Calum Lott is an Australian writer and has been obsessed with storytelling since childhood, whether it’s imagining sentient clouds or crafting pirate-ninja epics on printer paper. Inspired by Lord of the Rings, Hyperion, Disco Elysium, and True Detective, he’s been building the galaxy of Valsollas as a home for his fiction. After losing an early draft to a van robbery (yes, really), he regrouped and penned A Dirge for Cascius, a duology set in his sprawling sci-fi-fantasy universe. When not writing, he’s probably playing guitar, gaming, or annoying his girlfriend.
- To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
Howdy! So I was born and raised in a small beach town called Noosa Heads in Queensland, Australia. I grew up playing tennis, surfing, skateboarding and breaking bones. Apparently not much has changed even now seeing as I fractured my back seven months ago jumping off a cliff. Fun times!
I thoroughly disliked school, barely making it through. I believe I even failed one assignment in English senior year which is hilarious to think about now. I just didn’t care for most of it, especially not writing made up scenes in Othello and having to act them out. Yikes.
During the first couple years after school, I studied land conservation and some online cosmology courses, all the while I started writing song lyrics about aliens coming to harvest humanity and creating the foundations for the galaxy that would become the home for all my stories.
After my conservation studies, I travelled South America in a van for seven months, which was a once in a lifetime adventure. The only bad thing that happened on that entire trip was our van got broken into and we had most of our stuff stolen, the worst being my laptop which had the novel I had been working on and hadn’t backed up. But that’s all in the past now and worked out for the best.
Over the next eight years I mostly did mindless landscaping work, in between overseas travelling stints. The one thing that remained consistent was my writing, albeit at a slow pace, most of which was spent worldbuilding. Eventually, I decided to knuckle down and self-publish a book, and so A Dirge for Cascius was born.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
I have a vague memory that I wanted to be an architect at one point, and of course I daydreamed about being a rock star shredding my guitar to thousands of people. Besides that, I never really knew what I wanted to be. It’s a problem that plagued me for a long, long time, still does a bit to this day.
That was until I set out with a goal to publish a book before I was thirty, and while I achieved this a few months after my thirtieth, I achieved it nonetheless and am immensely proud of myself. Writing stories is the only thing I can see myself doing as a career I enjoy, but I’m currently in that plagued moment of life where I’m trying to find a job that can provide me a decent living while leaving space for my writing. I have hope as we all do that my writing will one day take off and it can sustain me full time, but until then I need to find an alternative career that I can spend my life and be content with, but that’s hard. AHHHHH, ha! Life has always come to me like waves, so I’m just waiting for the right one to come and I’ll start paddling.
3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
I would say I was a somewhat cynical agnostic when I was younger. The universe inherently had no meaning and it was just pure chaos, our frail minds the vessels for forces we could never comprehend.
Whereas now–although I still don’t believe in a god–I have a much more complex belief system about how the universe works. As Carl Sagan once said it best, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” I believe humanity and our consciousness is incredibly precious, even if there is an abundance of other sapient beings out there. We are the universe itself, vibrating energies, born from the death of a star, and yet we still understand so little. I can’t wait for the discoveries in my lifetime!
I also believed that drinking alcohol at eighteen was lots of fun, and boy did I drink. But when I finally realised it’s literally poison, and the terrible toll it took on my body, I can safely say I don’t think I’ll ever drink again.
4. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
The Lord of the Rings is my number one inspiration for everything I do. It’s the reason I’m completely obsessed with building rich worlds. Beyond that, some of my main influences are the video game Bloodborne and the manga, Berserk. Both masterpieces in their own ways. One of my favourite paintings is “The Portal” by Zdzislaw Beksinki, and quite possibly the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever heard is a song called “Ginnung” by Jeremy Soule.
5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?
The way my mind works is heavily imaginative. Even in quiet restful moments, I’m always thinking about something wild like black holes or other life forms out in the universe. It is relentless. And I’ve kind of always written, so it’s just something that naturally came to me as a means to release all my creativity and imagination. That said, I still write songs on my guitar and enjoy drawing as other ways to get out the artistic juices.
6. Please tell us about your novel, A Dirge For Cascius.
Oh boy. I understand genre is something important to readers, but to me, and I imagine most author’s, trying to label your precious into a few categories is a nightmare, but we’ll give it a go. A Dirge for Cascius is a blend of True Detective, Hyperion and epic space opera like The Expanse or Sun Eater.
But at its core, A Dirge for Cascius is a story about a broken man trying to heal his sorrows and change. It’s a murder mystery, action space opera, and intense character study all in one. It tackles topics such as depression, suicide, addiction, love and loss, war, friendship, and hope. Dirge does not shy away from all these things that so many of us face in our real lives. It can be quite the daunting read because of its dense worldbuilding and the heavy themes as mentioned above, but the things that challenge us the most only make us stronger.
7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
I like stories that make the reader put in effort and so it becomes a much more rewarding experience. Think of the Dark Souls videogames and when you piece together a bit of lore yourself from simple item descriptions, it’s far more rewarding than being spoon fed the information. So I hope people take a sense of pride in finishing the story and piecing the world together themselves.
The stories that stick with you the most are ones that make you reflect on your own life. A main example for me being Guts from Berserk. He never complains, not when the most horrific things are happening. He just keeps moving forward, doing what is necessary. Trying not to complain about little problems of no real consequence is something I am constantly correcting in my real life.
So I hope that people can follow along on Cascius’ difficult journey and empathise and learn something about themselves, or see something that they then want to change for the better.
8. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Besides Tolkien of course, I admire all of the friends I’ve met since I started self-publishing. So many of them are kicking absolute ass right now and it’s amazing to see how they’re giving traditional publishers a run for their money.
A few absolute legends who are crushing it right now are Z.S.Diamanti, Adrian M Gibson, Bryan Wilson, Z.B Steele, and my guy Scott Palmer.
9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
The goal has always been to earn enough from my writing that I can do so full time, beyond that, who knows. I have a very visual mind, so I definitely want to have a shot at writing a screenplay one day. Turning one of my stories into a film or tv show would be epic.
10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
Write. Fail. Learn. Write.
Calum Lott, thank you for playing!
A Dirge for Casicus
Chaos seeps into the Valsollas Galaxy.
Cascius Carcyde is on the brink of letting his addiction to reliving his sorrows claim his mind. When the Sages demand he take a new partner, Cascius must forfeit his old ways in order to solve the twisted Red Hand murders.
To unravel an interstellar mystery and stop the Red Hand, Cascius must pull himself from the very depths of despair and learn to change before the entire Velutra falls into oblivion.
Stare too long into the abyss, and the abyss peers back.
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