Travis interviews fantasy author Jonathan French about his new book, The True Bastards. They take you behind the scenes on what it’s like to transition from self-publishing to traditional publishing and dig into the series that won the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off.
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Transcript:
[intro music begins]Travis: Have you ever watched an episode of Sons of Anarchy and thought: This would all be better if they were riding giant pigs? Have you ever thought fantasy books could be improved with more colorful language? Or do you just really like orcs? Hang on to those thoughts.
Welcome to the Fantasy Inn, where we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. I’m your host, Travis Tippens. This week’s interview is with fantasy author Jonathan French, who’s best known for writing about a half orc biker gang determined to protect their land. His book, The Grey Bastards, won the second ever Self Published Fantasy Blog Off and earned him a book deal with Crown Publishing Group. Jonathan’s joined us today to give us a behind the scenes look at his journey as a writer and talk about his new book, The True Bastards. Let’s jump right in, shall we?
[intro music fades out]Jonathan, it’s so great to have you here today.
Jonathan French: Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate it.
Travis: When was the first moment you thought you might want to be a writer? I know you have a bit of a creative background. So I guess what made you decide Jonathan French, the writer, that’s going to be me?
Jonathan French: Yeah, I was wanting to be an actor for a really long time, for most of my life, and pursued that pretty heavily. In fact, in pursuing that, I ended up moving to Chicago when I was about 27. And this was 11 or 12 years ago now. I was in a play, and I moved to Chicago knowing basically nobody in February which, if you know Chicago, that’s not the best time to be there. In February it was super–
Travis: Not the warmest [laughs]
Jonathan French: [laughs] No. In fact, that year was particularly bad. I didn’t have much money, I didn’t have any friends to speak of at that point. I was loading trucks for UPS from like four in the morning until nine in the morning as my job.
Travis: Oh wow.
Jonathan French: [laughs] Yeah. And then I was in this show, I was in this play. And I started writing just as a way to… I mean, I’ve always enjoyed creative writing as a student, you know, when I was in school, those are the those are the assignments I like to do. But I never really thought about it. I’d written some plays in college, and I’d actually produced a few.
So I mean, I’d done some semi-entrepreneurial professional writing, but nothing like “Oh I’m gonna write a book.” That wasn’t ever really… I think a lot of people think, maybe one day I will, but it wasn’t ever a serious thought. And I just started… I didn’t have a lot of activity. I didn’t have a lot to do, and I was lonely. And so I just started writing this story, and I kept doing it. And finally I realized like, there’s a lot here and I was having fun with it. And it was a fantasy story and ended up being my first book, called The Exiled Heir. And 18 months later, I just had this manuscript.
But about halfway through it, I just didn’t want to be an actor anymore. I was having so much fun writing this book, and it just bit so hard, it took over. It became its own beast. And I left acting behind with no regrets, didn’t think twice about it, and started pursuing writing as a career and then fantasy novels in particular. So I don’t know, it happened pretty quickly. It was about a six month thing. I moved to a city to do one thing and within half a year, I decided I wanted to do something else. So it was kind of a hard reset.
Travis: Yeah, I can imagine. Did you stay in Chicago when you started writing or did you move back–I think you’re from the Atlanta area?
Jonathan: Yeah, I’ve moved all over. I came to Atlanta when I was, I guess 13. I’d grown up a little bit. I was born in America, in Tennessee. But I spent some time in England, about four years as a kid. And then I moved back here to the states and I was in Atlanta. I went all over the place, I went to New York for college, and then all this, so I kind of bounced. I was Gypsy for a while.
And so I stayed in Chicago for like three and a half years. I got my first book done there and started moving towards a traditional, you know, started querying agents and trying to feel out editors and all that stuff and didn’t really get anywhere. And then somewhere in there, you know, you get married and you start having kids and everything just gets kind of put to the back burner. And so my first book just sort of sat as a manuscript for like two and a half or three years and I just didn’t really do anything with it. Then finally I decided that I would self publish it. So I got on that road and did that for three books.
Travis: [laughs] And what led you to make that choice? I know a lot of people kind of have a stigma against self publishing or they’re worried that trying to wear all of the entrepreneurial hats is a little bit much for them. So what made that decision for you?
Jonathan: Yeah. As you say, there can be quite a lot of scorn around it. And there was much more back then. I mean, it’s changed a lot in the last nine years. I mean, it seems like every year it gets a little better. I always liked doing my own thing. I was never afraid to do my own thing. I’ve been a starving artist my whole life. So I didn’t have that bias, but it was definitely there and I ran into it a lot. But it was always in the back of my mind that it was an option and I was doing some some research.
But I did try the traditional route first, just because that felt more comfortable and more sure, and honestly it felt like I could be lazier that way. I didn’t have as much to learn, like you say, all these hats you have to wear. And when that didn’t really work… It’s just hard, period, to get a traditional publishing deal. It’s always been traditionally hard, but I was trying to do it right when Borders bookstore folded. They went out of business. And so it was really hard when that happened. Basically all the interest I had from agents that I had been cultivating, just dried up. I mean, it just vanished overnight.
And so, thankfully, I had a good friend who actually Grey Bastards is dedicated to. I had a good friend who I trust him implicitly, but he’s a he’s a punk rock enthusiast. And you know, people who know that scene—which I can’t really claim to know it except him—punk rock has this sort of very much do it yourself, nonapologetic, screw the man type thing. And don’t do what the studios want, you know, do your own thing. And he really pushed me. He just said, “You know, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think it’s what you should do.”
And so he kind of gave me that nudge to just do it. I’m really grateful that he did because I did have to learn a lot. And it was tricky. And I wasn’t that great at it. I mean, I did some things right and a lot of things wrong. And you do have to wear, like all these different hats. Marketing and editing and… it’s tough.
