KJ Parker Interviewed by Pornokitsch

Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a monster fan of KJ Parker. Orbit is releasing a new Parker novel this month titled, Sharps, which I've read and will be reviewing soon. Given the nature of Parker's public profile, or lack there of, few interviews are granted by the publisher and/or author and the only one of any real substance I've seen thus far was the one done by Tom Holt for Subterranean Press. Until now.

Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch was given an opportunity to interview Parker via e-mail. He posted the replies today and they're fantastic. Not surprising given the quality of Shurin's questions. I strongly suggest everyone check it out.

PK: Magic appears infrequently in your work, and is invariably accompanied by someone trying to explain it away as something un-magical. Why take this approach to the supernatural? Given how much you accomplish without magic/natural philosophy/weirdness, what leads you to include it when you do? 

KJP: I like to have magic in short fiction, and to keep it sidelined in novels. This started off when reviewers complimented me on writing magic-free fantasy (I’ll show them, I thought) but I rather like the distinction, since short-story stories are necessarily quite different from larger-scale narratives. Magic in fantasy literature is a bit like chilli sauce; a little, sparingly used, is great. A whole magic-flavoured novel can be inedible; all you can taste is the chili, not the meat and vegetables.

Click here and head to Pornokitsch the interview in its entirety.

And stay tuned to this blog for more KJ Parker love soon.

David Anthony Durham Interview (Part 2)

Part One of my Interview with David Anthony Durham

Justin: Some commentators out there, myself not included (obviously), say that War with the Mein didn't do it for them. It wasn't until the second book that the series caught them. I wonder if it's because the first novel is couched in traditional epic high fantasy, where the second and third go to some new places, literally and figuratively. Was starting in the expected and going to the unexpected part of the plan?

Durham: I don’t think that the first book was really couched in traditional epic high fantasy. I do think the first book appeared to be traditional in many aspects. I set up familiar elements in order to subvert them. The benevolent empire of the protagonists isn’t at all benevolent. The invading hordes from the hinterlands are fighting legitimate injustices that pretty much anyone in the empire could agree with. The obvious hero of the book suffers gravely for believing the myth of himself. An apparently shallow character is revealed, eventually, as the most cunning actor in the mix. The triumph of the ending has a lot of menace in it - enough to make it unclear if it really was a triumph. I cast a large cast of ethnically diverse characters - which seemed more unusual when I wrote it than it does now. And the two arguably strongest characters - both in martial matters and in political prowess - are women.

Seems pretty different than the Tolkien template to me.

I did feel that the first book’s pacing wasn’t as quick as it should’ve been. I was working a lot of stuff out about the world as I wrote. Not all of it needed to stay in the finished book. That’s why I made some cuts for the trade paperback edition. No changes in plot or anything. Just a lot of small trims. I think readers will find that the first part moves a bit faster, gets to the good stuff a little sooner.

Justin: I'm intrigued to see how the edits are received. To jump to a wholly different topic, where do you come down on the whole 'magic should be unknowable and mysterious' vs. 'magic should have rules and logic' debate? I would judge your magic in Acacia to be somewhere in the middle.

Durham: I’m not into completely “unknowable and mysterious”. It feels wishy-washy. I’m mostly down with “rules and logic” to it, but I’d say I stand by magic having “costs and consequences”. That’s how it is in Acacia. It’s power, but it’s hard to know how using it is going to come back at you.

Justin: For me, I always feel like magic should serve a purpose beyond the 'that's cool' factor. I think yours does that, but rather than talk about what purpose I think it serves, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Durham: It’s fun that it’s cool, of course, but in Acacia magic is a bit like nuclear power. A historical game changer. Incredibly useful. So much potential to be used in productive ways, but… It creates a power discrepancy. It’s hard not to misuse. And it leaves a toxic residue that causes lots of problems. This being a fantasy, the residual effects of magic aren’t cancer and birth defects. Instead we get enormous crossbred baboon/gazelles, mountain-sized ravenous fish and dragons, to name a few.

Justin: Speaking of unintended consequences, I'm not sure if you've caught any of the kerfuffle over the Hunger Games and the ethnicity of the kids in the film. I remember back on the Acacia forums you used to run on your website, there was a casting thread where the vast majority of the actors suggested were white. Most of your characters aren't white. Do you just wave your hand at that and move on, or is this a problem we need to get at?

Durham: I mostly wave my hand and move on. It can seem a bit strange to me that some readers don’t picture my characters the way I describe them. It’s an old story, though. Ursula K LeGuin has been dealing with it for decades. Over and over again she describes her characters as “dark” and “brown” and “coppered”. Hollywood (or Japan) hasn’t yet seen fit to respect her descriptions in film, though.

It’s not a fantasy problem, though. We’ve been miscasting characters ethnicity in all sorts of films for a long time. We’ve decided that ancient Greeks or Romans weren’t actually Greek or Italian. They weren’t even olive-skinned. Instead, they’re English or Scottish or Irish - at least in terms of the actors Hollywood picks to play them. It’s ridiculous. I’d love to see an ancient war film where Greek characters are played by Greeks, or Italians play Romans.

Justin: Your historical fiction work tackles race head on. I think Acacia does too, although in a much more roundabout way. Do you agree with that?

Durham: I wanted a world as diverse as ours, familiarly so. On the other hand I wanted to chop up the world map and move things around. I definitely didn't want to replicate the particular racial history of our world. So there are nations that seem pretty African, but that doesn't mean they’re destined to be slaves. There are European-like people that are fiercely proud, but it wouldn't occur to them to feel racially superior. Culturally superior perhaps, but not with the pseudo-science/religious nonsense that justified racial suppression in our world. The races exist, but not necessarily the baggage our history attaches to them.

Justin: There's a lot more non-western fantasy being written now. N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, and Saladin Ahmed, are three that come to mind off the top of my head. What do you think's driving this?

Durham: It’s wonderful. They’ve added things to the genre that can’t be ignored anymore. I knew Nnedi early in her career, and Nora and Saladin before they were even published. They were hard-core fantasy fans, very active in the community, always at cons, etc. They knew they’re stuff, but as writers they were intent on not just replicating the European stories they’d grown up reading. They wanted to honor their own origins as well - and those of others.

I think they’re succeeding because they’re writing strong, commercially viable books. Publishers may not have seen non-European fantasy as a strong market before, but clearly that’s changed.

I’d like to think I helped with that a little bit. The Acacia Trilogy was published by Doubleday, a mainstream publisher. I’d done three books with them before proposing The War With The Mein. We were on good enough terms that they were willing to shrug and say, “Sure, give it a try.” I’m not sure how readily genre publishers would’ve done that if I’d approached them.

Justin: Now that Acacia is done, I believe you're working on a Spartacus era historical fiction novel. Any plans to come back to fantasy in the future?

Durham: Absolutely. I’ve already written another fantasy novel, though it’s for a different audience. My first middle grade fantasy is called The Shadow Prince. It’s a kids book set in ancient Egypt. It’s full-on fantasy, with lots of demon fighting and shape-shifting gods and kids saving the world from eternal darkness - that sort of stuff. It was great fun to write, and if we get a publisher for it I hope to write a whole series of them!

In terms of grown-up stuff, I’m continuing to write for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards books. I’d love to return to the world of Acacia as well. There’s a lot more to explore. I’m interested in what the next generation of Acacians make of the world they inherited at the end of The Sacred Band. I’d love to spin the globe a bit more also - to get a look at what’s on the other side.

