Behind The Book Yalum With Matthew Hughes

Mickey has reconnected me with returning guest Matthew Hughes for this Behind The Book discussing his new novel Yalum. Yalum is available now, wherever you get your books! 

Q: Welcome back to Book Notions Matthew! Please, would you give a brief description of Yalum & discuss where the idea for the novel came from?

A: Yalum is the third volume in an unintended series of space-opera adventures that began with Template, originally published by PS Publishing in 2008.  Some years later, I wrote Passengers & Perils, continuing the story of Conn and Jenore, the original’s two main characters, and the ups and downs of operating a charter service using a space yacht acquired from a disgraced Old Earth aristocrat.  Along with the yacht, they acquired its captain, Yalum Erkatchian, who became their friend and partner.

In recent years, I’ve developed a habit of taking a supporting character from a previous work and making him or her the protagonist of a new tale.  Last year, it was Yalum’s turn.

Here’s the blurb:

Yalum Erkatchihan is captain and part owner of the space yacht Peregrinator when a distant relative lures him into returning to the planet he fled twenty-five years ago to escape an oppressive matriarchal cult.  But it’s a trap and Yalum is forced into a quest to recover a sacred relic that pitches him into a desperate struggle for survival.

And then it gets worse, because he discovers that the entire universe is about to be upended by a sudden switch of its operating system from cause-and-effect rationalism to will-powered magic. Yalum and his friends try to prepare to survive, but a new threat emerges:  someone has long been planning to ride the new reality into a tyranny of spellslinging, aided by a bored demon from the Seventh Plane.

Q: How long did it take you to write Yalum? What messages and emotions do you hope readers get once they finish reading Yalum? 

A: About four months.  I generally do a thousand words a day and my first drafts tend to be pretty close to the final product.

I’m not big on messages.  I try to make characters with all the flaws and virtues of people you’d like to know, at least the good guys, so the readers end up happy that my people faced up to the problems I threw at them and came through it all a little battered but unbowed.

Q: If Yalum were to be made into a film, who would be your dream cast for the characters of that world?

A:  I would go for character actors, since none of my “heroes” or “heroines” fit the Hollywood heroic mold.  Conn and Jenore could be Bob Odenkirk and Elizabeth Banks, while Yalum could be Billy Bob Thornton.  I think Stanley Tucci would be a good villain.

Q: Whether you are writing a sequel to Yalum or not, what would the characters be doing right now & what would fans expect if there was a future story in the Yalum universe?

A: They’re sailing their space yachts (they have two now) up and down the galactic arm known as The Spray, home to the civilization of the Ten Thousand Worlds.  Their passengers have ranged from oddball cultists enforcers of the organized crime family known as Green Circle, and they handle precious special cargoes, such as the shipment of little silver pots that were crucial to the plot of the third Henghis Hapthorn novel, Hespira.

If there is ever a sequel, it will probably be built around one of the supporting characters who came into existence in Yalum, maybe the mild-mannered academic who yearned to be a wizard but lacked the requisite quality technically known as oomph.