An Announcement on a Specific Day

Here it is, my 50^th birthday.

I normally ignore my birthdays, but I figure 50 is a big round number so I’ll pay attention to it for once. But how to celebrate? I considered a lot of options for that and finally figured I would break a long-standing rule of trying to not announce a project before you can, at least, pre-order it. With that in mind – Surprise!

It’s time to announce a new novel!

I’m writing my first fantasy novel. Let me introduce you to the book, and the leads, in a very early and limited way:

Carnivorous Paulie – He may be scrawniest orc you’ve ever seen, but he’s also the best con man he knows, and he’s pretty sure he’s one of the best there is. He hopes.

Karolina Stroyka – This elven necromancer doesn’t like wasting her time asking questions when she could be using one of her cleavers to help make new friends.

Together they do crime.

THREE-CORPSE MONTE

A Carnivorous Paulie & Karolina Stroyka adventure

It’s a story of partnership, trust, crime, magic both large and small, sharp weaponry, drunken revelry, one night stands, angry deer, really angry bunnies, the simple joys of a haircut and a good tailor – and more.

Spring/Summer ’26  get ready for a couple of part-time monsters being full-time criminals.

But I’m not content to just give you that and run away. It’s a birthday, right? So I reached out to fellow same-day birthday-haver Jason DeHart (whose YouTube Channel you should follow, and whose book you should buy!), who I’ve had the pleasure of being interviewed by before, to read the first 1/4 or so of the book and ask me some questions. So here’s that fun:

What led you to explore the genre of fantasy?
It was simply time. I’ve written novels in a bunch of genres such as horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy but I haven’t gone toward more traditional fantasy until now. I love playing with genres and the conventions in them. All genres give you various ways to move stories with expected tropes (in the best way) that, once you freely begin to layer them on one another and dig in and play, can all be used to reveal character. This book has a baseline of fantasy (I mean the leads are an orc and an elf after all), but it starts with the tone of a western, and then shifts into a sort of mystery/heist in a religious society angle, and … you’ve seen the first quarter maybe, and of course readers haven’t seen anything yet, but I’ll tell you it keeps shifting to match the characters and where they are. But the book’s heart is a more pure fantasy/crime novel core.

What were the ingredients for Carnivorous Paulie’s character?
I had this name laying around. Carnivorous Paulie. I knew he was an orc of some sort, just because it made me laugh to have this orc named like a weird 50s gangster. But I also knew that if I was going to write a fantasy novel I didn’t want to write something that just felt like it lived in a D&D setting. There are tons of great stories for that, and it just didn’t match the vibe I was after. I started thinking about the name, and came to the idea of a slender orc, the opposite of what you would think an orc would be. A con man, with a hint of magic about him, who took on the name because it gave him an air of something more dangerous than what you see on the surface. You hear of an orc named Carnivorous Paulie and you don’t think scrawny poker player in a suit with a mohawk. Once I had that, everything else just made sense about him, how he saw and moved through the world.

When you are creating a fictional world like this, how do you decide what details/description to zoom in on and which ones to save for later?
I find my first guiding light is what the character’s themselves would pay attention to. I want to highlight that so you’re living in their world the way they see it, even if, like this book, it isn’t a first person narration. You still want immersion in how the various characters experience things. Then, with the narration, I can add other elements that they might miss, that help make the world feel alive. I don’t want to overwhelm with detail, so I’ll mention a sense or two to engage, and leave out a third, when we first enter a scene, say, and then come back to that third later in the scene to fill in gaps.

How does prose challenge you as a writer in ways that comics writing might not?
Writing prose I’m a one man band. I plot it all, figure out the story, and the chars but also I need to control pacing, visuals, timing, choreography, all of the things the I would otherwise either work with an artist on or let them decide when they know better. It’s more control, and more of a tightrope walk for me. I love both worlds.

How do Karolina and Paulie complement each other as characters?
Paulie’s a con man first and foremost, where Karolina is a fighter. She thinks with her cleavers, figuring she can slice her way through a problem, or use necromancy to get past an obstacle. He likes to scam his way through issues, without a scratch if possible. But he can fight and she can grift, so they cover each others weak spots while still also amplifying each other’s strengths. But more importantly, they’re also very good at giving and receiving endless crap and sass to and from one another. They respect each other, and know when to let the other one take charge. Mostly. Sometimes. They’re truly equal partners.

You have elements of both magic and religion included in the story. What’s it like to envision the thinking of a fantasy world?
Faith is a key to both magic and religion, to me. Of course, both go sideways and dangerous when people impose power structures on them. So I like to think of religion in a world with magic as just “solidified magic.” For better or worse. Often worse, since strict power structures corrupt easily. But also a story is about the people, not the doctrine, which helps.

You also have some elements of humor and mystery that are part of the story. How do you go about working these in?
I love messing with what I think of as “genre math,” taking different genres and finding out how they stack, and where that ends up being additive or subtractive. It’s all in breaking genres down to the smallest pieces and then building them back up to see how those pieces fit. Doing a fantasy book as a base, and knowing it would feature two criminals meant I wanted to layer, instantly, a bunch of hard boiled crime novel stuff on the fantasy end. But then you use humor to soften the edges (and because it’s just fun to write), and some mystery here and there to push you through doors and see how the characters react, and suddenly you have a locomotive going under its own power.

Nightspire is a great name for a fantastic city. Is there any inspiration for this place that you’d like to mention?
Look at you, spoiling the good people with a place name! How dare you. No, it’s true, we do spend some time in a city called Nightspire. A few of the names, and some of the tone, here and there (very lightly) is inspired by Glen Cook’s Black Company series, which really, decades ago, opened my brain up to Low Fantasy. At first those books are very much not focused on big wizards throwing fireballs at dragons but schmucks living in those worlds who at best had a spark of it, just trying to survive while above them the big magic happened and endangered them on a regular basis.

What do you envision next for this world?
For right now there’s this novel. There might be other stories, but it’s too early to seriously discuss that. Would I like others? Oh, for sure. There was an idea that didn’t fit this story I’d love to see with these two. So if I get to do more, expect pirates.
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So there you have it! Next year, you’ll be able to buy a fantasy novel by me from Creative Guy Publishing, who brought you my last few novels. It’ll be fun, have crime, and be full of snark. Just the way you like it. So, if you want, you could subscribe to this site, down at the bottom, and get emailed when I post something new (once a month max generally, but maybe a few more for book things) so you’ll find out when I do cover reveals, or find out pre-orders open, etc. Either way, thanks for stopping by!