Justin: Thanks again for doing this and thanks for writing such a great series. Good luck with your next project.

Durham: Thank you.

***

David Anthony Durham is the author of six novels, all published by Doubleday and/or Anchor Books. 

His first novel, Gabriel's Story, is a historical novel set in the American West, featuring black homesteaders and cowboys. He followed it with Walk Through Darkness, telling the tale of a runaway slave and the Scottish immigrant hired to track him. Continuing with historical fiction, he published his third novel, Pride of Carthage, a fictional exploration of the Second Punic War between Carthage and the early Roman Republic.

More recently, he's published a fantasy trilogy including: Acacia: The War With The Mein, The Other Lands, and The Sacred Band. Three of his novels, including The War With the Mein have been optioned for development as feature films. 

Durham currently teaches Popular Fiction at the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program.

David Anthony Durham Interview (Part 1)

I first read David Anthony Durham back in 2007 when I came across his novel Pride of Carthage. After finishing it, I felt compelled to peruse his other work and I came across Acacia: The War With the Mein. I was quickly ensnared and I've anxiously awaited every novel he's published since. I read the series conclusion, The Sacred Band, earlier this year and immediately reached out to Durham to see if he'd be interested in coming on to the blog to talk with me. He kindly agreed. Once the interview was done, I realized how much material I had. I decided to make a week of it. Yesterday, I posted my review of the entire series. Today is part one of my interview.

***

Justin: Thanks for doing this. I've been a big fan of the series since 2007 when Acacia: The War With the Mein was first released. I credit it as the novel that first got me back into fantasy.

Durham: Thank you for saying the book had that effect on you. That’s huge. I’m very pleased if I played a part in your reconnection with fantasy. 

Justin: I'm a giver. You're a guy whose written extensively outside of the genre. What does fantasy do for you as a writer (and reader) that historical fiction or mainstream fiction doesn't do?

Durham: In a lot of ways historical fiction and fantasy do the same things - which is why I like both genres. I love being transported to different times and places, filled with problems and possibilities unique to those settings. It’s seeing people struggle with the things thrown at them - things I don’t quite have to deal with in the same way in current life - that interest me so much.

Historical fiction seems fantastical to me in that it describes a world that no longer exists. Historical settings can seem every bit as foreign as an entirely made up world. The things characters face in the past can be weird and wonderful and terrifying.

That said, there’s nothing like taking the fantastic to a higher level. I’ve read quite a bit of historical fiction dealing with early Arctic exploration, for example. Interesting stuff. But none of them will remain as vividly in my mind as Dan Simmons’ The Terror. All the historical stuff was pretty grim, but introducing a ravenous, mythical polar bear monster into the mix certainly injected something unforgettable into it.

If George R.R. Martin had chosen to write historical fiction set in Europe he’d have done a terrific job of it, but there’s something very cool about going to a land with it’s own geography and history, names and traditions, where real-world realities smack up against dragons and the undead and giants. Works for me.

Justin: What's your background as a fantasy reader? Were you a Tolkein/Donaldson/Brooks reader in your youth?

I was a Tolkein/Lewis/Alexander/Le Guin/Donaldson reader.

Justin: Donaldson seems particularly significant to the genre for me. He wrote a protagonist that readers almost had to loathe -- a rapist. It feels like we took a long break from that kind of character in favor of the farm boy hero, but we're seeing more of it now. In Acacia, Rialus, Heinish, and Corinn, all fit that flawed character model. What makes those kinds of characters interesting?

Durham: For me, it’s that they’re real and complex. People are more than one set of traits, and I enjoy watching them struggle with themselves as they make their way in the world.

Corinn, for example, does some pretty diabolical things throughout the series. She doesn’t do them because she’s evil, though. She wouldn’t see herself that way. The things she does come out of her insecurities, her desire to control as much about her fate as she can. She was betrayed and abandoned enough times that she came to only trust herself. That’s the core of her character. The way that manifests is through the things she does - all the way up until the end.

Justin: Lewis and Alexander are great calls. The Chronicles of Prydain were extremely formative for me, too. So, why come "back" to fantasy after three more mainstream novels?

Durham: Fantasy is the genre that taught me to love reading. I've never forgotten that, and I wanted to acknowledge it by writing in the genre myself. It partially felt like a way of paying respect to where I came from. It’s not entirely conscious decision making, though. I got the idea for the series because it crept up on me and started whispering in my ear. I wanted another big story after Pride of Carthage, but the story that was whispering to me just didn’t really fit on the map of this world. I needed a new map, and a new world.

Justin: As someone who teaches creative writing at the college level, do you earn more street cred for Gabriel's Story and A Walk Through Darkness or Acacia?

Durham: In traditional programs, my credentials are all about my first three books. If I wanted a prestigious job at one of the top MFA programs, I should’ve stopped writing after Pride of Carthage. I’ve sold many more books in many more countries since then, but I certainly got invited to speak at colleges more when I only had a couple of literary/historical novels out than I do now.

I’m not complaining, though. I teach at a low-residency MFA program that has a popular fiction track - the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program. There genre writing is booming. Lot of great students are coming through, writing fantasy and sf and crime and horror and thrillers and romances. Many of them are getting published and building writing careers. There’s so much energy and enthusiasm in the program that I don’t need to look elsewhere anymore.

Justin: Sounds like you're in a good spot that frees you to write what you want. But generally speaking is there any pressure in the academic world to publish "serious" fiction?

Durham: Yep. I can’t get too worried about that, though. Partly that’s because I do write serious fiction. It just happens to feature the fantastical elements that fantasy, sci-fi or historical material offers. Most of it’s not light, though. And partly it’s because a lot of the fiction that “serious” writers produce I find ridiculous. I’ve spent enough time in academia to be critical of it.

Justin: I don't think anyone can read War With the Mein without making some connections to George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, particularly with regard to the children and their stories. Mena and Arya. Aliver and Rob. Dariel and Jon. Corrin and Sansa. Bran and Rickon got lost somewhere along the way (I think Martin may have lost them too!). Interestingly, this four character paradigm maybe goes all the way back to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I seem to recall that you hadn't read Martin before writing War With the Mein. What do you think is so attractive to writers about this setup?

Durham: Yeah, I hadn’t read Martin before writing Acacia: The War With The Mein. If I had, I’d have had to make some changes. There are quite a few similarities early on in the first book. If I had read Martin my book would be less like his, definitely not more.

The C. S. Lewis similarities are strange too. What I thought I was creating with the Akaran kids was a family based on my wife’s family. She has three siblings, same ages as the Akarans, each with some trait that inspired them. Oldest brother that had responsibility thrust upon him early - and that he often had to deal with on his own. Eldest sister that had a cosmopolitan streak, an eye toward fashion and a high bar for her potential partner (she got a prince in the end). Mena came as a spin on my wife: a bit tomboyish when she was young, quite a temper… Fortunately, my wife’s got no skills with a sword. And Dariel… well, my brother in law isn’t exactly a pirate, but he made a pretty dashing big water raft guide. There was something in all of them that inspired the book. That’s why one book is dedicated to my in laws, and another is dedicated to my wife and her siblings.