But I think at the end of the day, it was like I would rather have done that than not do anything at all. I have friends who just won’t, they will never self publish, they won’t. It’s just not in them. They just cannot shake the fact that it’s professional suicide. And it just—whether they want to admit it or not, to my face or anyone’s face—they really do just have a bias against it and they just won’t do it.
But my thing is, do you want to continue to go through life knowing that you’ve got a story or a book in you and not letting people see it? However the delivery system is, do you really want it just to languish in your in your head or on your hard drive or in a drawer? Or would you rather let it out into the world to be judged? And so that for me was the thing. I was like, “Screw it. I want this to be seen, I want this to be read, no matter how it takes.”
I went for it. And I’m glad I did, and I think a lot more people are. And that’s got positives and negatives. Some of the stigmas are valid and some of them aren’t. And it just really depends on who you’re talking to, and about what time of day. But yeah, for me it made sense. And ultimately, it was a gateway into something else and I wasn’t closed to that either. So I really think that… I hate to give advice and throw these blanket statements out there. But you know, you really should be open to all things.
People have proven time and time again—not just me, but other other writers—that self publishing doesn’t really close any doors. And for the people that it does, for the people who are going to close the door in your face, they’re the wrong people for you anyway. So yeah, it was never a fear factor for me. It was just a matter of figuring out all of the steps and getting it done.
Travis: Right. And I mean, like you’re saying, more and more frequently these days we’re hearing stories of self published authors like yourself who make the transition into traditional publishing. And I suppose even if someone was worried about damaging their career starting out self publishing, there’s also pen names, you know, you can always either self publish under a pen name, or maybe your traditional publishing name is not going to be your birth name. There’s a lot of options out there.
Jonathan: Absolutely. Yeah. I was talking to Josiah Bancroft about this a little bit. We commiserate quite a bit because we have a very similar story. And we were talking about how we went what I call swimming upstream.
A lot of authors do both. They become hybrid, they transition from one to the other. But we kind of went the harder route, which is going from self to traditional. And there’s a lot of traditional authors who decide to self publish later. Like you say, they’re under a pen name or just because it makes sense. Because after a certain point, if you develop a readership and your fans are out there, they don’t really care what method you use, they just want to read your next thing. And so it does make a lot of sense.
And sometimes people do need to use a pen name to save some relationships professionally, if you have a longtime agent or longtime publisher, you don’t want to ruffle feathers and maybe you self publish under a pen name. The problem with that, of course, is that without that name recognition, it’s gonna be harder for your readers to find you and follow you. But, you know, I think we’re going to see as this industry changes, a lot of cross pollination more and more and more. And, I think that’s a good thing, frankly.
Travis: Yeah, I do too. Creatively, I know self publishing, you don’t have to follow any trends in market necessarily. You can do whatever you want, you can be a lot more experimental. And then I mean, traditional publishing is not going anywhere anytime soon, either.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
Travis: So you mentioned The Exiled Heir is your first book that you self published. So that’s a part of your Autumn’s Fall series. Is that correct?
Jonathan: Yeah, good man. You did your research, thanks. [laughs] Right on.
Travis: I believe you said before that came down from a role playing campaign that you developed. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. For the people who care, I mean, you know. Nerds, we can like really get into this. Ah I’m going to talk about my role playing game. And other people are like, I don’t care. [laughs]
Travis: [laughs]
Jonathan: I mean, so I had a great group of gamer friends in Chicago, and they were all a little bit older than me by 10 years or more. I was born in 1980. And they all kind of came up more in the glory years. They were playing in college, and I was playing… I got roped in in ’86. I was really young when I started gaming. Because I had an older brother and he and his friends were playing and they needed another player. So I got in at kind of the same time as them, but I was a different age.
And so we all had a lot of similar backgrounds, but I love not being the most knowledgeable person in a room. I love it when someone else is more of an expert. So this group to me was just heaven, because these guys knew gaming backwards and forwards. Even more than I did. And they had played systems I’d never played. So it was just in this crazy kind of cool creative headspace.
And I had already started messing with this book a little bit, and the story I’d been playing with in my head as a thing. And then once we started gaming with the system called HARP, which is High Adventure Fantasy Role Playing, which was a spin off of Rolemaster, which was produced by Iron Crown. And that had a heyday. I mean, Rolemaster was huge in the ’80s. Now people don’t really know what it is. But so we were using this system called HARP.
And I’m not really a math guy. I don’t really know how to crunch numbers and do all this stuff very well. But somehow HARP just made sense. And I suddenly just got it. I was like, “I get how this works.” So I started building this world as a full on rule set. The races had rules and numbers and stats and abilities. And I was able to just really plug in and start churning this out and was able to codify it in a way that I hadn’t been able to.
And then also I was writing the fluff for it and this background and all this history, and it was kind of happening in tandem. I was writing the book and working on the role playing game at the same time. But at some point I had to focus on the book and just finish it.
We only ran one game. There’s only ever been one Autumn’s Fall game and it was one session. But there’s two books, so it shows you how I had to lean towards the end. But yeah, it was a good time. I miss those guys, I miss those days. Because you’ll never get that back. It’s really hard to ever get that first pure creative experience with no pressure, no expectations. You don’t know how anyone’s going to respond, it doesn’t really matter. You’re just kind of in your creative bubble and it’s just fun and it’s all positive.
And I’ll always look back on that fondly. Because even now I haven’t thought about it in that detail. But you asked the question and I can already feel myself sort of falling into this. [laughs] It was good times.
Travis: I think you said… Did you paint miniatures for that as well?
Jonathan: Yeah, a few. I didn’t really do as many for that as I did ultimately for Bastards.. That’s just something I’m always messing with. I’ve been doing that since I was probably nine years old. So 30 years now. And I’m not very good, but I still do it.
