D.K. Latta's been a mainstay of the small press fantasy and science fiction magazines for many years, and has long been a favorite writer of mine. It was a distinct pleasure to "sit down" with him and get his take on a number of sword and sorcery topics. You can find out more about D.K.--as well as read more of his work and that by his brother Blair--at Pulp and Dagger, one of my favorite stops on the Internet. And in case you didn't know, one of D.K.'s excellent Kainar stories appears in the Lords of Swords anthology, and Zargatha appears in both Flashing Swords issue 1 and issue 2.

You've had an impressive and steady number of stories published. Tell us a little about your work habits--how do you fit in your writing?

When I can! Seriously, I have a poor brain for writing, because I like to either do something, or not do it--I need time to get "into" whatever I'm trying to create. As such, I need to find a space where I can work for a period with, hopefully, little interruption. Which is hard to do, and not always realistic. Unfortunately, I'm the same with reading, which is why I can be a slow reader. I like to know I'm going to have half an hour or so uninterrupted before I want to even open a book. My health, admittedly, can be up and down, which also dictates when I can write.

You've created a variety of interesting lead characters. Which are your favorites? Can you tell us a little about how you created them?

I'm not sure if I have a favourite. It depends on the mood I'm in, I suppose. In some cases, the origins were rather mercenary. One of the first stories I sold was called "The Test of the Pearl", a sword & sorcery tale about a young woman named Neekin. Because it sold, I thought, O.K., maybe I should look into this more, and I wrote more (somewhat "adult") stories featuring Neekin, basically embellishing upon a character that, frankly, had only been conceived of as a one-time character in one story. I can't remember the inspiration for Kainar and his enchanted ax, Hawk's Wood, but he's been very good to me--I've written four stories with him and managed to sell three (with the fourth under consideration). But like with Neekin, he didn't start out as a "series" character. The first story featuring him, "Hawk's Wood," was not meant to foster sequels and, indeed, all subsequent stories (so far) are prequels. Still, I liked the concept of a middle-aged, Conan-esque barbarian acting as a kind of police chief in a "civilized" city. I thought it made for interesting dynamics, even in-between the adventure and fighting scenes. Actually, I think a superficial inspiration for Kainar was a comicbook character called Omac who, if memory serves, also "talked" to a being only he could hear (though there was no axe, and Omac was science fiction, and so on). Zargatha, who has appeared in Flashing Swords (in "The High Tower" and up-coming in "The Stone Man"), owes a lot simply to the encouragement I've received from both readers and yourself. With him, I'm interested in experimenting with telling a series of self-contained adventures that, nonetheless, form a greater story arc.

Outside of the S&S field, I think a project I had the most fun creating was a couple of serials (with maybe more in the future) I wrote for Pulp and Dagger about World War II super heroes called The Fellowship of the Midnight Sons. Having grown up on comics, it was fun to try and create such characters, and to strike the right tone -- keeping it fast paced, with plenty of cliff hangers, but also making the characters and their emotions real; keeping it light and witty...while also making it serious and, hopefully, dramatic. Plotting wise, their adventures are among my most complex, because I'm juggling an ensemble of characters, which requires a more convoluted plot to give them all something to do. And even if I do say so myself, I think it came out rather well.

What are your current writing projects?

Whatever strikes me. I'm really keen on trying to actually, you know, sell some pieces, so I'll write S&S, SF, horror, suspense, adventure. I've done a little of it all. With that being said, I have a S&S serial currently going at Pulp and Dagger called "Shadow of the Blood Prophet" about a barbarian hero named Morg. It was actually kind of fun to write. With Neekin, or Kainar, or Zargatha my attempt was to try and create someone, at least nominally, original. However, with Morg, I deliberately, unapologetically, set out to write a Conan rip-off (though there are certainly Conan influences in Neekin, Kainar, etc.). Robert E. Howard is such an influence on so many S&S writers, that I wanted to see if I could try and capture some of the elements of a Howardian story--from the court machinations, to the temperament of the protagonist himself. There have been a zillion official Conan pastiches over the years, and scores of un-official homages (like Jake's Brak, Saunders' Imaro) but few that completely capture all the essences, in my opinion. I don't think I fully succeeded either, but it was fun--even liberating--to try. Actually, as I've probably mentioned before, my brother, Jeffrey Blair Latta's Fukitso stories, come closer than most.

How long have you been writing, and when did you discover sword and sorcery?

I started writing as a kid (I think one of the earliest stories I wrote was a page or two about someone being hunted and, in the end, it turns out the "someone" is a bear and the hunter a man--a twist ending and a morality tale!) but I think I sold my first story about nine or ten years ago and I've been fortunate enough to have actually sold probably 50 percent of what I've written. I think I've been reading S&S for as long as I can remember, probably starting with Edgar Rice Burroughs (not strictly S&S, but enough to act as an introduction to the idea), then Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock (his 1960s and 1970s work in the field). Years later I got further afield (though still fantasists) and have enjoyed works by people like E.R. Eddison, H. Rider Haggard (his Viking saga novel, Eric Brighteyes, might be of particular interest to S&S fans), and Mervyn Peake. Of course, I also read non-fantasy literature, too.

What do you think are the most important elements to remember when you're writing sword and sorcery?

Hmmm. That's a tricky one because it's obvious from what's out there and what others have written that different people want different things in it. I suppose, from my point of view, I see S&S as adventure, which means there should always be a sense the plot is headed somewhere, and exciting things should happen along the way. That isn't too exclude characterization--far from it--but to remember that, at its core, it should be adventure. And not just a promise of adventure. Because S&S/fantasy stories are often shaped around a quest, some writers see that as an excuse for doing nothing for two hundred pages until the characters reach the culmination of their quest. But things should be happening along the way too. I'm probably getting too specific here.