What I had no idea I was doing until later was recreating a four sibling template similar to Lewis’ kids. Maybe that’s subconscious. Maybe I inadvertently found their traits in my wife’s family. Or maybe there’s something fundamental about siblings that Lewis picked up on, and that we’ve been repeating every since.

Justin: You threw the kids into chaos early on in the novel. Some end up with father figures, some don't. Is that a relationship you wanted to explore or did things just fall out that way?

Parental responsibility - specifically fatherly responsibility - is a pretty big theme in the books. It’s a big theme in all my books. I must have issues.

What responsibilities does a father have in educating his kids about the world? What horrors should first be revealed by parents? What things should we try to shield our kids from? How much of fatherhood is a product of genes, and how much of it is determined simply by the quality of the relationships people have with each other - regardless of blood connections? I’ve chewed on a lot of that in my own life. I guess I’ve done the same in my fiction too.

Justin: Are you aware your initials are DAD?

Durham: I’ve heard that mentioned before. ;) My kids, I’m happy to say, call me by that name.

Justin: Who's your favorite character? It's a terribly generic question, but I ask it because mine is Rialus Neptos. He's the most fascinating character in the novel to me by far, so I wonder if you've got a special place for him.

Durham: It’s great to hear you say that. I have a special fondness for poor Rialus. I don’t really know where he came from. He may have begun as purely a comical character, but that didn’t last long. He embodies fears and ambitions and characteristics that are pretty fundamental human flaws. I know I’ve got a little Rialus in me. Can’t deny it. Who doesn’t feel hard done by on occasion? Who doesn’t think their owed more than the world has seen fit to offer? Rialus feels that way pretty much all the time, but I can relate.

The funny thing about him was that even early on - when he was just fumbling his way through the chaos - I had a feeling he was going to be important to the whole series. He was going to have a role right up until the end. And he did.

I don’t really have one favorite, though. I love Mena in all her versions - insightful kid, priestess of the avian cult of Maeben, warrior princess, dragon rider. I had a lot of fun writing her fight sequences. I liked stabbing Dariel again and again. I’m really glad that Elya came to me. I dig Barad’s stone eyes. I had a good time writing the various slimy Sires…

Naw, I can’t pick just one.

Justin: After comparing Mena to your wife I'm pretty surprised you can get away with not saying she's your favorite. Mine would be staring over my shoulder as a I typed my answer to a question like that. I notice an optimism throughout the series. Without giving anything away, although I'm tempted, why did you decide to tell a story that was more in line with the timeless heroic fantasy, than the nihilistic or raw bleeding edge stories that have become so popular? (For context: Joe Abercrombie, Richard Morgan, George R.R. Martin)

Durham: I love those guys, so whatever ways I’m different aren’t a criticism of them. In some ways I feel a slice of their DNA in my writing. I’m glad you find optimism in the series, though. There’s an awful lot that’s wrong with the Acacian world - as there’s a lot wrong with ours - but ultimately I can only get invested in characters that aspire to make things better. That can mean a lot of things. Sometimes making it better for one group makes it worse for others. Often the best of intentions are twisted before they even take flight. But still, they’re trying. And every now and then they achieve something.

Click here for part two of my interview with David Anthony Durham, author of The Acacia Trilogy.

***

David Anthony Durham is the author of six novels, all published by Doubleday and/or Anchor Books. 

His first novel, Gabriel's Story, is a historical novel set in the American West, featuring black homesteaders and cowboys. He followed it with Walk Through Darkness, telling the tale of a runaway slave and the Scottish immigrant hired to track him. Continuing with historical fiction, he published his third novel, Pride of Carthage, a fictional exploration of the Second Punic War between Carthage and the early Roman Republic.

More recently, he's published a fantasy trilogy including: Acacia: The War With The Mein, The Other Lands, and The Sacred Band. Three of his novels, including The War With the Mein have been optioned for development as feature films. 

Durham currently teaches Popular Fiction at the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program.

Guest Post | The Weekend Edition of Character Agency (Long)

I've noticed more and more authors lamenting the treatment of women in fantasy novels. Despite widespread agreement that there should be a more concerted effort to depict strong women, I wasn't necessarily coming away with the impression that agency is something a character has to have. I asked a swathe of fantasy authors about their thoughts on the subject. Some of the questions I asked the authors to consider were:

• What is agency?
• Why is it important? 
• Why do we find more male characters with agency in fantasy novels than females? 
• Is it OK if a character doesn't have it?
• Can a character still be interesting if it lacks it? 
• Can a book be good if none of the characters have it?

The answers I received were varied. When this series is all said and I done I hope to have an informed opinion on the subject. For now, I'm going to listen.

In the fourth installment of the series, I have a duo of  surveys from...

Nebula nomatined author of God's War, Kameron Hurley
Author of Shadow Ops: Control Point, Myke Cole

and a quick hit from...

Author of  The Alchemist of Souls, Anne Lyle

                                                                                    

What is agency?

Kameron Hurley: Agency is about having the ability to determine your own future and be the hero of your own story – not just the sidekick in somebody else’s. Secondary characters in fiction fall into this trap even more often than heroes. It’s vital to remember that even sidekicks believe they’re the hero of their own story. In a perfect world, they’d be depicted as actively engaged (or not) in the hero’s story for reasons that relate to their journey, not the hero’s. If a character is being passively controlled by the interests of others, or exists only as a faceless satellite circling your protagonist’s shining star, congratulations! You’ve created a character without agency.

Myke Cole: I suppose it can mean different things to different people, but I have always understood it to mean a characters ability to take possession of their own life and influence/control the events that impact them (as opposed to being hopelessly tossed about like a cork on the ocean).

Why is it important?

Kameron Hurley: Truly engaging characters are those imbued with the whims, desires, frustrations and passions of real people. If they act like dolls or puppets jerked around on the protagonist’s (or the plot’s) coattails, they’re far less interesting. It can also be much more insidious than that. When entire classes, groups, or types of people in an author’s body of work are consistently portrayed as having no personal agency, or agency subsumed by a hero from the dominant culture, it also sends readers a message that these people are just objects that exist to support the hero’s journey. If we’re all the heroes of our own story, then we, as writers, are training an entire generation of heroes to objectify the people in their lives, and see them merely as vehicles for getting what we want.

Myke Cole: Whether or not a character has agency will seriously define them in the eyes of the reader and the other characters in the novel. We have all met people without agency in real life, and it can be tough to respect folks who allow themselves to slapped around by life's waves. Such characters are less likely to make compelling protagonists, though I will say that the struggle to develop/recognize/obtain agency for a character is a fascinating thing and makes for a great protagonist/story.

You don't want to set up a false dichotomy here: More agency - good. Less agency - bad. Having little agency can be part of an interesting story as well, and the fact is that in life, some folks don't have much agency. Good stories have characters that reflect this range. It's also important to keep in mind that having agency doesn't necessarily mean that a character will achieve their goals in life. You can have all the agency in the world and still lose.

Why do we find more male characters with agency in fantasy novels than females?

Kameron Hurley: It’s interesting that this question wasn’t an “if” question but a “why” question. Ten years ago (or on another blog, perhaps), it would have been an “if” question. Men’s experiences have been given greater weight and importance than women’s in both history and popular culture. It doesn’t take more than a couple history or English class reading lists to figure that out, if you didn’t already pick it up from general media. There’s a very long history of narrative that positions women and “Others” stories as subservient to the goals and desires of a male hero from the dominant culture. Prioritizing these experiences over those of others not only teaches women and those from disenfranchised groups that they their stories are less important, it also teaches men from the dominant culture that this is as it should be. It reinforces power imbalances and reduces alternative narratives.

