Take Five with James Enge, Author, “The Wolf Age”

James Enge is the contributor for this week’s Take Five, a semi-weekly series where we ask authors to share five facts about their latest books. Enge is the author of The Wolf Age, the third installment in his series of books featuring Morlock Ambrosius, a legendary swordsman and bitter dry drunk who is more often reviled as a demon or bogeyman than hailed as a hero. Morlock’s latest adventure takes him to Wuruyaaria, a city of werewolves.

James Enge:

1. Ghost-powered zeppelins are the safest kind of airship. Unless you’re a werewolf.

2. The novel is set in a city of werewolves during an election year. It’s like C-SPAN, with (even) more dismemberment!

3. The cover painting by Dominic Harman didn’t illustrate any specific incident in the book. But I liked it so much I retrofitted part of the final text to match it.

4. Fans of Morlock in his drunken misbehaving mode (e.g. the Morlock of “The Singing Spear” in Swords & Dark Magic) may be glad to know he falls off the wagon (pretty hard) in the course of the book.

5. I wanted to quote the Grateful Dead song “Dire Wolf” in an epigraph. Getting permission to use modern lyrics is almost impossible–but not in this case, because the Dead and their publishing company (Ice Nine) are supremely cool.