1. - Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
Thanks for having me! I’m Ed Crocker, I’m a speculative fiction author from Manchester, UK. I’ve written a trilogy called The Everlands, which is an epic fantasy set in a land of immortals only – vampires, werewolves and sorcerers, but no humans! The first book, Lightfall, has just come out in North America (and elsewhere if you can buy it online!) from St Martin’s Press. My day job is as a freelance book editor. I’m also an SFF and horror book reviewer, so basically my life is books!

2.- When did you start writing fiction?
I started writing short stories around age 11. I was one of those very annoying precocious kids who was encouraged by their English teacher to write extra stories and enter competitions and stuff. A highly annoying child, to be honest. I also wrote a lot of poetry, although thankfully that died out when I was about 18 as it was pretty pretentious. I continued with short story writing, mainly horror, getting some published, up to the age of 27, which is when I decided to start writing novels. Kind of wish it hadn’t taken me so long, but that’s your crazy twenties for you. 

3.- What would you say inspired the original idea for Lightfall?
The premise for Lightfall – a fantasy world of immortals, vampires, werewolves sorcerers, no humans etc – has been a feature of all of the previous five unpublished books I wrote, in fact the same characters have been appearing in my books for 12 years (I’m very stubborn). As for where I got this idea I became obsessed with, it was reading The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, a Discworld novel. It features essentially a commander of the city watch who goes into the countryside on a diplomatic mission and gets embroiled in murder and conspiracy, the key part being that this countryside is full of vampires and werewolves playing politics. The idea of a fantasy world with horror tropes in, adding politics and murder mystery and conspiracy to the usual horror themes, was something I just couldn’t shake. It’s a great way for me to combine my two great genre loves of SFF and horror. 

4.- Could you tell us more about how you got your agent, and how Lightfall was eventually acquired by St Martin Press?
So my publishing journey begins when I was a high school English teacher in my twenties, and I quit to have more time to write novels. That is a weird story best saved for another time (or never). I wrote a novel with a similar world to Lightfall, and it got rejected by 50 agents. I wrote a sequel, stubbornly. Then I wrote a novel with a similar world to Lightfall (told you I was stubborn) that again got rejected by around 50 agents. I then wrote two more novels but never queried them. 
Finally I got my act together and wrote Lightfall, and then, tired of not knowing what I was doing (I wasn’t on social media really so I had zero writer friends and knew nothing about publishing, which seems incredible now) I took a 6-month online course run by an agency called Curtis Brown which helped me look a bit more professional and write a proper query letter, among other things. I then queried Lightfall, and two weeks later one of my two top choice agents, Harry Illingworth, requested the full manuscript and a couple of days later made me an offer. The way I put it is that I was a bit unlucky right up to the moment I was very very lucky indeed. 
After some edits with Harry, we went on submission to publishers. Lightfall was rejected (for the first time) by all the UK publishers, but I got an American offer by Pete Wolverton, an editor at St Martin’s Press who also edits fantasy author Jay Kristoff, which was all I needed to know. He was my only offer from anyone, so again, I got very very lucky! 

5.- I feel many people would ask this question, but I couldn’t resist: why did you decide to make a human-free fantasy?
Well, the glib answer is that humans are boring, which is true if you’ve ever met one. The serious non-idiot answer is that I’m fascinated by the idea of living, potentially forever, or at least for a few centuries. How does that change society if some of its members can remember grievances and secrets from centuries back? My working class vampires don’t have the blood that stops them aging – how does having a semi-immortal society increase the divide between the rich and the poor? How does your outlook on life change if you’ve been around for centuries – do you get depressed? How do you find meaning in life? My immortals aren’t invincible, so a lot die in wars, which means the survivors also have to face grief that can go on for centuries. I love to play around with these concepts. 
What then came as a happy accident when planning the plot was the idea that humans did exist, maybe, once upon a time. As one of my readers put it, “the mortals are lore” in my book (readers understand my book better than me) which I think is a nice twist on our usual perspective.

