Title: City of Magi
Author: Michael McDuffee
Series: Magi Stone Series (Book 1)
Genre: Industrial-era Fantasy
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: July 25 2014
Edition/Formats Available In: Kindle
Blurb/Synopsis:
At the heart of Astosen, the city of Dein Astos stands as a bulwark for the free world, always on alert to battle Valania’s attempts to bring the republic under continental dominance. Sophisticated and diverse, driven by magic, money, and information, this city of magi teems with tea houses, government agencies, exclusive clubs and risky districts.
At the heart of Astosen, the city of Dein Astos stands as a bulwark for the free world, always on alert to battle Valania’s attempts to bring the republic under continental dominance. Sophisticated and diverse, driven by magic, money, and information, this city of magi teems with tea houses, government agencies, exclusive clubs and risky districts.
Alexander Locke, a great Magi Knight and the hero of the
republic, lies dead. His daughter, Zia Locke, reluctantly rises to power,
unaware that her father may not have died of natural causes, as everyone
believes.
That is, until she is artfully maneuvered into meeting the
mysterious and abundantly self-assured Grayson Kearney. A keen judge of
character and cunning magus, Grayson rocks Zia's world in more ways than one as
he helps tear away the veil of ignorance from her eyes. From lifelong friends
to sworn enemies, the new leader of the House of Locke is discovering that
anyone could be the next to betray her. What Zia needs is a good intelligence
officer at her side. But when everyone has a hidden agenda, can she truly place
her trust in Grayson?
Grayson hesitated on the threshold of the Burrow Street
entrance to the Magi Knights headquarters. In a few seconds, he would do
something he hadn’t done in nearly ten years. He was going to walk into a
building and tell the receptionist his real name. He wasn’t wearing a disguise.
He wasn’t even going to use a fake accent. His hand clenched around the
heart-cut raw stone in his pocket. If he muttered the right words after talking
to the girl at the front desk, she would never remember him. It was tempting.
Feeling nervous and quite naked, Grayson stepped through the
open door and walked over to the receptionist, a seventeen-year-old girl with a
jaunty chin, an olive complexion, and bright red hair. Grayson knew her name:
Ellen Mewes. She was an intern at MKHQ in her final year at Soame, hoping to go
on to a military career. He also knew that under the desk, within easy reach of
each of Ellen’s hands, there were two cast stones. One of the stones would
sound the alarm, and no doubt bring a horde of soldiers, and maybe even a few
knights, from a waiting guard room. The other stone, which she would activate
second, would immobilize everybody in the room for twenty minutes. It comforted
Grayson a little to think that he knew more about this girl than she would know
about him.
She was reading the morning Ledger, barely paying attention
to the entrance. Stifling a grimace, Grayson coughed to draw attention to
himself.
Ellen finished her paragraph and looked up. “You’re not a
knight,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“You don’t usually come in here.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I know everybody that works for the knights. At
least, she knows,” Ellen said, gesturing to a rotating stone
on the counter behind her. “And she doesn’t know you. For whom are you
looking?”
“I have an appointment to see Lady Zia Locke,” Grayson said.
“That’s not what…” Ellen began. Her eyes widened and she
began shuffling through the newspaper. She threw the local, rural, military,
foreign, and sports sections on the floor before finding a piece of pink sticky
paper. “What’s your name?” she asked, holding the paper close to her chest.
“Grayson Kearney.”
“ID?”
Grayson sighed, then pulled his actual passport
from his pocket, turned to the page with his picture, and handed it to the
girl.
“Say your name two more times, please.”
This would set his name and face perfectly into the public
register for as long as he lived. Everyone with an identification system in
place would be able to recognize his face. He was officially killing his
anonymity in government buildings, at least when he wasn’t disguised on many
levels. His stomach lurched.
“Grayson Kearney. Grayson Kearney.” It was done.
“Around the hall on your left, take the lift up to the fifth
floor. Her office is on the left when you get out.”
