With The Shadow Commission (paperback, Kindle), writer David Mack is (probably) concluding the Dark Arts series of secret history fantasy novels he began in 2018 with The Midnight Front and continued a year later with The Iron Codex. In the following email interview, he discusses what inspired and influenced this third installment, while also discussing his new-ish Star Trek novel, More Beautiful Than Death (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
With last year’s The Midnight Front, an exciting tale of magicians fighting Nazis in World War II, writer David Mack kicked off his Dark Arts military fantasy series. But in the following email interview about his new Dark Arts novel The Iron Codex (paperback, Kindle), he explains why the second book in this ongoing series isn’t about those same magicians fighting the same Nazis in the same World War.
When a writer starts an ongoing series of novels, their plan is often for the books to all be about the same character or organization, and for the novels to all have the same style or genre. But in talking to writer David Mack about his new Dark Arts series, which kicks off with the occult World War II tale The Midnight Front (paperback, Kindle), he explained that not only will every book in this series be a self-contained, stand-alone novel, they’ll all employ a different literary style as well.