And Unto All Good Things, An End

From the reviews of Nights of Villjamur on Monday and City of Ruin on Friday through the behemoth of an interview than ran in two parts across Tuesday and Thursday, not forgetting Mark's guest post on six of his literary influences and the giveaway of a signed proof, it's been quite a week, hasn't it?

I tend to suspect there've been a good few new visitors to The Speculative Scotsman in the interim, too. Well... I say suspect, I do have Google Analytics you know, and the hits - shall we just say the click-through rate has been astonishing? I don't suppose it's such a great surprise. Mark's been pimping the articles every which way, gentleman scholar that he is; near-enough every article has been retweeted to hell and back (thanks guys!); Pat from the ubiquitous Fantasy Hotlist posted a link, much to my surprise; and the interview made it into SF Signal's daily tidbits round-up.

So to all those of you who've just now found the blog, a very warm welcome; it's a pleasure to have you here. I do hope you'll stay a while. And in case you're wondering, I do write about other stuff too. Next week, for instance: video games (one in particular), Seamus Cooper's dead dog blues, my thoughts on Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings excerpt, and more. Yes, more! What a busy little blogger I am...

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I hope you'll agree, the first themed week on TSS has been a huge success - so much so that I'm tempted to make it a themed month, but alas, Mark has only written so many books. Speaking of whom, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the man. Let's be honest here: what with the interview, the giveaway and the guest post, he did a whole lot of the heavy lifting. So thanks, Mark. Same bat-time, same bat-place next year, when book three of The Legends of the Red Sun comes out, alright?

In case you missed any of the shenanigans, here's a handy little collection of links to all the stories from the past week:

A Whole Week of Mark Charan Newton

Book Review: Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 1)

Mark Charan Newton on Six Influences on The Legends of the Red Sun Series

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 2)

Book Review: City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

And that's not even including the giveaway posts - nor this little round-up!

Sadly, though, that's that. But it's been heaps of fun, hasn't it?

So who's up for another themed thingummy? What with The Passage coming out shortly, I'm rather of a mind to get a bit of a vampire weekend on the go. All I have to do is get through the rest of that beast of a book first...

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 2)

Mark Charan Newton. It seems like wherever you look, he's there! He's in the cupboard under the stairs, he's between the daffodils in the garden and he's a distant figure silhouetted against the horizon in the wheat fields you drive by on the way to work. It beggars belief, really. You'd think there were several of him or something.

Well, he's also here, on The Speculative Scotsman, talking to me - or at least, one of him is. Would the real Mark Charan Newton please stand up?

If you haven't read the first half of my interview with Mark, in which we talked Twitter, forum trolls and blogging turn-offs, amongst a whole heap of other stuff, go on and get caught up. If you have, drop me an email with your name and address and I'll get your biscuit in the mail.

Enough of this madness. It's part two of the interview, everyone!

***

A year ago, Mark, as you said earlier, no one had heard of you, and I’ve heard it said that because of your relative obscurity, your creative wings were clipped with NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR. There were pressures to make the first book in a new series by a new author accessible to as large a segment of the audience as possible. Is that fair comment?

Absolutely, and with the added filter of a publishing house. My agent told me that if I kept writing out-and-out weird fiction, I'd never get published, because no editor in London was looking for those kinds of books. You have to ask yourself the question, what's more important, being published or holding out? Which isn't to say I sold out! I merely changed the aesthetics to something a little more familiar - possibly one which is more commercially appealing, I suppose - but I still am very proud of NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR. Now I have the publication deal, I can embrace my inner weird, and I hope that shows!

Oh, it does.

What, then, would the book have been if you’d had your way? Much the same, am I to understand, but weirder… new weirder, perhaps?

Weirder, probably, though I'm not sure how much more so - and most likely I would have looked upon the world as something more technologically and culturally advanced. It's hard to say now I'm so far into it. As for the New Weird... well. It's funny - a while back I said that the New Weird was a still-born literary movement, but there has been more talk in the couple of years than in the preceding eight or so put together. Perhaps it's finally been recognised, in some retrospective manner? But whatever the New Weird had in its original aims and ambitions, to bring a rigorous new dimension to the fantasy genre perhaps - and I admired that it wanted to be more than just entertainment, not that there's anything wrong with just entertainment – then I hope the spirit lives on in CITY OF RUIN.

Was there anything as per your original conception of NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR that you had to drop entirely, I wonder?

