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?

Art? I barely know the guy. The actual driving force behind my writing is the desire to illustrate some truth. Nearly every one of my stories represent something I have learned, and want to share with readers in a more palatable form than just smacking ‘em on the back of the head and growling “Listen up, Bub.”

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

I’m pretty happy with who I am. When I was a kid I wanted to be Doc Savage, but you can see how that turned out. It might be cool to become John Carter, if for no other reason than to watch the death match between Dejah Thoris and my wife. Second thought, that has a lot of ways of ending in tears, and after Mrs. Ehart finished with that Martian heifer, I would probably be next.

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?

Ugh. How to choose? I’m calling a three way tie between Uncle Bill Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and the Bible. Something for every mood.

Why Nin-Sinnus? What initiated her story and made you complete this particular tale?

I started writing stories about The Servant of the Manthycore over 10 years ago. I intended it as a one-of story, but folks, the kind with magazines and check-books, kept asking for more. Now we are at the point where the second book, The Tears of Ishtar, is soon to appear. Strangely, the more I write about her, the more I find to tell. The story in RotS came from a desire to write an action story where the protagonist had every reason to visit destruction on the villains, but refrained out of mercy. Heroic fantasy, video games and RPG’s are full of bandits who exist solely as sword-fodder. I wanted to find a little more.

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?

I am a 53 year old American male systems engineer. My protagonist is a 600 year-old bronze-aged Sumerian murderess. Clearly, the character is a thinly disguised version of me. Several readers have commented that even her name, Nin-Sinnus, is just a simple anagram of mine.

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

Printing Methods: Offset or Print-on-Demand?

Some variation of POD, I think, perhaps using smart paper.

Reading Formats: Electronic or Print?

Electronic, but not entirely right away. There is too much pleasure to be had from holding a real dead tree book.

Book Tours: Physical or Virtual?

Virtual will grow, but the whole point of a tour is to let the readers see for themselves that the author is not just some product of electron spray, but a real live human who is inevitably shorter than they expected.

Reading Habits: Dead, Dying, Alive, Growing?

Shifting.

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

Flash is sure growing, but the flexibility of e-publishing will sooner or later revive some older forms, including serial fiction.

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?

Ummm… aren’t those guys all dead? That being the case, I can honestly say that I am writing better stuff right now than any of them are. Heroic Fantasy is going through some interesting changes, and the genre is re-inventing itself. I am thrilled to be a part of what Howard Jones calls “The New Edge” and hope that my stuff helps push it forward to wherever it eventually ends up.

Thanks for your candid answers, Michael.

Michael Ehart has been writing for over 30 years, and would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. You can find out what he is doing now at his blog So, Okay, I Write.

Review Praise for “To Destroy All Flesh”

“…an excellent introduction to Ehart’s characters…His writing is fluid and his characters heroic with a twist.” ~ John Ottinger III

An excerpt

The screams seemed to come from so very far away, though Miri knew they were all around her and some of them must be hers. She could see very little. What was not obscured by the dust that swirled around the fight was hidden by the bulk of her dying horse which lay atop her.

Her arms were free, but the pain in her legs made her weak, and every time the horse gave a feeble kick or twitch things would go speckled black for a moment. In between waves of dizziness Miri caught glimpses of her mother, whirling and leaping as she fought. The stub of a broken arrow jutted from her mother’s side.

Miri tried to reach her dagger, but her belt had twisted around when her horse fell and it was underneath her hip. Here in the mountain passes they had dressed in heavy furs, and their bulk and the weight of the horse made it impossible for her to get her hand under her body.

She blinked away dust and looked up to see the hulking form of a man standing over her, grinning with blackened and broken teeth. Half of a broken shield hung from his left arm. His right held a spear, poised to thrust at her chest. Miri coughed out a cry, and twisted to the side. The spear thumped flat against her chest, the bandit’s severed hand still grasping its shaft. The bandit was thrown to the side by her mother’s shoulder to his middle and he fell. The fountain of blood from the stump of his wrist painted a crimson arc against the gray afternoon sky. Some of it pattered into Miri’s face, and she blinked and spat, gagging at the coppery taste. It burned salty in her eyes….

Enjoy this interview and excerpt?
Read more like it from other members of the anthology here on RBE.
Better yet – buy your own copy
of Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure today!