Featured Interview With Ty Johnston
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Originally from central Kentucky, I spent 20 years as a newspaper editor in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky before settling in North Carolina where I have worked as a fiction writer full time for the last decade. Yes, as can be expected, I read and write a lot, but I also enjoy longswording, mountain biking, antiquing (stop shuddering), and plenty of other hobbies and pastimes. Pets? Sure. I’ve got a house rabbit named Fuzzbucket, and there’s a cat who keeps showing up at my back porch every morning because I feed her.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can never recall a period in which I did not love reading. Even in my earliest years, I was reading comic books and kids’ books. I think the first novel I ever read was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, and I probably would have been about 7 years old at that point. I started writing short fiction in college when I was 19; my astronomy class had a paper due and the professor said we could write a short story, something I’d been meaning to do for some time, so I used that as a push to write my first short story. I began my first novel a few years later, wrote about a third of it, then set it aside thinking I would return to it eventually; eventually came 23 years later, though it was not the first novel I finished, which was my first Kron Darkbow novel, City of Rogues.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Favorite authors? Hmm, Stephen King, Alexandre Dumas, Steve Goble, Steven Erikson, Robert E. Howard, Fred Saberhagen, Ed McBain, Louisa May Alcott … I could go on. My favorite genres are fantasy and horror, though I’ll read just about anything and have a particular fondness for the police procedural novels of Ed McBain. As for who inspires me, this might sound cliched, but everyone. Really, I’m inspired by different people from different walks of life all the time.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My most recent novel, The God Sword, is a fantasy tale that follows a general Kavrik who lays hands upon the famed God Sword of his world. When he does this, he finds himself with a particular brand of immortality. He can die or be killed, but he will be return to life in the body of the next person to touch the sword, though obviously this doesn’t spell anything good for the individual who touched the sword. Kavrik’s path is a road of faith, lost in the world and looking for faith, all while forces work against him while some possibly also provide aid. In the end, without giving anything away, Kavrik has to decide what he is going to believe, especially when any evidence he could base a decision upon is limited. Oh, yeah, and there are some sword fights along the way.
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