This month - Royce Buckingham
Interviewer : Aigner Loren Wilson (she/her) is a 2023 double Ignyte Finalist for best novelette and best critic. She is a senior fiction editor for Strange Horizons, and her writing has appeared in F&SF, Lightspeed Magazine, Monstrous Futures, and more. You can follow her on her website, newsletter, or on Facebook.
Horror Author: Royce Buckingham is an American fantasy writer with an English degree from Whitman College and a law degree from the University of Oregon. He has published thirteen novels with major publishers and won multiple awards for his novels and screenwriting. In 2006, Royce sold his first novel, the middle grade fantasy DEMONKEEPER, to Penguin, Putnam. His screenplay for DEMONKEEPER then sold to 20th Century Fox. In his debut, Royce made reading lists, garnered good reviews, and hit the bestseller list in Germany with DEMONKEEPER (DAMLICHE DAMONEN).
Royce’s newest book, Monster Lawyer, is an urban fantasy published by Blanvalet in Germany last fall. Book II comes out October 2023. Rights available all other territories. In addition to writing, Royce works as a prosecuting attorney in Bellingham, Washington.
This interview is a part of the HWA Seattle Member Blog Interview Series. HWA Seattle members who would like to be interviewed for the blog, reach out here.
Aigner Loren Wilson: Your first novel, Demonkeeper, was turned into a screenplay that you wrote and then sold. Congrats on that! What was your journey like adapting your novel into a different format?
Royce Buckingham: So, I wrote the screenplay first and then adapted that script into a novel (then the novel sold first, followed by the screenplay sale—confusing, I know). Good news; the process of translating a screenplay to a novel was relatively easy. A screenplay operates as a 90-page outline of your prospective 250–300-page book.
A screenplay is just dialogue, action and simple, abbreviated scene descriptions. All you need to do to make it a novel is fill in the scene details and add internal thought where necessary. This leaves you with an action-heavy, chatty, quick-moving story that is very visual. Since Demonkeeper was middle grade, a quick read was perfect for my audience.
ALW: You're a well-known author in Germany, how did your books end up taking off there and what tips could you give authors trying to break into international markets?
RB: Demonkeeper ended up being featured by Random House’s new fantasy imprint. Because of the good initial push by the publisher, it found audience and took off. It helped that they highlighted the movie deal in their promotions.
The good trick for the international sale that my agent pulled was not selling foreign rights to Penguin in the U.S. Instead, we retained foreign rights and sold them overseas ourselves through an international agent. Thus, when Demonkeeper sold in ten countries for $5,000 advance per country, we made $50,000 in advances alone. That was great! And when it hit the bestseller list in Germany, I began working directly with Random House over there as one of “their” authors. Fourteen books later, I’m still working with RH.
ALW: You write for both adults and children. Are there any similarities you've seen that makes stories for both age groups work?
RB: A good fantasy story is a good fantasy story. The core conflicts and character arcs should work for any age. The details and themes distinguish them. Demonkeeper began as an adult short story about drug use. Ick! And my latest series, Monster Lawyer, is super-adult in content and detail, but the story is essentially a Demonkeeper for grown-ups.
The universal thingy I like to play with is the idea the character has a challenge and is the worst person in the world to have to face that challenge. Think Chief Brody, who can’t swim, fighting a shark in the ocean. My orphan in Demonkeeper fights a monster who eats lost children. My lawyer in Monster Lawyer has to defend the monster who tormented him as a child.
ALW: You have a six book medieval fantasy series, Mapper, could you give readers a bit of a glimpse inside that world and series? What are they in store for when they embark on that reading journey?
RB: Whew! Big question. Mapper started as a middle grade and up fantasy about a teen artist who lives on a pig farm and paints landscapes. One day he runs out of ink (which was expensive back then) and uses pig blood. Suddenly, the lands he paints begin to magically appear. The king sends a contingent of soldiers to investigate, they drag the boy with them, and suddenly we have six books worth of exploring to do.
I really experimented with this series, because a wrote the first book and then a prequel and then a sequel. So, it’s a sprawling chaos of a time-jumping fantasy history, legendary characters who show up in surprising ways, and man-eating cows. Yep, that’s one of the monsters. The satisfying thing about the series is that you get to look at it from past, present and future.
ALW: If a reader was unfamiliar with your work, what’s the story you’d suggest they start with?
RB: In the U.S. for middle grade, I recommend The Dead Boys (ghost story), which won a bunch of kids awards. For YA, The Terminals (thriller). For adults, the Mapper series (dark fantasy). Or Impasse (gritty legal thriller), which is written for fans of male wilderness survival stories featuring, of course, the worst possible guy to try to survive the wilderness…an out of shape lawyer (I’m also a lawyer, btw)
The best adult horror will be Monster Lawyer when I sell it to a U.S. publisher. It’s currently out with Random Penguin House in Germany, but hopefully coming to the U.S. soon.
ALW: Do you have any upcoming releases or projects you’re working on that you’d like to talk about?
RB: Yes! We are currently shopping my German Monster Lawyer series in the U.S. I’m two books in and starting the third for RH in Germany. Some lucky U.S. publisher will get it. Thirteen U.S. horror and fantasy publishers are reading it as we speak, so cross fingers.
RB: Best to all of my colleagues writing all night and fighting the good fight. Keep after it. It’s eerily like anything else in life—hard work and persistence make you good at it.
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Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve found a new author or a deeper love for an author you already know.
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