Yes, a quarter of the original manuscript had to go - I'm not sure I should be that candid, but never mind. The original manuscript was too big, and Peter Lavery, my then structural editor, asked me to hack it down - which was painful, but made the book a lot less baggy. I won't say in any detail what's gone though - largely because I can't remember now, it was a good while ago - but a lot of the reduction of the world count was to increase the chances of translation rights being sold.

And now they have been... this month, you’re being published in bona-fide American!

All kidding aside, it’s a huge achievement, and something I’m sure you must be very excited about.


Indeed - the American market is huge, and I'm privileged to be on the list of Bantam Spectra, and they've a great team there. Exciting times.

In the meantime, here in old Blighty, book two of The Legends of the Red Sun is arriving on bookstore shelves almost a year to the day of NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR’s publication. That’s a pretty quick turn-around for such an accomplished sequel. I take it you had a little lead time?

I did have a lot of lead time for CITY OF RUIN, yes - I think it was about 14 months or so from sale until NIGHTS was published, which meant I had a fraction longer to work on the next book. And I should be on schedule for delivering the third book in the series on time, too. The fourth - purely on speculation of the workload - I'm not so sure about, but we'll see. I'm a way off even starting it yet, so I could surprise myself. I know how important it is to get a book a year out for the first two or three books - purely in industry terms, the regularity helps get your name out there. The casual customer has a short memory when it comes to newer writers.

With CITY OF RUIN though, I knew exactly what I'd be writing, what story needed to be told, and what kind of toys I wanted to play with, right from the off, so I hit the ground running. And you get better at doing certain things, working out how many words it will take to tell a certain part of the story, building characters, all that jazz - such practice helps me be more efficient for the next one. But every writer is different.

Oh, and a deadline helps drive things a little quicker.

From a purely personal perspective, I’d love to see new books from you on an annual basis, Mark, though I don’t for a minute believe readers would simply forget about you if the sequel to CITY OF RUIN didn’t hit day and date next year. But there is the cautionary tale of Scott Lynch to bear in mind: an author with similar sort of profile to that you’ve achieved who promised, similarly, to deliver a book of THE GENTLEMEN BASTARDS sequence every year. Writing so prolifically, and with so much else on your plate, do you worry about burn-out at all?

The writing doesn't burn me out. The writing is a release of a hundred ideas fermenting away in my head. Between you, me and the internet, when I started writing, one reason I did it was to escape a dreary few months of my life, so it's always been the thing I do as a coping mechanism. Which isn't to sound diva-ish, I've always been into something creative throughout my youth - though then it was mainly music, tinkering away on guitars until the small hours.

Of course, this is easily the kind of thing to be quoted back to me in a few years time...

But as I say, the writing doesn't burn me out or tire me (though the edits certainly do...) - there is indeed a heck of a lot of other stuff that writers have to do these days, and it must be sustained for it to have any effect - there is no point blogging for a week, then doing nothing for a month or three, while you're setting up your career. The cumulative effects of the peripheral stuff – the blogging, the signings – is most likely to cause a burn out, but I think I would have been affected in some way by now if it was going to happen at all.

[If anyone is reading this in the future, and I have disappeared from the internet, then wipe that smile off your face.]

So what do you do with yourself when you’re not writing - or, indeed, working, blogging, signing, editing, etc? How do you like to unwind?

This summer, as I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been growing stuff in my garden that I can eat - mostly it's a deliberate act to keep me offline, to do something actually real. I listen to stacks of music, sometimes still tinker with the guitar - though mainly acoustic music these days. I'm really into Yoga at the moment - don't laugh! It's actually pretty tough, and if you spend all day at a desk and all evening with a laptop, you need something like that to put your back into shape again. I go running. I like green spaces. I've an interest in politics. And, believe it or not, I still love to read...

Oh, I don’t often get the chance to talk politics. But let’s frame the discussion a little. Going back to your blog, you made a post in the aftermath of the general election debacle on the very subject. You wrote, “Readers seem to surrender themselves to the idea of politics within fiction on a regular basis. They are open to worlds of hugely varying political structures and concepts, and many genre authors are willing to explore new ways of thinking. But when it comes to actual, real-life ideologies, authors and readers start staring at their feet.”

So lift up thine eyes and tell me, Mark: how are you feeling about the state of the UK government?