Myke Cole: There's a difference between females having less power/being oppressed and not having agency. Even females in the most dismal conditions (medieval settings, for example) can have incredible agency. In fact, it is a female's ability to find ways to shape events, advance her goals and protect her interests in the face of a deck stacked horribly against her that shows the greatest agency of all.

A good example of this is Arya Stark in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Arya is both a female and a child in a society that isn't particularly nice to either. Yet she exhibits incredible agency. She resists attempts to make her into a docile, compliant court lady and homemaker (like her sister Sansa). She faces down intense social pressure and threats to her life to carve her own path in spite of the obstacles laid before her. Contrast her with Sandor Clegane ("The Hound") who, despite being a physically powerful male and a skilled warrior, basically just tugs his forelock and does whatever the depraved boy prince/king tells him. The small, female child shows incredible agency, while the socially enfranchised, physically powerful male warrior shows very little.

Societies can oppress females, discriminate against them, try to force them into subservient roles. But no one can take a female's agency unless she lets them. Many would argue that women with great agency are more interesting, but I find Sansa Stark (who is almost bereft of all agency) FASCINATING. She's fascinating the way watching a car wreck is fascinating, but it's still a great story.

Is it OK if a character doesn't have it?
Can a character still be of interest lacking it?

Kameron Hurley: Not everybody is willing or able to take an active role in their own lives, it’s true. But most of us do. Sure, you can write about a character that doesn’t have agency. The trouble comes when you have an entire subset of people operating without agency. Not only does that perpetuate a lazy cultural narrative, but that same laziness means that those characters won’t be terribly interesting. A character without agency is a Cinderella, a woman of Gor, believing that if she is just good enough, and subservient enough, she will be rewarded for her passivity. There’s nothing wrong with a story like that read in isolation (it’s creepy, but not wrong), but when you’re just reproducing a lazy stereotype, taking part in the retelling and reinforcing of these stories, which have been done for generations, across multiple media, it’s no longer “just a story” but instead, part of the tacit instruction manual for leading a “normal” life. Your work becomes part of cultural narrative designed to favor one group’s experiences over another. You become part of the problem. Without a multiplicity of stories, we risk touting a single fictional narrative as “the way things are supposed to be” instead of presenting many ways that things can be.

Myke Cole: Yes. I'd argue that it's pretty hard to get behind a protagonist who lacks agency (unless the story is about the protagonist's struggle to develop/awaken to their own agency). That said, there are plenty of characters who lack agency who are still compelling and fascinating. I have already given the example of Sansa Stark (even if she disgusts you, she still INTERESTS you). I think our fascination with characters who lack agency is similar to our enjoyment of reality TV. We're either watching hoping that they will find a way to turn things around and take possession of their own course, or we're hoping they will reap what they've sown. Either way, we're WATCHING, and that means the writer has done his/her job.

Can a book be good if none of the characters have it?

Kameron Hurley: “Good” is such a wildly subjective term. Lots of people enjoy watching powerless people caught up in epic events beyond their control, moved about like croquet balls by the gods. It’s how we all feel sometimes. But for me, as a reader, characters who attempt to take some control over their lives (even if they fail) make for more satisfying books. Eliminating a character’s need to make a decision about
whether or not to leave their spouse, or spare their enemy, with a violent earthquake or timely heart attack also limits their agency. The more interesting, powerful story is the one that forces characters to make hard choices. The scullery boy or farm maid who just sits around waiting for great things to happen to them is an incredibly relatable character, but not exactly an inspiring one. Alternatively, handing a woman a gun and some sexy pants and having her run off to do the bidding of a group of guys and calling that agency isn’t terribly interesting either. If her story’s just in services of theirs and their goals, we haven’t made much progress.

Stories are powerful things. “Oh, it’s just a story,” people will say, “why get so worked up?” But stories contain the power of possibility. They inspire different ways of thinking. They tell us how life can be. There’s nothing wrong with a few “be a good girl and good things just happen” stories. But when you’re raised on nothing but “sit around and wait for your hero” stories, odds are you’re going to be sitting around in your mom’s basement folding laundry for a long, long time waiting for your fortunes to change.

And wow, let me tell you – that would be a boring story.

Myke Cole: Here, I'd have to say no. Stories are ultimately about people facing conflicts/obstacles and doing what they must to overcome them. This is, by definition, an expression of agency. While supporting characters can lack it, protagonists and antagonists need it to address that core principle of story-telling. Otherwise, they'd be faced with the challenge and just throw up their hands. "Get the One Ring to Mordor? Dude. Waaaaay too complicated. Let's go play X-Box. I'm sure someone will figure out a way to stop Sauron. Are there any Fritos left?" or "Storm Troopers massacred my parents while I was talking to you, Obi-Wan. I know you want me to go to Alderan, but can I just live with you until this whole thing blows over? The Rebel Alliance will take care of the Empire. I just need a place to hide."

See? Not very interesting.

Kameron Hurley is the author of the Bel Dame Apocrypha from Night Shade Books. Her debut novel, God's War, has been nominated for the Nebula Award for best novel. The final novel in her trilogy, Rapture, is due out this fall.

Myke Cole is the author of Shadow Ops: Control Point, a new blend of urban fantasy and military thriller. He's a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve and a tremendous advocate for genre fiction. He also prefers his beer fruity.


                                                                                    

Anne Lyle

To me, for a character to have agency they must have the freedom and will to make plot-relevant choices independent of other characters in the story. A character who is always a follower and never the leader, even for a moment, lacks agency. This is perfectly fine in a sidekick or minor character, because this kind of person exists in real life, and they can still be interesting if they have a distinctive personality. The problem comes when you have a major character, either protagonist or (more rarely) antagonist, who is like this.

Male characters lacking agency are much rarer than female ones, undoubtedly because it's an unconscious assumption in our culture that men are the doers, the movers and shakers, whilst a woman's role is to be supportive and compliant. This is frustrating for female readers in particular, who have just as great a desire as men to see their own dreams and aspirations reflected in the heroes of stories.

In genre fiction especially, many readers are looking for an escape from their mundane life, which is often one of passive reaction to circumstances beyond our control. Reading about a character who is similarly passive - lacking in agency - fails to satisfy that need. Through characters who have agency, or who struggle to attain it, we gain a glimmer of faith in our own ability to control our lives.

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Anne Lyle is the author of the new novel from Angry Robot Books, The Alchemist of Souls. Rumor has it she's pretty short. I've read her novel and highly recommend it to everyone who enjoys, you know, good books.

Elizabeth Bear Knows What Agency Is
Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency
Bad GMs Don't Allow Agency - Mazarkis Williams
The Weekend Edition of Character Agency (Long)
Is Robert Jackson Bennett a Secret Agent?
Robin Hobb Brings the Agency Discussion to a Close

Interview with Anne Lyle author of Alchemist of Souls

Earlier this week I reviewed Anne Lyle's debut novel Alchemist of Souls. It's an excellent piece of historical fiction that she blends with fantasy elements to create something wholly unique. A lover of historical fiction during a long stretch in my 20's, I found myself quickly drawn into the background of the novel. Before long I was neck deep in a Wikipedia wormhole following Lyle's historical threads and their real world simulacrums. After my supplementary reading, I wanted to ask her a few questions... Lyle agreed.

