Adrian Cole is a veteran of the fantasy/SF/horror scene. The first book in his most ambitious project to date, the War on Rome series, was just released. Read on to learn more of Arminius, Bane of Eagles, plus his other works, past, present, and future.

Introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I’m 73 and a native of the county of Devon in South West England and live close to its northern coast in the small town of Bideford. I’ve been married to Judy since 1976 and we have two children, Sam and Katia, and Katia has two children, Jasper (5) and Matilda (3) which makes me a granddad. (They call me Grandade, which combines my nickname Ade and distinguishes me from their other Grandad.) Before retiring from the working world 11 years ago I was the Business Manager of a large secondary college (high school). Now I am able to indulge myself in my writing as often as I like, although I do have to squeeze in my granddadding and a lot of mucking about in the nearby Celtic Sea, which I’ll do until about November (and of course, I’ll start again in the Spring!).

As a kid I’d always wanted to write, and I used to scribble stuff down, ghost stories, horrors, westerns, sf...nothing ever got finished, but I did manage a chunk of my first book, which was a pastiche of Black Beauty. I didn’t finish it, but to be fair, I was only 9 or 10. After that I had this idea that I would write one day, but probably after I retired. That changed when I went to work in a library in Birmingham, the large Midland city where I lived for 10 years. All those books, and book people, plus discovering more and more sf, fantasy, horror, etc...I was inspired. Why wait until retirement? So I rescued an old pile of unused school exercise books, with a handful of “biros” and got to work, planning and then writing my first novel, with a view to getting published. I had maps, historical records of the future and character sketches – a pile of material before I actually started the writing. The book was entitled The Barbarians and ran to about 7 notebooks, all written in long hand.

Eventually, about 5 years later, I had an agent sell the book to Zebra Books in the US, where it was split into the three volumes that constitute The Dream Lords. I was up and running! My books ran alongside other Zebra titles, including stuff by Robert E Howard, and pastiches by Karl Wagner and David C. Smith (with whom I have recently started communicating after all these years!)

I didn’t give up my day job completely, and worked part time, but by now I wanted to write more and hopefully go on to make a success of writing. But even being published regularly, mostly fantasy novels, such as The Omaran Saga, I still needed a day job to sustain me and my new young family. By the Millennium, my day job had become much busier and more demanding, so that my time for writing shrank so much that for about 15 years I did very little of it. But when retirement did come, I was able to get back into writing and have been applying myself to it with a vengeance, and I’m happy to say that I am again being published regularly. I even won my first ever award, the British Fantasy Award, for best collection in 2015, which was Nick Nightmare Investigates.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
The first major impact on my desire to write would have been the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan, of course, and particular other favorites being The Gods of Mars and Lost on Venus. Then it was the Black Magic books of Dennis Wheatley, HPL, followed by Herbert’s Dune, and inevitably (as a youngster growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s) the biggest influence of all, The Lord of the Rings. These all combined to play a major part in my desire and drive to write The Dream Lords. (As an aside, I didn’t discover REH until after I’d written those books.)

I still love all those books, but I’ve gone on to read books, comics, see movies and so on that have continued to influence me. I have developed a very wide taste, so it would be hard to single anything out, but they run across various genres, not least my enjoyment of Shakespeare (just got back from seeing Richard III at the RSC Theatre in Stratford). I particularly like espionage fiction (from Bond onward), Dark Age history, Mythos fiction and numerous comics (I have a complete run of 2000AD from issue number 1).

Movie influences began with William Wyler’s Ben Hur (the chariot race has never been bettered), Fistful of Dollars and stuff like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

I’ve never deliberately copied or “pinched” ideas from anything and I try to be as original as I can. But I’m a firm believer in “we are what we eat” and it’s impossible to avoid those influences getting in. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If we’re guided by the best elements of books, films, etc., we can benefit. I try to be aware of my influences and if I’m going to use a familiar concept, I try to tackle it from a new angle, or give it an original twist. Even with my new Elak of Atlantis stories, based on Henry Kuttner’s character, where I’m drawing on as much of his world as I can, I still try to bring in something fresh, rather than just regurgitate all the old tropes.

And in my basic writing, these days I try to avoid cliches, or over-used expressions. The use of the word processor makes this much easier (ah, those early days of pen and paper!) so there’s no excuse for not taking pains.

