Local Author Daniel Meyer Interviewed By Kaela Lockard

I just finished Credible Threats, Daniel's first book in the Sam Adams series. Seriously, it was so fantastic! The book grabs your attention from the first chapter and doesn’t let go. Having met him, I had his voice narrating for Sam the entire book. The writing is so vivid and descriptive, this made the ‘movie in my head’ the most real that I’ve ever read. I love all the pop-culture references. Sam is so fun, relatable, and quirky. Rising Shadows is the sequel, it is on my bookshelf and will be read soon.

KL:  When we first met and discussed your books, I heard the name Sam Adams and obviously went immediately to Colonial America. That is not where the book is set. Why/how did you decide that Sam Adams was going to be the name of your main character? Were the names chosen in honor of people in your life? I love Sam’s familiar’s name (no spoilers!).

DM:  Well, somehow I got it into my head that my main character needed to be named after a founding father. I have no idea how that got started, but I stuck with it. I went through the names of some of the obvious ones, but the only one that sounded like a good protagonist name was Sam Adams. I guess it just has an “everyman” feel.

As to the other names in the story, there wasn’t much rhyme or reason. I picked “Alexandra” because I thought it sounded fancy, and “Elise” because I thought it sounded vampirey, and “Ella” because I’d recently seen that name in some sort of popular baby name list. Beyond that, they were usually just the first names I thought of. They’re not taken from people I know, though there is one exception: in the next book, we’ll briefly see a teacher named Mr. Haynes, which was the name of one of my favorite teachers in high school, who died of a heart attack a number of years ago. That was a little tribute I threw in on a whim.

And I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the name of Sam’s Familiar; I saw that name on TV once, a long time ago, and it popped into my head when I started writing the book.

KL:  As you begin writing, do you have the storyline all plotted out or do you see where  characters take you? Does the story or do the characters come to you first?

DM:  Well, I try to have it all plotted out, but it never works. I can usually knock out the core scenes on the first draft, and throw in some things I make up on the fly, but I have to do draft after draft to get it all fleshed out. I go in knowing the books' important events, but I have to figure out how to tie them together. I write outlines, but they seem to be much sparser than what authors are usually talking about when they discuss their outlines.

DM:  As to the story and characters, I think they’re like pieces of a puzzle. I can come up with one or the other, and they might even be good, but I have to find a way to make them fit together in order to feel comfortable writing about them. I’ve noticed that issue with many of my WIPs and potential WIPs. I have to marry interesting characters to an interesting story, and often it’s difficult to figure out how to pair them up.

With Sam Adams, I hit on the idea of doing a story about a wizard in high school; not the stereotypical magic academy, but a real, rough and tumble, all-American high school. Someone may have written a story like that, but if they have, I wasn’t aware of it, and I liked it so much I decided to run with it. After that, it was a matter of sorting through my ideas, and seeing which ones were up to par and which ones weren’t, and figuring out which ones worked for my teenage wizard concept. Of course, the story changed and developed a lot since then—there’s no substitute for actually writing the book—but that’s what got the ball rolling.

KL:  How do you relate to your characters? Where does your inspiration for them come from?

DM: I can’t say as I relate to my characters that much; I relate to Sam to a certain degree, since his narrative voice comes very naturally to me, and is the kind of thing I like to write and read, but my stories aren’t really autobiographical and there’s not much in the way of self-insert characters.

Like I said, Sam came to me in a flash of inspiration, when I thought there should be a story about a wizard in high school. At the risk of sounding cynical, his supporting cast was largely created to serve the needs of the plot: I gave him a family and a best friend to balance out the magical aspects with some humanizing relationships. Rodriguez was created because the story needed a Jim Gordon type figure.

One character who took me somewhere I didn’t expect was Alexandra Tyler. When I first dreamed her up, she served the needs of the plot as well: I needed a character who would help introduce us to the story, someone for Sam to interact with so we could get a sense of who he was and what he was up to. In that early version, the poltergeist he’s trying to banish was at Alex’s house, and once that scene was over, she was going to vanish. I changed it for one reason or another, but realized I could bring back my heiress character later in the story, to serve as a window into Williamsport’s “North Side” faction. I still didn’t envision her doing that much, but found myself intrigued by her character, and I was soon thinking of all sorts of things she might do over the course of the series. Since then, she’s appeared in every book so far, and will have a major role, particularly as the series goes on.

I should also mention Sam’s Familiar: he sort of popped into my head when I heard that Salem wouldn’t talk in Netflix’s then-upcoming Sabrina, the Teenage Witch series. “Then I’ll have a cat who will,” I vowed, shaking my fist at the heavens. And in the beginning, when I wasn’t sure if the story was good enough to spend lots of time and energy trying to turn into an actual book, he was the character that clinched it, when I realized how much I wanted to write his interactions with Sam.

KL: In this fantasy, there are several types of characters/creatures which are found across the genre, such as wizards. Shal’Gasa is not something I am familiar with, nor could I find more information on it online. Is this your own creation? Is there more about the Shal’Gasa you can tell us without spoiling any plots?

DM:  Yep, the Shal’Gasa are my own creation.

I needed something to play a role akin to the one the Fae play in The Dresden Files, a race of supernatural heavy hitters that are an instant cause for alarm when they show up, because it signals there’s something going on high above the hero’s usual paygrade. I also decided almost immediately not to use the Fae specifically, because Butcher gets so much mileage out of them in his novels. I thought it would be fun to try and make up some original creatures, and not rely solely on urban fantasy’s usual suspects, and that’s what the Shal’Gasa became. Visually, I drew some inspiration from Thanos’ lieutenants in The Avengers: Infinity War, like Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian.

I admit I don’t have a ton of worldbuilding for the Shal’Gasa, since their role has been limited thus far, although I will certainly need some for later books. But here’s a little teaser: they’ll be back in book four, as we pay off some of the things we set up in book one. You might remember that in that book Elise says “something is coming,” and unlike most of the characters in our story, the Shal’Gasa know what that something is.

KL:  Currently, there are two books in the Sam Adams series. I believe you are working on book three. Do you see the finish line for this book? When can we expect the release? How many books do you anticipate in this series?

DM:  I’m happy to say that yes, I can see the finish line; in fact, I just sent the manuscript back to my editor for her second pass. It’s called Mysterious Ways, and while I’m not ready to set a release date, it’s slated to drop by the end of the year. (One of the good things about self-publishing is that you don’t have such a long turnaround time between finishing your book and releasing it.)

I’m aiming for nine books, and I’m still on track to pull that off, though a couple of the later ones might have to be on the long side.

KL: A question Matt has used that I think is wonderful, if your novel had a theme song, what would it be for Credible Threats?

DM:  Oh, this is a good question. It’s tough, because I listened to quite a few random songs to serve as inspiration for Credible Threats, but did I have one particular theme song?

Well, I plumbed the depths of my brain, and remembered that yes, I did have something that qualifies: “Heat of the Night” by Bryan Adams. (My bio says I’m a lover of Eighties rock, remember?) I heard that song on the radio once, and it made me think of Sam prowling the mean streets of Williamsport. When the chorus kicks in, my brain edits together scenes from the book to make something like the opening credits TV shows used to have, where we see the cast throwing punches and dodging explosions with some catchy tune playing in the background. So, if I was picking a theme song, that would have to be it.

KL: Thank you for discussing your work with me and our readers! If you haven’t yet picked up your copy of Credible Threats or Rising Shadows you can do so now at Bazoo Books or on Bookshop.org (don’t forget to set Bazoo Books as your preferred store)! You can learn more about Daniel or contact him through his website https://www.danielmeyerauthor.com/.