Threat received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Peter Gribble.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Threat, Book 1 in The City of the Magicians series, published November, 2020.
What’s the book’s first line?
A pale blue 5––the obsolete form––was painted on a crier pillar.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
“A Journey Without Departure” is the traditional term for a telepathic sending. It is a talent few can perform yet this is the strategy the City of the Magicians––non-violent pacifists, without army or weapons––hopes will mitigate the barbarian invasion arriving in six months. The plan could work but then maybe not. Sas, the young man chosen to “educate the barbarian” can only think, Me? Sendings? They’ve made a mistake!
Lalya, a City librarian searching for her dead lover’s vanished manuscript, is ensnared by a secret society planning to collaborate with the same barbarians. Attempts to extricate herself from the blackmail, double-dealing, seduction and betrayal force her to realize her final treachery could very well destroy her.
Shoan, the Council strategist, is well aware a shadowy opposition lurks behind the scenes but is stymied how to lure it out into the open. He should remember one of the basic axioms of tactics is, “Methodology is seldom prepared for surprises.”
Both Sas and Lalya are pawns in the strategies of others … yet it only takes a pawn to change the game.
Threat, the first book in The City of the Magicians series, follows the preparations for a barbarian arrival, but when strategies collide, will anyone be ready? Will anyone be safe?
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
When I was nine, I stood in the middle of endless acres of little white crosses stretching to the horizons, saw the battlefields of WWII reverently preserved in Normandy, France and something in me that day was profoundly affronted by the waste of war. Over the years the puzzle over war versus pacifism grew. As a premise for a novel, I wondered how a pacifist, non-violent city-state could effectively prepare for a barbarian invasion while keeping their integrity intact.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Reading how a different people experience reality broadens the view of our own. Magic and the dynamics of consciousness are cultural assumptions taken for granted in the City of the Magicians but their active practice has declined over the centuries. When a people grow complacent, they are more easily assailed. With a barbarian on the way, is there ever a right time for integrity to give way to compromise? Perhaps never if you don’t value your life as others do … but if integrity has atrophied, where’s the harm in a little compromise? Curious thing though about compromise, it seldom comes alone.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
That’s a tricky question. I’ve never thought of the main character’s most distinctive quality in this way before. He suffers from ambivalence, which makes him uncertain about almost everything. Though as the crisis deepens over the first three books this perspective develops into a surprising strength. As for the second part of the question; I’ve never thought of this before either. Many authors will recognize aspects of themselves in their main character but this one has a little bit of Hamlet squeezed out of him because he is obliged to “catch the conscience of a king.”
When did you first decide to become an author?
I loved writing as a young boy. I didn’t equate writing with authorship so luckily none of my juvenilia survives … not counting a skimpy diary of a summer trip camping through Italy with my parents and brother when I was ten … and there is some teen angst existential poetry that got into the high school yearbook because the committee was desperate for material. However, the moment I started writing The City of the Magicians, it was out of my hands. The book decided it had to be published and, because I was the nearest available, was to be its author.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
I wrote an unpublished novel of what could happen one night in a high end restaurant. Having never worked in the industry but having huge respect for it, I interviewed chefs, their entire staffs and was invited into their kitchens to observe the demanding dynamics that go into creating different gorgeous plates of delicious food a hundred and fifty times a night. From the beginning of prep to closing, a lot happens in my fictional restaurant but it’s not all culinary. Only two regular diners arriving late and taken to their usual table notice something is up. I had enormous pleasure writing it and gained weight doing so.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I worked part time in bookstores in Montreal and Toronto. My partner Robert and I had a second hand bookstore for ten years in New Westminster, BC. I’ve worked part time at a major garden centre for going on 24 years. Over twenty years I’ve written articles on a variety of subjects related to the arts for magazines in British Columbia and for several years have been writing a monthly gardening column for an online Vancouver magazine.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I spend anywhere from 5 to 8 hours a day writing. This does not include journaling, which is an entirely different species.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The hardest was making the decision to be one. After five years of writing and rewriting the query letter uncountable times to numerous but carefully selected literary agencies (an excellent exercise btw regardless of whether any agent ever sees it), the ensuing silence caused me to go indie. However, once on that path, there have been no regrets. None.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
Write every day no matter what. If you have to get out of bed, get dressed, brush your teeth each day, you have to write. If you need to go to the gym, walk the dog or have a mid-afternoon nap, you must write. Writing is not a hobby, discipline or task; it’s a necessity.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Early on I was certain of it, but now I’m not so sure. The self-publishing experience with the indie company I chose (Tellwell, if I’m allowed to name them), has been so professional, well-organized and author friendly, I would feel real pangs of disloyalty in abandoning them after such a rewarding experience. I’m in it for the long haul anyway since Tellwell will be publishing the first three books of the first trilogy. If a traditional publisher did come along and could guarantee a substantial boost to the series’ distribution, then and only then; with reluctance … maybe.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
Posterity. Not for me but for the things I’ve learned (and continue to learn), the interconnections within the accumulated knowledge and experience plus the wisdom that seems to be emerging from it. Don’t want this to get lost, go missing or disappear after I’m gone so it’s being woven into an intriguing story: A gift for the present and a legacy for the future. And, one hopes, fun to read anytime.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.