You probably know RazörFist from his opinionated, impassioned YouTube videos, but did you know he’s a fantasy author as well? In this interview we discuss such topics as his upcoming novel Death Mask, the influence of noir/detective stories on his writing, being called a “coked up metalhead Dennis Miller", and more.

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I'm known in the fake world of the internet as RazörFist, and my writing in a professional capacity only spans a couple years, following the publication of my freshman Fantasy Noir pulp, The Long Moonlight. I finished it just to say I'd finished it, with no grander aspiration than having license to say I'd completed something I started. A publisher caught wind of it, took a look at my manuscript, liked the concept, and to my amazement, it became a success.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
I only ever wanted to combine my longest abiding Pulp influences. As my favorite genres are Crime/Noir a la Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane or Walter B. Gibson... and Sword & Sorcery Pulps like Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard, I essentially slapped them together into a Fantasy Detective story... that stars a Thief, rather than a detective. The '30s pulp detective was a device, really. As Chandler wrote about in "The Simple Art of Murder". Ideal because he could move in both quarters of crime - police and criminals - without being necessarily allegiant to either side. So the story could be told from all angles through one character's eyes. I was telling a street level crime story with The Long Moonlight, and as there are no detectives in my world, a thief was my ideal. Independent, able to infiltrate anywhere, acquainted with both law and illicit alike.

The Thief video game series was one impetus for that idea for sure, but I'd harbored the idea for an ongoing Fantasy series that followed the travails of a thief going back to my first readings of "Robin Hood". I don't worry about appearing derivative. I wear my influences on my sleeve, but I do not write like my influences, which, dichotomously, frees me up to write more like them if I wish. My world is my own. It's existed for decades to accommodate a longer novel series I have yet to publish. So that detailed backdrop also helped alleviate any worries I might be too "derivative".

I once heard someone describe you as "a coked up metalhead Dennis Miller." Do you think that assessment is accurate?
I can't imagine a greater compliment than being compared with one of your favorite comedians. At the risk of shattering any illusions about my extracurricular habits, however, I'll admit I've never done a drug harder than Ibuprofen. I roll on adrenaline and acrimony, exclusively.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
I didn't have an audience for my first book, as I never intended to publish it. So that freed me up considerably. With Death Mask, I've only labored to improve the quality of my prose and the artwork I've contributed. The story, at the risk of indulging a cliché, literally came to me in a dream. So audience expectations never weighed on my creative process in that sense. I am using the approach Walter Gibson used when writing nearly 300 pulp novels for The Shadow: Cycling through different kinds of stories, to keep a sense of variety, while remaining within the framework of the world and atmosphere I've already established.

Death Mask, the second book in your Nightvale series, will be released soon. Tell us about it. Have you had any other new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
Nightvale is a Fantasy Noir Pulp series. As such, if The Long Moonlight was more Noir... Death Mask is more Fantasy. Sword & Thievery, as I've taken to calling it. You can see it in the '60s/'70s style cover and typeset. This is me steering into the Elric/Solomon Kane/Fafhrd & Gray Mouser side of things. Those old yellow Dark Fantasy paperbacks before genre conventions and the many mimeographs of Tolkien turned it into the "Phonebook Fantasy" of today. And yet, the story and setup is pure '40s Noir. In fact, it's inspired by two of my favorite Raymond Chandler stories, The High Window and The Lady in the Lake.

A humble innkeeper's wife has gone missing. She may have been kidnapped. She may have run off with a younger man. Xerdes, our intrepid thief hero, takes the job to find her for two reasons: for one, he's in Nazgan, a land where thievery is legal, but regulated. As an "independent", he owes tributes he cannot pay. And for another? He's developing this nasty thing called a conscience.

But as he ventures forth, he soon learns that something is waiting out there in the desert. A masked figure that has carved its way through the criminal underworld of two entire countries and is heading his way. Worse still, it has only ever uttered a single word.

A name. "Xerdes."

I have a couple other stories I am working on, including the next two Nightvale pulps. Along with a standalone barbarian Sword & Sorcery tale set in the same world as Nightvale. Additionally, I am in the early stages of writing a Western.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
I recently tore into Dead Wake by Erik Larson. A dramatized historical novel about the sinking of the Lusitania. Superb book, as I've always been fascinated with the Lusitania in the way some others are with the Titanic. On the older front, I recently finished Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber. Any excuse whatsoever to return to Lankhmar.

Any final words?
Create! Don't ask permission. Don't wait until you're "qualified". And for heaven's sake, don't waste money going to school for it! Write! Draw! Paint! Compose! Bob Ross either coined or repeated one of my favorite quotes ever: "Talent is just an interest pursued". Pursue that interest. The corporate entertainment monoliths are dying (of self-inflicted wounds) and something superior must take their place. Be that something! Godspeed!

More information on the Nightvale novels can be found on this website.