BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we talked to Larry Z. Daily about his writing and recently released second installment in the Chronicles of the Lawbreaker series, The Ring and the Sword,  a gripping, character-driven descent into guilt, betrayal, and the brutal cost of survival (read the review here).

How did you decide on this title? 

The first book was called The Minstrel and the Prophet because the first part of that book was dominated by Lauren’s relationship with Ryan, a minstrel. The second part of the book was dominated by Lauren’s relationship with Ambrose, a prophet. That provided a model for the title of this book, which starts with Lauren in possession of the Lawbreaker’s ring. A great deal of the action in this book involves a search for the Lawbreaker’s sword.

Tell us some more about your book.

The Minstrel and the Prophet was Lauren’s coming-of-age story. He’d built himself an identity as a minstrel and he had a woman he loved and who loved him back. In this book, he begins to find out that there’s another identity waiting for him, one laid out for him by fate or the universe or destiny or whatever. The reaction of some of the other characters to that identity costs him dearly and the expectations of other characters weighs on him. In the end, the book is about Lauren’s choice between clinging to the life and identity that he worked for or embracing that other life and everything that it entails.

Which scene or chapter in the book is your favorite? Why?

My favorite? That’s hard to say. There are several scenes that I’m really fond of. But now that you’ve got me thinking about it, one scene springs to mind. In that scene, Lauren is in Alain’s study feeling terribly alone. He sings a little snippet of a song. When he finishes Élan – who came in quietly while he was singing – puts her hand on his shoulder and tells him that he’s not alone. What makes that scene special to me is that it combines two things from my life, one from the time when I was first conceiving a desire to write fantasy and the other from much more recently as I was finally working to bring the trilogy into existence. The short little bit of a song that Lauren sang is something that I wrote when I was in high school about the girl who inspired the character of Peg. The other occurred in 2013. I had lost my older son the year before and I was still feeling broken and very alone. A friend had invited me to a party. At one point I was in the kitchen getting some hot cider. I was in the middle of a crowd of people, but I still felt lost and alone. While I was standing there, my friend passed behind me and as she did, she put her hand on my shoulder. That’s all it was, but it let me know that I wasn’t truly alone. 

What life experiences have shaped your writing most?

There are two that I can think of: discovering fantasy and learning to play guitar. I already had a desire to be a writer and my introduction to The Lord of the Rings focused that desire on fantasy. Following Tolkien, I read Mary Stewart’s first two Merlin books, LeGuin’s Earthsea trilogy, and McKillip’s Riddle-Master trilogy. Those took the ember that Tolkien sparked and fanned it into full flame. I decided then that I wanted to write a fantasy trilogy of my own. I also learned to play guitar while I was in high school. Years later, I discovered contemporary folk music, not just John Denver and Gordon Lightfoot, but people like Bill Danoff, Kate Wolf, Stan Rogers, and Schooner Fare. They and so many others were the inspiration behind the Minstrels of Alomar. The story would not have been the same without them.

What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?

So far, I’ve only written the one trilogy and to some degree I see that as one story, so I’ve got a very small sample size to try to generalize from. If you count nearly five decades of reading fantasy literature as research, I do a lot. I don’t think that’s what you mean, though. I actually did very little research before I started writing. Once I got into the process, though, I did quite a bit. I was trying to make my world as real as possible, so I asked the great oracle Google a great many questions: how far can a person travel on foot in one day? How far can you go on a horse in one day? What plants actually have demonstrated medicinal value? I ended up having to rearrange the geography a bit to take those things into account; the original outline for the trilogy involved people going way too far in way too short a time.

You said that you’ve been reading fantasy for five decades. How often you read?

I read all the time. I spend the hour before I turn out the lights at night reading in bed. During the academic year, that’s often the only fun reading I get to do. During the summer, though, I read a lot. Much of what I read is fantasy – I can’t get enough – but I also read about politics, ethics, philosophy of the mind, you name it. I just love to read.

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