G. J. Reilly​

Interview with B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree

G. J. Reilly - March 16 2016

 

I’d like to welcome B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree G.J. Reilly to Layered Pages! By day, G. J. is a teacher of (mostly) ICT and Computing in the South Wales valleys, where he lives with his long-suffering wife and 2.4 cats. 

 

He has an eclectic selection of hobbies, from playing a number of musical instruments with varying degrees of competence to learning the art of contact juggling and teaching sword-based martial arts. Having gained his degree, he spent ten years working in industry, before deciding to change career and head into education.

With an interest in high fantasy, contemporary fantasy and science fiction from a young age, it comes as no surprise that his first work falls into the young adult contemporary fantasy genre.

 

How did you discover indieBRAG? 

 

Before I answer that, I have to say that I count my lucky stars every day that I did!

I’ve been writing seriously since 2009, but I’ve only really discovered the indie writing community in the last twelve months. When I joined the Goodreads Kindle User Forum in early 2015, I had no idea how vast that community was, but one thing led to another and I soon noticed indieBRAG’s name on my screen time and again.

 

After looking at the quality of work submitted by other honorees at the time, I didn’t think that ‘Inquisitor’ would stand a chance of being accepted, so I put it out of my mind. Then, sometime during that summer, another writer friend brought indieBRAG up in conversation again and persuaded me to send my details. So I did. Then I forgot all about it again, so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed when my little book was rejected.

 

Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone who’s received that confirmation from Geri how it feels! Now I visit the site every day just to marvel at the company I’m keeping and to check out the blog and read the interviews.

 

Please tell me about your book, Inquisitor; The Book of Jerrick – Part 1

 

‘Inquisitor’ is a contemporary fantasy novel for Young Adults that centres on an ongoing war between two ancient factions.

 

The night that Michael Ware is born, his uncle is murdered, leaving him a locked leather book that has been fought over for centuries. In the weeks following his uncle’s funeral, the opening of the thirtieth Braxton Academy is announced. To everyone’s astonishment, they say that they are going to offer scholarship places to any pupil able to pass the entrance examination. Unknown to the general public; the academy is a front for a society of powerful psychics known as the Inquisition, who are replenishing their ranks for their campaign against the nomadic sorcerers of the Elder Council. And Michael soon discovers that the truth depends on your point of view and that comfort and opulence come at a heavy price.

 

Set in and around an alternative, modern day London, ‘Inquisitor’ draws on inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights and Grimm’s Fairytales but isn’t a direct retelling of any of our old favourites. Instead, as a reader, you’ll be immersed in a totally familiar world, yet with some fantastic differences and unexpected twists.

 

‘Inquisitor’ is a book that I hope readers of all ages can enjoy as a bedtime story or something to take your mind off a tedious train ride to work although it does have a good subtext for people who like to read between the lines. Each book in the series is a snapshot of the lives of the main characters as they live through an ongoing war.

 

Without giving too much away, the main theme of this first book is deceit. I’m not talking about little white lies; I’m talking about the whopping great lies that fester and, hopefully, readers will enjoy trying to decide who they’re rooting for before the end of this adventure. I want them to feel the indecision that Michael has to live with. Most of all, I want their loyalties to waver from one book to the next.

 

How did you come up with the title for your book?

 

I was looking for a title that summed up the mystery of the story in one word. Inquisitor – for me, it’s a word that has a lot of superstition surrounding it and an almost mythological quality that people still recognize (even if they only associate it with a famous Monty Python sketch that nobody expects).

 

It also conjures an image in the mind of what an inquisitor should look like. Think about it – what image comes to mind when someone says ‘Nurse’, or ‘Bishop’, or ‘Undertaker’? Given the plot, it might have seemed blatantly obvious to have chosen that particular word for the title, but I must have gone through a list of twenty others before I made the final selection.

Who designed your book cover?

 

I did. Those hands around that big ball of fire … they’re my hands, wedding band and all. Actually, the photograph was taken by my wife (don’t worry, she gets royalties). I’d been trying all day to get into the right pose during the 5 seconds the camera was counting down. 60 seconds in Bec’s hands and I had the perfect shot! Then it took a lot of hours of online tutorials and a great deal of patience with a well-known photo editing suite to get it looking the way I wanted it to.

Tell me about Michael Ware and how you developed his character.

 

When we meet Michael the most he has to worry about is how he’ll survive the move to his new school. He’s of that age when everything is full of wonder and the horrors of life aren’t something he should be thinking about, but often does.

 

Since I’ve been teaching, I’ve heard conversations that would raise a lot of eyebrows in many circles. Young adults aren’t just talking about football (both kinds), games and relationships. They’re talking about politics, pregnancy, marriage, education, economy and immigration. They might not entirely understand those issues, but they’re giving them some serious thought. One or two reviews have mentioned that Michael and his friends seem older than the age I’ve put them at, and it’s true to a certain extent. But I wanted to give them the credit that the people I teach often don’t receive.