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When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods--and a skrayling ambassador--to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital? 

Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is seconded to the ambassador's bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems. What he learns about the skraylings and their unholy powers could cost England her new ally--and Mal his soul.

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Justin: Thanks for agreeing to answer my questions, Anne. During my college days, when I thought I was way too cool for fantasy books, I started reading gobs of historical fiction. James Clavell, Stephen Pressfield, etc. In reality, historical fiction is as much fantasy as well... fantasy. Especially when you get into alternate time lines as you have in Alchemist of Souls. What do you think about the distinction between the two?

Lyle: I never considered myself too cool for fantasy - I was playing RPGs such as D&D and Runequest at uni! - but I did read Shogun and other historical novels as well. I think they appeal to a similar audience, in evoking nostalgia for a simpler time.

Some would say that all fiction is fantasy, in that it can never be a true representation of reality, but the lines blur more easily when it comes to historical fiction. After all, most human cultures throughout history have believed in ghosts and other supernatural creatures, so these things will be as real for your historical characters as magic is for Gandalf or Harry Potter. However I've noticed that many historical novels play this down, perhaps for fear of straying into fantasy territory. Their loss, I think!

Justin: How much research did you put into making the novel feel historical? Is Elizabethan England a passing interest or something you've studied extensively?

Lyle: It's an era I've always loved, but naturally I had to ramp up my knowledge level once I decided to write a book set in this period. I now have an entire bookcase shelf full of non-fiction about sixteenth-century England, and have made research trips to specific locations used in the book, such as the Tower of London.

Justin: Is it true you were locked up in the Tower of London after a controversial incident at university?

Lyle: Damn, I thought that had all been hushed up!

No, I went to university in Bristol, which is a long way from London. The city does have a tower, a Victorian edifice honouring the Italian explorer John Cabot, who sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland in 1497. And, in my alternate history world, found skraylings. They say write about what you know...

Justin: Your historical macguffin is that Elizabeth had children. It's not one of those great what-ifs that you hear about (what if Alexander went west, what if Hitler never went to Russia, etc.) Why this one?

Lyle: Late sixteenth century England was politically volatile because of Elizabeth's lack of a clear heir, giving rise to the many plots to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne, and of course the Spanish Armada. I didn't want these problems - or the consequent high tension between Protestants and Catholics - to overshadow my fictional political struggles between humans and skraylings, so I took the decision to stabilise the Tudor dynasty, and that meant marriage and children for Elizabeth.

Justin: On top of that you throw in the Skraylings, some kind of mystical race living among the Native peoples in the New World. Where are you drawing the Skraylings from? It all seems significantly more imaginative than say... dragons in Napoleonic Europe (no offense intended to dragons in Napoleonic Europe) or pixies.

Lyle: There have been quite a few fantasy novels set in Elizabethan England, and nearly all of them draw on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and therefore have fairies as their main fantasy element. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I felt I didn't have anything new to add in that line. What interested me was the Age of Discovery and particularly the conquest of the New World. With bands of brave, reckless men crammed into those tiny ships for weeks on end, crossing the vast featureless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, I saw obvious parallels with space exploration, and the thought came to me: what if the Europeans discovered "aliens" - people who weren't just humans speaking strange languages (though they exist too). I like the idea of stealing tropes and themes from other genres - crime and noir are popular additions into fantasy these days, but SF has such a rich history, it's just ripe for mining :)

Justin: You've got two story lines going on in the novel. One is court intrigue stuff and the other is the theater. Obviously the theater is a huge part of Elizabethan England, but what prompted you to use it as a major component in the novel?

Lyle: I've always been interested in the theatre. My parents met through the local amateur dramatics society, which performed at a proper theatre in town, so I more-or-less grew up backstage, watching rehearsals. I even appeared on stage once myself when I was eight or nine, dancing in the pantomime "Babes in the Wood" (a traditional English tale featuring Robin Hood). In recent years I've seen many of Shakespeare's plays in performance, two of them at the reconstructed Globe, so I had a lot of experiences and imagery to draw on for the book.

Justin: Of course, men dressed as women was the default of the era. Interestingly, you went with a woman dressed as a man as the PoV character. And then also went with a gay character to bridge the gap between your two story lines. Both fascinating choices given the time period.

Lyle: My female PoV character Coby started out as an ordinary young woman, but I soon realised that it was going to be difficult justifying her running around London with these young men - Elizabethan society was very strict on the subject of proper female behaviour. So, I decided to have her disguise herself as a boy to earn an honest living (she's an orphan), which allowed me to riff on some of the Shakespearean clichés of that situation.

Likewise Mal's friend Ned was originally straight, and a promiscuous rogue to boot. When I made the girl into (apparently) a boy, that changed the dynamic between them - so I shifted it back by making him gay and therefore potentially still interested in her. It gave me a chance to explore Elizabethan attitudes to homosexuality and masculinity, which were very different from ours.

Justin: It made for a fascinating juxtaposition, I thought. So what's next? Will we get a chance to visit the New World in future books?

Lyle: Next is a sequel set mainly in Venice (one of my favourite places in the world), which reveals more about the skraylings, as well as moving the main characters' stories forward. I don't have any immediate plans to take the characters to the New World - that would require a lot more research to get it as authentic as the European settings!

Justin: Well, let me know if you need me to go the Native American Museum. It's right down the street! Thanks for joining me Anne. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to the next one!

Lyle: Thank you for having me!

Interview with Songs of the Earth author Elspeth Cooper

Today marks the United States release of Elspeth Cooper's highly anticipated debut, Songs of the Earth. Released in the UK last year, Songs garned a great deal of praise along with its fair share of skeptics. I read an early galley of the U.S. edition and reviewed it about a month ago. Long story short, it's a very solid debut novel that features great writing with some (not unexpected) first novel unevenness.

Over the last few months I've had a chance to chat with Cooper on Twitter and various literary forums. I've very much enjoyed her insightful and candid responses. After finishing the novel, I had some questions, which she was kind enough to answer. Enjoy!

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Here's the blurb:

The Book of Eador, Abjurations 12:14, is very clear: Suffer ye not the life of a witch. For a thousand years, the Church Knights have obeyed that commandment, sending to the stake anyone who can hear the songs of the earth. There are no exceptions, not even for one of their own. 

Novice Knight Gair can hear music no one else can, beautiful, terrible music: music with power. In the Holy City, that can mean only one thing: death by fire—until an unlikely intervention gives him a chance to flee the city and escape the flames. 

With the Church Knights and their witchfinder hot on his heels, Gair hasn’t time to learn how to use the power growing inside him, but if he doesn’t master it, that power will tear him apart. His only hope is the secretive Guardians of the Veil, though centuries of persecution have almost destroyed their Order, and the few Guardians left have troubles of their own. 

For the Veil between worlds is weakening, and behind it, the Hidden Kingdom, ever-hungry for dominion over the daylight realm, is stirring. Though he is far from ready, Gair will find himself fighting for his own life, for everyone within the Order of the Veil, and for the woman he has come to love.

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Justin: First off, it seems to me it would be difficult to have two major release dates so far apart. You've been out in the UK for something like 5 months. You saw all the reviews and critiques the first time around, and suffered whatever second thoughts about how you did this or that. Now, the same book is being released again to a whole new audience. It seems like double dipping anxiety. How have you handled that?