Are you sure people won't click on another site at this point? :) As an aside, I was disappointed that a couple of the responses to that initial post were along the lines of, Authors shouldn't really talk politics. Of course they should. Everyone should.

I'm a man of the Left, though not a Marxist, and my opinions of the state of the UK government can pretty much apply to the state of UK politics over the last 30 years, with its ruthless pursuit of the neoliberal/Chicago School policies. In that I am spectacularly saddened. Now we have some of the richest folk in politics deciding that the poorest deserve to pay for their sins. The poorest, via the much-loathed State, must bail out those who preach the benefits of the free market (link) and various institutions continue to roll out their 'structural adjustment' programmes across the world, meaning more people are forced to suffer (link). At the same time, this is what a lot of our taxes are being increasingly spent on (link), as governments declare public expenditure must be further reduced.

Perhaps that sums it up. But, you know, I remain endlessly optimistic.

It, umm... sure sounds that way, Mark.

Politics really do seem to be a turn-off for a lot of folks. At a stretch, I can sympathise, I suppose: people come to fantasy primarily to get away from the real world, so the last thing they’d want are those writers who create the worlds they escape to hammering home their ideologies. And political opinions remain very personal to some; there are yet those who won’t say who they vote for. Commies the lot of ‘em!

And yet, flying the face of that reticence, there’s remains a willingness to engage in fiction which espouses more outlandish political leanings than any that’d fly in reality.

But back to the books. Overtly speaking, CITY OF RUIN is, I think, less concerned with politics than NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR. Was the movement away from that mode of narrative something you intended, or was it simply dictated by the story’s movement away from Urtica and the imperial capital?

It's interesting you think that - personally, I felt the political thought was much truer in CITY OF RUIN - that it greatly informed the construction of the world and the story. We get to see the true effects of political decisions, and especially the hegemony of the Empire. We see dead communities as a result of trade changes. We see the gangs play a role in strike breaking. (You can see more in this recent extract - skim down to the final section.)

Perhaps it's a different kind of politics in CITY OF RUIN. Back in Villjamur, we had the very obvious power plays and the humanitarian crisis, so maybe I'm now being a lot more subtle about it, I don't know. Maybe I disguised it a little. But it just goes to show how reviewers may look at a text very differently than the author does!

Overtly speaking, I said. Certainly the consequences of all the politicking in NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR are spread out before the reader in City of Ruin, but are political decisions made in book two, or merely followed through from the first book?

That's a fair point, yes, now I see what you mean. There are more micro decisions, perhaps - the portreeve (local leader for those who haven't read the book), is managing the affairs in Villiren, and doing his best to forge his own economy at the expense of others, so we see more of the local politics (more of a microcosm, in my head) but as for general Imperial policy, and the main plot, we're still following what was set-up in the first book.

But this is a dangerous game I’m playing. Back on terra firma, one of the most remarkable things about NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR was its titular setting; I’d have paid good money to read more about Villjamur. Plenty of authors are glad to get the worldbuilding out of the way and move on: in contrast, you seem to positively relish the prospect. Instead of taking the path most travelled, you pulled the rug out from under our expectations and shifted the action to another location entirely. Is that something we can expect to continue, as THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN progresses?

Yes and no. I had to split my focuses on Villiren - since it needed its own story telling, and I'd love for readers to come to this book and enjoy it without needing to have read the first. In book three, we do indeed return to Villjamur, and we meet some new characters - but that's all I'm saying! I want each book to have a strong flavour of its own, with individual agendas and themes. Slot them all together, and you get the big picture (though book four is probably going to require the reader to have read the first three).

But I do love worldbuilding - there's something to be said for the sensation of being confronted with a blank slate, and just creating. For me, that's the fun part, the discovery, the exploration.

How was it discovering Nottingham, “a city surrounded by ex-mining villages which were razed to the ground by witches (more or less),” when you moved into the place a few years ago? You spoke of coming to understand the city partially through DH Lawrence, I seem to recall... was that literary exploration literature a similar sort of thrill as you felt when creating the Boreal archipelago in literature? Do you think Nottingham has influenced the world you’ve built in THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN?

The experiences of moving to a new city and discovering the local area through local authors is not too distant from creating worlds yourself. Or rather, you can use your own experiences of discovery in the real world and transfer the methods to the writing. I've always believed that what makes a place come alive, textually, isn't merely the structures, but the people's relationship to their environments, their local heritage - and it's those things that make a real-world location unique to any other city or county. When you read local authors, even if it's decades ago, you get an appreciation of those things.

