What drives your art? What forces you, rides you, hustles you, controls you until its latest needs have been met? What really drives you to create speculative fiction art, be it words or images?

Two things, really. First, I’m a bit of a control freak and I get to enact my desires through fiction. Second, I’ve been a spec fiction type guy ever since I saw Star Wars when I was 9 years old. The pathos bordering on melodrama, the impossibly high stakes, and the sense of ‘gee whiz’ wonderment all make for a great story.

If there was the possibility of becoming any speculative fiction character ever created (except your own), would you? Who? Why?

This answer was firmly cemented in my mind a few minutes after seeing Star Wars. Han Solo. I think the reasoning was self explanatory back then and still is now.

If you could only take one author’s works compressed on an e-book reader on a “one-bag-only” one-way trip to another galaxy, whose works would it be and why?

C. J. Cherryh because of the tremendous depth of setting and characterization. There’re other good ones out there like Keyes and Gemmell but for overall satisfaction it’s hard to beat Cherryh.

Why Oth? What initiated his story and made you complete this particular tale?

I had an image for a setting, the final stand on a narrow bridge against hordes of marauding savages, for quite a while before I settled on Oth. I needed the relentless brutality required to keep bashing brains in as long as they were available but I also needed a human connection to juxtapose it all on. So I plucked Oth out of a different story I’d been tinkering with and developed him and his daughter for “The Battle of Raven Kill.”

In the privacy of your favorite writing nook, do you act out your protagonist’s actions? Do you know how to use his weapons? Do you wear his clothes? Do you talk like him?

No, but I do facial expressions and hand gestures. Those are little ways I both get the fine details right and connect with that part of my brain that creates a character. I’ve found that acting classes have been a big help when trying to get into character and write a scene as realistically as I can.

Quick: List your first thought as your answers to these questions about the future of genre fiction:

Printing Methods: Offset or Print-on-Demand?

POD.

Reading Formats: Electronic or Print?

Electronic.

Book Tours: Physical or Virtual?

Virtual.

Reading Habits: Dead, Dying, Alive, Growing?

Changing (So I cheated on this one. Sue me.)

Length: Flash, Short, Novella, 1970’s novel (60k), 1980’s novel (80k), 1990’s novel (120k), 2000’s novel (150k)

Going to each end of the extreme with little left in the middle.

Robert E. Howard, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, Louis L’Amour, Frederick Faust, Ian Fleming, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rafael Sabatini . . . the list could go on. Some lived long lives, some flared and burned out young. All lived life hard. All wrote pulse-pounding action-adventure, often dipping into the many different genres they share, yet each eventually establishing their name within a specific one. What do you believe you have in common with these authors, and what makes you so sure speculative fiction – heroic fantasy fiction to be precise – is your genre? Or is it?

I’ve written some sci-fi, some horror, and taken a shot or two at Clancy style techno-thrillers but I think I’m settling into heroic fantasy. You get a lot of cool fight scenes that are very personal and up close. You get the visceral reaction of smelling your opponent’s death and hearing the crunching of bones and howls of pain. It’s against odds like these that heroes arise to connect with our basest natures.

Thanks for your answers, Jeff  – and for joining the RBE staff as an advance reader.

Jeff Draper is one man guarding a bridge against a horde of savages, with the wife and four kids he holds dear right behind him in the Seattle area. Jeff discusses his writing and the creation of this story (and others) on his website at http://scriptoriusrex.blogspot.com.

Review Praise for “The Battle of Raven Kill”

“…a masterful job of giving a very realistic description of close and horrible infighting…” ~ Richard Marcus

An excerpt

…“Do as I say!”

She backed up a step, startled. Without another word she turned and ran.

Oth watched his adopted daughter vanish into the dark. The charm dangled over his heart and he brushed at it with a hand that would soon be drenched in blood. He bent to gather his weapons and prepare himself for the coming fight.

A slow, cold breeze blew down from the mountains while he waited. Pale light from a partially hidden moon drifted across the landscape. A tower shield lay ready at his feet. In his right hand was a stout hard oak rod that ended in a fist-sized ball of studded metal. The foreign trader had called it a mace and so that was what Oth called it. Mace. In his left hand was Stick, a similar sized club that ended in a squat metal point.

The bridge over Raven Kill was not much wider than an oxcart and it had no rails. Ice runoff from the mountains and the recent rainstorms had created a torrent of frigid water roaring between the large, smooth rocks. Raven Kill could not be crossed without the bridge, and to fall into it would be certain death, either by drowning or by being dashed against the stone. The raiders would have to cross the bridge and to do that they would have to kill him. “I will not die here tonight,” he whispered…

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