Cooper: There's a little bit of a double dip going on, I can't deny it, but I always knew there would be. Gollancz bought the trilogy in September 2009, but we didn't get a US deal until early 2011, by which time, publishing schedules being what they are, Tor couldn't shoehorn it into their calendar any sooner than February 2012.

I'm a lot more relaxed about it this time around, though. For the UK release I was pinging off the walls with excitement and therefore terribly vulnerable to anxiety; this time it's all happening way over there so it feels a bit more remote, and I've got a better idea of what to expect.

As for the second-guessing, well, I try not to do that. The book's written and in print; I can't change it now so I try not to get wound up about "Oh, I wish I'd fixed that/made that clearer" when a review comes in. It's done. Any missteps I made the first time around I've tried to avoid with the second book, but at the end of the day, no matter what I do, there will always be someone who doesn't like it, or thinks I should have done things differently. That's their prerogative, but it was my best effort at the time. No book is ever perfect.

Justin: You wrote three main POVs in the novel. Gair, Alden, and Masen. All men. In fact, there's only one female PoV, and it's only for a few pages. What compelled you to write so many male characters? Were you tempted to give us Aysha's POV?

Cooper: I was compelled by the story. You see, Songs came about because like many debut authors, I got an idea and I ran with it, figuring things out as I went. As E L Doctorow said, it was like driving at night in the fog, only able to see as far ahead as my headlights would let me. This was where the story led me; I just wrote it down.

A certain amount of maleness was predicated by Gair's origins as a member of a monastic military order - an absence of women in that environment is kind of a given - but mostly I didn't choose to have all-male POVs in Songs: I opened the tap, and that was what came out. By the same token, Trinity Moon wound up hip-deep in women with agency: Tanith has a larger role, there are two more terrific women in Ytha and Teia, and numerous other smaller roles.

I was tempted to give Aysha's POV in Songs, largely because she was so much fun to write and I knew it'd be a hoot to get inside her head and hear her take on things, but in the end I decided that doing so would have been pure indulgence on my part. She didn't have enough to add to the main story, and I was afraid that if I let her off the leash she'd end up trying to take over the book. She's a force of nature, that woman.

Justin: Speaking of the Church, the one in Songs feels very hypocritical, although led by a man who seems quite the opposite. Between you and me, were you raised Catholic?

Cooper: I've been asked that before - no, I wasn't.  My birth certificate says Presbyterian, I went to a Methodist Sunday school, I've attended a Catholic mass (as a non-combatant, as it were), and observed both Eastern Orthodox and western celebration of Easter.  I love ecclesiastical architecture, I can feel some kind of energy in sacred spaces, and have been known to light votive candles in great cathedrals in times of tragedy, but I am not a believer.

Justin: I detect some very biblical themes though. Maybe even a little hint of Paradise Lost. Conscious influences?

Cooper: Really?  Well I never. People keep asking me about the themes in Songs, and all I can say is that any themes they find must have sneaked in whilst my back was turned, because I damn sure wasn't consciously introducing anything other than the story.

I've never read Paradise Lost (and me an English Literature student - shocker) but I have read widely and voraciously over the years. There could be all kinds of influences coming out in the wash that I'm not even aware of - from Beowulf to the Brontës to Blackadder.

I stand in awe of writers who actually decide what they're going to write about, and choose to explore such-and-such a theme by doing thus-and-so. How do they do that? That kind of thought process does not come naturally to me at all.

As you can probably tell, as a writer I am very much what George RR Martin called a gardener. I get an idea for a story, incubate it a bit to see if it's got what it takes, then I just let it go and try to keep up until it's done. During the edit phase I prune and trim and shape, bring some strands out and send others into the background, but mostly I'm just transcribing a movie playing in my head.

Justin: You also seem to have a thing for swords. The scenes where Gair is playing with his sword (not a euphemism) are really compelling. Any experience in that type of stuff or just good hard research?

Cooper: I've been in love with edged weapons for over thirty years. Longswords, falchions, cavalry sabres, katana - yum. I have no real experience, though. My MS was affecting my balance too much by the time I thought about getting some lessons, so without the technical knowledge to describe the action, I concentrated on writing about how it feels. This was the perfect excuse to buy myself a blade: a replica of a 15th century longsword, as close as I could get to what Gair uses without having one custom made. It's not one of those poncy fakes made of cheese designed to hang on the wall, either: it's functional, and it's sharp. How else am I going to know what a real sword feels like?

As for research, yes, I did a bit - there's plenty of WMA/HEMA (Western martial arts/historical European martial arts) videos on the internet, for instance - but mostly it was instinct, common sense, and watching a lot of historical and fantasy movies an awful lot of times . . . ahem. Sooner or later someone who actually knows what they're doing is going to come along and put me in my place, I'm sure.

Justin: You don't go into great depth with magic system. It's a song in the mind, but the mechanics aren't really delved into. Are you in the magic should be unknowable camp or will there be more exposition on that front moving forward? I find this to be one of the more interesting debates between fantasy authors. It's like the Jets and the Sharks.

Cooper: Interesting question. You're right, a lot of fantasy fans seem to get into quite a tizzy about this subject, insisting that it has to be one or the other. I sit more in the middle.

I'm not particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of how anyone's magic works, as long as it's consistent and enough is explained for me to understand it. That's one of the reasons why I didn't dwell on Gair's studies: I shouldn't need to write a primer on the use of the Song for a reader to enjoy the story. Besides, with Harry Potter et al the whole magical college thing has been done, and I didn't think I had anything new to add to that particular trope.

The way I see it, if you make your magic too hand-wavy and unknowable, you run the risk of it becoming a cop-out, a cheat, a way to cover up a deus ex machina. Analyse it to death and it becomes too much like science (don't you start quoting Clarke's Third Law at me!) and you lose a little bit of what made it magic in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I admire the heck out of writers who have the patience, the imagination and the sheer dwarven cunning to come up with systems like allomancy and sympathy, but it's not my thing. So a magical thingummy doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics? Dude, it's magic. If the author's managed to suspend my disbelief this far, I'll swallow almost anything. And no, we are *so* not going there ;o)

Justin: The primary story arc in Songs is Gair learning how to be a Guardian and, to a large degree, a man. There are quite a few other subplots, some more obscure than others. They certainly hint at a much wider world. Can we expect Trinity Moon to take us over the hills and through the woods?

Cooper: Oh Trinity's going to take you to all kinds of places. The deserts of Gimrael, to Astolar and Bregorin, north into Arennor and beyond the Archen mountains. There is also stepping through the Veil, and interaction with denizens from the Hidden Kingdom, to give you a teaser for when the lid really comes off in Book 3, The Dragon House.

Justin: So I understand you're working on edits for Trinity Moon, do you have an idea of when it might be out? 2012 in the UK, 2013 in the US?

Cooper: Middle of June for the UK, for the US I don't know yet. My editor at Tor did mention something recently about catching up with the UK release dates for subsequent books but I'm not sure whether that was just a fond hope on her part!

Justin: Thanks for joining me Elspeth! Get back to work.

Cooper: *rips off parade ground salute* Sir, yes, sir!

