Fantasy-Hive

Main Menu

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Interviews
    • Author Spotlight
    • By Author Surname
  • Book Reviews
    • Latest
    • Hive Reads
    • Self-Published
    • By Author Surname
  • Writing
    • Write of Way
    • Worldbuilding By The Numbers
  • Features and Content
    • Ask the Wizard
    • BookTube
    • Busy Little Bees Book Reviews
    • Cover Reveals
    • Cruising the Cosmere
    • Excerpts
    • News and Announcements
    • Original Fiction
      • Four-Part Fiction
    • SPFBO
    • The Unseen Academic
    • Tough Travelling
    • Women In SFF
    • Wyrd & Wonder
  • FAQ

logo

Fantasy-Hive

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Interviews
    • Author Spotlight
    • By Author Surname
  • Book Reviews
    • Latest
    • Hive Reads
    • Self-Published
    • By Author Surname
  • Writing
    • Write of Way
    • Worldbuilding By The Numbers
  • Features and Content
    • Ask the Wizard
    • BookTube
    • Busy Little Bees Book Reviews
    • Cover Reveals
    • Cruising the Cosmere
    • Excerpts
    • News and Announcements
    • Original Fiction
      • Four-Part Fiction
    • SPFBO
    • The Unseen Academic
    • Tough Travelling
    • Women In SFF
    • Wyrd & Wonder
  • FAQ
Author SpotlightInterviews
Home›Features›Author Spotlight›Author Spotlight: A.Z. Anthony

Author Spotlight: A.Z. Anthony

By The Fantasy Hive
April 11, 2018
2800
0

A.Z. AnthonyJoining us for today’s Author Spotlight is A.Z. Anthony!

A.Z. Anthony is best known for his genre-warping fiction whose popularity commonly crashes global markets. Also, his humility.

More realistically, he is the author of several award-winning short stories. His debut novel, “Servant of Rage,” is out now. He’s also hard at work on an additional standalone novel, the two sequels to “Servant of Rage,” and is a contributor at The Fantasy Hive.

Though his family hails from Cyprus, he was born a Jimmy Buffet-loving, sweet tea-drinking, scuba diving Floridian. He currently lives in eastern Massachusetts, but hopes to end up south of the Mason-Dixon soon.

You can learn more at Azanthony.com.

Thanks for joining us today, A.Z. Let’s start small: tell us about a great book you’ve read recently!

A great book, huh? Hold up. I’m going to my bookshelf. One moment.

…

Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension) by Andrew RoweOkay. I’m a picky one, so this was a tough question. Andrew Rowe’s Sufficiently Advanced Magic was a book I very much enjoyed recently. I found the world quite unique and the magic system a lot of fun. The best part was the Serpent’s Spire, however. I want more of that delicious, deadly, trap-filled, adventure tower! It’s like American Ninja Warrior in a book, and with magic. Oh, and monsters trying to kill you.

That sounds great! Okay, time to escalate things: reality warps and you suddenly find yourself leading a D&D-style party through a monster-infested dungeon. What character class are you, and what’s your weapon of choice?

Healer, definitely. There’s a decided lack of healing magic in the stories I write (largely because I think it lessens consequences) but I’ve always been the healer of the group. From MMOs to FPSs to D&D, I’m the guy with the heals. Go ahead, jump off that cliff. I gotchu. As to weapon? A mace, I think. All those years of baseball have to pay off sooner or later…

When you’re not trawling through dungeons, do you prefer to type or to hand-write? Why?

Type, absolutely. The romanticism of handwriting is nice. And it makes for a wonderful aesthetic on Instagram, but damned if it isn’t slow. I usually type around 600-1,000 words per hour and there’s no way I could do that on paper.

And how do you like to work – in silence, with music, or serenaded by the damned souls of a thousand dead shrimps?

There’s a running joke in my family about how little I enjoy shrimp and how often my mom wants me to try them to see if I’ll like them more this time. So not shrimp. Definitely not shrimp. I’d have to say music, though it has to be specific music. Lyrics tend to throw me off my writing groove. My go-to playlists include movie and television show soundtracks like Pirates of the Caribbean or Outlander, and techno (are we still calling it techno?) like The Glitch Mob and Dance with the Dead. Sometimes, though, you gotta dip into a bit of head-banging rock. Volbeat and Five Finger Death Punch fill that void wonderfully for me.