 

I didn’t want ‘Inquisitor’ to be a rags-to-riches story, so I made the Wares a middle-class family. To be fair, most of the young people I teach now come from the same kinds of families, with a few exceptions up or down the ladder. I was also definite that I wanted Michael’s family to be alive and as loving as any other. I think it makes him more relatable, especially considering what he’s going to go through in the future. But above all, I wanted him to be the average person, even after his talents are discovered because I find overtly brave or sensitive characters unrealistic.

 

During his character development, I tried to give Michael an emotional range that would make him an accessible character for both male and female readers.  In one scene, we see him break down on Tamara’s shoulder after a heated argument with his best friend. In another, he’s about to profess his love but is stopped before he can. A lot of adult readers will read that last passage in particular and feel that those emotions are too advanced for a twelve-year-old, but young adults are more open about their feelings now than they were when we were their age (with each other at any rate).

 

Unlike your average teenagers, however, Michael and his friends will have adulthood and responsibility thrust upon them, and their later development will depend on just how vindictive I’m feeling at the time.

 

Can you tell me a little about how your characters are influenced by their setting? 

 

Certainly. Day to day, Michael, Tamara and their friends are surrounded by wealth and power but are treated very much as outcasts by the rest of the school. Even the staff of other houses at the school look down on Solaris, mainly because the Braxton Foundation pays for the education of all of Solaris’s members. Even Rupert, who comes from a very wealthy family, is bullied for being a Solaris student.

 

Michael’s personality changes quite dramatically from location to location in the book, but it also depends on the company he’s keeping at the time. At home, he’s as relaxed as you’d expect him to be. He even takes the book out to his best friend’s house in his backpack – something he wouldn’t dare do at school. He’s very secretive about what goes on at the academy, however, but mostly because he and Tamara have agreed that knowledge of the Inquisition could have dire consequences for their families. And you have to wonder whether it’s something they’ve been taught at school, or whether it’s a conclusion they’ve drawn on their own.

 

Most of us indulge in our need for melodrama from time to time, especially when we’re caught up in the moment. Young people have a knack for seeing wonder around every corner, so I didn’t need to make the academy buildings as special as, say, another recently well-known school for gifted children. We also need to remember that they’re not gifted until they reach the academy. So, instead of the immediate wonder of … the other place, I gave them every luxury. Hopefully, it reinforces the sense of obligation that Solaris’s students feel towards the Inquisition. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’, as they say.

 

In the Peer Court scene, we get the impression that duty and honour are highly prized at that academy. After all, it’s Michael’s sense of duty that lands him there in the first place, or perhaps it’s the other student’s attitudes towards Michael and his friends that encourage them to look out for each other so fiercely. In the end, though, the academy forces our best friends to grow up prematurely.

 

When I was editing Inquisitor, one of my biggest concerns was that chapter where Michael visits his sister’s high school. It wasn’t until I’d read the whole book back that I realised how important the chapter was to the rest of the story. We get a glimpse of what could have been – the normality (or perhaps the futility) that would have resulted from his time as a regular teen; even his father’s comments about having to stay late at the office or miss holidays with the family hint to it.

Now, you might think that all of these things have nothing in common. But they make the academy the mysterious, magical place that it is, without giving it paranormal paraphernalia. And ultimately, if we as readers feel that way about the academy, it’s no wonder Michael and his friends do too.

 

What is an example of Michael and Tamara’s education at the academy?

 

On the surface, Michael and Tamara’s timetable is like any other school timetable – Math, Science, English etc. But they also have lessons in Lore.

 

Lore mainly covers talent development. For example, in Inquisitor, Mr Steele (their Lore master) demonstrates his own particular talents – telepathy and telekinesis. But as each pupil’s abilities lie in any of three main disciplines, they are separated according to their strengths for physical training.

 

Michael and Tamara learn to use their telekinetic abilities in combat, for the most part, learning how to disarm, disable and ultimately dispatch their opponents with the minimum effort- a lot like a martial art. But it isn’t all about the fighting.

In one of my favourite passages of the book, Michael, Tamara and their friends learn about the history of the Inquisition and how their powers came to be. We also learn how Aladdin’s genie was imprisoned in the lamp and how the war began. Most of their information comes from updated versions of Grimm’s Modern Lore, which also helps us as readers to understand more about Michael and Tamara’s world and the magic that exists in it.

 

Who is Mr. Catchpole? 

 

That’s the million-dollar question! All I can say is that he’s not your usual villain. If anything, I would describe him as chaotically good – or willing to do whatever he thinks is right to achieve peace. His story unfolds throughout the series, and I hope that the more you learn about Catchpole, the more interesting he’ll become.

 

In fact, he is probably the character I find the most difficult to write. I often find his dialog and sometimes his actions getting away from me, and I have to rein him in again. On the days I struggle to get 500 words onto the page it’s usually because I’m writing Catchpole. It’s like a game of chess. I have to be thinking so far ahead of the story for him while keeping his back story in mind at the same time.

 

For now, Catchpole’s most important role is to be our anchor to the views of the Inquisition. Without him, I couldn’t tell their side of the story.