Many authors say that marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be the most effective for getting your name out there?
During my first period of writing, up to the 1990s, all this sort of thing was almost entirely undertaken by the publishers, which was a blessing. Nowadays, often working with smaller presses, it quickly became clear to me that marketing, promotion and publicity really are the hardest nuts to crack. Basically it takes time and money, neither of which I have in abundance! I don’t have a magic formula for this – I use the social platforms that are available, Facebook being the obvious one, but I recognize that they are limited. I make sure that all the various editors, publishers, writers and those in any way connected with publishing are all told about my work, be it short or full length. I’m a great believer in having the best possible covers for my books, but I know just how difficult it is for smaller presses to afford the best artists. I attend conventions when I can (and hopefully with Covid seemingly less life-threatening again) and use any “airtime” plugging my work, book-signing, etc. I encourage friends and associates to review my stuff, but there is so much stuff being published now that competition for a bit of limelight is tough!

I think because there will always be big gap between the way the major publishers promote their authors and the restricted efforts of the smaller presses, the world will know about the former, but so few people will know about the latter. I’d love to be able to hire my own full time publicity agent and have them shout out from the rooftops that my books are a must read!

How much do your audiences expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever hold you back from experimenting?
I almost never write stuff that I’m not really interested in – such as commissioned work for gaming worlds, which I have done in the past. So I think my audiences like the same material I like, ranging across fantasy, S and S, horror, sci-fi, space opera, Mythos and so forth. I try to think of what I’d like to read and what would please me as a reader and apply that to what I write. As I said before, the trick is to avoid regurgitating old plots and ideas and hopefully bring something fresh to the table. I’m sure readers appreciate this, and when I see comments in reviews such as “highly imaginative” and “original” when applied to my stuff, I’m happy. Because I’m fairly prolific, it’s impossible to maintain the best of standards every time, and occasionally a yarn comes out which doesn’t quite hit the spot: when this happens I usually know it and try to polish it up, because I know the fans (and reviewers!) will pick up on it. I should say, though, that if I thought the yarn was a dud, I simply would not submit it.

I did try a bit of experimenting when I came back into writing, notably in some of my horror yarns, and some worked very well, others less so. It was more a case of readers deciding what they thought – I was guided by their reactions. In some cases the stories I wrote and thought were pretty cool were evidently not seen that way by some of the readers! Reality check. But then, others I wasn’t sure of sometimes got a really hot review!

The work I did for the gaming world, for example The Crimson Talisman, a sort of Tolkien sword and sorcery novel (for Wizards of the Coast) was difficult to do, as it had to work within a world that had very strict rules. I put a lot of effort into it and tried to make it work, but from the reviews, especially from the gamers, it was a bummer! They didn’t like it, which surprised me, but it made me realize that this wasn’t my place. No more.

Tell us about your new novel, Arminius, Bane of Eagles. It’s an alternative history/fantasy. How much does it deviate from the timeline of our world? What sort of supernatural elements did you include?
For many years I had this idea of an alternative Romano/Celtic European history, and it bubbled away inside me. I’ve always had a keen interest in this period of our history, and apart from loving all the movie epics, such as Ben Hur, Spartacus, The Gladiators and so on, I read a lot of fiction of the period. My War on Rome series (3 volumes in total, when it’s complete) reflects my love of the times. And TV series such as I, Claudius, added fuel to the fire. It also infuriates me that the Romans got away with a lot and came very close to significant defeat a number of times. Arminius’s victory in the Teutobergerwald could so easily have become the starting point for a rebellion that could have ended with the fall of Rome itself (and Augustus was at one point terrified that this might happen). If Arminius’ own jealous tribesmen hadn’t assassinated him, who knows what Arminius might have achieved? So my book explores this. I’ve set it in an alternative world, which initially follows our timeline, but then gradually starts to veer away from it. Unless you know your Augustan period and beyond, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was simply a historical novel. Another major change in the series is that Germanicus, grandson of Augustus, does not die around the same time as Arminius in our world – he survives and goes on to clash later with Arminius. I’d like to think the changes I’ve made, subtle at first, but eventually dramatically different, are credible and that history could well have taken this path.

Another major influence on the books is my enjoyment of sword and sorcery (and I’ve written a fair chunk of it), particularly the battles and the sorcery. There is plenty of violent action in the book, from individual conflict to the explicit horrors in the Black Forest, where Rome lost its three legions. And I have introduced the supernatural element as I thought it would give a heightened sense of being in a world not quite like our own. Arminius and the tribesmen do utilize an element of sorcery, linked to elemental forces, and in Rome there is a secret society, the Via Tenebrarum, who seek to manipulate everything, often using dark forces. Their part in the overall saga grows and their use of power becomes ever more corrupt. As far as I know, there’s no equivalent of them in our world, but in some ways they could be thought of as forerunners of the Mafia. Initially in the series, the supernatural elements are less obvious, clad in shadows and suggestion, but as things develop, the powers of darkness become more manifest.