Nottingham - very much in the way you've mentioned there - was certainly an influence, but more so in CITY OF RUIN. Aside from the usual quirks of cities, and of local gang problems within, it was more some of the surrounding elements that contributed. There are communities throughout the archipelago that were built around the mining industry, and they have been left crippled when the Empire changed a policy here, a trade route there. They're dead settlements, and you can certainly see that in Nottinghamshire - towns crippled by Thatcher's brutal politics, and still - nearly three decades later - they are struggling to recover. Villages are like inner city ghettoes, with acres of abandoned terrain, the odd industrial structure which nature is slowly reclaiming. (It was a startling contrast to the rural Wiltshire I grew up in.) Once you're aware of that, it's difficult not to let it drift into the text. Thatcher’s politics had essentially created dying earth conditions around here.

So let’s say Villjamur was a real place, and you, Mark, were its DH Lawrence. Give me a little local colour from the realm of epic fantasy you’ve conjured.

If I were its DH Lawrence, presumably I'd be disgruntled with the locals, become highly critical of the wars, and exile myself to somewhere warmer? Or I could give a sharp paragraph on the things you'd see there: age-old statues, smothered in lichen; labyrinthine cobbled streets; tiers of the city layered up like a crude cake; hundreds of thousands of people milling about, hunched in thick clothing, miserable faces; a mishmash of architectures, from the baroque to the eccentric, precariously pitched so they look as if they're about to fall over; garudas causing downdrafts on stall awnings; beyond, the rolling tundra, towering fjords, spindly forests, broken communities, vast ancient structures; and everywhere, the endless falling of snow...

Generally speaking, THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN is read as epic fantasy, but both of your books are suffused with elements of other genres: crime and noir, science-fiction, mystery, even romance. We spoke earlier of what we’re missing in fantasy, of how "too-clean" writing, as you put it, is the Ford Focus of fiction, whereas more radical narratives stand out like shiny, new Alfa Romeos. China Mieville’s THE CITY AND THE CITY recently won the Arthur C. Clarke award, and it’s crime fiction in everything but name. So I put it to you: when virtually every fantasy novel has a bit of a kick to it, a twist of genre to set it apart from the morass of standard genre fare, is there still a place for straight-faced fantasy in the world today? Can we make the Ford Focus palatable again? Should we?

The important thing to remember about the Ford Focus is... a lot of people buy it. A huge amount. Some people like its reliableness, or perhaps its value or economy. (How far can I stretch a metaphor?) There has been such fantasy for decades, and it will not go away any time soon. Why? I can't say. Is it a bad thing? Perhaps not - I'm aware that it sells a lot, and bankrolls publishers to take more experimental novels on board.

But it's interesting you say everything has a bit of a twist these days: it's almost become the norm, to some extent - the perfect marketing solution. The same, but just a little bit different - like every Jack Johnson album. That's almost become the norm, if you see - not utterly radical like the days of PERDIDO STREET STATION, but just a fraction different. For a genre that can go anywhere, it seldom reaches for such radicalism - but whether that's good or bad isn't really for me to say.

Nor I, though I'll say it anyway: it's bad. But we're winding down here, and that's a whole can of worms I shouldn't stink out the place with this late in the game.

One last biggie: there’s been a lot of talk of late of the so-called death of publishing. An article by Garrison Keillor that has to be seen to be believed ran on The Baltimore Sun a few weeks ago, which had the LAKE WOEBEGONE DAYS author harking back to times the good old days of typewriters and editors. Is there anything to all the grass-is-greener muttering, do you think? Are eBooks and the perceived rise of self-publishing going to kill books and bookstores dead?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, Mark. You’re a pro writer now, you were in publishing before, as part of Solaris for starters, and you were an Ottakar’s man back in the day, weren’t you? Oh, how I miss my Ottakar’s...

I miss Ottakar's too!

It wouldn't be publishing without someone kicking off about the Good Old Days. I look forward to the time where I can look back on the blogosphere, before the Singularity kicked in, reminiscing on how it was good that we could send electronic mail to people and put two-dimensional pictures up. You go, Garrison! Don't let them youngsters get to you!