And yeah, it’s just sometimes I get in these spurts. It’s like I’ll just be really into a certain aspect of fantasy and just dive into that. And I think a lot of us are like that. I think we have focused interests but we’re cyclical in where we spend our energy.
Sometimes I get super into role playing games, sometimes I get super into miniature painting and war games, sometimes I get super into reading and writing. Yeah, I mean, miniatures are just a part of that. But I ended up painting more during The Grey Bastards run up than I did back then.
Travis: Yeah, well, now that we’re talking about Grey Bastards, what’s the origin story for that? How did Grey Bastards come around?
Jonathan: Memory is a tricky thing, especially with something that’s done what it’s done and taken off. It sort of writes its own legend and I have to do this thing where I’m like, “Is that really how it went?” [laughs] My memory is so weird. I had written two books in my Autumn’s Fall series, and the second book called The Errantry of Bantam Flynn, which, like you said, there’s a title that you can self publish but no traditional would touch with a 10-foot pole. [laughs]
But I wrote Flynn and it was 210,000 word beast of a book and I was really proud of it. And to this day, I still think it’s my best work, but I needed a break. I just told myself I want to write something and I said, “I’ll just cleanse the palate.” And I didn’t know what that was going to be. I didn’t know if it was going to be a short story or shorter book or whatever. Foolishly I think—and fortuitously, it was sort of dumb for me to do but it ended up working out—I decided just to not begin writing book three of that series.
But I wanted to do something very different and those books are multiple POV and they’re really kind of dense, and there’s a lot of cosmology and legendarium and plot and they’re very much in the Tolkien vein. I just wanted to do something different, and I wasn’t quite sure what.
So I’m not really sure in what order this happened. You know, all this sort of took place sort of simultaneously, but over time. I’d been watching a lot of kind of hardcore TV like Spartacus (the remake) and Black Sails and Justified and Sons of Anarchy and it was just all this stuff that was sort of sexy and raw and gritty. It also had this sort of Western bend to it as far as like old west cowboys. And I grew up on spaghetti westerns, so I was sort of thinking that. And then D&D fifth edition had been out for a little while. And I was playing that, like everybody, just really invested. And I was painting these half orc miniatures and just getting into this one thought process.
I had a gaming group going, I was back in Atlanta. I was here, I was away from my Chicago friends and had been for several years, I was a dad now, so life was just really different. And I thought, all right, I’m going to run a game for my friends, and we’ve been together so long, and they really like a strong starting point. They don’t have a problem when one of us who’s running the game just says like, “this is what it is.” We’re comfortable with each other, we don’t feel railroaded.
So I thought, “I want to make… I just want to use these half orc models that I’ve been painting, and so I’m gonna make a game where all the players are half orcs using D&Dfifth edition.” But I wanted them to be in this mercenary company, in this sort of desert region, this Badlands region, and they’d be riding horses.
And I had this sort of Godfather figure who at that point was called the Paymaster who was just gonna be this shadowy dude who paid them for jobs so… My lovely wife, who is the first person to read anything I’ve written, and she has a crazy amount of insight and a lot of good instincts. And she’s also a writing major. So she got her degree, she’s very well educated. And so I always run everything by her.
I was just talking to her, really excited about this game, you know, I’m going to run this game for the guys, half orcs and it’s going to kind of be like Sons of Anarchy. And she goes, “Oh, are they gonna ride Hogs instead of hogs? You know, big pigs instead of motorcycles?” And I thought, well, that’s a little bit on the nose…
Travis: [laughs]
Jonathan: …I don’t know, is that kind of too much? Is that cheesy? You know? And she says, “Well, I think it’d be cool if you did it right.” And then she just sort of looked at me and very calmly, very matter of fact, she just said, “You know, why are you going to run a game when you could write another book?” And I just said, “You’re right.”
It’s true, and I had been looking for something to do different. So I kind of took the ideas and just sat down and started writing, and the first chapter just blew out of me. It completely just flowed, it was really easy. I don’t really do drafts, especially not back then. And so, it is very much like it was in the published version, there’s really not a lot of difference between that first day and what the reader saw.
And I kind of looked at it, and I thought, “This was a lot of fun and the hogs work and I think I might have something here.” So I showed it to her and she said it was fantastic. She said this was exactly what I needed to do. And so I thought this is it, so I limited it down, I made it one POV so that I could make a shorter book. I think it ended up being like 135,000 words, which was way shorter than the last thing I’d just written. [laughs]
Travis: [laughs] Still not a short book!
Jonathan: No, I don’t do anything short. But I was able to justify it because I was self published. And I was going to a lot of events where I had my table and was doing panels at these conventions. And as you know, probably, Atlanta is a great convention town, there’s something going on practically every weekend. And so you could do the circuit and make a decent amount of money, just selling your stuff at the table and signing to people who will take a chance on you.
But one of the things I noticed after doing this for several years was that a lot of people didn’t want to commit to a series that wasn’t finished. And so I had these two books out and they’d be like, “Is it going to be a trilogy?” And I’m like, “Well, it’s probably going to be six or eight books.” And they’re like, “Wait, six or eight and you only have two out?” People have that attitude. I don’t personally agree with it, I think if you want to support an author, you should read them while they’re out because that’s how you help them along the way. But whatever, to each their own. Some people, they don’t want to commit to a series till it’s done.
And so I thought, this will be great, I’ll have this standalone book so that when people say “I don’t want to commit to a long term series” I can point to The Grey Bastards and I can say “That is one and done. There you go.” By the time it was done, I was really proud of it and I thought it was worth a shot. So you know, I ended up querying it out traditionally. I ended up pitching it, I didn’t immediately self publis. I tried to do the old route and didn’t get anywhere, so then I just thought “Well all right, time to do what I do and self publish it. So I did.”
