D. B. Jackson Takes Readers
On a Visceral Ride in Thieftaker

An exclusive Authorlink Interview with
With author David Coe writing as D.B. Jackson

By Paige Crutcher
July, 2012

D.B. Jackson brings readers an evocative and captivating urban fantasy set in pre-Revolutionary Boston. THIEFTAKER is a fast-paced, visceral ride. A historical fiction with embers of fantasy, it’s an authentic and surprisingly relatable adventure. Author D.B. Jackson, the new pen name of established, award-winning author David Coe, shares with authorlink an inside look in how he crafted his novel. Jackson explores what makes a story great, and lets us in on why he believes in magic.

AUTHORLINK: You have said that THIEFTAKER is the most important release of your career. Would you share what makes the release of this (amazing) novel so significant?

JACKSON: Writing as David B. Coe, I have published a dozen novels, all but one of them epic, alternate-world fantasies. (The one exception was a movie tie-in I did a couple of years ago.) With the THIEFTAKER books and stories, and my switch to a different pen name, I have shifted styles and sub-genres as well. THIEFTAKER is a historical urban fantasy that combines elements of historical fiction, fantasy, and mystery. It is more literary than any of my previous work. It has the most commercial appeal, I believe, of anything I’ve done before, due in part to its cross-genre appeal. And so, I see it as a chance to expand my audience, even as it challenges me to expand my writing repertoire. I kind of feel like an actor who has done television sit-coms all his career and is finally being given the chance to do a serious, dramatic role in a movie. I’m branching out, taking chances, and, I hope, bringing my work to a larger, more diverse readership. There is nothing wrong with writing epic fantasy, and I’m sure I will write more of it eventually, but this feels like a key moment in my development as a writer.

AUTHORLINK: What do you believe makes a great story? Did that element drive how you crafted THIEFTAKER?

JACKSON: To me, story is all about character. Yes, plot lines are important -- you want to have an interesting tale to tell. But ultimately a good book or short story comes down to the characters who populate it. If the lead character and his or her antagonist have a compelling interaction, if the hero or heroine grows and changes and overcomes obstacles in a manner that is as dramatic and satisfying as it is convincing, the story will work. And if that character arc is not compelling or interesting, no amount of intrigue or plot manipulation can save the story. That’s my opinion, anyway. People like to read about people. They like a good yarn, but most of all they like to be moved. They want emotion, conflict, and, ultimately, resolution.

And yes, my belief in the vital importance of character had everything to do with how I created this book. My lead character, Ethan Kaille, is as complex a character as I have ever drawn. He has a dark past; he is scarred both physically and emotionally by the life he has led. As the book opens, he is scratching out a living, trying to keep himself alive, and one senses that it wouldn’t take much to throw his life into a chasm. He soon finds himself investigating a murder, and that inquiry takes the plot in interesting directions, but ultimately this is Ethan’s story. It is his struggle to find a place for himself in a changing world that propels this book and the series.

AUTHORLINK: Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, but he’s also an authentic and human character. How did you combine reality and fantasy to build this world?

JACKSON: The key for me, I think, was to begin with the historical grounding of the characters, setting, and narrative. I wanted to build a cast of characters who were very much of their time and place. I also took a good deal of time to research 1760s Boston and make it as real and visceral for my readers as possible. That way, when I finally got around to introducing the fictional elements, the historical conceits, I was working within a structure that forced me to make the fantastical fit easily into the historical. A couple of examples: There were, of course, no conjurers in the real Boston of 1765. But by making my conjurers what contemporaries knew and feared as “witches” I managed to make my magical element seem a natural part of the New England landscape. I was able to use the history of New England witch trials as camouflage for my magic system.

