We recently got a chance to speak with Dariel R.A. Quiogue about his sword & sorcery character Orhan Timur, sword & sorcery in general, and the crowdfunding campaign with <\/span>New Edge Sword & Sorcery<\/span><\/i> to release his new novella <\/span>The Hunt of a Thousand Leagues<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n [GDM] Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. Can you tell us who you are and what sorts of stories you write?<\/b><\/p>\n [DQ] Hi Alex, and thanks for the interview. I\u2019m Dariel Quiogue, I used to do commercial photography work and wrote for some magazines, but well before that I was a fan of fantasy and science fiction. Getting introduced to <\/span>Star Wars<\/span><\/i>, Conan the Cimmerian and John Carter all in the same year (1977) kinda warped my brain, so I guess it was kinda inevitable I\u2019d write fantasy and science fiction in the pulp tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n [GDM]<\/b> The Hunt of a Thousand Leagues<\/i><\/b> is not your first tale with Orhan Timur. I first read him back in New Edge Sword and Sorcery<\/em><\/b>\u00a0Issue 0 with your story \u201cThe Curse of the Horsetail Banner\u201d (which was really good, by the way!). Where did Orhan come from? How has writing him changed from story to story?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n [DQ] The first Orhan story was \u201cLord of the Brass Host\u201d, which first appeared in <\/span>Heroic Fantasy Quarterly<\/span><\/i> #7<\/span><\/i> (it\u2019s still free to read on their site, and also appears in their <\/span>Best Of Volume 1<\/span><\/i> and my <\/span>Swords of the Four Winds<\/span><\/i> collection). The inspiration for that was the Terra Cotta Army that was found in the tomb of China\u2019s first emperor, Qin Shih Huang Di; as I was looking at the photos I started to imagine what if these were clockwork automata? I needed a protagonist to pit against the clockwork army, and since the setting was going to be a fictional North China frontier city, I thought a character of Mongolian-inspired origin fit the bill best.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To give the character extra spice, I set him up as an alternate-world version of Chingis Khan, who had just been overthrown by his former friend and sworn brother, the equivalent for the historical Jamuqa. I was aiming to make Orhan Timur a series character from the very first, so I wanted a hook that could be used again and again in many variations.<\/span><\/p>\n I wrote that first story in 2013. I guess I\u2019m changing as a person, and I\u2019m also looking for new angles for this character, so this reflects in the newer Orhan stories. I\u2019m exploring his origins more, getting deeper into Mongol history and culture, and I guess writing more of him, specially in longer formats, lets me explore his humanity. He can be a cold-hearted badass, but he\u2019s also got his ties and dreams.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [GDM] Orhan and his stories are inspired by and take place within Mongolian culture. What got you interested in the subject and what is it that you enjoy about it?<\/b><\/p>\n [DQ] I\u2019ve always been interested in the history and culture of the Eurasian steppe nomads \u2013 the freedom of life on the wide open steppe, which was a great highway between cultures rather than a barrier, you could have a character get on a horse in Xinjiang in one adventure and end up on the shores of the Caspian in the next one. I\u2019ve also got this thing with what I call \u2018Forgotten Asia,\u2019 Asia from the Chinese border west to Persia and from Siberia south to the Southeast Asian archipelagoes \u2013 you find a lot of English-language media inspired by China and Japan, but very little in Forgotten Asia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So when I was coming up with my first stab at writing and publishing fiction, I came up with the title <\/span>Swords of the Four Winds<\/span><\/i>, a book that would explore this Forgotten Asia and also as a homage to an author I consider a mentor of sorts, Harold Lamb. I first read Lamb\u2019s <\/span>Babur the Tiger<\/span><\/i> while living in Delhi, actually found my copy in a bookstall within view of the Red Fort so that was really appropriate, then devoured his other histories and biographies in the school library. All that of course got me even more interested in the steppe peoples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [GDM] While most S&S stories are episodic in nature\u2014with the reader being able to pick them up at any point in a character\u2019s saga\u2014is there an arc that you\u2019re working towards with Orhan?<\/b><\/p>\n
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