Interview with Richard Blunt, author of LUCAS TRENT: GUARDIAN IN MAGIC

Richard Blunt is the author of the fantasy novel, Lucas Trent: Guardian in Magic.

He is currently working on his second book in the Lucas Trent series.

You can visit his website at www.lucastrent.com.

Visit him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lucas_trent and Facebook at www.facebook.com/people/richard-blunt.

Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life, Rick. Can you tell us how long you’ve been writing and how your journey led to writing your latest book, Guardian in Magic?

Well, actually Guardian in Magic is my first published book. The road to it was quite bumpy I have to say, from getting the motivation to write it, via the whole convincing myself to actually publish it, to the publication process itself. But in the end it was fun to have done it.

Q: I love your title. Can you tell us why you chose it?

The title was the last thing I chose for the book. I wanted it to say something about the story without giving away too much of what will be going to happen. Many of my friends told me at first glance that they thought I misspelled it, but after reading the story they agreed that it was OK the way it was. Mission accomplished.

Q: Why did you believe your book should be published?

I actually didn’t. Some of my friends pushed me in that direction. But now that I am holding my authors copy of the book in hands, I agree that it was a very good idea to go through with this.

Q: We all know that publishers can’t do all of the publicity and that some lies on the author. What has your publisher done so far to publicize the book and what have you done?

My publisher has done exactly what I asked him to do, that’s the way it is with self-publishing. It’s particularly hard for me to do much by myself as I am living in Austria, where you can’t really publicize an English book… But in the end it all works out.

Q: What book on the market can it compare to? How is it different? What makes your book special?

I don’t like to compare me to something else. The closest thing I could find would be Harry Potter, which is sort of lame naming one of the bestselling books of all time. But just for the sake of differences let’s stick with it for now. Guardian in Magic is different in that it incorporates the heroes deeply into something that works like the real world. The fantasy portion in the book is high, but limited to a certain set of characters, which makes it, in my opinion, especially interesting to read as the interaction with, what J.K. Rowling calls Muggles, is quite intense at some points.

Q: Open to a random page in your book. Can you tell us what is happening?

I ended up on page 157 where the title character and one of his friends had just barely survived an encounter with normal people, meaning non magical folks. They are back in their beloved shack by then and are talking about what had happened.

Q: Do you plan subsequent books?