Austerley & Kirkgordon, #1
by G.R. Jordan, Gary Ross-Jordan
A long forgotten manuscript of music. A genius professor hungering for the dark creatures which drove his studies. A Russian vamp with an icy touch. A government agent pulling everyone's strings. And a former bodyguard trying to hold onto his marriage amidst Eldar creatures threatening the end of the world.
Join Austerley and Kirkgordon on a hunt for Eldar music of a long forgotten race. From America to Russia and across the British Isles, two broken misfits try to pull the world back from a cosmic disaster while keeping at bay their reciprocal loathing.
Paperback, 260 pages
Published October 25th 2015 by Carpetless Publishing
Previously he spent his time at Loughborough University masquerading as a chemical engineer but ultimately playing American football, Gary worked at changing the shape of cereal flakes and pulled a pallet truck for a living. Watching vegetables freeze at -40'C was another career highlight but currently he is one of the few remaining "blind" air traffic controllers. Having flirted with most places in the UK, he is now based in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland where his free time is spent between raising three young children with his wife, writing and caring for a small flock of chickens. Luckily his writing is influenced by his varied work and life experience as the chickens have not been the poetical inspiration he had hoped for!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/carpetless
Q & A with Gary Ross-Jordan
1. Tell us a little bit about your main characters.
Well, like any good duo, I have two opposites in Messrs
Austerley and Kirkgordon. Austerley, formerly Professor Austerley of Miskatonic
University, is a genius when it comes to Occult Affairs. He's ever eager to
find out about anything strange and is fascinated with persons, places or
objects from other worlds. All his life he has been in the darkest libraries
and the weirdest places building up an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything
unholy and terrifying. For this cat, curiosity always gets the better of him.
His counterpart, Kirkgordon is a former bodyguard.
Proficient archer and protector, his former experience with Austerley has given
him a loathing for anything strange and their coming back together has each of
them at each others throats. Unfortunately for them, their joint skill sets are
a perfect match to deal with the forthcoming darkness and they have to rely on
each other as the world depends on their getting the job completed.
And just to stir things up a little more, Austerley's former
lover, Calandra turns up. She's an 800 year old former shieldmaiden who is now
literally ice cold after she was cursed by a witch. When she feels attracted to
the married Kirkgordon and he fights his reciprocated feelings, the partnership
is threatened as personal takes precedence over professional.
Through a journey around the globe, they are pushed, pulled
and prodded until they have to face an unspeakable demon on a remote Scottish
island.
2. Who designs the covers for your books and what is that
process like for you as an author?
Jake Caleb Clarke (Jcalebdesign.com) is my cover artist, a
guy who I have found to be energetic and passionate about his work. I live in
the UK and Jake in the USA so communication is by email with Jake being some 6
hours behind time-wise. I'm really not talented in the graphics sense and so I
try to give Jake the ideas and essence of the story, usually by giving him
highlights of the second or third draft. At that point I try to go a little
hands off and let Jake push ideas forward, trying to maximise his talent and
not throttle it with my preconceived thoughts.This generally produces graphics
I hadn't thought of and it's just a case then of honing down the images and
making sure they stand up with the text in the book.
One of the things I have found as an author, and indeed
really the CEO of the whole publishing process, is that the one thing you need
to succeed at making a great book is talented, enthusiastic people around you
to pick up the areas where you either have no or limited talent. Fortunately in
Jake, I have someone with bags of both talent and enthusiasm.
3. Describe your ideal writing spot.
I have three children and am soon to have a fourth which
means our house is pretty busy. So I don't have a consistent place to write.
Generally the view doesn't matter to me but there are three things that do:
1) There is someone there who knows how to make a good
coffee! It is my fuel and is like my comforting companion when I am writing. If
the coffee is poor then I struggle to focus, it is the potion leading me into
the zone.
2) I generally don't like complete quiet so I enjoy coffee
shops or places where people are sporadically trundling in and out. I think it
helps me to focus but also makes the odd little thirty second break a real
diversion. Total silence has never worked for me.
3) A steady table. I usually write on my tablet with a
little keyboard I have in the cover that wraps around it. And there is nothing
more off putting than a table than rocks back and forward.
Outside of these things I am happy writing wherever. I try
and not have too many essentials as it provides a barrier to getting on and
writing.
4. What is the best advice you have been given?
Just write, as it's the only way to learn. Neil Gaimen says
this in various comments as does Stephen King. And they are right. There is no
other way to practise this art we call writing than to simply write. By all
means read up on the art but you have to write, even if it is tripe at times.
It's how we learn.
5. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I'm forty-two now so you are really testing the grey matter.
From the dark recesses I remember always being fascinated with aeroplanes. I
used to make crude model ones with my Granddad and also spend hours on the Air-fix
model kits. I never quite made it to being a professional pilot but I did spend
some fifteen hours in a Tomahawk aircraft on the way to becoming an air traffic
controller.
But as a teenager I was always writing, mainly poetry and I
think life experience has taught me about people and allowed me to flourish
into the novel writing.
6. Which do you prefer: hard/paperbacks or eBooks?
Apologies to all you modern people but it has to be in the
solid form. There is something about holding a book and seeing your progress as
you turn it sideways. And the flick of the pages with that smell a new book has
does it for me. As to whether it's a hardback or paperback, a paperback to hold
and read but a hardback always looks better on the shelf!
7. If you could have any supernatural power, what would you
choose and why?
Excepting perfect animal attraction to the opposite sex,
which all us guys think we have but so few rarely exhibit, it would have to be
teleportation. My favourite character was always Nightcrawler from the X-men,
strange and weird but incredibly fast and agile. I think I just like the little
guy who can rip into the big men.
8. What book are you reading now?
I'm currently reading "Population" by Elizabeth
Stephens for the read it and reap program and enjoying it. There's a possibility
at at the end of the year I may be looking to write a post-apocalyptic
adventure, so this is one of my books in the genre I've decided to read. I'm
also reading Baden-Powell's "My adventures as a Spy" which is quite
an eye opener into an old profession. In order to gain a deeper perspective
into character, I like to mix it up between fiction and non-fiction.
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