Okay, we’re wrapping up my Tour Spot for A Necromancer Called Gam Gam with some actual new content! (gasp!!) Holcombe was gracious enough to take some time out from camping to answer a few quick questions for me…I hope you enjoy these answers!
Why don’t you take a moment to introduce yourself to the readers, and tell us about your path to publication?
Hello all! I’m Adam Holcombe, author of the Chronicles of Gam Gam series as well as the upcoming sci-fi epic, Bounty Inc. My path to publishing is much like the tick’s path to getting burned off of someone. Except the people I latched onto were all very nice and helped me instead of burned me! I’m very grateful for that.
But what I mean specifically is that I was able to follow some of my favorite indie authors through social media, and ended up finding ways to get involved, such as an accountability thread on a Discord server where I ended up getting to know some of my favorite people. With their help, I was able to find my way to publishing A Necromancer Called Gam Gam, and much of my success is owed to how kind and wonderful everyone in this community has been to helping ticks like me grow into our own authors.
Who are some of your biggest writer inspirations/influences. Whether or not we readers can see them, but you know they’re there.
Two of my biggest inspirations to writing come from different media sources than the traditional book, actually. The first is Eiichiro Oda, the mangaka for One Piece, and the second is James Gunn, writer and director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, among several other things. And both of these are for very similar reasons: they both blend humor and emotion so seamlessly it’s incredible how it works, and it’s what I’m constantly striving for myself. I want to create a story that leaves one laughing before they suddenly find themselves silenced by a powerful, heart-wrenching scene. And then maybe ending on a laugh, I don’t know, guess you’ll have to read to find out!
That’s not to say I don’t have authors who are inspirations to me as well! In the same vein of things, M.L. Wang writes emotion so well, she’s been one of the few authors who have ever really brought tears to my eyes. Krystle Matar writes characters so well, it’s hard to imagine they invented these people, they feel real, pulled straight from whatever plane of existence Krystle can peer into. C.M. Caplan can dial the unhinged to eleven and just make it work, something that is so very hard and something I hope to get the chance to do more and more as I continue writing. Those are just a few, but so many stories I’ve read, and authors I’ve talked to have influenced my work in tiny ways, and will continue to do so as I keep pushing more out.
I want to ask about tone—because you strike this balance (or do an intricate dance around and between tones, whichever metaphor you prefer) between cute/cozy and emotionally-wrought with a side of creepy. Was this something you had in mind from the beginning? Was this something you discovered along the way and then wrote/rewrote to turn into it? Or is this just Adam Holcombe in a nutshell?
Ha, maybe my previous answer gave some of this away, but deep/serious moments and light/silly moments are two things I work hard to balance and I’m happy to see that it seems to be working from your perspective! For A Necromancer Called Gam Gam, there were a few ideas I wanted to incorporate from the beginning that set up this balance, but so much of the actual work came when the writing started. If something felt too creepy and too serious when I wanted it to be lighter, I would adjust and make sure something silly was incorporated so it wouldn’t go too far in one direction. And in the same way, if it was getting too whimsical, I’d look for a way to ground things once more. It took a lot of toying to get the feel that I was satisfied with.
This is the point where I like to ask about a supporting character or two that caught my attention. But you’ve done a good job of taking these supporting characters and giving them short stories. When did you decide to do those? Was it because of people like me who were asking questions about them, and this was a quick and effective way to shut us up? Do you have any plans to keep these coming? I think The Wishing Stone provides several potentials.
A lot of authors offer a newsletter magnet, usually a novella of sorts that ties into their story and brings people to their newsletter while also giving readers a chance to try their work and hopefully hook them. I wanted to do something similar, but with A Necromancer Called Gam Gam already being a novella, it felt odd doing a second novella to sell the first. Or giving away that for free to join a newsletter that had nothing else to offer. In the end, the idea came from several anthologies I’ve read where the authors would tie the short story into a series of theirs, giving the reader a taste and a chance to hop onto that series if they liked what they read. A short story seemed a lot more doable for coupling with A Necromancer Called Gam Gam than a second novella or something similar might be.
So, I decided to look at which characters I felt really deserved more backstory, and started with Sir Gibblet in The Knight Revenant, and of course Nugget would need more story in Nugget’s Tenth Life. He’s demanding like that. I also wanted to provide these stories for free, so that anyone who wanted to see what the Chronicles of Gam Gam was about could easily do so. And, for people who are better at reading physically, I also decided to provide them in the physical copies so a reader wouldn’t have to read it digitally if they have a preference. After the first book, pairing up with The Knight Revenant, I thought it would be a lot of fun to do this for each book in the series. Each main book is planned to be partnered with a short story to expand on side characters that don’t get to hog as much spotlight.
The Wishing Stone offers up a lot of fun decisions on who can be next, but as a sneak peak just for you and your readers, the next short story will be following Emil who runs into some shenanigans in the city after the events of the second book.