What other stories of yours have been published recently? Are there any that you are currently working on that you can tell us about?
I’ve had a number of short stories published over the last year or so. Weirdbook Magazine usually carries one of mine, most recently (issue 45) a horror yarn, “Every Bone in His Body.” I’ve submitted a vampire novella, “My Tears Like Blood,” to them for their forthcoming Annual. In the UK, Parallel Universe have been publishing a series of sword and sorcery anthologies, Swords & Sorceries, and I’ve been in all 4 so far, the latest being “City at the Mouth of Chaos”, an original Voidal yarn. I’m working on a new one, “Prisoners of Devil Dog City,” for them.

PS Publishing (UK) have published Darrell Schweitzer’s anthology, The Mountains of Madness Revealed, and I have a yarn, “Cold Storage,” in that, and another anthology, Shadows Out of Time is due soon, with my story, “Moonlight over Mauritania” therein. A new volume of Mythos stories is also likely to appear later. Also in the horror vein, out very soon, is Paul Finch’s latest Terror Tales anthology, this time set in the South West (of England) and my yarn is “In the Land of Thunder,” set on Dartmoor. A Mythos yarn with more than a hint of S and S, “The Place of Unutterable Names” was in DMR’s Terra Incognita anthology.

I’ve written a number of new Elak of Atlantis stories (after Henry Kuttner) for various magazines, including Tales from the Magician’s Skull and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Other sword and sorcery yarns were “The Burning Blade” in the e-zine Sexy Fantastic, “A Ship of Monstrous Fortune” was reprinted in DMR’s Renegade Swords III anthology and “The Hill of Breaking Bones” will be in DMR’s forthcoming Samhain Sorceries anthology this October. Jim Beard’s anthology Blood on the Blade contained a new Elfloq story of mine, “Dishonor Among Thieves.”

Cirsova magazine have published a handful of my new Dream Lord stories, and the next one will be “Across the Poison Sea.” Wildside Press published Startling Stories 1 last year and included my Dream Lord novella, “The Blood Red Sky of Mars”. The second issue will be out soon and includes the first in a new series, “Rising from the Devil’s Planet.”

And there are new stories in the works – a “Twilight Zone” type horror yarn and new Mythos material, although most of my writing time this year will be devoted to researching and writing the third of the War on Rome books, Boudica, The Savage Queen.

Are there any plans to get some of your older works, like the Voidal series, back into print?
Indeed! Apart from The Dream Lords, which I mentioned, I am very much involved in looking to bring the 3 Voidal volumes back, and am actively pursuing that.

Recently I had a few books published by Pulp Hero Press (US) but they are no longer publishing fiction, so, apart from the Dream Lords, I will be looking for new homes for my Nick Nightmare series (3 volumes) and Elak, King of Atlantis. I have almost completed a second Elak volume of stories, Elak, Prince of Atlantis, so those two need a new publisher.

At some point I’ll probably look into the possibility of having both The Omaran Saga and the Star Requiem quartets brought back into print, although both are available on the Gollancz e-site as e-books and as audio books from Audible.

Blood Red Angel, a stand alone dark fantasy novel, originally published by Avon (US) may also get a fresh outing. Other than that I’m looking into the possibility of collecting some of my stories into a horror collection and a Mythos collection. I did have an S and S collection of stories planned with Pulp Hero, Dark Ships Passing, but that will need a new home if it’s to see the light of day.

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.)
The most recent book I’ve read is John Le Carre’s final work, Silverview. I’ve always enjoyed the James Bond type of spy fantasies, but also love the Len Deighton and Le Carre angle. Le Carre doesn’t use humor the way Deighton does, but his amazing perception and adroit handling of characters make most of his books worthy of revisiting. Silverview is stripped down and slick, and nothing is ever quite what it seems in the shadowy world of duplicity Le Carre depicts so well.

An older book? All Fool’s Day by Edmund Cooper, a British writer who was once very popular, but whose works are now considered not politically correct. He was, however, a great storyteller and All Fool’s Day is a fine apocalyptic novel, handled with panache and grittiness.

Any final words?
I’ve never lost my desire to write, the inner drive that keeps me at it. It would be easy to stop and retire, away from the hard work, the rejections, the disappointing bits, and yet, with the advent of War on Rome, I am nearing achieving the best books I’ve yet written, the cream of my particular crop. Once I would have been far too unsure of myself as a writer to attempt anything so ambitious, but you have to do these things, you have to push harder, whatever the outcome.

And then of course, there will be A Ship of Broken Souls, a work currently only in existence in my head, but what a firecracker that is going to be...