Travis: Yeah, and I know you mentioned Sons of Anarchy. I definitely get that feel from reading The Grey Bastards. I think even in your new traditionally published cover, it just looks to me like a Sons of Anarchy poster or something.
Jonathan: [laughs] Yeah, that was the publishers like… I was a little bit like “I don’t know. Is this a little too much, you know, mirror image?” But they liked it and they wanted to do it. I didn’t have a lot of choice, but they leaned really hard into it. And hey, at that point, I was with the professionals. I was like, “Yeah, y’all do your thing.”
Yeah. And I mean, like you were saying with the literal hogs that they ride around, it may seem on the nose, or it may work out really, really well. So personally, I think it’s worked out well. I appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, that seems to be the consensus from people who’ve read it. People are having a lot of fun. I mean, I have people who dislike the books, but I’ve never yet heard that it’s because of the hogs. [laughs] I’ve never heard people say “That was where you lost me.” You know, it’s never that.
Travis: Yeah. And I think I remember you saying this in another interview before, but part of the origin for The Grey Bastards as well was you wanted to write something that could encourage boys to get into reading again?
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. See? That’s why you do interviews, so you remember stuff. It’s like a journal, they spark my memory. My experience as a self published author who was out there just selling books was that women from, I’m talking teenagers all the way up to in their 90s, would take a chance on a book, but man getting the guys was just next to impossible. If they were younger than me, forget it.
I had commissioned a lot of artwork for both Autumn’s Fall and Grey Bastards. So I’d have all this artwork up and these guys would come over and they’d be like, “Oh, awesome, this stuff looks really cool.” And then they’d start having a conversation in front of me to each other. And be like, “I’m gonna play a character like that in our next game” and point to one of my art pieces. And I’d be like, “Well read the book and you’ll know more about them” and they just wouldn’t.
Or they would ask things like, “Yeah, I just play video games. So if this ever gets turned into a video game then sweet.” And I was just sitting there, super disappointed and really pissed off, honestly. There’s just like, what the hell, you know, this is sad.
There was a part of me that had this stupid crusade idea, I just got this wild hair like shame on my gender. But then I thought, is there just nothing out there for them? Is it just that they just don’t feel like there’s anything compelling and video games are just way more compelling? And so I did sort of lean into the male aspect.
I mean in the book there’s a lot of cursing, there’s a lot of sex appeal, there’s a lot of violence. And so there was sort of like that idea of maybe I can skin this more in the language and the aesthetic of what they’re seeing in video games. I don’t know ultimately if that worked at all. I don’t think I succeeded one way or the other.
But I will say, now that I’m on the other side of it, and I’m with a big publisher and all that, most of the fan mail I get is still from women. And some people take issue with this. A lot of guys will almost get offended like “I read, how dare you!” And they might, but the statistics aren’t really backing it up. I don’t feel like for the most part men are reading anymore, and if they are they’re not reading fiction.
And I’m sure that there are people out there who will say I’m wrong and I’m sure there are other authors who’ll be like “Most of my readership is male.” And good for you. But my experience has not been that. So most of the interactions I’ve had on both sides of the publishing aisle, whether self publishing or traditional with the Big Five, most of my major interactions have been with female readers. So I think that they are sort of the powerhouse. I think that women are dominating in this form of entertainment, I think they are the ones that are buying books. So if you can get them, if you can earn them, then you’re doing a great thing. But I still would love to see more guys flock to it.
And not just as a “Oh, I need more people buying my books!” Of course. Every writer needs more people buying their books for the most part. But it isn’t just that selfish bottom line, you know, “I need royalties.” It is sort of this philosophical issue that I’m having. I want to see and be convinced that there are still some dudes out there who are literate and reading and enjoying it and stretching and right now I’m not. I gotta be honest, I’m not there. I’m not I’m not convinced.
Travis: Right. Well, a lot of what you’re saying from video games, that grit, that darkness, that violence… So would you describe Grey Bastards as a grimdark book? I know grimdark is a bit of a nebulous term, and everyone has their own definition for it, but would you personally consider it that way?
Jonathan: No, I don’t. I stay away from a lot of the Reddit stuff. And I don’t have a problem with Reddit. I just don’t like to lurk on the internet. I have a seven year old son, I spend my time as much as I can away from the screen. So I try to stay away from it.
But I’ve seen some chatter, and some people have pointed me in directions of things where it’s brought up. And the consensus seems to be amongst hardcore grimdark fans that it isn’t. The book is shockingly moral. For the most part, the main characters are fairly moral, even with the violence level. And I think that’s the difference.
I think violence and sex and leaning into the fact that kids shouldn’t read this fantasy book doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a grimdark book. I think there is this sort of moral and very realistic approach to grimdark where it strikes this tone, like Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence do, where people are just people and they make a lot of shitty moves. They make a lot of bad decisions and a lot of immoral and evil things, even if they’re not necessarily entirely bad or rotten to the core themselves. And I think that mirrors our own world a lot.
And while I am proud of Grey Bastards, and I think that there is a lot of truth in it, and I think that I succeeded in capturing some universal things in human experience, I don’t think that I was successful in striking that tone of morally gray. I think in moments it happens, but I wasn’t trying to do that. I think there is an argument to be made that the book is more in the vein of like, old school Conan and sword and sorcery. Where it’s a hard life and it’s sort of violent and bloodthirsty, but you still are able to see who the hero is.
In the original Robert E Howard stories, Conan isn’t Superman. He’s not a paragon. He calls women hussies and he smacks him on the butt. He’s not a very woke individual, but he’s also not an amoral sociopath, either. He does still come across as sort of a noble barbarian who has a code that he lives by, and he’s still the hero you can root for. I don’t feel like you ever are uncomfortable with him as a hero, for the most part.
