Category: Guest Post
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I heart the apocalypse
by - March 8th, 2011
A world-changing catastrophe is a favourite authorial device. It is – almost, but not quite – older than dirt. Whether or not you subscribe to the historical accuracy of Noah’s flood or the Epic of Gilgamesh is a moot literary point – trashing everything in sight makes a fantastic setting for a story.
Pandemics slay billions, massive asteroids slam into the Earth, god-like aliens render our puny weapons obsolete at the stroke of a heat ray, mutually assured destruction lives up to its name: the common factor in most apocalyptic-themed stories is that the protagonists are rendered powerless in the face of overwhelming, impersonal force.
And that’s the problem with turning the apocalyptic into good fiction: the survival of the main characters is more or less a matter of chance. Narrowly avoiding death, repeatedly, while an excellent idea for the people involved, can get increasingly ludicrous for the reader. That the person you’re following survives is, more or less, down to luck. Certainly, there might be some things they can do to shift the odds in their favour – but you can hear the creaking gears of the deus ex machina in the background. Read the rest of this entry »
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A Few Favorite Fantasy Dragons
by - March 7th, 2011
When I was a child, storybook dragons in our town library were harmless, misunderstood creatures who certainly never flamed someone to death or ate maidens. They epitomized the kind of softened, vaguely amused, condescending approach to myths and legends that Tolkein repudiated.
Hence, for a renewed understanding of just how terrible a beast the old legends intended to depict, Smaug in The Hobbit. Smaug is a traditional wicked and greedy dragon with a hoard, who reacts to theft with violence. He has razed whole towns; he is the scourge of his region when he’s not lounging on his pile of gold. He’s not a joke; he’s not cuddly; he’s not generous or kind.
Yevaud, in Le Guin’s “The Rule of Names,” a story in LeGuin’s collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, is nothing like Smaug. He seems, in fact, entirely harmless and not dragonlike at all. But in this story, even the mildest, most peaceful, modest, and shy person can be pushed too far.
Yet another very different dragon: Mayland Long in MacAvoy’s Tea With The Black Dragon, the first Chinese dragon, I’d seen in fantasy fiction, although he appears as an urbane and very knowledgeable gentleman. Can dragons retire? Or only Chinese dragons? Read the rest of this entry »
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The Heir of Night – today’s UK release
by - March 3rd, 2011
Up until a week ago, I was really looking forward to the UK release of The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night, Book One) today and was busy making plans around how to best celebrate on my blog. But I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and just over one week ago we were hit by a massive and destructive earthquake. Although fortunate enough to survive, and very well off compared to many, it does not seem like the right time for the usual release day celebrations.
The road to publication—from the original idea, through giving effect to it on paper, the production process and finally printing and distribution—is a long one and release day is the obvious time to celebrate your book finally getting to the shelves and the public, and party up. But release day also gives you the opportunity simply to hold the book in your hands and enjoy the tangible sense of completion that gives you, even if there is no opportunity for fanfare.
And I do love this UK edition of the book: the starkness of the black-on-red colour scheme and the way the cover image captures both the strength and vulnerability of the central character of Malian, the Heir of Night. Most of all though, holding The Heir of Night in the context of the last week’s terrible events has made me reflect on the story being told inside the dramatic cover. The Heir of Night is epic fantasy, and in this case, an epic that speculates on both the grand sweep of events and their catastrophic consequences for the individuals and societies caught up in them. Love and hate, fear and courage, struggle, friendship and people choosing to support or undermine each other—this may be epic fantasy, but it is also absolutely the stuff of real life as it has played out in Christchurch over the past week.
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An Apology for Jane True
by - February 15th, 2011
Poor Jane True! Her latest book, Tempest’s Legacy, came out last month but because her editor AND her author were traveling, she didn’t get a blog post!
Jane is very cross with us, and we feel terrible for the oversight. So we’re offering a gift in consolation.
The gift of DANCE!
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Ingredients for a Fantasy Battle
by - February 8th, 2011
As a writer you take your inspiration wherever you can find it – from everything you read, watch, play, experience and particularly like or don’t – and I’ve always found myself as much influenced by film, TV, and computer games as I am by books. In writing The Heroes, then, the fantasy war-story of a single great battle told from various points of view on both sides – and which I’ve occasionally pitched as Lord of the Rings meets A Bridge Too Far – war films, and scenes of battle of all kinds, from the fantastic to the brutally realist, were just as much on my mind as books on the subject. Here are some of my filmic touchstones for summoning up a realistic fantasy battle…
Read the rest of this entry »
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Lord Knows I’m a Voodoo Child
by - January 31st, 2011
Ask ten writers how music influences their writing and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some might say they don’t listen to music at all. Some will say they can’t write without it. Might even tell you that entire books were influenced by a particular song or album.
I fall into the can’t-write-without-it-camp. Music not only helps me get into the right headspace to write particular scenes, but specific lyrics have helped me figure out the themes of entire books.
