And now, a word from bestselling, award-winning author Steven Savile about his and Aaron Rosenberg’s newest collaboration, For This Is Hell, currently available for the NOOK:
“I’ve known Aaron a long time. We joke about being separated at birth, and given the date and time we came into the world it’s almost possible—I’m October 12th 1969, he’s October 13th 1969, and given time zones and such, I’m only a few hours older than him, so imagine a long protracted labour and a grueling transatlantic flight in between and you’ve got us. We’ve written loads of stuff together, but surprisingly little has actually hit the streets yet; in fact, For the is Hell is our first collaborative release, but far from our last.
So, three years ago I was on holiday in Carthage with the wife, wandering around, drinking in the history, and as we clambered back onto the tour bus to head towards the hotel I sent a sketchy email to my Transatlantic Twin with the beginnings of an idea that had hit me about writing something with an immortal hero, sort of a “my life of crime” thing where we have a recurring hero/villain across the ages, kicking off during the fall of Carthage and bringing it to the modern day by way of lots of cool historical moments. And wouldn’t it be cool if our hero was like the phoenix who kept renewing himself age after age? Aaron wrote back explaining, surprise surprise (we are very similar sometimes, right down to the ideas we play with, which makes for a good partnership) that he’d created a roleplaying game a few years ago called Chosen which revolved around mythical beasts like the Kraken and Phoenix being reborn in different times to fight an eternal struggle for supremacy. It took all of about ten minutes to think “ahhh hmmm wouldn’t it be cool then if we could merge these two very similar ideas into a story or three?”