Are you an architect or a gardener? A plotter or a pantser? D’you write in your underwear, or in a deep-sea diver’s suit? Tell us something unusual about your writing method!

I’ve been both a plotter and pantser at different points. Now I’m not sure where I fall. Somewhere in between? As to something unusual about my method, I had to ask my fiancée on this one. In my own head I think I’m a totally normal human being when it comes to writing (aren’t we all?). She reminded me, however, that I work out while I write. Not in between keystrokes, but every forty-five minutes to an hour I bang out a quick routine. I find it helps the creativity flow to step away from the keyboard briefly.

What was the last thing you watched on TV and why did you choose to watch it?

The entire Harry Potter collection is on HBO Go right now and my fiancée and I are working our way through that. Aside from the movies being the classics that they are, I find they do a standout job of conveying a sense of wonder. That’s something I’m working on in my own writing, so I’m low key taking notes as we watch.

Harry Potter is always a huge win! A.Z., the world shifts, and you find yourself with an extra day on your hands during which you’re not allowed to write or otherwise do any work. How do you choose to spend the day?

Video games, my friend. Lots and lots of video games. I thrive on competition. Bit of a humble brag here, but my best friend and I are in the top 3% of players in the world for Rocket League duos. Some have said if I played less video games I might get more writing done, but they clearly don’t know what they’re talking about.

Clearly…

If you could choose one punctuation mark to be made illegal, which would it be and why?

Semi-colons. Seriously. Does anyone actually understand them? You can’t trust those slippery devils. Soon as you think you know how they work the definition seems to pivot and suddenly you’re left with a horde of editors chasing you, red pens and torches in hand.

Servant of Rage (Bloodrage) by A.Z. AnthonyIn no more than three sentences, tell us a little something about your current work in progress!

Well I’m obviously working on the sequel to Servant of Rage, but I do have a background project I’m in love with:

“Senesio Suleiman Zhao doesn’t want much, just wealth beyond measure, fame beyond reason, and maybe a small kingdom somewhere warm. His latest adventure – conning his way onto an expedition to the remote jungles of the far wild – seems the perfect opportunity. But as Senesio and company soon learn, the monsters that stalk the far wild are the least of the expedition’s concerns.”

This sounds fantastic! If you could co-write or co-create a series (like The Expanse, or the Malazan Book of the Fallen), who would you choose to work with and why?

My good friend Graeme Penman, for sure. He’s a master of creating unique worlds, fascinating characters, and he understands writing on an otherworldly level. Collaborating with him would require dragging him into contact with another human more than twice a week, however, which he and his award-winning beard are known to despise.

What’s the most (and/or least) helpful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

Write every day. Look, I know it works for some people, and I’m fully capable of writing every day, but I hate the pressure of it. If I approach writing with the mindset of “I have to write today” it becomes a chore. I’d rather think “I get to write today,” which makes it a hell of a lot more fun. And I find that if you’re having fun writing it, the readers are probably having fun reading it.

That’s such a great outlook! *makes notes*

If you could visit any country at any point in history, where/when would you go, and why?

Assuming I don’t have to worry about dying? East Asia during the rise of the Mongol empire. Assuming I most certainly have to worry about dying? The Biltmore during the height of its use. Or Victorian England, perhaps. I’ve heard they had some good poets back then.

Not so great hygiene, though… in fact, visiting Victorian London might be as deadly as visiting the Mongol empire.

Every writer encounters stumbling blocks, be it a difficult chapter, challenging subject matter or just starting a new project. How do you motivate yourself on days when you don’t want to write?

Quit and play video games. Okay, that’s only half the time. The rest of the time I tell myself to suck it up and write. I find that once I get into the writing it becomes easier. Rather than waste time saying “I’m stuck and can’t write,” I’d rather bang my head against the proverbial wall trying and hope something good comes out. Something more than blood, at least.

Jurassic Park by Michael CrichtonAgain, great advice! A.Z., tell us about a book that’s excellent, but underappreciated or obscure.

Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Okay, it’s a Crichton book so it’s not that underappreciated. But so many people I know love the movie and have never enjoyed the book. It’s a whole new adventure with all of the fun of the movie, but taken to another level. I know, I know, every book is better than the movie, but this one is something different. It’s really that much better.

Finally, would you be so kind as to dazzle us with what we like to call a ‘shark elevator pitch’? (It’s exactly the same as an elevator pitch, but with sharks.) (Well, one shark. Which, by the way, is currently picking between its rows of teeth to try and dislodge the remains of the last author who stepped onto its elevator.)

Ahem. So: why should readers check out your work? A shark elevator pitch of your own book(s) in no more than three sentences – go!

Considering Servant of Rage just released, I’ll stick to that:

“When the khan’s fiercest headhunters, brothers Subei and Bataar, are struck by lightning from a freak storm, they awake to find unnatural powers growing inside them. And they’re not alone – all across the land other “heirs of the ancestors” have been similarly blessed. To kill an heir is to consume their power, but as the brothers’ power grows, so to does a primal, uncontrollable madness within.”

Brilliant. Thanks again for joining us, A.Z.!

A.Z. Anthony is the author of Servant of Rage, which is available now.

Servant of Rage (Bloodrage) by A.Z. Anthony

TagsA.Z. AnthonyAuthor InterviewsAuthor SpotlightBloodrageServant of Rage

The Fantasy Hive

The Fantasy Hive is a collaborative site. We just want to celebrate fantasy - and to have fun while we're doing it! Our official tagline – ‘Fantasy, together’ – embodies our goal: to unify fans of SFF through shared enthusiasm and appreciation of the genre. You can also find us doing this on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @thefantasyhive. The Hive officially launched on January 1st, 2018. Plans for world domination are yet to be realised.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

Welcome

Welcome to The Fantasy Hive

We’re a collaborative review site run by volunteers who love Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, and everything in-between.

On our site, you can find not only book reviews but author interviews, cover reveals, excerpts from books, acquisition announcements, guest posts by your favourite authors, and so much more.

Have fun exploring…

The Fantasy Hive Team

Visit our shop

Features

Support the Site

Books by A.Z. Anthony/Alex Knight

Books by A.Z. Anthony/Alex Knight

Jeramy’s Books

The Akallian Tales by Jeramy Goble

More from Jonathan

  • Ballad of Black Tom (Feature) The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle posted on December 6, 2017
  • Book of the New Sun (Feature) The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe posted on November 13, 2017
  • 13 Minutes (Feature) 13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough posted on December 6, 2017
  • Paper Menagerie (Feature) The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu posted on December 6, 2017
  • Interview with Steven Erikson posted on November 1, 2018
  • Hex (Feature) HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt posted on November 15, 2017
  • Fifth Season (Feature) The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin posted on November 14, 2017
  • Binti (Feature) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor posted on November 18, 2017
  • THE DOLORIAD by Missouri Williams (BOOK REVIEW) posted on March 3, 2022
  • MORDEW by Alex Pheby (Book Review) posted on August 6, 2020

Laura’s Books

Books by Laura M. Hughes

More from Laura

  • Malazan Characters: Bridgeburners by Shadaan (Feature) A Beginner’s Guide to Malazan Characters: ‘Gardens of the Moon’ posted 6 years ago
  • The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne 5 Reasons to Read ‘The Faithful and the Fallen’ posted 6 years ago
  • The Killing Moon (Feature) The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin posted 6 years ago
  • Ruin (Feature) Ruin by John Gwynne posted 6 years ago
  • Malazan Characters 2 (Feature) A Beginner’s Guide to Malazan Characters: ‘Deadhouse Gates’ posted 6 years ago
  • Prince of Fools (Feature) Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence posted 6 years ago
  • John Dies at the End (Feature) John Dies at the End by David Wong posted 6 years ago
  • Larcout (Feature) Larcout by K. A. Krantz posted 6 years ago
  • Slow Regard of Silent Things (Feature) The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss posted 6 years ago
  • The Emperor's Blades (Feature) The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley posted 6 years ago