There were also no thieftakers in 18th century Boston, but Boston had a poor -- almost non-existent -- law-enforcement infrastructure, so that while thieftakers hadn’t really been there they COULD have been. The conditions were ripe for them. If ever a town would have needed thieftakers to help protect and recover stolen property, it would have been 1760s Boston. And finally, I took a great deal of time working on Ethan’s backstory, giving him a history that blended convincingly with the history of Boston, of the British Empire, and the Colonial penal system (he’s an ex-convict). Taken together, all of these things allowed me to get that blend of fantasy and reality that you mention.

AUTHORLINK: How important are the ripples of one small incident to the whole of a person’s life?

JACKSON: The fact is, some of the ripples die away without our ever taking note of them. And some of the ripples grow into tsunamis. The great mystery of it all stems from the fact that we rarely know at the time which ripple is which. I was actually reminded of this forcefully upon hearing of the passing of the great Ray Bradbury. I read “A Sound of Thunder,” perhaps his best known short story, when I was just a kid in grade school. This was before I had read Tolkien or Lewis, and way before I had even the vaguest notion of becoming a professional writer. But as in the story itself, the act of reading that story changed me in ways I could scarcely comprehend at the time. Even at that young age, opening my mind to those most powerful words “What if . . . ?” made me look at the world in an entirely different way.

From a writer’s perspective, using those little moments, those minute details that might seem at the time like throwaways, can be a powerful narrative tool. There is a scene at the very beginning of THIEFTAKER in which Ethan has a confrontation with a young thief. He recovers jewels that the young man has stolen, but then lets him go, without taking him to the county sheriff. That decision seems in those early pages to be a small one, but its ramifications become huge later, as Ethan’s conflict with a rival thieftaker takes a very serious, even deadly turn. I won’t say more, except to reiterate that we never know which ripples will be the ones to carve new paths in the landscape. And that’s a tool an author can use to his or her advantage.

AUTHORLINK: The idea of a conjurer is delicious. They fall into the witchcraft category to some degree – having been persecuted alongside them. But they’re something a little different. How did you come up with the concept of a speller?

AUTHORLINK: You do a wonderful job affecting the dialects in the novel – how difficult was it to generate the late 1700’s vernacular? Did the voices come to you formed, or did a lot of research go into creating them (and did you discover a new favorite term)?

JACKSON: Thank you. Getting the language right was difficult, and to this day I still wonder if I could have done more with it. I wanted my characters to sound like they belonged in Colonial Boston, but I also wanted to write a book that would be easily accessible to 21st century readers. Had I been concerned only with authenticity, my characters would have spelled and pronounced words like “accessed” as “acceffed,” and much of what they said would have been nearly indecipherable. It’s hard to convey just how much the vernacular -- not to mention spelling and pronunciation -- has changed over the course of two hundred years. In the end, I chose to err on the side of making the book easy to read. Still, I did do a good deal of research on terms and manners of speech, and I managed to find some pretty good slang from the period. One of my favorite terms is one that is in fact still in use to some degree today. I thought it sounded right to have Ethan refer to a foolish young man as a pup. And sure enough, according to a couple of sources I found, young fools were often called “puppies.” Some things, it seems, never change.

AUTHORLINK: Will you share a little about the various “art” that a conjurer can create?

JACKSON: Conjurers can do a great deal, depending upon the resources at their disposal. A conjurer with only the elements upon which to draw -- air, water, fire -- can cast illusion spells. At the beginning of the novel, Ethan is able to cast only fairly crude illusion spells, creating vague images that might fool the unsuspecting. As the book goes on and his needs deepen, he learns to create illusions that can speak and that can allow him to hear and see things from some distance.

Using blood from humans or animals, or using leaves, bark, and other parts of living plants, a conjurer can heal wounds, break wood or metal or bone, summon light, find other conjurers who might be nearby, ward themselves from hostile spells, and do a host of other things. Conjuring is a living, breathing craft; spellers are developing new charms all the time.

And finally, if a conjurer is willing to take a life, he or she can do great and terrible things, even take control of another person’s mind and actions.

AUTHORLINK: What is it about the love of the craft, of writing and building a written world, that inspired you to persevere – to never give up?