I thought since the latest book in my Sabina Kane series, GREEN EYED DEMON, comes out in the UK on February 3 (and March 1 in the US), I’d share my playlist for the book, as well as some notes about why each was included.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Ghosts too numerous to number
by - January 21st, 2011
My favourite mention of The Fallen Blade so far calls it, ‘Two books occupying the same page space.’ And describes those as, ‘An adventure fantasy with a smidgeon of romance, great hordes of vampires and werewolves and, of course, plenty of swordplay.’ Mixed with, ‘A fantastic evocation of Renaissance Venice… the beauty of the culture it gave birth to and the merciless, brutally violent and Machiavellian politics that ran alongside it.’ [Guardian, UK]
My favourite, simply because that’s *precisely* what I was aiming to do.
When a reader commented on Facebook that the only thing the review missed was the, ‘Shakespeare casserole… delicious, and not too filling,’ it was time to crack open a cold beer. Because riffing off the first half of Othello was part of the fun. And I’m already enjoying myself riffing off the second half (and the first half of Hamlet) in the second book, which I’m now editing.
When I told my brother-in-law I was going to set my next book in Venice he looked at me and said, ‘My, that’s original.’ (Management consultants like stating the obvious). And, obviously, Venice has been the setting for so many novels and poems and plays and films it seem impossible that anyone could find anything new to say. But the point is, everyone who goes sees a different city.
Venice is what you bring to it.
It mirrors back at us what we’re interested in.
Read the rest of this entry »
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First find your story…
by - January 20th, 2011
The Fallen Blade came out of a single image in my head of an impossibly-beautiful boy chained naked in darkness to the bulkhead of a ship. He snapped awake to reveal amber-flecked and inhuman eyes. The ship was in the Venetian lagoon and I realised the boy knew no more about himself than I did.
That gave me Tycho, although I didn’t then know what species of inhuman he was or what origin story lead him to being the first Vampire into Europe and the survivor of the last Viking outpost in North America.
After ten SF novels I realised I was about to write fantasy!
Venetian first, Christian second…The Venetians had no hesitation living up to that maxim. They transported Crusaders to the Middle East, but called ahead to protect their Middle Eastern trade deals by telling those living there that the western armies were coming. Half of Venice is built from bits looted from elsewhere. The Duke’s palace and cathedral alone use pillars stolen from mosques, synagogues and other churches. As a people the Venetians were treacherous, avaricious and two-faced and proud of it! You don’t get to build a thousand year empire and become the richest trading power in the Mediterranean by playing nice.
It’s cliché to say Venice is a fantasy in itself and there’s something unworldly about its atmosphere, that it’s a city of sex and death hiding its darkness under all that glitz and glitter, but it really is. The damn thing’s been standing in that lagoon for centuries and dying and fighting a watery death for every one of them. And I defy anyone to go there and not feel ghosts are watching.
How could I resist it as a location for a fantasy novel? Read the rest of this entry »
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How I Write
by - January 18th, 2011
People have asked over the years how I write and I’ve replied with everything from 200 word bullet-point heavy ‘This-Is-How-I-Do-Its’, to 5000 words academic walk throughs covering initial inspiration to delivered script.
Every writer is different. A friend of mine writes 500 perfect words a day and never revises or goes back. No idea how he does it and wouldn’t want to try. Another friend is cross because she can’t get her output up from two novels a year to three. (I work seven day weeks to manage one).
Basically:
All my books come out of a single image. In The Fallen Blade it was Tycho chained naked to the bulkhead of a ship. He opened his eyes and proved he wasn’t human. After that, it was a simply a case of working back to see where he’d come from and working forward to see where he was going. When writing I see the places in my head and hear the words spoken. Without that I couldn’t do it. Read the rest of this entry »
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Cold Magic: The Cookie
by - January 6th, 2011
I’ve been writing and publishing novels for a while. In some ways, I approach the ups and downs of my writing career with a weary resignation, knowing that a great writing day can as easily be followed by a terrible writing day as by another good one, that a gushingly positive review may spark a new reader to pick up the book only to dislike it, that I may struggle with doubt one week and be sure everything is going well the next. I still get a thrill when I first see the new cover for a soon-to-be published novel, and I never get bored of coming up with new ideas, characters, and landscapes.
Yet here is a first for me, one that left me speechless with surprise and glee but mostly because I was too busy eating and savoring to talk:
A fabulous reader who loves to bake sent me a box of home-made cookies as a thank you for my book Cold Magic. One batch was scrumptious double chocolate chip cookies.
But just to make the entire experience even more full of squee, the other batch was a cookie she invented herself in honor of Cold Magic.
That’s right. There is now a Cold Magic cookie, created by Raina Storer.
With Raina’s permission, I am sharing the recipe and photo with you, just in time for the winter baking season. It is a refrigerator sugar cookie, rolled with chocolate mint filling, and glazed with a white piped frosting and icy blue sprinkles, and it is unbelievably tasty as well as beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »
