Interview with Daniel Cohen, author of Coldmaker and INT giveaway!

Dear Readers:
I had the immense pleasure of interacting with the author, Daniel Cohen, on twitter when he very graciously gave away some of his ARCs by other authors. He also sent me a copy of his book, Coldmaker, and I really enjoyed it! I am excited to share it with you as well. To pay his generosity forward, I am giving away a mystery package of a few arcs (there will be a 2019 in it), so make sure to read everything and enter to win! If you are INT, I will send a few small swag items. And now, without further ado...

Goodreads description: Eight hundred years ago, the Jadans angered the Crier. In punishment, the Crier took their Cold away, condemning them to a life of enslavement in a world bathed in heat.

Or so the tale goes.

During the day, as the Sun blazes over his head, Micah leads the life of any Jadan slave, running errands through the city of Paphos at the mercy of the petty Nobles and ruthless taskmasters.

But after the evening bells have tolled and all other Jadans sleep, Micah escapes into the night in search of scraps and broken objects, which once back inside his barracks he tinkers into treasures.

However, when a mysterious masked Jadan publicly threatens Noble authority, a wave of rebellion ripples through the city.

With Paphos plunged into turmoil, Micah’s secret is at risk of being exposed. And another, which has been waiting hundreds of years to be found, is also on the verge of discovery…

The secret of Cold.

My review: 4 couches. I have not been impressed by many fantasies this year, and while I'm not positive which genre this book fits in, it drew me in like a proper fantasy. The world building was fascinating and the main character compelling. We learn secrets of his world as he does, and our outrage increases as he realizes everything that he's learned hasn't necessarily been the truth. The other characters are interesting, except one in particular, I'm not sure exactly if I trust him-- I don't really understand him to be quite honest. I feel like either there is a story there that hasn't been told yet, or something is missing. Despite that, the story comes together very nicely. It's interesting that the author writes in his acknowledgements some of the big names that inspired this book-- Patrick Rothfuss and Sanderson, because I felt their imprint on Cohen's work in a good way. I'm looking forward to the sequel!

More about our author: Having spent most of his life trapped in the frozen tundra of upstate New York, Daniel Cohen decided to dream himself somewhere new. It was from this quest for heat that the scorching world of COLDMAKER was born.

In addition to his writing career, Daniel is a semi-professional saxophonist in Austin, Texas, spending his days in front of the page and his nights in front of crowds. Sometimes the crowds cheer, and Daniel often wishes the page would do the same.

Interview

1. I absolutely love the world building in your book and about cold. Can you tell us first about your process of developing this world, any research you did/had to do, and what inspired cold as the starting point?

First and foremost, I wanted to explore a societal structure where the currency had a high inherent value, instead of just an assumed value.

Basically I wanted to explore the barter system on steroids.

I wanted the reader to feel the need for a particular currency, which in this world happens to be Cold itself, coming in five varying denominations (from least to most potent: Wisps, Drafts, Shivers, Chills, and the most holy of all, the Frost).

Even though the cold/hot trope has been widely explored, I’ve always found the idea of barren landscape to be simultaneously poetic and devastating. How do native peoples, desert travelers, and vagabonds survive in such harsh conditions? It takes a certain level of ingenuity (enter MICAH, the inventor protagonist of COLDMAKER) and a driving sense of survival in order to carry on. I figured a land as hot and barren as they come would give me the perfect set-up for this kind of desperate world, making Cold itself the currency, which automatically bestows that inherent value.

2. Micah was a great character as well as one of the main characters, Shilah. Can you tell us how you develop your characters and if plot or characters come first?

I’m one of the designated ‘pantser’ writers, who frantically find the story as they go along. On the first pass I find plot lifts the heaviest corner, and then on the second draft I begin to discover the characters and their motivations. Usually there’s a nice semblance of their deeper desires already on the page, and often I’m pleasantly surprised by how I’m not meeting my characters so much as they’ve already been their waiting.

3. If the main characters could be sorted into houses at Hogwarts, which house would they go to? What is your Hogwarts house? (you can ignore this question if you haven't read Harry Potter)

Well, both intuition and the official Pottermore test have told me that I’m a Ravenclaw. As for the main characters:

Micah= Ravenclaw

Abb= Gryffindor

Shilah = Gryffindor

Cam= Hufflepuff

4. What was the easiest part about writing this book? The hardest?

I’ve written nine novels, and some of them have come out as easy as an old breath, but I can’t say anything about COLDMAKER was easy. In fact, it’s conception and delivery were among the most painful bouts of my life. Front to back the process was five years of near agony. I think I put too much of myself into the book, which is great for the final product, but was terrible for my health, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

5. I have a lot of close friends that are authors. One thing they have always told me is to keep my day job, and have writing as a side job. Do you agree/disagree? Why or why not?

Considering I have two day jobs…. Strongly Agree.

6. Do you have beta readers? Why or why not?

I do, and I find beta readers invaluable. Mostly because writing is such a lonely art, and novels often take years before they’re ready to share with the world. It’s nice to have someone in the trenches with you while you're fighting and waiting. 

7. What has been your favorite read so far this year? What book inspired you the most to be an author and why?

Okay, so if anyone ends up following me on Twitter and scrolling through my history, they are likely to find an uncomfortable amount of reverential posts centered around a writer named ‘Theodore Sturgeon’. I discovered him last year, and I think he very well might be the greatest SFF short story writer of the twentieth century. His prose was consistently brilliant, tricky, inventive, as well as prolific, and I seriously can’t get enough. Fun Fact: he was the basis for Vonnegut’s famous Kilgore Trout.

“The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss made me want to write fantasy. I would be doing the book injustice if I said anything other than it’s a true MUST-read.

Other writers who consistently inspire me are:

Ted Chiang – IMO the greatest living SFF writer

Neil Gaiman

Ottessa Moshfegh

Philip K. Dick

William Goldman

Greg Egan

Brandon Sanderson 

8. What do you have on the horizon? Hopefully more in the Coldmaker series?

So the sequel to Coldmaker (Coldmarch) was actually released by HarperVoyager UK last November and I have the third and final book in the series (Coldmyth) scheduled to come out this upcoming January!

I loved his answers! And now, enter the giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway