1--What is the title of your latest release?
AN INHERITANCE OF MAGIC
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Modern-day progression fantasy where magic is for sale but really expensive, featuring a working-class boy and his cat.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I set it in the East End of London because I live there!
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Sure! He’s polite, friendly, and has killed at least 20-30 fewer people than the average fantasy protagonist.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Intelligent, organized, adaptive.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
The cash value of a main battle tank in the US is maybe $30 million, and a jet fighter maybe $100 million, but similar hardware from Russia or China costs only a fraction of that, and European prices are somewhere in between. If you’re wondering why I had to look that up, it was to answer the question “how much would a Western military be willing to pay for a squad of invisible special forces soldiers?”, which is relevant when Light essentia in your setting can create items that work as Predator-style active camouflage.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both. I edit as I write, after each section, again when the book is done, and again when I get the report from my editors.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Muesli. Yeah, I know. I don’t have very exciting indulgences.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My living room/library. I write lying on the sofa, often with my cat beside me.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Agatha Christie is one I’ve always really looked up to. Her books are incredibly compact and neatly plotted. Every character has a part to play, is neatly sketched out in a handful of lines, and yet still has their secrets and surprises. Complete opposite of the sprawling doorstoppers that you get in the fantasy genre with 30+ interchangeable background characters that you struggle to remember even after they’ve filled up 1000 cumulative pages.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Not exactly. The two that influenced me the most were Watership Down and The Lord of the Rings.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
For me it came when I was in law school – my author career had failed to take off for long enough that I’d decided I needed a real job, and so I was studying to become a solicitor. A couple of weeks before the course had started, I’d had a meeting with an Orbit editor who’d expressed some interest in my last book, but he’d been very clear that they weren’t promising to do anything with it. I did a rewrite, sent it off again, and for the next few months spent all my time focusing on my studies. Then one day I opened up my computer to find an email from my agent saying “So, you know that manuscript of yours . . . how many books were you thinking and can you write book 2 in 6 months?”
I sent a reply back saying “lots!” and “yes!”
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I jump all over the place. SF, fantasy, crime, classics, and so on. Recently I’ve been reading quite a lot of webfiction on sites like Royal Road.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
That’s actually a hard question for me. I have dozens that I like, but none that would really be a favorite. Maybe Megamind.
15--What is your favorite season?
Autumn.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I don’t, really. Usually I work right through the day.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
For books, the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman is loads of fun. Unfortunately, movies and TV shows are going through a bit of a bad patch when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy. Lots and lots of content, but it’s almost all mediocre to bad.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Are chicken wraps, roasts, and cereal a cuisine?
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I skate a lot, and play strategy games. Current favorite is Against the Storm.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Book 2 in the Inheritance of Magic series! First draft is done and being edited as we speak, and it should be releasing Autumn 2024. After that will be book number 3!
The super-rich control everything—including magic—in this thrilling and brilliant, contemporary fantasy from the author of the Alex Verus novels.
The wealthy seem to exist in a different, glittering world from the rest of us. Almost as if by . . . magic.
Stephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat.
But when a chance encounter with a member of House Ashford gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the deep end. For centuries, the vast corporations and aristocratic Houses of the magical world have grown impossibly rich and influential by hoarding their knowledge. To survive, Stephen will have to take his talent and build it up into something greater—for only then can he beat them at their own game.
Fantasy [Ace, On Sale: October 10, 2023, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593549841 / ]
Benedict Jacka became a writer almost by accident, when at nineteen he sat in his school library and started a story in the back of an exercise book. Since then he's studied philosophy at Cambridge, lived in China, and worked as everything from civil servant to bouncer to teacher before returning to London to take up law.
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