competition this year. Some of the footnotes have footnotes.1 I think I also demonstrate an unparalleled, and thoroughly justified, loathing of geraniums. In general, though, it’s a book that deliberately doesn’t take itself too seriously without- and I think this is important- mocking the nuts and bolts of fantasy even as it mines them for humour. I’m also an old-school metalhead, and the idea that you can find something awesomely beautiful, technically brilliant, and yet inherently ridiculous all at once is something I hold to be true about any of the arts.
There’s a reason we still talk about turning things up to 11.
And people differ so much as to all the beautiful, brilliant, and ridiculous, which sometimes just makes it even funn(i)er!
And now … share whatever you like, writing-related! Go ahead! You have the reins 😀
I thought long and hard about what to put in this bit. I considered interviewing myself, but I’m one of those people who talks to themselves all the time and I’ve probably heard everything I have to say by now. I could go into a long tirade about footnotes, and how annoying it is that certain very expensive pieces of formatting software (I’m not saying it’s Vellum, but… it’s Vellum) don’t seem to understand that they exist or why they’re supposed to be at the bottom of the page. I could follow that up by grousing about how footnotes don’t work in the ‘Look Inside’ preview on Amazon, leaving readers occasionally scratching their heads after reading two-thirds of a joke. This even happens with Terry Pratchett books, mind you, so it’s equal-opportunities incompetence, at least.
But none of that would be particularly interesting, so instead here’s a final extract from ‘The Zero of Destiny’, concerning the availability, or lack thereof, of healing potions:
“The Universal Healing Potion is the most sought-after goal in alchemy, the relatively simple task of turning lead into gold being solved centuries ago. The problem is that healing is very complicated, and potions are very, very stupid. Attempts to refine Troll blood came closest to success, but merely created a potion that turned the imbiber into a quivering blob of flesh that wouldn’t die but really, really wished it could. ”
Thank you for sharing all of that with us! It has been a pleasure to learn about The Zero of Destiny!
Tim Peers is an author, blogger and occasional dustman from Norfolk, England. Born in 1974 to parents who had no idea what they were letting themselves in for, he is a man of many talents, which regrettably do not include focus. He has been a singer in several bands, most notably Last Paradigm, and enjoys music, writing, and miniature war-gaming, along with following a rigorous exercise plan known as “The Kettle Is Downstairs.”
He also once crossed a drainage ditch on a ladder used as an improvised bridge to rescue a sheep from an electric fence.
You can find Tim Peers on his Author Website, and Twitter. You can also watch a failed, but still amusing, promo video he recorded for The Zero of Destiny on YouTube here.
The Zero of Destiny is available on Amazon UK, USA, CA, and AU. You can also check it out on Goodreads.
1 Like this one, not all of them are terribly important.
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