William C. Tracy is joining us today to talk about his novel, Physical Magic. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Welcome to the Shifting Lands.
Silluka was born with only one arm and could never practice the exacting motions to summon the favor of the gods. Caught stealing, she is forced to test her powers or be branded an outcast. She fails, and loses citizenship to her village.
In a fit of desperation, Silluka tries to steal a badge of citizenship from a mysterious elder. But instead, Elder Quilqi shows Silluka a different path to gain the powers of the gods, aided by an octopus-like technological wizard who worships their own eldritch divinities. Time is short for training however, because a new island is speeding toward the coastal town, throwing deadly hurricanes and tidal waves before it, and threatening all who live there.
Only the gods and godlike storm warriors protect the village from destruction, but all of them fail when a mysterious creature bursts through the wall. It’s only one forerunner for a species of terrifying turtlemen: fast, deadly, and ready to invade the larger island. The village must flee inland before the invasion, while Silluka is weighed down by her outcast status and her brother’s failing abilities. To save herself, her family, and her village, Silluka must overcome stigma and self-doubt. She must learn the scope of the world outside her village. She must learn Physical Magic.
What’s William’s favorite bit?
My absolute favorite bit of this book is knowing I can write it now. I started this story over ten years ago, because I had a great idea to write about a kind of Tai Chi-based magic system. At that point, I’d practiced martial arts for about ten years and really wanted to show off a cool system in writing.
It was…fine. I got about twelve chapters into the book and realized I just didn’t have the prose to tell the story I wanted. I read back through it and was bored. So I shelved it and, in the meantime, wrote about ten more books. I finished up my latest hard science fiction series last year, The Biomass Conflux, and had no new books on my schedule. In addition, I had started reading progression fantasy books in the last few years, where the main characters get stronger and stronger over several books until they’re challenging gods of the world. I thought that was a really cool idea for a longer series.
I also got an excellent book last year, because I am a giant nerd. It was called Origins: The Evolution of Continents, Oceans and Life, by Rod Redfern. It details how the continental plates move, and how that affected life on Earth over millions and billions of years. I decided I was going to include tectonic plate mechanics in my new fantasy book, but to make it exciting, I’d speed them up a lot!
And so was born the second iteration of Physical Magic. Now, having practiced martial arts for over twenty years, I feel I know a little more about it. My prose has also evolved over many other books, and I feel I can do justice to writing complex hand-to-hand fight scenes. I re-read my original draft and ended up keeping only one sentence (which my beta readers later identified as being “awkward” and it got deleted). I even managed to get in not one, but two fight scenes in the first chapter! Here’s a bit of one of them:
“Silluka struck first.
Her punch went wide as his hips shifted him out of the way, but it interrupted his chayu just as the glow of the ampuka was starting to build.
He barely seemed to notice, as one hand, still in a claw, caught her punch and pulled her across his body and toward his cohorts.
Silluka moved with the momentum, trying to slip between a tall, pretty girl and a meaty boy, making sure her stump was up front and in their face. No reaction from the girl, but the boy blanched and fell back, just enough for her to slip through.
She reoriented, scanning the group. The others had rearranged as she turned, and Hufi was halfway through Jakua’s Claws again. One of the last two, a girl even shorter than her, was performing what looked like Tortoise’s Heavy Foot from Strength stance. Any strike she made would be amplified with strength given from Tiyu Tiksimuyu—Uncle Earth. The longer this fight lasted, the more the odds were not in her favor. But if she ran now, they would chase her down again, and she would be more tired from the chase.
Instead, she slipped back into the fray, throwing her stump into Meaty Boy’s face. She’d pegged him as the most skittish from the beginning. She sidestepped the strong, but slow, blow from the short girl, and reached for the low roof on the right. Just a handsbreadth away.
Hufi’s hand grabbed her right bicep, Jakua’s Claws giving him unnatural gripping strength, fingers digging into her flesh.”
I haven’t even touched on the other amazing things I love about this series, like a tiny octopus with a faulty translator, who channels eldritch creations, a species of turtle-like beings who get stronger the fewer there are of them, or two islands literally crashing into each other with all the earthquakes and volcanoes that would spawn! This first book is a journey, where the main characters discover just how little they know of the world and get set up for an even bigger challenge coming as they find much stronger practitioners than themselves.
I promise The Shifting Lands will be a wild ride all the way through the series! I’m already noodling on ideas for the second book in my head, and I have more incredible locations, moving islands, and fantastic creatures planned for farther on. I hope you’ll join me at the beginning of this journey in Physical Magic.
LINKS:
Space Wizard Science Fantasy: https://www.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/book/physical-magic
Author’s Website: https://www.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wctracy.bsky.social
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@tracywc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wctracy.
Mastodon: https://wandering.shop/@wctracy
BIO:
William C. Tracy (he/him) writes and publishes queer science fiction and fantasy through his indie press Space Wizard Science Fantasy. His largest work is the Dissolutionverse: a space opera with music-based magic including nine books and a TTRPG. He’s also published Fruits of the Gods, an epic fantasy with seasonal fruit magic; How to Operate Your Body, a nonfiction book about body mechanics and correct posture; and The Biomass Conflux, a sci-fi trilogy with colony ships and a planet covered by a sentient fungus. He’s currently working on a progression fantasy series about martial arts and moving islands. William is an NC native, has a master’s in mechanical engineering, has trained in Wado-Ryu karate since 2003, and keeps bees.