Interview with The Troupe author Robert Jackson Bennett (and giveaway)

Last month I did an early review of Robert Jackson Bennett's new novel, The Troupe.  It's all about a sixteen-year-old pianist named George Carole who joined vaudeville to find Heironomo Silenus, the man he suspects to be his father. As he chases down Silenus's troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are unique even for vaudeville and strange happenings follow in their wake. It's not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe isn't simply touring, and Silenus is hiding a secret as old as time itself.

Long story short, I thought it was an awesome read. It reminded me of American Gods for it's look behind the curtain of reality and I dare a parent to finish it without a few tear stained pages.  I figured I ought to chat with the author about.... stuff.

Oh and at the bottom of this post there's a giveaway, just saying.  Be sure to read the instructions, as I'm changing the method I use to collect entries.

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Justin: When I first heard about The Troupe my first reaction was, "another circus novel? Did Orbit lose the auction for The Night Circus and then just go find the next best thing?" As jerky as that sounds, this is how trends can be perceived. Have you heard any of this? What do you think?

Bennett: I have heard some of it already, and I’ll be honest, it is fairly irritating to me. The process for this book started about two or three years ago, long before this trend started happening – or at least I think before it. I only learned about the existence of The Night Circus a month ago or so (an indication of my poor reading habits, certainly), when someone compared The Troupe to it without ever having read my book, which is when I had to go out and discover that a circus trend was indeed taking place, and apparently I was part of it.

I do not think that this trend started with The Night Circus, however – I think it probably started with Water for Elephants, which came out several years ago, and was such a smash hit that I think it’s reverberated throughout many genres and movies.

Regardless, if you read the novel, or just look vaudeville up, you will find that vaudeville is not the circus: it’s not a huge production of thousands of men and women and animals, but just one person or a couple of people with some props and sheet music touring theaters and living out of hotels. Sort of like rock stars touring venues, but crazier, because vaudeville was open to anything. It’s much more individual, much more varied, and much more unpredictable.

My inspiration for The Troupe was probably David Lynch. He always has very cool red curtains in his stuff. I just wanted to do something with curtains and a stage.

Justin: Regardless, it's probably inescapable for the comparison to be drawn.  I guess you can hope that their success will transfer to your novel.

Bennett: I have no idea. I have not really looked into either novel: I haven’t read them, nor have I done much research on their sales or reception. I guess it’s expected of me to do so, but I think the last thing writers want to read is stuff like their own. It gives them the creeps.

It’s quite funny – my editor later professed  –  after I finished The Troupe, of course - that he’d been a bit hesitant when I first described the book I planned to write. So I can honestly say that Orbit did not jump on the circus bandwagon, but had to be persuaded.

Justin: As you said, The Troupe isn't even close to a circus novel. In fact, it's only superficially a vaudeville novel as the story moves away from that pretty quick. Were you tempted to go more milieu and give the reader a real strong feel for vaudeville?

Bennett: I actually had several thousand more words in the first third of the novel about George joining vaudeville, learning the ropes, understanding what vaudeville was, and so on. But it quickly became apparent that this didn’t contribute to the action of the book at all: it was just George hanging out in vaudeville. Nothing was happening.

Essentially, George’s father, Harry Silenus, not only controls his troupe, but he also controls the plot – and when Silenus was offstage, things weren’t happening. Silenus carries all the secrets and meanings of the story with him, almost like how a vaudevillian keeps his props in his suitcase. He’s a guy you want front and center.

Justin: I spent a lot of time in my review talking about the father/son relationship that you develop in the novel. It's incredibly well done. How much of this was inspired by the birth of your own son and all the responsibilities and pressures that come with that?

Bennett: Well, I’ll say I had the idea for the entirety of the plot before I got married, and finished the book before I knew I was going to be a father. I worked and reworked on it after that point, of course, and it’s probable the reworks were colored more by my anticipation of becoming a father than the initial first draft was, but the overall structure was already in place.

But one thing I’ll say about parenthood is that hearing about it is one thing, and seeing and doing it is another. You don’t know it until you actually know it, until it’s for-reals happening. I intentionally finished The Troupe before it started for-reals happening – I practically had to - so I’m not sure how much actual, bonafide paternalistic experience affected The Troupe. My own experience of fatherhood has been a lot more fun than what happens in the book.

Justin: It also felt like there's a definite theme in the novel of the 'world behind the curtain' so to speak, which felt very Gaiman to me -- particularly American Gods. Any intentional hat tips in the novel, or just a reader putting his own interpretation on what he's reading?

Bennett: My actual inspiration for a lot of the prose and the nature of the characters was Susana Clarke more than Neil Gaiman – but the two are pretty solidly connected. I think the “world behind the curtain” aspect is common not only to urban fantasy, but to a lot of fiction: we all like the feeling that underneath the drab exterior of the world there is something fantastic working away, making sure everything goes as it is supposed to. We want for our lives to have a larger meaning.

It’s interesting that you mention interpretation, because that’s one of the bigger conceits of the book. How much of what you’re experiencing was intended by the artist – or the Creator? The master of manipulating interpretation is, of course, Nabokov, so I did toss in one hat tip to him. I’m curious to see if anyone finds it.

Justin: I haven't read any of your other work. You seem to be getting some award buzz for Mr. Shivers this year. How are they like The Troupe? Or put another way, is there a style uniquely RJB that fans of your previous work will find in your new stuff?

Bennett: I can never tell. I thought The Troupe was wildly different from my other stuff – it has more pathos, more humor, more hope – but I am told it is still very much a Robert Jackson Bennett novel. I don’t know what that means. Probably has to do with stabbings, or something.

I do think that The Troupe was when things “clicked” for me. The Company Man was a struggle to write – this one just leaped out of my head, fully-formed, like (what a cliché) Athena. But ask me again on the next novel, and I might tell you that that “click” was horseshit, and I don’t know what I’m doing.

Justin: You touch on race a bit in the novel. It was well done, and did a ton for character development, but didn't seem very connected to the plot. Did you include it just for character purposes or was there a larger purpose? Perhaps addressing the very real issue of race that pervaded vaudeville?

Bennett: I would say it was connected more to theme than to the plot. The book has a lot to do with perception, and how people see themselves and each other and the world. Each member of the troupe has their own struggle with perception, and race just happened to be one characters’ struggle. It fit in very naturally.

I will say that I felt like if I didn’t examine minstrel shows to at least some degree in a book about vaudeville then it would have felt like a sin of omission. It was such a prominent part of vaudeville, I just couldn’t feel comfortable amputating an unpleasant part of history just to make the book more palatable.

Justin: Does your son actually have a beard and epic tattoo'ed eyebrows? (If you don't follow Bennett on Twitter, you won't get this joke, so sorry.)

Bennett: Not yet, but we’re feeding him the appropriate vitamins.

Justin: Thanks for taking the time. I loved the novel, and really need to get to Mr. Shivers and The Company Man.

Bennett: Thank you for having me.

You can follow Robert Jackson Bennett on Twitter or on his blog.  He also has a very cool website for his book.

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Giveaway

I have five (5) copies of The Troupe to give away

courtesy of the author himself.

Giveaway Details:

This giveaway is open to anyone.  You must be 18 years of age or older to participate. Void where prohibited by law. Giveaway rules are subject to change.  

