Over 300 Readers (and counting) Love Im Zwiefel für das Monster


Für Freunde skurriler Geschichten à la Christopher Moore genau das richtige… mit einer Prise Magie, “übernatürlichem Scheiß” und Anwaltsleben gepaart.

Die Leser lieben Im Zwiefel für das Monster! Über 300 (Tendenz zählende) Zuhörer und Leser haben diese Geschichte bereits hoch gelobt!

Just the right thing for fans of bizarre stories à la Christopher Moore… paired with a pinch of magic, “supernatural shit” and legal life.

Readers are loving Im Zwiefel für das Monster! Over 300 (and counting) listeners and readers have already shared their high praise for this story!

ANDREWELTEN LIVE – Countdown to Halloween

1666909415

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

LitLounge.tv Live Stream Event

20:30 Uhr | Watch the Online Event Live HERE; LitLounge.tv

Im Zweifel für das Monster | Echo

Royce Buckingham, Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Rachsüchtige Berggeister und kriminelle Monster – bei diesen Romanen schalten Sie beim lesen besser das Licht ein!

Moderation: Björn Springorum

Die Fantasy-Verlage der Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe bringen bekannte Autor*innen im Livestream zu euch nach Hause – und ihr könnt live eure Fragen stellen.

Rachsüchtige Berggeister und kriminelle Monster – bei diesen Romanen schalten Sie beim Lesen besser das Licht ein! 

Halloween steht vor der Tür, die Zeit der Hexen, Geister und Ungeheuer. Mit diesen Gestalten kennt sich der niederländische Horrorautor Thomas Olde Heuvelt bestens aus. Für sein Debüt »Hex« wurde er von Stephen King geadelt, in seinem neuen Buch »Echo« entführt er uns in die Schweizer Alpen, wo ein uralter Berggeist zum Leben erwacht.

Der amerikanische Bestsellerautor Royce Buckingham dagegen nähert sich den Ungeheuern in seinem gerade jüngsten Roman »Im Zweifel für das Monster« von der humorvollen Seite. Erlebt die beiden Schriftsteller im Gespräch miteinander und erfahrt alles über die vielen Facetten des literarischen Gruselns. 

Wie immer könnt ihr uns eure Fragen im Chat schicken. 


Super excited to be doing this in Munich, Germany…from my publisher’s offices!

#OtherWorldsLive – The Halloween Countdown

8:30 p.m. | online event on LitLounge.tv

When In Doubt For The Monster | Echo

Royce Buckingham, Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Vengeful mountain spirits and criminal monsters – you’d better turn on the lights while reading these novels!

Moderator: Björn Springorum

The fantasy publishers of the Penguin Random House publishing group bring well-known authors to your home in a live stream – and you can ask your questions live.

Vengeful mountain spirits and criminal monsters – you’d better turn on the lights while reading these novels! 

Halloween is just around the corner, the time of witches, ghosts and monsters. Dutch horror author Thomas Olde Heuvelt is very familiar with these characters. He was ennobled by Stephen King for his debut »Hex«, and in his new book »Echo« he takes us to the Swiss Alps, where an ancient mountain spirit comes to life. 

The American bestselling author Royce Buckingham, on the other hand, approaches the monsters from the humorous side in his most recent novel »In Doubt for the Monster (Monster Lawyer)«. Experience the two writers in conversation with each other and learn everything about the many facets of literary horror. 

As always, you can send us your questions in the chat. 

Back to Urban Fantasy

After publishing several medieval fantasy books–five to be exact–I decided to return to urban fantasy, the genre of my very first novel, Demonkeeper / Damliche Damonen. And now I’m celebrating the German release* of my new novel, Im Zweifel für das Monster (Monster Lawyer).

So why write an urban fantasy about a lawyer representing monsters? First of all, urban fantasy is awesome! How fun and scary is it to imagine modern-day monsters among us? Answer: very fun and very scary. Also, writing Im Zweifel für das Monster as an urban fantasy was a natural fit for me—an organic choice. Im Zweifel is a marriage of two passions in my life—I’m an adult lawyer, and I have loved monsters since I was a little boy. There is nothing more “urban” than the law—modern civilizations are built upon it—and monsters are inherently fantastical, and so the natural habitat for a lawyer/monster story is indeed urban fantasy.



Key Seattle Sites in Im Zweifel für das Monster / Im Zweifel für das Monster Cover

A Q&A with my Publisher

Auszüge aus Fragen und Antworten mit meinem Verlag

After several medieval fantasy novels, why did you decide to write urban fantasy?

When I wrote my first novel, Demonkeeper (Dämliche Dämonen), nearly twenty years ago, I was a criminal prosecutor in juvenile court. I loved monsters and fantasy, and the young criminal defendants I was seeing in the courtroom were very real and had hard, gritty lives. So I created young fictional characters and put them in a real-life setting (Seattle), and then used monsters to represent the turmoil and perils of a hard life. It felt perfect for urban fantasy.

