We had the pleasure of talking to Michael Moreci who is a comics author and also had his debut novel, Black Star Renegades, published last year and now its sequel, We Are Mayhem, is about to hit the shelves! Inspired by Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, Moreci’s Black Star Renegades series will definitely satisfy your sci-fi needs!
Read on to find out more our Moreci’s work, writing advice, and book recommendations, and be sure to check out Black Star Renegades, We Are Mayhem, and Wasted Space next time you’re at a bookstore or browsing online!
Tell us a little about yourself!
Hi! I’m Michael Moreci, comics author and novelist. Some of my comics work includes Wasted Space, Roche Limit, Curse, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, and other titles. My novels are Black Star Renegades and its sequel, We Are Mayhem.
For those who haven’t read your 2018 debut novel, Black Star Renegades, can you tell us what it is about?
Sure! Black Star Renegades is a space adventure epic about a young man, Cade Sura, who has the galaxy’s most powerful weapon shoved into his hands; he doesn’t want it, and he’s the last person who should be responsible for it, but it’s his. And he has to figure out what to do with it. Alongside a ragtag group of friends, including ace pilot Kira Sen, Cade is tasked with using the weapon to help save the galaxy from a brutal regime. It’s a book inspired by Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, with a little bit of Arthurian legend for good measure.
The sequel, We Are Mayhem, is set to publish on April 9th. What can readers expect?
I like to think of it as a deeper extension of the first book. It still retains the fun and playfulness of Black Star Renegades, and that rock and roll attitude, but it’s a little more serious minded as we focus on the escalating war and the personal backstories that led Kira and Cade to this point. I wanted to go a little darker and, again, a little deeper, and I’m happy with the results that balance a good amount of fun and adventure with real character/emotional stakes.
Did you find anything challenging about writing the sequel?
It was a bit difficult to find that happy medium between deeper/more serious and recapturing the playfulness of the first book; I didn’t want one to overwhelm the other, but I did know the story had to evolve a bit. I didn’t want to just remix the first book, I want there to be progress and evolution. It was tough getting that balance right, but I think We Are Mayhem handles both sides fairly well.
You’ve written many comic series previously, but has writing a novel always been a dream of yours?
Absolutely. I actually have a pretty extensive background in writing prose, through my undergrad grad days through grad school, and beyond. I have a deep, deep love of books, and I’ve always wanted to have one published (I’d written a novel before, but thankfully—for all our sakes—it was unpublished). This is definitely a dream for me, and I couldn’t ask to be working with better people fulfilling it. My editor, everyone at St. Martin’s, all the indie bookstores and libraries I’ve worked with—they’re all the absolute best. I couldn’t ask to be surrounded by better people.
Writing comics and novels both present challenges – do you find you prefer working on one format over the other?
I probably prefer writing novels a bit better because there’s far more artistry in writing a book than there is writing a comic script. Scripts, in their form, are more or less directions for an illustrator to be the one making the artistry. But, I still love writing comics; I love the collaboration—seeing pages come in from artists will never stop being a thrill for me.
Do you have any interesting writing quirks?
Is writing nude a quirk?
Ahhhh! Burn that image from your minds, everyone. And I’m totally kidding. To be serious—nah, not many quirks for me. I’m a “butt in chair, do the work” kind of writer. I’m at my desk at 8:30, and I’m working. That’s really all there is to this thing—doing the work.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Well, this goes back to my previous response: Do the work. Writing can be discouraging and painful, and at the end of the day, no one is asking you to do this. So, the onus is on you to make yourself get after it, and that’s not easy. Under those conditions, in my mind, the only way through is doing the work. Treating this like a job (because it is). I don’t believe in the whole “kissed by the muses” line. I think if you work hard—and that includes studying the hell out of the craft of writing—and put in the time, you will get to where you want to go. It might take 10 years, it might take 30; you might end up with a bestselling book, you might end up with a self-published book you sell out of your car. But the end goal should be the finished product, and as long as you stay focused on that, and not that result, you’ll get there.
What’s next for you? Any upcoming projects?
Always. I have some new stuff coming out with Vault (who publishes my series Wasted Space), I’m working on a new novel, and I have a few other thing percolating here and there.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?
Hmmm…I loved Myke Cole’s Armored Saint; that was great. Mike Chen’s Here and Now and Then is superb. And there’s always the classics, which I go to time and time again—Vonnegut, Dick, Bradbury. I read Black Crouch’s Dark Matter recently, which I adored.
As for comics—Deadly Class is the best, and I’m loving Jeff Lemire’s Ascender and Hayden Sherman’s/SeanLewis’s The Few.