Another important point is atmosphere. I think Howard, in particular, managed to create a vivid sense of place in his Conan stories. You could feel the heat of the jungle in his prose.

Another point, that sort of relates to your question, and maybe doesn't, but I'll toss out there (since I'm not sure myself of what's right or wrong) is whether S&S can be appropriated for dealing with issues and ideas. At its core, S&S is escapism, but all writers, whether intentional or not, can find ideas creeping into their works. But S&S worlds are pretty far removed from our own, ideologically and politically, and often serve as awkward backgrounds for real world metaphors. After all, fantasy worlds tend to be undemocratic, and where might, very often, makes right, and where heroes are often rogues and anti-heroes. So the question is, how seriously--and literally--should we take fantasy settings? I remember reading a Marion Zimmer Bradley novel where she seemed to be trying to make moral and political statements...and it just seemed really awkward given the largely amoral nature of her reality. Probably the first time I say S&S successfully employing metaphors, and dealing with "issues" (the way SF regularly does) was in TV's "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess"--both series having a strong satirical element, and making no pretense at being historically realistic (the characters were very modern in their views) so they were a specific example. That isn't to say that traditional S&S can't tackle bigger ideas--one of my favourite Conan stories is "Red Nails", precisely because it seems to be acting as almost a parable. So it can be done...but it's tricky.

And that's the problem...if you make fantasy stories too modern in their values, you lose the sense of period atmosphere, but if you make them too true to their pseudo-historical period (moral realism, I think it's called) you end up with stories that can't really be taken too much to heart. With my Kainar/Hawk's Wood stories I often find myself walking that line, and perhaps crossing it, where there are aspects to the characters, their moral values, and their town, that are probably too modern and, therefore, anachronistic.

Do you think sword and sorcery remains a viable genre? Why has it nearly disappeared?

Because S&S (as distinguished from the fantasy of say, Tolkien, Brooks, or what have you) is more primal, more action oriented, it could be suffering from the problem that a lot of "action" based genres are (such as comic book super heroes). Namely, that with the advent of video games, and the advances made in TV and movie F/X, a lot of the potential audience is being wooed away. I mean, why read about it, when you can play it, or watch it? As well, S&S has always been on shaky footing. Robert E. Howard, one of the acknowledged giants of the field, died poor, with money owed him by Weird Tales, a magazine which itself wasn't paying top dollar to begin with. As well, there's always been a stigma around the genre (some of it probably deserved) that is dealt with in the SwordAndSorcery.org editorial about thirteen-year-olds. Of course, there's also the problem that S&S hasn't necessarily produced too many R.E. Howards--good writers, who could put words together well, and tell exciting stories. There have been those who can do one (write well with beautiful descriptions...in service of a dull story) or the other (telling a crackling good story...but with a clunky prose style). So is S&S viable? Yes. But as with anything, it takes effort to make it good.

Tell us about Altair Accretion. How long has it been around? Why did you and Jeff create it?

The Altair Accretion is just the umbrella we used to bring together some of our various websites. It was created about 1998, after we had both been cruising the internet for a few years, visiting other sites, and finally thought, why not do one of our own? Part of the point was mercenary, to promote ourselves and our work, by self-publishing. First we created some surrounding sites (Blair did a site reviewing Conan books, I did sites about graphic novels and Canadian movies). Then we set up our flagship webzine, PULP AND DAGGER. But since we didn't like the vanity "optics" of just publishing ourselves, we (mainly my brother Jeffrey Blair) decided to make it a webzine that would consider submissions, but a webzine with a specific--and at the time, fairly unique--mandate: to be a webzine devoted to recreating some of the flavour of the long ago pulp magazines. Hence, "Pulp and Dagger". To set the tone, we wrote some original serials, establishing some of the tone we were going for. I wrote everything from 1930s supernatural tinged adventures of a Canadian Mountie in the Far North, to 1940s super hero adventures about the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons, to S&S with Neekin and others, to a far future space adventure called "Dalton Quasar and the Doom Ship of Time," while Blair has written adventures about bush pilots, pirates (a particularly cool serial called "The Ship Eaters") and, of particular interest to people reading this, his S&S stories about a character called Fukitso which are, I think, among the best Conan-esque stories I've ever read not written by REH himself--yeah, he's my brother, so I'm biased, but I've also worked as a critic/reviewer, so I think I have some judgement.

A side point about Pulp and Dagger and writing is that I'm Canadian and I kind of enjoy trying to bring that to my work (well, O.K., not the S&S stuff which is set in fantasy worlds). American readers probably won't understand this, because they're used to the idea of stories set in, and about, America. But readers from other countries probably will understand when I say that it's not that common to read Canadian pulp stories--even when written by Canadians, they tend to be set in the United States. So it's been fun with Pulp and Dagger to defy those expectations, and tell two-fisted adventures about mounties, or Canadian super heroes, or what have you. And not in an apologetic, or self-depecrating way. I'd like to think that maybe, by doing this, I might be encouraging future writers to think "outside the box" and to recognize that heroes, and adventure stories, can be from different places and that they can actually have a little freshness because of that.

What do you do when you're not writing? Judging by your resume, more writing, but inquiring minds would like to know.

Some family members have some health problems, and I kind of act as chief caregiver, which can consume some time (not always, of course, but sometimes). Hobby-wise, I do the usual things self-styled "creative" people like to do...I play a little guitar and, recently, I've taken up drawing again. And, in both cases, I pretend I'm better than I am! (Hey, I am a fantasy writer).