It’s that time again! Forum community members volunteer to be asked random questions by other members and we post the questions and answers here. Before we begin, here’s a bit about Tim and all the places to find him!
Tim Hardie grew up in the seaside town of Southport during the 1970s and 1980s. This was before anyone had even heard of the internet and Dungeons & Dragons was cutting edge. Living in a house where every available wall was given over to bookshelves, he discovered fantasy writers like JRR Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Ursula Le Guin, Alan Garner, Stephen Donaldson and Susan Cooper. Those stories led him into the science fiction worlds created by Frank Herbert, Philip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke and HP Lovecraft.
After training to become a lawyer Tim lived in London for three years before moving to Yorkshire in 1999, where he has worked ever since in a variety of legal, commercial, financial and management roles. His writing began as a hobby in his early twenties and has gradually grown into something else that now threatens to derail his promising career.
Tim writes epic fantasy that will appeal to fans of Joe Abercrombie, John Gwynne and Robin Hobb.
Twitter – @TimHardieAuthor
Facebook – @Tim.Hardie.Author.Public
Bluesky – @timhardieauthor.bsky.social
Instagram – @timhardieauthor
Website – www.timhardieauthor.co.uk
Book links:
Hall of Bones – www.books2read.com/HallofBones
Sundered Souls – www.books2read.com/SunderedSouls
Lost Gods – www.books2read.com/Lost-Gods
Broken Brotherhood – https://books2read.com/BrokenBrotherhood
A Roll of the Dice – https://books2read.com/ARolloftheDice
A Quiet Vengeance – www.books2read.com/AQuietVengeance
The Anatomy of Fear – https://books2read.com/theanatomyoffear
The Advent of Winter – https://books2read.com/u/bPlrlx
The Wolf Throne is available via my bi-monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for via my website.
Onto the questions!
If you could time travel to any point in history, where would you go and what would you do?
I wouldn’t go backwards in time because I’d be worried about creating the kind of paradox which means I cease to exist. If time travel is an option then I’m going forward, not back. I’d love to know what the future holds for the human race. Are we alone in the universe? The answer to that question is looking increasingly likely to be no. Will we get off this rock floating in space? Do we become a space-faring species? Humanity’s tendency to repeat the mistakes of the past makes me think those goals might not be achieved, but I’m an optimist at heart and I’d like to think we can transcend our origins and strive to be better.
Are there any books that you have reviewed that either age better or worse with time after they sit with you longer and you continue to think about them?
I don’t think any book is truly timeless, in that you can always see its origins and influences which reflect the age in which it was written and the attitudes of the author and general reading public at that time. I can remember loving books when I was younger that I would be less keen on returning to now. In terms of ageless appeal, it has to be The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. Those books really are special and my love of fantasy as an adult began when I read and subsequently re-read them.
I only began reviewing books about four years ago, so my opinions for those haven’t really changed but it’s true that certain books stay with me longer than others. That’s due to the combination of character, story and sense of place when an author’s writing really works for me. In terms of examples, the writing of Iain M Banks’s Culture novels and Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden Trilogy have been formative in what I look for in my reading and also in my own writing. Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy is another important influence.
If you were at a party and you wanted to impress people with a trick, skill or piece of knowledge, what would it be after one, three and five tequilas?
One tequila – At this point I’m usually emboldened enough to talk about my writing and watch as my captive audience glazes over…
Three tequilas – Time for juggling. Only three balls. Not that impressive, but more so after three tequilas.
Five tequilas – My main skill at this point in the evening is drinking five tequilas.
What’s the most ridiculous conspiracy theory you kind of believe?
That the pyramids were built by or with the assistance of aliens. The more you look at those structures and understand the sheer engineering challenges behind building them the more incredible that feat becomes. Just to be clear, I don’t believe they were built by aliens but that actually makes their construction by the Egyptian civilisation all the more impressive.
In humanity’s hubris, they have long since overstepped their bounds, playing god and toiling with powers they do not understand. In their arrogance they have foolishly created the wicked AI gods, and with their creation, they have damned all of humanity… nay, all organic life as we know it…
What food item will you use to defeat the AI gods, and how?
Coffee. As everyone knows, coffee, especially if you’ve added sugar, is lethal to all electronic devices. You just need to take a cup into one of those AI server warehouses and leave it on a cabinet somewhere. Job done.
You are the captain of a ship. Whilst on your maiden voyage it struck an iceberg and sank. There are 30 survivors, but they are crowded on a lifeboat designed to hold just 7. With the stormy weather getting worse, it is obvious that many of the passengers will have to be thrown out of the lifeboat, or it will sink and everyone will drown. Will you have people thrown overboard? If so, on what basis will you decide who goes? Age? Health? Strength? Gender? Size? Personality?
I’m obviously not a very good captain if we’ve ended up with 30 people in a lifeboat that can only hold 7 people. Since we’re all going to die otherwise, I’d look for volunteers to jump overboard, but with 23 volunteers to find that looks unlikely. If there were children on the boat, I’d try and ensure they survived as they’re not really in a position to understand the choices faced by the rest of those unlucky enough to be in this situation. They would probably also need someone with sailing skills to help them keep afloat until help came. I reckon if it came to forcing people off the boat then it would rapidly descend into survival of the strongest – at which point my opinions on the subject are likely to become irrelevant.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever Googled?
If you’re an author then nothing you have Googled is ever weird – only necessary. One of the laws of writing is whatever you are researching will almost certainly never make it onto the page. The chance of it appearing also reduces the longer you take to research something, until you reach the point where you realise you never needed to look it up in the first place.
I’ve spent ages looking at how the Vikings constructed their longships (the use of the word ‘gunwale’ being the only thing that made it onto the page), their social hierarchy, weapons, house building and military tactics (again, barely used). For A Quiet Vengeance my main research concerned diet in different regions of the Middle East and Africa and food does actually play a big part in that book. Slightly more alarmingly for anyone going through my search history would be methods of torture used in the Middle Ages. It turns out there were a lot, since humans are very imaginative when it came to innovative methods of hurting other people.
What is the most difficult part of writing a book?
Without doubt it’s editing and, more specifically, proofreading to hunt out those final typos at the very end. I self-edit my own work and actually enjoy the different stages of the process. There’s a certain satisfaction in improving your work and making it better with each pass through the text, but that final search for mistakes is hard because you’ve become so familiar with your manuscript at this point it’s increasingly difficult to see what you’ve actually written, rather than what you think you’ve written. It’s definitely easier to edit someone else’s work rather than your own for this reason.
Having worked with a number of authors in the last few years I’m actually considering offering paid editorial services either this year or next. So, whilst it’s the most difficult part of writing a book, I hope to be doing more of it in the near future!
What’s one piece of advice, either from real life or fiction, that you turn to in times of trouble?
I think the most useful thing I’ve learned is lots of things can cause you worry and stress but it’s often the case that you can’t influence them or change the situation you’re in. Knowing the difference between the two – changing what you can, whilst accepting what you can’t alter – is something that’s taken me years to understand. That ability to be accepting of certain situations or circumstances has been important to me in recent years and it’s helped me get through some difficult times. I’m a Christian so it’s worth adding that, for me, part of that process of acceptance and letting go is giving that thing over to God. However, I think that general approach is still good advice for those approaching this from a secular viewpoint as well.
Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?
A bit of whiplash there with those last two questions! I’m squeamish, so the idea of the mess involved in taking on 100 duck-sized horses fills me with an irrational sense of dread. I’d rather take on the massive, oversized duck and have done with it.