And I think with true grimdark, you usually are. You read Prince of Thorns and Jorg makes you really uncomfortable. And he’s meant to. Abercrombie’s characters, Logen and Glokta and all those, they make you really uncomfortable. I don’t know for the most part that Jackal and Oats and Fetch really do that.
I think at the end of the day, they come across more like Knights of the Round Table in a way, but they just really like sex and swearing. So while they’re not super noble and knights in shining armor, there’s this kind of honor system that they have.
And so no, personally I don’t. I love that the grimdark fantasy fans are coming to it. I love that there are Bastards fans who are also huge grimdark fans, because grimdark fans are great. And they’re really ravenous readers.
The fact that there is a bit of bleed between what I did with Grey Bastards and grimdark… and as you said, there’s also bleed within grimdark. I mean, I think that’s true amongst any genre. I think it’s really hard to codify a lot of genres. But no, I welcome grimdark. I certainly think that there’s a lot there for grimdark fans to enjoy. But me personally, no. I did not set out to write a grimdark book, nor at the end of the day do I think I accidentally succeeded in writing one.
Travis: Right, and I mean, like you’re saying with genres and subgenres, I feel like there’s no clear lines really between any of them. And a story can be multiple at once. So it’s kind of just like a starting point for people to find books they might like.
Jonathan: Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Travis: And so you mentioned Mark Lawrence, so I guess that kind of leads me into the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off. So how did you hear about that?
Jonathan: So I was still on Facebook back then. I’m not anymore. But I was part of this thing called—I’ll try to get this right—The Grimdark Readers and Writers Facebook group was I think what it was called. I don’t remember if that’s exactly it or not.
And the guy that was one of the moderators, Rob Matheny, he reached out to me and I think he was the one that put it on my radar. And Thomas Clues was another guy on there and so I’m not sure who spoke to who first, how the book got on whose radar or what, but somehow Bastards and its cover and all this got on there.
And so, I joined this group, I joined The Grimdark Fiction Readers and Writers Facebook group. I was just sort of lurking around, I didn’t really engage that much because I don’t ever really on anything. And then somebody—I think it was Rob—posted this thing, this Self Publishing Fantasy Blog Off, SPFBO.
So I thought, screw it, whatever. The book had been out a few months and I wasn’t really sure. It wasn’t doing all that well. It was doing alright. And I thought, “Hey, all Mark Lawrence is saying with the contest is that there’s no prize but exposure. That’s really it.” So I thought it couldn’t hurt.
So yeah, I entered and as they say, the rest is history. It ended up being a life-changing thing for me, across the board. It was nothing but positive and it will forever be the keystone to the whole thing. It was the turning point.
So yeah, smartest thing I ever did. [laughs] And thank god Mark did it. I’m indebted to that man until the end of time.
Travis: Yeah, and I believe the year you entered in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off—which I’m just going to call Spiffbo because that seems a lot easier—
Jonathan: Attaboy. Yeah. [laughs]
Travis: —so I think that was the second year of the contest that you were in it?
Jonathan: That’s right.
Travis: That year in particular stands out to me as a really strong sense of community from the authors that were involved with it. So I guess, do you still keep in touch with any of those other authors?
Jonathan: Yeah, I do. And all of that is 100% because of Dyrk Ashton. A lot of people online, if you know Dyrk or if you’ve seen him on Twitter or Facebook, a lot of people love to make Dyrk kind of a joke. Because they can, because he’s such a cool guy and he’s so laid back.
But no, in all seriousness, SPFBO year two, we were close because we had Dyrk. And that’s all there is to it. I’m not saying that all the other people on there weren’t gems and weren’t great people. But we had a cheerleader in him. We had this genuine just mascot of a man, who was also a killer writer and a gracious contestant.
And I told him, he was the hub of the entire wheel. He was the hub of that wheel. And if it weren’t for him, I think we would have been like some of the other “classes” or you know, whatever we want to call them, contestants. He melded us all together in a way that I don’t think can be repeated because there’s no one like him.
I mean, I had that same sense, that the community was stronger with us than it’s ever been. But I always feel a little bit shitty saying that, because I feel like I’m being kind of arrogant in some way or saying our SPFBO is better than everyone’s. And I don’t want to downplay anyone else’s experience with the contest, but no, I really think you’re right. I think that there was a different feel then.
Travis: Yeah. So you did end up winning the contest. I don’t think we’ve actually said that yet.
Jonathan: Yeah, well, I try not to say that. I feel like the book won. Yeah, it benefited me. But I don’t know that I would have won if I’d entered a different book. So Bastards won, yeah.
Travis: Sure. And something that, in doing a little bit of research for this interview, jumped out to me was you were actually contacted by your eventual editor from Crown before The Grey Bastards won, right?
Jonathan: That’s right. Yeah, that’s absolutely true. This is such a tricky thing to talk about because early on, even within the early days of that top 10, the scores were very high. I was trying to not engage with the chatter that started to happen, which was mathematically Grey Bastards can’t lose and I just didn’t want to go there.
I felt like a) it would make me seem like a bad person and a poor contestant and b) I was superstitious. I didn’t want to jinx myself. So I didn’t want to play into any of that. But the numbers were high and it really was rolling full steam ahead. The reviewers were all really into it, thankfully.
And so, I know that the editor at Crown—his name is Julian, I don’t want to just keep calling him the editor—Julian had been following the contest. I’m pretty sure he had followed it a little bit the year before. And the way he is, I mean, this is the same guy that found the Martian, right?
So as an editor, he’s very much into looking at what else is going on. He’s a traditional New York publishing guy, but he has a habit of keeping his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the indie world and what’s happening in the self publishing world. He saw that the book was just kind of crushing it in the top 10, so he decided to take a look at it.
And so he had read it when he contacted me, and the contest was still not over. And so, I did tell him, I said, “Look, you know, I am interested in talking to you about transitioning this book over to your publishing house.” Which is Crown, which is under Penguin Random House.
