Dark Legends Block Party!

Kevin McLaughlin

Featured Book: By Darkness Revealed

Hi and hello! Very excited to be here with you today. For those who don't know me yet, I'm a Boston writer of science fiction and fantasy. I'm an amateur astrophysicist and play with swords in my spare time as well, so my hobbies line up really well with my line of work. When I'm not hitting friends with sticks, I might also be sailing. Or writing. More often the latter than the former, but I enjoy both.

How long have you been a writer and how did you come to writing?

I came by writing naturally: my mother made me do it. No, not quite! As a kid I used to fall asleep listening to my mom writing fiction at her typewriter, tack-tack-tacking away while listening to some movie soundtrack or another. Taking up the craft was so natural that I wrote my first short story at age 7. It took second place in a local writing competition. I've pretty much been involved in telling stories in one format or another ever since.

How did you come up with this storyline?

By Darkness Revealed is close to my heart, because it's personal. I went to Norwich University as a cadet - that's the well I drew from to paint a good picture of cadet life for the protagonist. Obviously the 'Northshield University' in the story is a fictional place, but much of the feel I captured in the story was drawn from the real college. As for the storyline itself? Again, a lot of it is drawn from reality. No, people were not actually slinging bolts of magical energy around campus (not that I was aware of, anyway!), but the real world Norwich is an unusual place with all sorts of magical legends and tales.

What are the best and the worst aspects of writing?

For me the best part is telling the story, hands down. When I get into a really good flow state, I might be typing as much as three thousand words an hour. Just letting the story spill forth onto the screen. Those moments are a bit like singing, or dancing, or sailing, or martial arts forms... It's like meditation where the mind is active and burning at full speed. Where you have complete focus on the task and everything is moving in synchronicity.

The worst part? Edits. We hates them, my precious. When I'm done telling the story, I am *done* telling the story. I don't really want to read it over for errors and nit-picking bits. I do, of course. And I have a great editor who finds what I miss. But this is my least favorite part.

What inspires you to write?

I like telling stories. I really like telling stories for a living. I really, REALLY like running my own business telling stories for a living. There's no other career out there which I get as much satisfaction from, where I feel so complete working. If I wasn't writing fiction, perhaps I'd be making up stories for film or for video games or something else entirely... For me the telling of exciting stories is more central than the medium I use.

How did you conduct your research for By Darkness Revealed?

I cheated. I do this often.

Writers have two choices when it comes to research. They can set a story someplace they have never been, in a land or culture they don't know at all - and then have to research the heck out of it. Or we can write a story set someplace we either know really well, or which we are making up entirely. Or both. For this book I did both. I set the book at a fictional university in a fictional town, and then painted the fictional place with real-world experiences from a similar place.