How to participate:

• To enter the giveaway, e-mail me at staffersmusings@gmail.com, with the subject TROUPE PLZ, including a valid mailing address.
• One entry per person, or face disqualification.
• Entries accepted until 11:59pm ET on February 23, 2012.
• Winners will be chosen by random sorting entries, and then using a random number generator.
• There will be five (5) winners who will received one (1) book each.

Although not required, it sure would be nice if you:

• Follow me on my blog publicly so that you appear on Google Friend Connect.
• Follow me on twitter, @jdiddyesquire.
• Like me on Facebook 

Interview with Hitchers author Will McIntosh

Hitchers was my first exposure to Will McIntosh.  And it was very rewarding.  Somehow I missed his debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, last year.  And I'm terrible about keeping up on short fiction, so his 2009 Hugo Award winning short story, Bridesicles, is largely unknown to me.  Turns out it was just recently optioned for a feature film.  He's also signed a book deal with Orbit to write a novel based on it.  In any case, given how much I enjoyed Hitchers, and rumors have McIntosh in possession of a completed baseball themed fantasy manuscript, I felt compelled to chat with him.

I thought it was pretty interesting -- I hope you agree!  Hitchers is available for sale tomorrow in hardcover and in eFormat February 1.

                      

Justin: I haven't read Soft Apocalypse.   I read almost all of Night Shade's 2011 debuts, but missed yours for some reason.  It's why I made such a point of reading Hitchers right away.  They don't seem very much alike.  What led you from dystopia apocalypse to what is really a supernatural horror thriller novel?

McIntosh: And my third novel won’t be much like either of them!  It’s probably not a great strategy for building a career, but these were just the ideas that grabbed me.   I just trying to write the very best novel I can each time I begin one, and if my best idea at the time is a supernatural horror thriller, then, by god that’s what I’m going to write.  That being said, now that I have an agent, I don’t start any new project without getting his opinion first.   I’m guessing if I went to him and said, “Seth, I have this idea for a high fantasy mystery novel!” he’d gently steer me away from that at this point.

Justin: Hitchers seems to be about a few things.  To a lesser degree, cartoons, and what they can do from a cultural perspective.  And then to a larger degree the connections between people and death.   I understand you have a passion for cartooning, are you also into death?

McIntosh: Yes, I’m a big fan of cartooning.  My dad and I collect original comic art together--I’ve got a Bloom County original right here on the wall in front of me.  I've never thought of myself as big fan of death in the same way, but I guess I need to revisit that.  Right now I’m working on my next novel, Bridesicle, and it’s about love, death, and loving the dead. So yes, I guess I am into death.

Justin: Who did the cartoons in the novel? How much input in them did you have?

McIntosh: An artist named Scott Brundage did them – aren’t they terrific? The people at Night Shade commissioned him to draw them. I wrote the dialogue, described the scene, and described what the characters should look like to some extent. I was especially impressed with his ability to depict a robot werewolf doll.

Justin: The "grandpa" figure (Tom Darby) in Hitchers is a real son of a bitch.  I'm not sure I've ever read a character I disliked more -- Sauron... maybe.  Please tell me you didn't source a relative for him.

McIntosh: That’s my late grandfather. Note that I dedicated Hitchers to my grandparents – that’s the reason. Now to be fair, I made Grandpa in the book much worse than my grandfather was in real life, but that’s who he’s based on. Some of the lines (“You’re nothing but a sissy!”), and the joke about the yolk of an egg are vintage lines my family will immediately recognize. My mom gave me her blessing to use him in the role. Grandpa was a tough guy, tough as nails, an Irish immigrant who worked loading trucks for a supermarket, night shift, for forty years.

Justin: Well, don't I feel like a jerk now.  Let's move on.  Anthrax attack is a big plot device in the novel.  At some point you made a choice for it to be domestic terrorists pissed off about their own lives. You could have gone with the fundamental extremists or a host of other directions. Were you consciously avoiding the political tug and pull that would have resulted in that choice?

McIntosh: Yes. I didn’t want this story to be about the attack, it was about thousands of dead souls inhabiting the living. I needed a vehicle to get it started. If terrorists or a foreign government was responsible for killing half a million people, I can’t just drop that thread, so now I have to divert focus from where I want it to be to tie up that loose end.

Justin: Your Hugo winning story, Bridesicles, talks about hitchers. Is it related to the novel in any way? How does that reconcile with the fact you just sold a novelization of the short to Orbit?

McIntosh: It’s an unfortunate coincidence. Hitchers was originally titled Deadland, but the editors at Night Shade thought that sounded too much like a zombie apocalypse novel. They were right, of course. So, we needed a new title, and the one everyone liked best was Hitchers. For the Bridesicle novel, I’ll change the term from “hitchers” to something else to avoid confusion. Hmm, maybe I’ll use some crucial term from my short story, Defenders …

Justin: Your new deal with Orbit is for two books, the second being based on story you just mentioned, Defenders. I assume it isn't written yet, but is that going to be more of classic SF book?

McIntosh: Yes, so it will be nothing like Soft Apocalypse, Hitchers, or Bridesicle! It’s based on a short story that came out this year in Lightspeed. The human race creates millions of huge, intelligent super-warriors to defeat alien invaders, but has no idea how to deal with them after the invaders are defeated.

Justin: This is a tricky one, so I apologize.  We're seeing a lot authors starting with a Night Shade, Angry Robot, or Pyr, then moving to the big-six for subsequent novels. How's that process been?  Why the move?

McIntosh: I love the people at Night Shade. They’ve been kind and supportive and enthusiastic, and it was a really, really tough decision. The people at Orbit have been just as awesome. I think I’ll leave it at that.

Justin: Word on the street says you wrote a "baseball fantasy." As a die-hard fan of America's game, I have to know more. Enlighten me! Please!

McIntosh: Yeah, it’s right here on my hard drive!  After writing a baseball fantasy (the title is Wild), I discovered that baseball novels are not exactly in high demand.  I was still seeking an agent when I wrote it, and I think one of the four thousand agents I queried asked to look at a partial.  I ended up contacting Rick xxx, an SF writer who also wrote a couple of baseball novels (his father was a major league ballplayer), and Rick told me it was fine to have baseball in your novel, but don’t write a novel about baseball.  Too late – I should have asked him before writing Wild.  I don’t get it -- there are some very successful baseball fantasy novels out there, like Shoeless Joe, The Natural, Brittle Innings, If I Never Get Back, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and I just love all of them. I don’t know why baseball novels don’t get more love.   For the record, here’s what Wild is about:

Strange things are happening to young pitcher Jason Cutty’s team, and he appears to be responsible. One player cries every time he sets foot on the field. Another can’t reach base no matter how hard he hits the ball. The infield floods on sunny days. What did Cutty do to potentially cause these events? The answer involves the first openly-gay player in major league history, a beanball, the top of the Statue of Liberty (the very top, where the torch is, not the wimpy crown-top where the tourists go), and a long-dead baseball legend.

Justin:  Hell, sign me up!  You listening publishers?  Hey, Night Shade, you want another Will McIntosh title?  Anyway, when can expect your novels from Orbit? Keep in mind we only have 11 months left until the end of the world.

McIntosh: I’m delivering Bridesicle next fall, so hopefully Bridesicle in 2013, Defenders in 2014, but it will depend on Orbit’s schedule.

Justin: Awesome, can't wait.  Thanks for joining me!

McIntosh: Anytime.  Now for god's sake, go read Soft Apocalypse!