“Thank you,” Grayson said and started off down the hall.
“Welcome to MKHQ, Mr. Kearney,” she shouted after him.
After he was hired, he could have snuck in to the office on
days when he needed to be here. Nobody on Zia’s team would have been wise to
it. They were expecting him to come. So why bother? Was it really worth it so
that they could follow him one day, as he knew Zia would send someone to do? If
they found out, he could explain that it was easier for him to work this way.
They wouldn’t have been able to pay him if he wasn’t registered, but he didn’t
really need the money. What he’d be making here was a pittance compared to what
his operations across the continent brought in.
When it came down to it, Grayson had given up his name
because he needed something less quantifiable. He was in Zia’s employ, and to
an extent she wanted things done by the book. He would get his leeway, he knew,
but if he wanted Zia to ever trust him, there were some lines he simply could
not cross. Small as it may seem, registering at the front desk was most likely
one of them.
Just before the fifth bell, Grayson felt the lift slowing
and focused his attention on the situation at hand, rather than decisions made
in the past. The doors opened and revealed a grey tiled floor and boring white
walls with blue patterns, scarcely more artistic than lines twisting about each
other in a short, pathetic dance every couple of feet. The upper stories had
wood-paneling and great works of art hung so close together it was nearly
wallpaper, but new knights had to rough it out for a while before they earned
the luxuries associated with seniority.
The working life. It wasn’t anything Grayson had ever
experienced as himself. There had been many times where it was necessary to
work his way into an organization, but even then he wouldn’t go all the time.
Cella, Madi, and he would switch off the disguises so they would all be able to
see every part of the operation, no matter which was actually their own. That
could be arranged now, but with so many powerful magi about, someone might
notice if Cella or Madi came in disguised as Grayson. He could never ask them
to register and give up their identities as he had done. They’d have to work
from the outside, this time.
Grayson paused, just down the hall from the open door to Zia
Locke’s office suite. The knot in his stomach would be comical if it didn’t
make him so nauseous. From the minute he walked through that door, he would no
longer be in complete control of everything that occurred. Grayson had been
careful in choosing Zia, but the fact was that he needed her help as much as
she needed his. Her actions would be crucial in what was to come.
I
am pleased to have Michael McDuffee the author of City of Magi with me
today.
**Please tell us
a little bit about yourself. Where do you live, etc.? When did you start
writing?
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, though in the past I’ve
lived all over the United States. I grew up in Raleigh, NC, then moved to
Philadelphia, then to Seattle, back to Raleigh, to D.C., and eventually out to
the Bay. My wife and I have always struggled with what is often referred to the
Two Body Problem in academia, but it applies equally well to two people trying
to synchronize careers in the same city (although unlike in academia, you can’t
get your employer to hire your spouse).
I started writing back in college, though it’s
hard for me to remember what originally spurred me to do so. It was another
four years before I finally put together something that I knew was worth
publishing. Four other manuscripts had to be put to rest before that fifth one
really started to shine, but over time the practice started to pay off.
**Tell us a
little about the book and where did you get the idea to write this story.
City of Magi
actually was that first book, though I published quite a bit between when I
started it and when it finally came out. It was actually inspired by an old
video game that I played some fourteen years ago. The game was old when I
picked it up – Suikoden
3. One of the main characters was a female knight named Chris. I really got to
thinking about the world that they had in the game, most of which wasn’t
particularly compelling, and about the presence of a female knight. In most
archaic stories, the forces of sexism usually prevent women from being heroes
in the traditional sense, and I started to wonder how the world would have to
be different for that not to be the case. That was how Zia Locke, the heroine
of City of Magi, was born. The world of City of Magi and the world of Suikoden
are nothing alike, but Lady Chris was the inspiration for my Lady Locke. The
rest of the story sprang up around that singular character and the world that
was needed to create her.
What’s the best and worst part of being a
writer?