6.- Lightfall plays with multiple POVs. Would you say it was challenging to make them all work together?
Honestly, I found it quite easy getting them to work together, the structure and flow and all that kind of stuff has always been something I find quite easy in novel writing. The tough part with the POVs was keeping the voice consistent, because they’re all in first person, which means you’re always in the character’s voice. Making sure that all my POVS had distinct voices was a real challenge; I had to keep reminding myself of the key qualities of my characters before I’d write a chapter on them. I ended up doing acting impressions of them on my own in my living room, which was as weird as it sounds.

7.- Which other pieces of media would you say are your influences in Lightfall?
I’m a big noir fan, and Raymond Chandler is one of my favourite writers full stop, so that sort of snappy noir dialogue and existential feel of classic detective noir is something I tried to emulate a bit as well as the complexity of the central mystery, although not very well to be honest.
I’m also a big fan of witty, snappy, slightly modern whip smart dialogue in fantasy, the kind you see in TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which can go from funny banter to high emotion in a millisecond, which influenced my writing a lot. I love dialogue and playing around with wit and emotion in it.

8.- You work as a freelance editor. How would you say your editor experience has shaped your novel?
So sadly my editor experience has not really shaped Book 1 too much. I say sadly because the bones of book 1 were written about 6 years ago – the way it works with a debut novelist is that often it takes so long to get an agent and then a book deal and then have it published that there’s a large time gap between writing the book and getting it published. Yes, it was edited since then but the bones of it are pretty old, and since then my editing day job has vastly improved my writing. 
As a result Book 1 is much sloppier than I would write now, and I don’t like it that much (standard debut author feelings about their book to be honest!) The good news for my own sense of self worth is that Book 2, which was written eight months ago as I write this, is much better as I definitely used my editor experience of the last few years there. The main lessons being on the story side how to increase the pace without sacrificing depth (my debut has been rightly criticised by most readers for being too slow in the first half) and on the language side how to write much cleaner sentences that are snapper and smoother. I’m obsessed with line editing, which is the part of editing that focuses on improving word choice and syntax among other things, and I think the help I’ve given to authors early on in their career on that score has really helped my writing of Book 2. Basically book 1 sucks but I’m pretty proud of the sequel!

9.- What does Ed Crocker like to do in his free time?
I’m pretty boring and have the social life of a sloth on freeze frame, which is on purpose as I’m an extreme introvert (I’m good at parties though, but only briefly) so honestly it’s mostly reading. I like to obsessively keep up with all the new SFF and horror fiction, so I read for absurd daily amounts. I’m also a horror film obsessive, so lots of movie nights. I’m a big gamer too, mostly RPG but a bit of horror also, so that’s another part of my geek chic. Football (UK kind) and American/British politics (massive politics nerd) round out my weird hobby collection, and I’m also learning Italian to try and be classy.  Basically, my hobbies have not really changed since I was a teenager, and that’s just the way I like it.

10. What can we expect from Ed Crocker in the future?
Well Book 2 of the Everlands should be out around this time next year, so expect news about that in the next few months, and hopefully Book 3 the year after. I’m also writing two more series at the moment, one another fantasy trilogy, the other a secret project I’m being pretty quiet about but that I’m really excited by and is in a different genre to fantasy. If the publishing gods are kind to me, at least one of these might see the light of day in the next couple of years, if they are not then you’ll never hear about them (damn those gods). 
In the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun book blogging and reviewing and building up my massive Substack newsletter Get Crocked (shameless sales pitch incoming) which gives a curated round up of what’s happening in the SFF and horror bookworlds as well as short stories and the standard news about me. I’m enjoying the journalism aspect of building up a genre-focused newsletter; the old failed journalist in me is excited.
Last but not least, If I can get my lazy rear in gear then I want to start an interview Booktube channel soon and have some fun chatting to some of my favourite authors in SFF and horror. Or maybe I’ll do none of the above and just play video games all year, you can never tell with me.