And I said, “But I really want to see where this goes. I started [SPFBO] as a self-published author, and that’s how I want to finish it.” He was cool with that, so that’s what we did. Even though I was contacted prior, I waited until the book won before actually making the deal.
Travis: Right. So how… I guess a lot of people outside of the traditional publishing industry, they kind of view them largely as gatekeepers or people who maybe are more interested in money than in your career as a writer, but that’s people who don’t have that inside experience. I was reading past interviews that you’ve done, and it sounds like Julian did a lot to help you early on. Like, he actually contacted agents for you? Is that correct?
Jonathan: That’s true. Yeah. I used to be one of those people. I wasn’t as outspoken as somebody like Joe Conrath or somebody saying, “Oh, you know, traditional is evil and don’t sign these deals.” I wasn’t that much a zealot, wasn’t that fanatical.
And I like Conrath, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I don’t. I read his blog for years and got a lot of good advice from him. But I did sort of feel like they were gatekeepers, and it’s hard not to. I mean, all of us who query and submit and agencies don’t reply or they deny you… it gets frustrating. So yeah, I’ve had that feeling.
And there are still people I know who have that feeling, and who am I to tell them they’re wrong? But I can tell you that my outlook is entirely switched. I mean, I’m completely the other way. I don’t think that everyone needs an agent. I don’t think that I’m better because I have one, as far as like, “I’m better than you.” I think, though, that I have more support now.
I don’t know how I did this without my agent now that I’ve had her for as long as I have, for the last couple years. It’s hard to look back and go “God, how did I ever do this alone?” My experience was very different. I was very fortunate.
Most people query and query and query and hopefully they get an agent to finally say, “I want to represent you.” But there are a lot of people that never get that chance. And I’m aware of that. And I was one of those people, I was mostly ignored. I didn’t even get denials. I just got nothing. Just crickets. Just no replies.
And I could have stayed one of those people very easily. But, Julian, while he could have just said, “Here’s the number I’m going to offer” and he could have done a direct deal. He could have just been an editor and just said “here’s the money we’re offering” but that’s not the way he likes to work. And he said, “Look, I want this formally pitched to me. So you need representation.” And he said, “Would you be okay with me contacting some people that I think would be a good fit for you and this book?
And I said, “Sure.” So he contacted three agents on my behalf. Two of them got in touch with me, both of them had already read the book, both of them enjoyed it, knew it like the back of their hand. They were very professional. They were very knowledgeable. They were very passionate. Both of them had been in the industry a while and knew what they were doing. Both of them had crazy good resumes.
And I had to make a choice and it’s sucked. Because that is not a position a lot of authors find themselves in, and here I am having to make that call. And I have to go with one agent and tell the other one “I really appreciate it but I’m going to go the other direction, thank you but no thanks.” And that was a tough couple of days.
I’ve had friends say, “Oh poor pitiful you, go cry me a river, you got your choice of agents.” But I had to go with the one that I felt the most kinship with and the most trust. And I know I made the right call, and she’s fantastic. And I’ve never felt like someone had my back the way she does. She is so professional and so knowledgeable and she doesn’t bullshit me, she doesn’t allow me to bullshit myself.
And so I am completely converted. But I know that if this is the end of the day, this is still an interpersonal thing. This is the what you’ve got to realize: Big publishing is still made up of people. And while I have met a lot of people that are very passionate about books, and who really want to connect with good stories and authors and all that, they just love books and writers and all that… That’s been my experience.
There isn’t anything to say that that is everyone’s experience. In fact, I know it isn’t. I know people who have not gelled well with their representation, who their agents have not had their backs the way they probably could or should, and who just see them as another author in the stable. So you hear horror stories on every side of the fence, I think the important thing is that it’s really hard to get to that point where you can have a conversation with an agent.
But if you are having that conversation and you don’t really feel great about it, or an editor or anyone. If anyone that you’re going to be working with just doesn’t feel like a good match, then you need to listen to that. Because they’re not a golden ticket.
They’ll tell you that. If they know what they’re doing, they will tell you, there are no guarantees in this. And both my editor and my agent, both of which have done major books that have done major things, have told me, “There’s no guarantees, we can’t do that.”
I think that if you have a team, then good for you. And whether you build that team as a self published person by surrounding yourself with other self published authors and surrounding yourself with freelance editors and great freelance cover artists and marketing people, then you have a team. And if you trust them, then great. If that team also comes from a big publisher and you gel well with them, and you work well together, great.
I think anyone laboring alone, and some of us have to do it forever, but I think anyone laboring alone is at a severe disadvantage. But I don’t think that those people are less than me. I think that they need to keep going like I did, because I was alone for many, many, many years.
However you can keep going, however you can find some gumption and some grit and you can keep going, then that’s absolutely what you should do. And don’t look down on yourself for not having an agent or not having an eiditor. Don’t. I’ve kind of been rambling and you kind of got me going here.
But here’s the thing. I know the country and everything’s very polar. Everything is all there’s a right and wrong. There’s good versus evil battle across the board, doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. I got into a Twitter discussion about frickin Warhammer today, and it was just like “Jesus, like, what are we doing?” You know, it’s just… Here’s the thing.
If you are drawing a hard line in the sand, one way or the other, if you are saying, “Oh, self published authors are never going to have the advantages that traditionally published authors are and they’re at a severe disadvantage, and there’s no way they can be successful,” then you’re a snob, and you’re wrong.
If you are drawing a hard line in the sand, one way or the other, if you are saying, “Oh, self published authors are never going to have the advantages that traditionally published authors are and they’re at a severe disadvantage, and there’s no way they can be successful,” then you’re a snob, and you’re wrong.
