Graham Austin-King was born in the south of England and weaned on broken swords and half-forgotten spells. A shortage of these forced him to consume fantasy novels at an ever-increasing rate, turning to computers and tabletop gaming between meals. He experimented with writing at the beginning of an education that meandered through journalism, international relations, and law. To this day he is committed to never allowing those first efforts to reach public eyes.
Graham is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for the re-release of his first series, the Riven Wyrde Saga. You can get all kinds of awesome things if you back this project, so go and take a look at it!
If you HAD to choose between having your consciousness transferred into a computer and living forever as machine, or having the power of a god but only living for one hour (and no magic secret ways out of it) which would you choose?
I don’t know, living forever as a machine doesn’t really appeal to me. I don’t have such an interesting life anyway. I’d go with the power of a god for an hour, if I can choose when I want to use that hour. I’m still too young. I might still have a chance to get something out of this life. Who knows?
If you had to pick one author to give a publishing contract to, who would it be and why?
I see you are not going to make this Questioning easy for me *sigh* This past 1,5 years I’ve got to know several crazy talented authors who would deserve a publishing contract. It’s not much of a secret that I’m a huge fan of Benedict Patrick myself, and I’d like to see the Yarnsworld series to get a wider audience. But I also loved Lore of Prometheus too last year and I think that would appeal to readers as well.
What’s the most annoying thing about blogging?
Ugh, I totally shouldn’t answer this question in my current mood, but here it comes. As with pretty much everything else, your popularity as a blogger comes down to luck, the people you know and your personality. In order to get your voice heard, you have to work your way up to popularity. I probably don’t have to go into details how much work and dedication that takes. What I find annoying though, is that some times no matter how hard you try to be heard, to get something out for people to see, it receives next to nothing attention. No matter how good that material is, or how much you (or someone else) worked on it, how hard you tried to make a buzzing, it means nothing. I like to experience with stuff, to come up with new things outside of the usual – review, interview, “conversional” posts most bloggers do – but they not always work. Hell, the things I’m sure will work and get a lot of attention, usually don’t. And that can be frustrating, so there are times when I just sit down to consider whether I should going on or not. Apparently, my standards and ideas about what should appear on a blog that would make it appealing, is not always what people want to see. I think I still have a long way to go.
Which character from a book would you most like to meet?
Tippy from The Imaginary Corpse by Tyler Hayes. Who the hell wouldn’t want to meet a yellow plush triceratops PI, who is unbearably cute?? Seriously, just read my interview with him.
If The Asylum was a real place for fictional characters made flesh, which ones would you lock up?
Hmm, how about Umbridge from the Harry Potter series? Or this would be too kind for her?
Probably the interesting ones – those that are intelligent, but still a bit crazy. Sure, I would lock up some feral monsters just to get rid of them, but those wouldn’t be entertaining. I would go for people like Jorg Ancrath or Jalan Kendeth or the Magpie King or Cassandra from Devin Madson‘s We Lie With Death. Characters that has some issues that makes them dangerous, instable and a bit of a psycho actually. I’d like to study them, to figure out what makes them who they are – genetics, environment, life choices. I’m fascinated with stuff like that. But then I would let some nice guys in too, just to have balance and a few sane people to keep things cool.
What would it take to bribe you to let them out?
Hah, I’m not that easy to bribe.
Coffee or Tea?
Tea. I’m not a coffee person. I don’t read tea much either, but I would definitely pick that.
Scratch that… pangalactic gargle blaster, or metheglin?
I… never heard about these (yes, I know, shame on me), but thank fuck for Google. Honestly, I don’t drink alcohol in any form, so I think I would go back to the tea option, if you don’t mind.
Can you name the books those drinks come from?
Well, I just confessed I had to look them up, so no… you won’t have to take away my Fantasy fan badge, right? But for those not in the knowing either: pangalactic gargle blaster is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and metheglin is from Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss if I’m not mistaken.
What’s your biggest blogger fail?
First, I’m offended. I’ll let you know that I’m a perfect blogger, and never failed at anything. Just so you know.
But if I was pressed to say something, I’d say my biggest fail is that I started to take blogging more seriously than I should have. I pour an insane amount of time into maintaining it, so of course when things aren’t going as I’d like them to go, I get frustrated and think of giving up. Some days it feels more like work than joy, because I put too much pressure on myself. I don’t know of many more blogs (except big blogs, of course) that put out 4-5 posts a week. I’ve been keeping this up for over a year now, and when I really think about it, I just question my own sanity.
If you’d like to get in contact with Graham Austin-King, you can find him on social media:
I strongly recommend checking The Lore of Prometheus out (here is my review), as well as Graham’s Faithless series. But what I offer you today is his Kickstarter page for the Riven Wyrde Saga re-release. Go and take a look at all the goodies you can get your hands on!
Alternatively, you can take a closer look at each book by clicking on buttons, which will take you to their Amazon pages.
Keep up the good work Timy! We all know the struggle and you’re doing great.
Thanks Jason! <3