UFI welcomes Rod. Belcher Author of The Six-Gun Tarot. Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my
readers something about yourself that they might not know from looking on your
bio or reading in another interview?
Hmmm.
Let me see…Oh, I used to box, not professionally or anything. I just
wanted to learn when I was in my early 20’s. I was doing Judo, fencing, Aikido,
kendo- all this stuff, at the time and I decided one day I really wanted to
learn how to box. So I walked into this
place on Hull Street in Richmond Virginia called “The Million Dollar Boxing Club”. It was dive at the time and it was awesome! I
was the only white guy in the place and I had no end of volunteers to spar with
(hahahahahaha). It was very cool. That’s not very well known.
Oh, and I was in the running to do an
internship with a criminal behavioral profiler for the Virginia State
Police. He was a very nice man, named
Larry McCann, but I couldn’t do it because I wasn’t sworn law enforcement
personnel. Those things are not too commonly known.
Oh, and my favorite booze is Tequila- no
salt, no lemon, with a Budweiser chaser.
What do you enjoy doing on
your down time?
See the above mentioned booze preference
(hahahaha). But seriously, I like to read,
I love doing stuff with my kids, I enjoy hiking and target shooting, I love
research- finding all kinds of weird little corners of the world and of
history. I’m a gamer. I enjoy boardgames and RPG’s and I have been kicking and
screaming into videogame play- Skyrim rules!
What is your Favorite part
of writing?
That’s a hard question. I really enjoy the
whole process, but I guess the character development and world building are two
of my favorite processes
Do you have any certain
routines you must follow as you write?
I did develop a process that I began with
writing Six-Gun, however, that seems to work pretty well for me. I do a chapter
summary just prior to writing the chapter. It helps keep me grounded and on
focus to what I want to touch on and accomplish. Certain kinds of music also help me write
sometime- classical and trance.
What are some of your
Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Genres?
Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Laurell K.
Hamilton, J.K Rowling, Alan Moore, Anne Rice, Grant Morrison, Nancy Collins,
Tad Williams, Mike Resnick, John Steakley, Jonathan Maberry, Guillermo Del Toro, Rosemary Edghill, Tim Powers, Charlene Harris, Lee Collins, Max Gladstone,
Joe Hill.
How would you pitch The Six- Gun Tarot to someone who has
never heard of it before??
The Six-Gun Tarot a wild multi-genre book
set in the old west that mixes horror, fantasy and dark humor and if you buy
it, my kids and pets get to eat! (hahahaha)
What can you tell me about
the world that The Six-Gun Tarot is
set in?
It is as grounded in the history of our
world as I could make it and still tell the story I wanted to tell. It looks
like our world, but you turn the corner and you can find yourself in a very,
very different world—one of many and each world has its own rules, powers,
beginning and end.
Do you have a favorite
scene in The Six-Gun Tarot?
I’m very proud of the chapters about Biqa
and I am happy with how the showdown at the end of the book turned out. I think the chapter titled, “the Lovers” is
an important and powerful turning point in the book and I’m happy with how it
worked out.
Which character was your
favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about?
I really try to make my characters as real as I can and I end loving
all of them. It bothers me to do the
awful things to them I do—I am a bastard! (Hahahahaha) I actually felt very sorry for the character
of Holly- see I told you I’m a bastard!
I also hope I was able to give Harry and Ringo a fair shake. I wanted to make that relationship feel real
and not forced or token. I tried to just let the love come through and hope it
seemed authentic.
What Other Projects can we
look forward to reading from you?
I am almost finished with a dark urban fantasy with
a working title of “The Greenway”, and then I’m at work on sequel to the
Six-Gun Tarot, with a rough working title of “The 32 Killers of Golgotha”.
Greenway is set
in the present and I’m describing it as Raymond Chandler, John D. McDonlad and
Jim Butcher mashed up with “The Story of O” and “Pulp Fiction”.
The Six-Gun Sequel deals
with a historical tragedy, some of the most horrible murders in human history,
teeth, cannibals, Pirates of the Barbary Coast, reanimated monsters and
brawling angels. It’s a children’s book
(Hahahahaha).
Seriously, I am so
thankful that people have enjoyed my little western town and want to visit that
world again. I hope I have the chance to take people back to Golgotha many
times in the future, and that continue to enjoy the trip.
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R.S. (Rod) Belcher is an award-winning
newspaper and magazine editor and reporter. He has been a freelance
writer for over a decade. He has written for local, state and
international publications.
Rod has been a private investigator, a DJ, a
comic book and game store owner and has degrees in criminal law,
psychology and justice and risk administration, from Virginia
Commonwealth University. He has done Masters work on a degree in
Forensic Science at The George Washington University, as well as
worked with the Occult Crime Taskforce for the Virginia General
Assembly’s State Crime Commission.
He was the Grand Prize winner of the Star
Trek: Strange New Worlds Anthology contest. His short story “Orphans”
was published in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 9 published by Simon and Schuster in 2006.
His story, ”Hollow Moments” is featured in the horror anthology Deep Cuts published by Evil Jester Press in 2013
Rod’s first novel, The Six-Gun Tarot, was published by Tor Books in 2013.
He lives in Roanoke Virginia with his children: Jonathan, Emily and Stephanie, Three cats and two dogs
The Six-Gun TarotAmazon / Barnes & Noble
Buffy meets Deadwood in a dark, wildly imaginative historical fantasy
Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true origins than he’s letting on.
A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation.
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