But if you’re a self published author who’s sitting there saying, “Oh, the gatekeepers, and traditional publishing is dying, and they’re all just out to screw you… Then you’re a rube, and you’re ignorant, and you’re wrong. You can find a nice balance and you just got to keep going. But if you’re shutting out anything, if you’re closing yourself off to anything, because of some staunch stance, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You got to be malleable. You got to be willing to roll with it. And you got to be willing to let other people in, but trust your gut and let the right people in. Anyway, whenever we want the closing prayer, we can have it. But that’s my rant [laughs].
Travis: No, I mean, it’s always fascinating to hear from someone who has experience from both sides. Because there’s not a ton of people out there who have that. So thank you for the insight.
Jonathan: Hey, be careful what you ask for, you know? [laughs]
Travis: So your latest book, at the time of this recording, it’s getting ready to release: The True Bastards. But when people are hearing this, it’ll have been out for a little while. So, book two. Is it as hard as everyone says? I know this is the first time doing the entire process from start to finish through traditional publishing. So I guess, what’s your experience been like with that?
Jonathan: Oh, you mean like the curse of the sequel? Like the the sophomore effort. You talking about that? Okay. [laughs] It’s a tale of two cities, man. It was the best time and the worst of times.
Like it started off, I was by myself. I hadn’t gotten the call yet. I hadn’t won SPFBO yet. I started True Bastards when I was still just doing my thing. And I’d had a really terrible 2016. It was awful, personally. I had a lot of issues and depressions and you know, all this stuff. And I didn’t get a book done in 2016. I didn’t even get close to a book done in 2016. And I thought, “Never again, I don’t want to go another year where I don’t do that.”
So January 1st, 2017, I started the Bastard’s sequel. And it was because it had been doing so well in the contest that there were already people asking about it through SPFBO. It just made sense. As a self published guy, I needed to give the audience what they want.
So I started writing it, and I got like 70,000 words done in less than two months. I mean, that’s fast for me, I was flying. And then I got the call [laughs] from Julian. It’s not his fault, but the whole train went off the rails at that point. Because here I was, back in this happy state of just cranking out this book, I was really having a good time writing.
And then suddenly all this pressure of traditional publishing and New York and signing a deal and having an agent… It was all very positive, but it was also really stressful. It was a lot of anxiety because I felt like they were going to figure it out at any second, they were gonna be like, “This guy is not worth it,” that I was going to do something wrong, I was going to piss somebody off and they were going to realize they’d made a mistake signing this guy.
So I was paranoid that with this life changing event, the rug was just going to get ripped out from under me. And I was also having to go back and look at Grey Bastards, because they wanted to give their own polish. And I sort of told him, I did not want anyone who had read the self published version to have to reread Grey Bastards in order to move forward with the series.
So my thing was, if the only one you’d ever read was Grey Bastards self published, I wanted you to be able to pick up True Bastards without a problem. And I told them that. I said, “Look, we cannot change this book to the point where it’s unrecognizable.” And they were cool with that. So there’s very little difference. There’s a couple of additions and some neat little scenes that got added in, some polish up, different word choices and whatnot. And I think I had to cut the word fuck out of it like 40 times. But other than that, it was not that different.
But that derailed me writing True Bastards. And so that’s when that pressure of the second book hit. I thought, because I’d been flying on it and done it so fast, I thought I could deliver it to them pretty fast. But I couldn’t. I didn’t.
So I would hit deadlines, but these drafts just wouldn’t be anything I was happy with. And they would have editorial notes, but they weren’t upset. But I was upset, I didn’t like what I had done with the book. And so I just got more and more in my head about it.
So I think it did get hard. And so that curse of the second book did hit. But what my thing is, and this dovetails back to what I said about Exiled Heir and that creative bubble, that it’s never going to be that good again. I think that the second book has gotten a bad rap, because it’s not the second book. It’s the first book with a major publisher.
And I’m not blaming major publishers for that. But what I’m saying is that if we take self publishing and don’t think about that, let’s just say that all authors go the traditional route, just for the sake of this example. So, if you think about that, that means that most authors write their first book just like anyone, they don’t know they’re going to have a publisher, they don’t know they’re going to have an agent. They are just in their happy place. They are writing a book. They want it to go somewhere, but there’s no pressure, they don’t know anyone. They are in their house, on their word processor, just being happy clicking away, and that’s it.
So then that book gets picked up, and that book suddenly gets signed, and you have a deal and you have deadlines, and you’ve got an advance, and you’ve got all this stuff. So it’s not the second book. It’s the first book with all of that pressure.
I wrote three books with not a problem because I self published all three of them. I wrote Exiled Heir, Errantry of Bantam Flynn, and Grey Bastards, never ever ever had an issue. Never. I mean, yeah, I’m a slow writer, but it wasn’t ever like “I’m losing my mind. I’m gonna disappoint everyone, oh my god.” No. That was not my experience. I wrote those three books and had fun doing it, and that was it.
So it’s that first book when suddenly you are in the game, when you have the support and you’ve got the pressure and then everyone’s looking at you. I’ve used this analogy before, it’s like Strider vs. Aragorn. Strider is just on his own. He’s like, I’m a ranger. I do my thing. I patrol the borders of Hobbiton, I sort of mess around in Arthedaine and make sure everything’s cool. But I don’t know who I am. And no one knows I have any pressure and it’s all good, and I’m comfortable being Strider.
But then it becomes time to step up and you got to be Aragorn, and you gotta reforge the sword and you got to join the Fellowship. And you suddenly have a team and there’s a mission and you have all these other badasses backing you up. But that’s a lot more pressure because suddenly it’s not just you alone. It’s this publisher and this editor and this agent, all of which kick ass. And they’re offering you my bow and my axe and they’re right there with you.
But it’s just like, “Shit. What am I going to do? Am I the weakest link in this chain?” And that’s what starts getting to you, I think. At least that’s what got to me. And so, yeah, it was tough, man.
