David Coe (aka D.B. Jackson) is one fine human being, a friend, and a damned fine writer. His "Thieftaker" historical fantasy series is lovely in its evocation of pre-Revolutionary War Boston, and the latest in the series, A PLUNDER OF SOULS, is a compelling, driving read. I asked David to guest-blog here after the release of PLUNDER, and so without further nattering from me, I'm going to let David take the stage. David, it's all yours!
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This post grew out of a question Steve asked me as a writing prompt when we first discussed my guest appearance on his blog. (By the way, Steve, thanks for having me!) He wrote: “In the Thieftaker series, have you had any minor characters that were intended for a quick cameo, but whom you liked writing so much that they ended up being an integral part of the series? I had that experience in the Nessantico series -- if you've had the same, I'd love to hear about it.” Asking me this as I worked on promotion for A Plunder of Souls, the third Thieftaker novel, was kind of like asking Mick Jagger, on the eve of the release of Beggars Banquet, if he’d ever considered writing a song about the Devil . . .
Why, yes. Yes, I have.
In Thieftaker (Tor Books, 2012), the first book in my historical urban fantasy series, Ethan Kaille, my thieftaking, conjuring hero, ponders the considerable power of the rogue spell caster who is stalking the streets of Colonial Boston. This sorcerer has committed murder, has communicated with Ethan through the conjured image of a child, and has used his powers to attack Ethan from afar. He has encountered few enemies who can match this man’s strength, although he does remember in passing one conjurer from several years before with whom he did battle.
In the book’s first draft, that was as specific as I got about this foe from Ethan’s past. In rewrites, however, I decided that this other conjurer deserved at least to have a name. Here is how the passage reads in the published version of the book:
Ethan had faced skilled conjurers before, a few here in Boston in the years since his release from the plantation, and one or two from before his imprisonment. Only two years ago, he had tried and failed to bring to justice a speller who killed two merchants and attempted to murder another. The speller, Nate Ramsey, had sought to avenge his father, whom the merchants had cheated out of ship and fortune. Ramsey had been as potent a speller as any he had known; Ethan still dreaded the day when he might have to face the man again.
That was basically the extent of what I said about Ramsey in that first book. I mentioned him in one other scene, but only in passing. The book wasn’t about him; that episode in Ethan’s life was long-since over and he had more important enemies to face in the books to come. End of story.
Except not. Because long after Thieftaker went into production and I began to work on the second book in the series, Thieves’ Quarry (Tor Books, 2013) I continued to think about that man Ramsey I’d mentioned in the first book. Who was he? What exactly happened between him and Ethan? What did he do and how did he manage to escape? At last I couldn’t take it anymore. I set the second Thieftaker book aside briefly and I wrote a short story called “A Spell of Vengeance.”
In it we meet Nate Ramsey, the son of Captain Nathaniel Ramsey who was indeed cheated out of his fortune and hounded by two merchants named Keller and Forrs. Eventually, the elder Ramsey hanged himself from the main yard of his ship. Nate, a conjurer and sea captain, comes to Boston seeking revenge on his father’s behalf. Ethan is hired by Keller and Forrs before meeting Ramsey, and upon hearing the captain’s tale, regrets taking the merchants’ money and agreeing to protect them. Ramsey, he believes, may be a bit mad with grief, but his rage and his grievance with the merchants are righteous. He wishes he had never involved himself in the matter.
But the fact is, he is involved, and he has given his word to the merchants and to Boston’s sheriff, Stephen Greenleaf, that he will keep the men alive. So begins a conflict that grows ever more tense until the final scene. I could tell you how it all ends, but the story, which appeared on Tor.com in June 2012, just before the release of Thieftaker, can still be found online [Link:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/06/a-spell-of-vengeance]. I hope you’ll take a few moments to read it. The upshot, though, is that Ramsey and Ethan both survived their encounter, emerging from it with a healthy respect for each other’s power, and a mutual antagonism forged, quite literally, in blood and fire. Ramsey, I realized upon completing the story, is Ethan’s “Moriarty.”
Thus, rather than satisfying my curiosity about Ramsey and his rivalry with Ethan, the short story served only to whet it further. I went back to work on the second Thieftaker book, but I decided then that in the next novel Ramsey would return to Boston, more powerful than ever and determined to strike back at Ethan.
A Plunder of Souls, the third volume in the Thieftaker Chronicles has just been released by Tor Books, and it features Ramsey. He is indeed back, with his sights set on Ethan. But more than that, he is determined to make himself the most powerful conjurer Boston has ever seen. He remains a broken, lonely character, still grieving the loss of his father, still arrogant and slightly mad. And yet he and Ethan also still share a grudging respect. Under different circumstances, they might have been great friends, drawn to each other by their love of the sea and by their conjuring abilities.
And it all began, at least in my imagination, with a single passage in the first Thieftaker book. As Steve’s original question to me implies, it’s not all that rare for us writers to create a minor character only to have that person insinuate himself or herself into our thoughts. We begin to ask questions, to delve deeper into the character’s history and motivations, and we discover that there is a fully realized person there, begging to have his or her story told. Yes, it can be distracting -- infuriatingly so at times. But ultimately it is one of the great thrills of this difficult and at times frustrating profession. Because there is always another character, another story, another book, waiting to be discovered.
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D.B. Jackson is also David B. Coe, the award-winning author of more than a dozen fantasy novels. His first two books as D.B. Jackson, the Revolutionary War era urban fantasies, Thieftaker and Thieves’ Quarry, volumes I and II of the Thieftaker Chronicles, are both available from Tor Books in hardcover and paperback. The third volume, A Plunder of Souls, has recently been released in hardcover. The fourth Thieftaker novel, Dead Man’s Reach, is in production and will be out in the summer of 2015. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.
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