You display a certain knowledge of knitting—and I like the way that Gam Gam uses it to describe magic. Is this the result of research for the character? Or is this a hobby that you inserted for the image of an elderly necromancer?
Okay, so a peek behind the curtain here, I know nothing about knitting. Give me yarn and two knitting needles, and you’ll get a big ol’ knot back. Maybe the two knitting needles, too. I owe everything knitting related to my wife, who is a huge fan of knitting, crocheting, and many other forms of crafting. I’ll do my own research, but then I run it by her, and she helps me phrase it in a way that actually makes sense. Her teaching me what a perl was probably tested her patience.
Interestingly enough, not that long ago I had to ask her about some big cable knitting thingy to see if it made sense to exist yet in the world of Gam Gam, and she got a big kick out of me trying to talk about it and ask about it. She even dared to say I “was cute.” In the end, though, I decided that in a world with enchanted, magical items, the big cable thingy can exist too. (The big cable thingy is circular knitting needles for those who know more than me.)
I have a guest question from Jodie at Witty and Sarcastic Book Club. I think I read somewhere that Gam Gam started as a D&D character idea, was that a natural jump from the game to writing? Do any of your other characters share that origin? Does being a DM affect how you write/structure a story?
Gam Gam certainly started as a D&D character, but she was quite a bit different! One of my favorite things about D&D is being able to play as ridiculous and fun characters, and sometimes, I take that to the extreme. How she came about was that I wanted to be the party’s grandma if I ever played her, baking cookies, and caring for everyone, but I needed to figure out what kind of class this grandma would be. The funniest to me was having her raise the dead as a Necromancer because it was such an odd combination. And lastly, it’s fun to be insane, so I originally had her animating the bones of some dear loved ones. This was not in a cute way, but a rather horrifying way. At the time, I was a forever DM (meaning I never played characters, so all my character ideas lived and died quickly, never finding freedom on the fields of imagination and dice rolling), so when I had a character idea I was obsessed with, she kind of stuck around until I talked about Gam Gam and was coerced into writing about Gam Gam.
The transition was relatively natural, but I had a character and no story. And the character was a bit insane, so that definitely needed adjusting. Maybe it could have worked, but that was the character I wanted to be to mess around with my friends, not necessarily the one I wanted to read about. I tamed her down, gave her an actual reason for being a necromancer, and found a story that fit just right for her, and the rest came quickly after that. I’m much happier with Gam Gam the story character than I probably would have been had she remained the D&D character.
Right now, Gam Gam has earned the sole distinction as D&D character turned book character. I have a lot of influences from D&D coming into my books (a character in Bounty Inc. is kind of like a lizardfolk or dragonborn, and I have a different character in the third Gam Gam book that is kind of like another creature from the world of D&D), but nothing so direct as the Gam Gam transition. I don’t know if it will be likely either, that seemed to kind of be a one shot wonder that worked in the right place at the right time. I’m getting to play characters now, but it feels like their stories belong in my D&D group, not a story, and so they’ll likely not see the page.
Being a DM feels like writing mostly worldbuilding with the barest frame of a story at times. I can control what my players do to a point, but we never really know where the story is going, and I don’t want to pull them away from something interesting, especially if I’m also very interested. Whereas, for writing, I usually need some beats of plot to really begin on it, and that tends to be central (after I’ve already figured out characters, I do need those before plot). So, my brain actually splits these completely apart, and I tend to not overlap them in many ways. Like, what works for D&D doesn’t always seem to work for a story and vice versa. I’ve had many a great story moments ruined because my players just did other things haha. It feels less like one builds on the other, and more that they compliment each other in completely different ways, and I love that because I’m not always feeling like I want to write one way verses the other. This is, of course, a disclaimer that this is from my own experiences of how I DM and write my own way, and this definitely varies between authors/DMs.
While we’re here, do you want to give a plug for Bounty Inc.? What’s on the horizon for Adam Holcombe, author, after that?
Yes, I would love to! Next on my release docket is a huge swing away from Chronicles of Gam Gam with Bounty Inc. This was the book I was working on before A Necromancer Called Gam Gam came knocking on my brain, so it’s been cooking for some time. If you’re interested in a sci-fi epic that has the same blend of humor and seriousness as Gam Gam, but brought into a more action-packed, vulgar adventure through space, helping to improve the galaxy one bounty at a time, then be sure to check it out! It releases October 15th, 2025!
I am also hard at work on The Knitting Club (book 3 of Chronicles of Gam Gam) and hoping to have that out early next year (though that may be pushing it). I plan to send that out to beta readers by the end of the month. Emil’s short story will be sometime in there too, I’m sure.
I have plenty more Gam Gam and Bounty Inc. left in me, I just need to find the time to work on it all!
Thanks for your time and participation! I’m a big fan and I hope we get to keep reading your work for years to come!
Thank you so much for having me and for enjoying your time with Gam Gam and Mina! I hope to be around for years to come, I’ll need them for everything I have planned.
Alex S. Bradshaw loves stories with unforgettable characters and epic settings.