Now things have come full circle in my writing career, and I’ve returned to urban fantasy. Crazy as it sounds, the original young fans of Demonkeeper have all grown up! And because I’m writing adult novels, Monster Lawyer (Im Zweifel für das Monster) can be genuinely horrifying, and it is! It’s also serious and fun at the same time. Like Demonkeeper, there are societal themes to give Monster Lawyer depth, but I still weave in humor whenever I can because…well, I’m me.

Warum hast du dich nach mehreren High-Fantasy-Romanen entschieden, Urban Fantasy zu schreiben?

Vor fast zwanzig Jahren schrieb ich mit Dämliche Dämonen meinen ersten Roman. Es war recht junger Urban-Fantasy-Roman, und jetzt bin ich zu meinen Ursprüngen zurückgekehrt, denn so verrückt es klingt: die ursprünglichen jungen Fans der Dämlichen Dämonensind erwachsen geworden! Diese Geschichte ist für sie. Und weil ich jetzt Romane für Erwachsene schreibe, ist Im Zweifel für das Monster wirklich gruselig! Aber ich webe immer noch Humor ein, wann immer ich kann, weil… nun ja … ich ich bin.

Demonkeeper has a lot of humor. How is this with Monster Lawyer?

The fact that Demonkeeper was both spooky and funny is a product of my personality. I like to see the humor in things, even if those things have a dark side. I think it’s good to laugh when addressing death in particular; it helps us deal with our mortality.

It’s the same with Monster Lawyer. The idea of a lawyer representing monsters strikes me as hilarious, and the situations that arise when Daniel Becker represents monsters in legal cases are delightfully ludicrous. But the idea of representing a monster has a very serious side too. I work with lawyers who represent real-life murderers, and their representation of killers can be seen as an analogy to representing “monsters.” This serious underlying theme lends Monster Lawyer depth and makes Daniel’s character arc extremely interesting, especially because of his painful childhood relationship with the monster he’s asked to defend as a grown-up. No more spoilers, but I can tell you that Monster Lawyer is funny and sad and serious and raises lots of ethical questions. It’s truly an adult take on monstrous urban fantasy, but with plenty of immature humor to make it fun too. I hope!

Additionally, writing Monster Lawyer was a real experiment for me in mixing humor and horror. One thing I learned is that the tone of the tale can be “spooky” and funny—those two moods can coexist—but when real “horror” arrives, the humor flees the page, goes into hiding, and doesn’t come back until it’s safe—usually not until the next chapter.

Dämliche Dämonen hat eine Menge Humor. Wie ist das bei Im Zweifel für das Monster?

Die Vorstellung, dass ein Anwalt Monster vertritt, finde ich urkomisch, und die Situationen, die entstehen, wenn Daniel Becker Monster in Rechtsfällen vertritt, sind herrlich lächerlich. Aber ich habe auch gelernt, dass der Ton der Geschichte gruselig und lustig sein kann – diese beiden Stimmungen können nebeneinander bestehen –, aber wenn echter Horror auftaucht, flieht der Humor, versteckt sich und kommt erst zurück, wenn er sicher ist – normalerweise nicht vor dem nächsten Kapitel.

Most authors choose a Private Investigator or a Cop as their hero in Urban Fantasy, but you chose a lawyer. Why?

Well, yes, I am a lawyer, and it is good for me to write what I know. It gives me an interesting and genuine perspective to share, and I can create scenes for my readers that are not cliché or overused. It’s true that many stories use a cop to generate situations for action on the streets, and an attorney is more of an analyst in an office. As a prosecutor I’ve never chased criminals down dark alleys. But the real-life drama of a courtroom is incredible. I’ve tried burglaries, rapes, homicides, you name it. Serious stuff. I handled a home-invasion stabbing where one of the five defendants received a sentence of life without parole. Trying a case in front of a judge and jury and waiting during those tense moments for the verdict to be announced is a heart-pounding, emotionally exhausting experience. Now imagine you’re trying a case with monsters and, if you lose, the penalty is that you get eaten. You get the picture.

Of course, Monster Lawyer’s lawyer-protagonist, Daniel Becker, also goes into the field to track down evidence, and he has a supernatural investigator to help out, so we get plenty of on-the-scene action throughout this particular story.

By the way, lawyers are a natural fit for fantasy. They are experts on rules, and well-developed fantasy worlds have well-defined rules. So do monsters. Vampires have rules—they drink blood, sunburn easily, and only die when you shove a wooden stake through their hearts. Werewolves have rules—full moon transformations, bites that cause lycanthropy, and getting shot with silver bullets really sucks for them. As I like to say, fantasy worlds and monsters have immutable laws, and where there are laws there are lawyers.

Die meisten Autoren wählen einen Privatdetektiv oder Polizisten als ihren Helden in der Urban Fantasy, aber Sie haben sich für einen Anwalt entschieden. Warum?

Nun ja, ich bin Anwalt, und ich schreibe gerne darüber, was ich kenne. So kann ich eine authentische Perspektive vermitteln und dennoch Klischees vermeiden. Im Gegensatz zu Daniel Becker, dem Helden von Im Zweifel für das Monster, habe ich aber noch nie Verbrecher durch dunkle Gassen gejagt. Reale Anwälte sind ja eher die Analytiker im Büro. Aber Daniels Fall ist von der Art, dass man keine offizielle Unterstützung anfordern kann. Also muss er die Action-Szenen selbst durchstehen.