Writing that second book was a 25-month process from start to finish. I started it January 1st, 2017. And I did not get done until like February 2019, this year. So it was a rough thing, but hell, I mean, it’s out and I’m through it and I’m glad. And it’ll be out when people listen to this and hopefully it’ll still hit and people will really dig it and it won’t matter that… Or maybe it will matter, but in a good way, that I went through all that. Who knows?
Travis: Right. So I guess for the foreseeable future, I imagine your upcoming writing is going to focus on the Lot Lands, Grey Bastards three and four, whatever those titles may be. So what’s after that? Are you considering returning back to Autumn’s Fall, maybe something new?
Jonathan: Yeah, I have to get back to Autumn’s Fall, personally as well as for the people who’ve been waiting for so long. There’s not many of them, but they’re growing every day because of Bastards, and people are discovering the other books through that book. So yeah, I need to get back that story. It’s been too long and I am so grateful for what’s happened with the Bastard’s series. They have saved my career, they’ve changed my life.
But I started something and I need to finish it. And that’s still a series that I have a lot of passion for. So, you know, best laid plans, right? I mean, who knows? I do get offers do other things that have come up since Bastards, because you’re on more people’s radar, that I’ve mostly been able to turn down. But there could be something that I can’t turn down. So I’m hoping that nothing else gets in the way of me returning to Autumn’s Fall.
But you got to do what’s right for the family and the bank account and all that. So I can’t say for sure. But I will say that my plan is that once the first Bastard’s series is done, I will return to Autumn’s Fall. And then maybe I could do a follow up series, another Bastards series that’s kind of a different scope. But yeah, short answer: Yes, Autumn’s Falll next. [laughs]
Travis: So, one final question that I’m always curious about with authors. What’s a book or a comic or role playing game or movie or something you’ve consumed recently that you really enjoyed and you just can’t shut up about?
Jonathan: God that’s a great question, and it’s one of those ones where I’m on the spot now and… crap. I recently played—and I’m a little bit behind—but I recently played God of War, the reboot on PS4, which I guess is the fourth or fifth game in the series. But it’s the big fancy one where you’re Kratos but you have a son now.
And it absolutely grabbed hold of me and didn’t let go. It hit all the right buttons. I hadn’t been playing video games for a long time because I just hadn’t had the time, and the way that they crafted not only the story but the gameplay… And I guess because I have a son who’s about the same age as Atreus, I just went in whole hog. It was just like I was living it.
You know, I was just talking to my wife about it before this podcast, which I guess is why I’m using it as my answer. Just the drama and the action and they did what you kind of wouldn’t think could be done. They went to Norse mythology and used Thor and Loki and Odin after the Marvel movies. That’s a big risk, because a lot of people in their head space right now, Thor is Chris Hemsworth and Loki is Tom Hiddleston. You use those names and people’s brains automatically go in one direction, for the most part.
That’s what the zeitgeist is, is Marvel. And I love the God of War where they just didn’t care. They’re like, “Look, we have our own story to tell and we have our own way that we’re going to tell it and we have our own take on this mythology, and we’re confident in it.”
And I think that is such a huge lesson, because for me, as a fantasy author, there’s always that fear. It’s like, has this been done before? You know, are you just rehashing old ground? But if you have that passion and that confidence that “No, I have something to say. And even if it seems sort of like the same stuff that other people have been doing, I do have something to add and I do have a unique perspective,” then that’s huge.
Because I think that’s elusive for a lot of people. I think they get bogged down in the worry, and there’s a lot of analysis paralysis. I see on threads all the time on Goodreads and Reddit, sometimes I’ll get these notifications and a lot of them are just people like, “Is this a good idea?” Or “Is this done to death?” Or “Should I?”
I think if you’re asking the question, then no, because you’ll know when it’s your baby. It’s Frankenstein’s monster, man. It’s like, I got this. I got to finish it. This is the book, I gotta keep going.
And so yeah, this video game where I get to be sort of like any good role playing game… You know, I always like to play the big barbarian with the axe. It’s probably because I was the skinny, bullied kid. So you sort of always go the other way. It’s like, “I’m going to be the guy that could never be bullied.”
But you give me a big barbarian with an axe, and I’m usually in. But when you give me a big barbarian and an axe who’s basically unkillable, but the whole thing of the game is you got to protect your son. You will get me with that every time.
Because that’s the Superman thing. It’s like, yeah, you can’t hurt Superman. But what you do is you start throwing innocent people off buildings and force him to save everyone. And that’s how you get him.
That, to me, is such a compelling thing. You are a god of war. You are practically invincible and immortal. But you are looking after this life that you are responsible for. And so just being in that and being able to constantly fight with your son, but also be trying to keep him from becoming you… It just hit me deep. And so I was all in. So there it is. That’s the one I can’t stop talking about, clearly, right there. [laughs]
Travis: Well, Jonathan French, thanks again for coming on the podcast today. It’s been an absolute blast.
Jonathan: Oh, yeah, I hope so. It was for me.
[outro music begins]Travis: You can find Jonathan French on Twitter as @JFrenchAuthor, or on his website, JonathanFrenchBooks.com. And while True Bastards may live in the saddle and die on the hog, true fans of the series take the time to leave the books a review on Amazon. Or Goodreads. Or just chuck a copy of the books at your closest friend.
Links to Jonathan French’s books and social media are in the show notes. Don’t forget to check out his Autumn’s Fall series if you’ve already tried and enjoyed his Lot Lands novels.
As always, you can find us over at thefantasyinn.com or on Twitter and Instagram at TheFantasyInn. If you enjoyed this interview, we’d love to hear from you. Leave us a review, comment on the blog post, or just tag us on Twitter to let us know what you thought. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can catch all of our future episodes. That’s it for this week. See you next time.
[outro music fades out]