JACKSON: Well, the easy answer would be “Lack of another marketable skill…” The truth is, I absolutely love what I do. Writing is the most challenging and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I struggle with my stories and books every day -- sometimes I grow so frustrated that I want to scream and throw my computer out the window. But the next day I’m back at it, because I can’t imagine doing anything else.

The other thing that keeps me going is that I have more stories inside me. I have characters in my head who are clamoring for my attention, avid to have their stories told. And each one of those stories is an undiscovered world, someplace new that I get to explore and fall in love with. I think that sense of possibility, that anticipation of the next adventure is a huge part of what keeps me going.

AUTHORLINK: What is the biggest distraction for you when writing, and how do you overcome it?

JACKSON: I have a thousand ways to answer this. Everything has the potential to be a distraction. Family, friends, household chores, my guitar, my camera, a beautiful day, the internet, television, the refrigerator, the phone. You name it; at one time or another it has kept me from working. But ultimately I’m pretty disciplined. I have stories to write, I have deadlines to meet, I have bills to pay, and if I don’t do the work I’ll never finish anything, or satisfy my agent and editor, or get paid. In the end, those can be powerful motivators. I can’t say that I have a secret to keeping myself from procrastinating. This job -- like most jobs -- is about sitting down and doing the work. Butt in chair. That’s the mantra that my colleagues at the Magical Words blogsite [http://magicalwords.net] and I return to again and again. Our blog is geared toward teaching people the craft and business of writing, but in the end we usually come back to the same advice: Put yourself in the chair and do the work.

AUTHORLINK: Do you believe in magic?

JACKSON: Yes, though perhaps not quite as you mean it. I can take words on a page and turn them into living, breathing people, into worlds that smell and taste and sound and look and feel like the real thing. I have a brother who paints professionally: In a matter of minutes he can take a flat canvas and give it depth and shape and make it look like a landscape that you could actually step into and explore. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. I met my wife twenty-three years ago, and she swears to this day that she knew the moment we met that we would be married. Is that magic? It feels like magic to me. Do I believe in spells and conjurings? Probably not. I wish the magic I write about in my books could be real, but I don’t believe in it in that way. But as I say, magic comes in many forms, and I do believe that it is at work all the time.

AUTHORLINK: Finally, what are you working on now? Will we be seeing more of Ethan and Kannice?

JACKSON: Lately, I have been writing a lot of short fiction in the Thieftaker world, telling small stories to help me get a better sense of Ethan and his life in Boston. One of these shorts, “A Memory of Freedom,” was published recently at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. Another, “A Spell of Vengeance,” will be published sometime this month at Tor.com. And a third, “The Witch of Dedham,” is now up at the D.B. Jackson website (http://www.dbjackson-author.com -- go to the “Free Samples” page) as a free download, either as a .pdf file or as an MP3 file, with me doing a reading of it. There is a fourth story as well, but I haven’t found a home for it quite yet.

There is also a second Thieftaker book already in production. It’s called THIEVES’ QUARRY, and it is scheduled for publication in June or July 2013. It is a new mystery set against the backdrop of the British occupation of Boston in 1768. And I have ideas for at least two more Thieftaker novels, but those are still in the developmental stage. So yes, if I have my way, you’ll be seeing a lot more of Ethan and Kannice.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. If your readers are interested in learning more about THIEFTAKER or about me, or if they would like to read sample chapters of my books, I hope they’ll visit http://www.dbjackson-author.com. There is lots of information there, including stuff about the history of Boston, about Ethan Kaille’s background, and about the books I consulted as I wrote the Thieftaker books and stories.

Paige Crutcher is a wordie, writer, book addict, blogger, National Authors Examiner and columnist for authorlink.com. Visit her articles at: http://www.examiner.com/authors-in-national/paige-crutcher, her blog: http://paigesprose.blogspot.com/ or follow her on Twitter: @PCrutcher.