Over at Apex Book Company, they’re releasing some great new books, especially some wonderfully dark fantasy. I’m going to be doing some interviews with a few of the authors there so I hope you’ll take the time to check out their work. Last week I interviewed Sara M. Harvey. Today, we have Maurice Broaddus.

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To start, can you tell me a little about yourself.

I’m just me. Father of two (rambunctious boys), husband of one. Full time writer, sometime editor. All around bon vivant and mischievous imp.

How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?

Been writing as long as I can remember. In second grade, my teacher didn’t know what to do with me. She had an overloaded class and I could be a handful since I was easily bored. So she put my desk in a corner, gave me a stack of paper and just told me to “create”. I guess I’ve been doing that ever since.

I started to seriously begin pursuing being published in 1999, when my story Soul Food was published in a little known magazine called Hoodz. I started my blog in 2004, had a column in a local paper, and had a few dozen short stories published. All of which brings me to now.

You have two new works out, a novel and an anthology, King Maker and Dark Faith, respectively. Tell me what inspired you to write the one and edit/compile the other?

Oddly enough in both cases, my faith. I was working with a homeless teen ministry called Outreach Inc. After talking to many of the kids, I got this sense that they couldn’t think of themselves with a future. It was difficult for them to conceptualize of survival further out than a week. So I began writing a story, more as a lark, imagining some of them as knights and princesses of the streets. Eventually, it led to King Maker.

Dark Faith sprang from my eponymous conference, MoCon. Originally we wanted to produce an anthology which was a tribute to it and its guests. The premise was any of the themes of some of our MoCon panels: spirituality, race, sex, art. The prospect of writing stories revolving around the idea of faith caused us to be hit with a lot of submissions and the anthology grew into something more. So we have science fiction, horror, and fantasy writers all playing with the idea of faith from various perspectives.

I have a keen interest in dark fantasy. Tell me how you would classify both of these books and what’s dark about them? In particular, tell me more about what you are trying to explore in the “dark side of faith” with the anthology.

King Maker is urban fantasy, after all, it’s the re-telling of the legend of King Arthur except playing out in our modern, inner city streets. I’ve had many folks come up to me and tell me “I couldn’t read your other stuff because you’re a horror writer. King Maker sounds like something I can read.” I guess they forget that I *do* have a horror writing background. So there is definitely some dark scenes. It really isn’t too different than the kind of horror I typically write, as I like exploring the dark side of humanity and the evil that people do to one another. This is no bunnies and rainbows version of King Arthur.

In Dark Faith, I wanted artists to engage the idea of faith and let it take them wherever the stories take them. Some stories are dark (like Douglass F. Warrick’s Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation) and some are a little lighter (like Jay Lake’s Mother Urban’s Booke of Dayes or Kyle S. Johnson’s Go Tell It on the Mountain).

Which was harder to edit: the anthology or your own novel? Can you explain?

Yes. I should probably mention that King Maker is book one in a trilogy called The Knights of Breton Court. Book Two is King’s Justice and Book Three is King’s War. I was editing Dark Faith while writing King’s Justice, as both projects were due at the same time. Once it became evident that I was going to be deluged with submissions, I brought in co-editor supreme, Jerry L. Gordon. He made it his mission to keep my anthology plate as clean as possible and give me room to write book two. We made a great team as we both had similar tastes and ways of working.

In many ways, editing was easier. It’s not really a chore to take breaks from writing to “have” to read stories from Catherynne M. Valente, Alethea Kontis, Kelli Owen-Dunlap, and Brian Keene, if you know what I mean. It was also a HUGE learning experience. I think every writer needs to have to deal with a slush pile and see the submission process from the other side.

This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the books – something that you’re particularly fond of.

So I whisper his name. And he tells me to call him Jeezy. “Seriously, man. Everybody does.” (From Kyle S. Johnson’s

Go Tell It on the Mountain)

What can we expect from you next?

King Maker hits the U.S. shores in August. King’s Justice around December. In between, I have stories coming out in the following anthologies: Dark Future, Dead West, and Ancient Shadows.

Where can we find you on the internet? Blog? Twitter? Web site? Book trailer?

Oh, you can’t avoid me on the interwebz. I blog at my web site, I tweet endless gibberish about my life, and you can find me on Facebook.

Any final comments or thoughts you’d like to convey that you haven’t covered?

Buy my books because I speak of the pompetous of love.

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And I thought I was busy! Wow! Thank you, Maurice, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions. Best of luck and looking forward to reading both of these works.