Introducing an epic new world for German fantasy fans!

Die Klinge des Waldes comes out today! German readers, you can now explore my biggest fantasy novel yet. More adventure, more world-building, more vivid characters, and more fantastic locations to explore than you can shake a sword at.

Special thanks to my publisher for offering this cool contest for my fans
Click HERE to learn about it in German.

And click HERE to translate the contest page into English – even though the book isn’t available in the US yet, it’s still fun to share what’s happening overseas!

© Illustrator Max Meinzold, Munich

Check out this Q&A with me about the fun of
writing medieval fantasy: in German / in English.

Take the Die Klinge des Waldes Personality Quiz to find out
which district in the City of Filth you would live in. Click HERE.

 

 

 

 

Royce Writes: The School Visit

I am looking forward to an upcoming school visit with students at Edmund J. O’Neal Middle School in Albany, NY next month, but I won’t be traveling there to do it.

Their wonderful librarian, Kimberly Bramfeld, noticed I offer free Skype sessions. Skype is a brilliant and convenient way for me to connect with readers and for schools to give students the experience of meeting a real, live author. Well, virtually live.

I’ve had years of public speaking experience and adapt my presentations to fit any audience – whether in-person, on Skype, or at professional conferences.

To make it the best experience possible, I strongly advise teachers/librarians to prepare their students by having them read, or listen to, the book that is the subject of the visit. In this case, it’s The Dead Boys .

Interested in scheduling an appearance? Please email me via my website’s Contact tab. 

Where would you live in the City of Filth?

My new novel, Die Klinge des Waldes, Blanvalet-Germany, is set in the City of Filth which has 35 districts with very distinct personalities. Take the personality quiz to find out which district is yours!

Click on the image below to get started.

City of Filth
© Andreas Hancock, Bielefeld

BOOK COVER!

My latest novel officially has a face. And what a pretty face…

Release date November 19, 2018 in Germany.

More details here

Die Klinge des Waldes von Royce Buckingham

The Blade of the Forest

As a naïve princess she was cast out, as a strong self-confident woman she returns.

As heir to the throne of the forest kingdom of Strata, Flora and her older sister Amora lead a sheltered life. But then, out of love for her sister, Flora makes a fatal decision, with dire consequences. She is banished by her own father and is suddenly confronted with the real world outside the palace. Betrayed by her last confidant, Flora is close to death and finally on her own. But she is not ready to give up. Flora fights and survives. The naive girl becomes a strong young woman ready to fight to save the one she loves …

My lifelong friend’s book is coming out!

My dear, dear German friend Alexis’ first book is coming out. She writes fantasy books, like me!

Her debut novel, The Deathbringer, will hit German bookshelves in March/April of 2018.

The Deathbringer is the tender story of a princess…who becomes an assassin. Yeah!

She kicks ass. The book kicks ass. Everyone kicks ass! Including my publisher, who hired Alexis on my recommendation. I hope fans are as into her work as I am.

The rights will be shopped in the US soon (when the time is right).

Until then, good luck Alexis!

The Mapper Series on Paper

Formatting books for print is not for the faint of heart when the author focus is writing stories. It took a few months and some hair pulling. Today we celebrate with all six books in the Mapper Series available for U.S. readers in both print and Ebooks! For some back story, the series did phenomenally well in Germany when Book I: Die Karte Der Welt, hit the bestseller list. Book Two: Der Wille Des Konigs was a prequel to the first and then Book Three: Die Rubinrote Konigin followed. Learn more about the series here.

For the U.S., we decided to re-order the books  and break them down from three 700-pagers to six smaller books. We are incredibly pleased with the results. Self-publishing does have its perks.

 

 

Spark Your Writing Career with Competitions

By Royce Buckingham

My 16 year old son just earned 1st Place for his composition in the Washington State Young Composer’s Project. While I understand that this news is most exciting to my immediate family, it reminds me of how important contests were in building my writing resume and ultimately leading to my first deal.

I started by submitting short stories to contests, wrote and submitted my first novel (which is still in my desk drawer, by the way), and then moved on to screenplays. First, I chose regional contests and then expanded to national opportunities. With each new honorable mention, second place, and outright win, I gained the confidence and inspiration to continue developing my craft.

Eventually, my entry into the Academy Nicholl Fellowships earned a semifinal finish, which led to my first book sale and a movie deal with 20th Century Fox.

Here are the things I looked for when choosing which contests to enter:

Price: Most budding authors don’t have a ton of money to throw around. Make sure the cost is in line with the size and reputation of the contest.

Is the contest reputable? Find out how long its been around. Check out past winners. Research what others have said about it. Review the list of  judges.

Exposure: Make sure success in the contest will get people to take you seriously at the next level. Also, what type(s) of promotion does the contest offer, and is there a solid web and social media presence?

Feedback: You need to hear what others think about your work. Contests that include critiques by judges are extremely valuable to improve your storytelling and evaluate whether to continue developing and marketing the story you submitted or chalk it up to experience and move on to new material.

 

 

 

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