photo: George Kurbaba

Joshua Palmatier is an epic fantasy writer with a Ph.D. in mathematics who has had eight novels published by DAW Books, including The Throne of Amenkor trilogy, Shattering the Ley and Threading the Needle (DAW Books, July 5, 2016). He is working on the third novel in the Ley series, Reaping the Aurora. In addition, he's published numerous short stories in various anthologies and has edited four SF&F-themed anthologies with co-editor Patricia Bray. Palmatier is also the founder of the small press Zombies Need Brains.



On your nightstand now:



I'm reading Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu, his first book from DAW, and I'm really enjoying it. The culture and setting is interesting and the main character is compelling. Next up is The Courier by Gerald Brandt, a debut novel that looks extremely interesting.



Favorite book when you were a child:



I'd have to say The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I'd read mostly Andre Norton novels before that and Elfstones took the fantasy worlds I'd been reading into a whole new realm of realism and complexity. It was a different style and it opened up my mind to the variety of what could be done with SF&F. I've read it multiple times since first discovering it and I enjoy it every time.



Your top five authors:



As always, picking five authors out of all of the ones I love is difficult. But I'd have to start with Terry Brooks, because of how his books changed the way I thought about fantasy at the time. For a similar reason, I'd pick Katherine Kurtz, who introduced me to yet another type of fantasy novel, one based far more solidly in a medieval setting. Not to mention that Katherine Kurtz's books were the first books I actually owned, a present from my dad. I still read and enjoy her books today. Both of those authors were formative in my youth. More recently, I'd have to select Tad Williams and Guy Gavriel Kay, because they introduced me to even more complex storytelling and what could be done with language to create new worlds, atmosphere and setting. And lastly, I'd have to say Stephen King. His ability to bring everyday characters to life in bizarre situations is awe-inspiring.



Book you've faked reading:



Okay, okay, so when I was in high school I had to do a book report on Watership Down by Richard Adams, and I have to admit that I totally faked it. I knew enough about the book that I figured I could squeak by, even though the book report was oral, in a one-on-one meeting with the teacher. It was the most nerve-wracking report I've ever given. And I felt guilty enough about it that, years later, I actually read the book.



Book you're an evangelist for:



I don't generally read science fiction. Not for any particular reason, I just enjoy reading fantasy more and so rarely pick up SF. However, when I randomly ran across The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack Campbell, I was hooked from page one. I read the entire series immediately, in the space of days, and ever since, when someone asks for an SF recommendation, I leap in with this series and expound upon how great it is, even when it's obvious that the listener has gotten the point and would like me to stop talking. Definitely highly recommended for both SF and fantasy fans.



Book you've bought for the cover:



For some reason, the covers of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series were extremely compelling to me. When I saw the first book, The Dragonbone Chair, at the bookstore, I had to have it, even though it was in hardcover and I didn't buy hardcovers at the time. The cover to the second book, Stone of Farewell, was even better. After buying the books, I ended up searching out the artist, Michael Whelan, and ended up buying prints of a bunch of his artwork, including the covers of Williams's books. The icing on the cake was that the books themselves were also stunning. It introduced me to a new author.



Book you hid from your parents:



For some reason, my mom was dead set against me reading Stephen King when I was in high school. She hadn't read his books herself, but she'd heard that they were violent and such, so she didn't want me reading them. However, after catching part of the movie Firestarter on television, but missing the end, I had to find out what had happened. So I picked up the novel from the library and hid it from my mom while I read it. Of course, after that I had to read all of Stephen King's books.



Book that changed your life:



Unfortunately, I can't be specific on the title here, but it was an Andre Norton novel. See, when I was a kid, about nine years old, I was reading only mysteries. Every trip to the library, I'd pick up a bunch of mystery novels and drag them home. At one point, my mom was going to the library without me and I was reading Mary Norton at the time, so I told her to pick up some more of the Norton novels. As you can imagine, she grabbed Andre Norton by mistake. I remember being pissed at the time, but decided to read the Andre Norton anyway. And from that point on I abandoned mysteries for SF&F. I only read Andre Norton for probably a solid year after that. And 90% of everything I've read since then has been SF&F. Probably 95%.



Favorite line from a book:



I'm going to cheat here and steal a line from a movie based on a book: The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. At a crucial scene, with one of the characters dying after getting shot in the chest, he looks up and mutters, "I would like to have seen Montana." Then he dies. For some reason, this line strikes me as absolutely perfect for a last line for a character, summing up the heartbreak of death, the lost hopes of that person, the sadness of what could have been.



Five books you'll never part with:



I will never part with my battered mass-market paperback of The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks. Nor the Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy by Katherine Kurtz that my dad gave me as a gift. I wouldn't have parted with my hardcovers of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, except they became victims of one of two floods that wiped out a good portion of my library. (DAW was kind enough to replace them though.) I'm also inordinately proud to have a first edition hardcover of A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (the one with the silver cover and the image of a throne on it), which will never leave my library, because I bought it long before George became... well, George.



Book you most want to read again for the first time:



I would love to be able to go back and read The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks again for the first time, at the same age, with the same mindset of that time, so that I could experience the awe and wonder and excitement I felt back then. It so perfectly sparked my imagination, that world coming to such vivid life for me, that I know it set me on the road to writing my own stories. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I did finally sit down to write on my own, I know that I tried to emulate Terry Brooks because of this book.