The best part is simply getting lost in a world of your own
design. Weaving together stories is incredibly satisfying, and when you have
the opportunity to share them with others, it’s
an amazing feeling. The worst part is (for me) the business side of writing. I
like how authors today now have the ability to take control of all the parts of
getting their work in front of the world, but that can also be tiring. I’ve
found that blogging, doing publicity tours, getting cover art, and other things
of that nature, are very taxing on my ability to actually get words on the
page.
What is your writing schedule like?
It used to be much more sporadic, but I’ve
been on a stride ever since I committed myself to writing 1000 words every day,
no excuses. As of my answering this interview, I’ve
been on a 68 day streak, during which I’ve written 95,546 words and completed
two books (both were started before I began the 1000-a-day streak). I suspect
that I’m going to have to take a break soon
to go back to editing, as I now have three completed books, two of which have
already come back from my editor, and it’s time to get those out.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Keep writing, even if what you put together is bad. Especially
if it is bad. I had to write badly before I could write well. Keep writing
until you lose interest in each story, which is a great signal that the story
is dead. Don’t be afraid to put a manuscript to
rest and never come back to it. The next one will be better, as will the next
one after that, and the one after that.
What route did you take for publication?
I’m all Indie. Making that decision was
actually a long time coming, but I’m happy with the direction I’ve
gone in publishing. I wrote a blog post about it a while back at http://bit.ly/indiepost.
There’s a lot to think about in choosing
your direction, but the biggest one is time. I simply don’t
want to wait months and months to see if perhaps someone would take a chance. I
went down that road for a while, and the worst part wasn’t
needing thick skin from rejections—it was how long you’d
spend to find out nothing.
Do you write full time or work outside of the home?
I have a day job that keeps me interested and pays the
bills much better than writing. It’s still a creative endeavor, but
instead of designing stories and worlds, I write applications that go on
billions of people’s phones worldwide.
How do you balance writing and everyday life?
By forcing writing to happen first. My 1000 words are
always the first thing I do, before work. If I wait until I get home, those are
the days where I almost miss my targets. After work, I just want to relax with
my wife. I can read then, but never write.
A lot of people think that genre hopping isn’t
a good idea. What do you think?
I think you should write the stories you want to write and
not worry about whether or not you’re in the right genre. City of
Magi and my short series Those Who Die Young are both fantasy
novels, but my upcoming release Time and Time Again is hard sci fi, and
the next two books—the sequel to City of Magi,
titled Magi Revolution, and an unrelated novel titled Fix—alternate
genres as well. If you don’t like science fiction or don’t
like fantasy, I won’t be offended if you skip a book or
two.
Anything unusual you had to do for research on this book?
Not for City of Magi, but for another recently
completed novel, Fix, I had to do a lot of research about how people use
drugs—one of the characters is an addict.
This probably gave me the most terrifying search history ever and landed me on
a few FBI watch lists, but on the plus side I have pointers about how to inject
horrible things into your body and what you’re
most likely to die from when you do.
What is next? Any new titles we should be looking for?
City of Magi’s
sequel, Magi Revolution, is back from my editor and ready to be revised.
I plan to get that out in the next few months, particularly since I now have
three complete manuscripts and really need to get to work converting them to
published novels. I also have a series of short stories that are prequels in
the City of Magi universe that I’m going to release online (for free).
Following those, I’m very excited about the upcoming
release of my first hard science fiction novel Time and Time Again. All
of those will be available in the first half of this year. Fix will
probably wait until the fall.
Michael McDuffee is a science fiction and fantasy author
from Raleigh, North Carolina. He moved around the United States long after his
formative years and spent time in Philadelphia, Seattle, and DC, before moving
to the San Francisco Bay Area. His first series, Those Who Die Young, was
designed and conceived to be published exclusively in online platforms, utilizing
the freedom of the new distribution network to explore a story that would never
have been possible before, the long-form serial. His first feature novel, City of Magi, is a fantasy
adventure set in a magically-powered industrial society. Get it exclusively on
Kindle now!
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