Fantasy author Louis Piechota joins me today to chat about Waymaker.
Bio:
Louis Piechota grew up in Colorado, camping, fishing, and developing a love of the outdoors that is closely connected to his love of writing. He now lives in upstate New York, where he works as a mechanical engineer. When he isn’t writing he’s usually either reading, cooking something, or hiking in the Adirondacks.
Welcome, Louis. Please tell us about your current release.
Waymaker tells the story of Kateb, a twelve-year-old boy growing up in a small fragment of reality called a splinterworld. Deadly winds scour his world, and only mind-destroying nothingness lies beyond its boundaries. Kateb longs to visit other worlds, but in his repressive society even daydreaming about doing so is forbidden.
One day a young woman named Ryn literally falls into his world and changes his life forever. She reveals that demons secretly control all the splinterworlds. Ryn is part of the Resistance fighting back against them. She has stolen a compass that senses hidden gates between the worlds, but now she’s injured and on the run. She needs Kateb’s help to evade her pursuers and return home.
Helping Ryn means risking his life and leaving everything he knows behind. But turning her in means staying in his little prison-realm forever. Kateb chooses to help. Together they flee into the desert, seeking a gate which leads back to Ryn’s world.
What inspired you to write this book?
Waymaker had at least two sources that came together into one novel. Actually they came together into a series of novels, as the ending of Waymaker sets up at least one sequel that I’m currently working on.
The idea for Kateb’s world, a tiny habitable land on the edge of a lifeless desert, came to me one evening while visiting my brother in Albuquerque several years ago. The rhyme on the first page popped into my head while watching a fire in a chiminea. The idea of a “city of demons” at the edge of the world (where Ryn comes from) was already in my head from many years before, when I happened to see an anime short film called ‘Kakurenbo’.
I knew I wanted to tell a story for each setting, but didn’t have a fully developed conflict for either one. The story that became Waymaker really took off when I realized the two ideas could be connected: that the two setting fragments I had imagined could literally be two separated fragments of a larger reality.
Excerpt from Waymaker:
Without a word Kateb and Ryn crept back from the mouth of the cave, him on tiptoes and her scooting across the floor. When they reached the far end they stopped and waited, listening again. The creaking and the footsteps grew even louder and closer at first, but then both noises began to diminish. Kateb held his breath. He had imagined a horde of bonemen converging on the cavern, but now they seemed to be passing it by. When the sounds had shrunk so low that he could hardly make them out, he let out his breath in relief.
Then a loud creak sounded right at the cave’s entrance. A scuffing noise echoed in the darkness. Within the rock pile a shadow moved.
Ryn hissed a swear word. She yanked the crystal out of her bag again and held it aloft. The crystal’s light had dimmed when she’d put it away, but now it flared again. Its blue silver rays shone upon a monster.
A boneman was crawling through the rock pile. At a glance it looked like a bleached skeleton, but it had just enough dry, white flesh and sinew to hold its bones together. The skeleton was not quite human, either. Its head and its hands were too long. The empty eye sockets which it turned on Kateb and Ryn had a stretched, oval shape. There were too many teeth in its mouth, and they were all sharp.
The boneman surged forward and climbed to its feet. The creaking of its withered limbs echoed in the cave. An acrid scent filled the air. When it had risen it paused, staring at them as if sizing them up.
Bile rose in Kateb’s throat. He could not move. The creature’s black, eyeless stare was hypnotic. If he had been alone he might have just stood there, stricken, until the thing seized him. But Ryn let out a strangled gasp of fright. Kateb glanced down at her reflexively, and the spell was broken.
Part of him saw her as a grown-up woman. She almost certainly was a woman, rather than a girl, by the laws of the Crescent. If he had been just a little younger himself, he would have wanted to run and hide behind her like a little boy hiding behind his mother. But the rest of Kateb did see a girl: older than he was maybe, but also hurt and vulnerable. He turned back toward the bonemen with his hands balled into fists.
Punching the creature would be useless, though. Even the knife at his belt would scarcely hurt it. For a few seconds he could only stand there, no longer panicked but still petrified. Then a thought struck him like a slap in the face. Water! Water hurt the bonemen!
Frantically he plunged down into his knapsack for his two canteens. He almost sent both of them flying as he pulled them out, but he managed to hang on to one. He yanked out the stopper and stepped toward the monster.
“Leave us alone!” he shouted. “Leave us alone or I’ll… Hey!”
As he spoke two things happened. First, the boneman lunged at him. At the same time Ryn seized his belt and hauled him backward. He fell down next to her with a squawk. Some of the water sloshed out of his canteen. Then Ryn’s free arm shot out past his head. She must have set down her glowing crystal, for now something else glinted in her hand. He just had time to realize that she held a pistol of some sort before she pulled the trigger.
Boom!
The boneman jerked backward. A large piece of its breastbone and one of its ribs disintegrated into powder. Otherwise the bullet went right through. It ricocheted off the walls of the cave with two quick pings. The boneman hesitated for a moment, more as if surprised than hurt, then with a hole in its chest it started forward again.
What exciting project are you working on next?
Right now I am working on a sequel to Waymaker tentatively titled ‘The City at the World’s Edge’. I am also working on a totally separate trilogy which I’m calling ‘The Father of the Night’. I’ve had that story in my head for many years now and need to get onto the page, even though I’m anxious to continue Kateb’s story too.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I first considered myself to be a writer when I self-published my first book. I had been writing for a long time before that, but actually putting something out there for strangers to read made it feel much more real. I’ve been writing more regularly and with more purpose ever since.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Unfortunately, I don’t write full time. By day I work as a mechanical engineer at a national laboratory. I get all my writing done first thing in the morning before going to work. I used to try to write in the evenings, but my brain was always much too fried. Writing in the mornings has been a game changer and I wish I’d made the switch years sooner than I did.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I have a lot of trouble getting things down onto a blank page. The first draft of each novel goes very slowly. I seem to be much better at fixing things up once something is already there to work with. Sometimes I wonder if my brain is wired more for editing than for writing, but writing is where my heart is.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was very little I’ve been told I wanted to be either a doctor or a balloon salesman. Apparently it was a tough choice at the time. I think I knew I wanted to be a writer after first reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in 5th grade. I wanted to make up my own worlds and tell my own stories about them.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Happy reading!
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