If you put seven ebook theorists in a room, you'd get eleven different answers (or three of them being a variation on "what Cory says"). No one really knows what's going on. Free downloads are registered as ebook sales, to my knowledge, which skews things massively, so the stats are not reliable. Years ago, people said computers would kill the book, but all it's done is support the growth of novel sales through online shopping and free extracts and virtual communities.

It's also important to stress that, when people talk about sales decline in the trade, the sections of the bookstore that get hurt are usually those with pretty elastic demand (if you can apply economic terms to the industry) . Celebrity biographies and gift books - in good times they sell loads, in bad times no one wants to know, because they have a very transient readership. Unlike fiction, and very much unlike SFF, which remains unaffected because of its loyal fans.

Self-publishing books will seldom have any influence – it's $$$ that makes the difference in this game. Publishers have to fork out cash for bookstore promotions, and advertising in magazines, and sending out hundreds of review copies etc, to get that book under the nose of the casual punter. Unless you're armed with huge amounts of cash to invest, then think again of getting much success here. I should say that some of these vanity presses are little more than a scam trying to seduce struggling writers with promises like "we'll send your book to newspapers for review!" - of course they can, the newspaper reviewers are just going to put anything like that in the bin.

And we shouldn't dismiss the technology, though - small print runs, or Print on Demand is great for local community books with a tiny readership; and it allows us to read previously out-of-print titles, as do ebooks. Digital publishing has brought authors back from the dead. How good is that? Technology will be seized by our community of readers and ultimately put to great use.

As long as people are reading, I don't care how they're doing it.

Quite so. A fair and balanced perspective, and not at all old-man moaning. Really, we should be denying grizzled grumps like Keillor access to the internet.

Anyway. I think we’ve burbled at one another just about enough, and it’s been an absolute pleasure, Mark. Before we call it a day, though, a couple of quick hits, if you don’t mind. First up, and we touched on this earlier: last word on the new weird. Dead as the dodo, or alive with possibility against all the odds?

I've said before that it was a stillborn movement, that the New Weird is dead, it is an ex-subgenre. And you know what, there's been more talk recently than ever before. It's a zombie movement, back from the dead – the tag is being used, without the previous taint in publishing houses "We ain't touching that manuscript - we'll never sell it!", and people are starting for the first time to know what it means. So who knows, perhaps the Weird is back again. It's certainly surprised me how people are looking for more of it though - that's a good sign.

Personally, I think there has always been a weird gene in the genre, from Hodgson to C.L. Moore to Miéville. I'd love to think I carry that gene myself.

On your blog last year, you put together a playlist of music to read NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR by. Any chance you’ll be doing something similar for CITY OF RUIN, now that it’s gracing bookstore shelves across the UK? What are a few of the most significant tunes that would feature?

Yes! I've a playlist lined up. It starts off with The Cure's "Lullaby", and features Mogwai's "Kids will be skeletons", Radiohead "Idioteque", 65daysofstatic "Little Victories", Martin Grech "Penicillin", Sufjan Stevens "Dumb I Sound"... In fact, I should really post this online soon. [He has: here - ED] I love having a playlist to write along too - it kind of helps with the whole direction of the project.

If I could eat your books - which is to say, if they were consumables literally as well as figuratively - what foods would NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR and CITY OF RUIN be?

NIGHTS would probably be a kind of curry, nothing too hot mind, more of a Chicken Jalfrezi, so you know something spicy is happening there. CITY OF RUIN is much more in Vindaloo territory, which may be a bit too much for a lot of people, but if you can handle it...

I can handle it!

And since I suspect I’ll get nothing out of you about book three of THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN, what will it taste of compared to the two courses of curry the first two volumes in the sequence represent?

Whereas the first two are still Indian curries, the third will be something more like a Thai Green curry. Not too far away, geographically speaking, but hopefully a very different taste indeed.

On that appetising note, then: Mark, I really can’t thank you enough for your time - nor, for that matter, your support of the little old blog. For your generosity and your kindness, then, not to mention the single most interesting chat I’ve had in ages, thanks so much.

And thank you, too, for the interesting debate and your hospitality – and for asking some genuinely tricky questions. It's been a blast!

***

And with that, we're done.

Thanks to everyone for reading. I know it's been a long one, but fascinating, no? And thanks again to Mark; the gent deserves huge amounts of gratitude for being so generous with his time and his words - his stock in trade, no less - as to put up with my pestering.

NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR is out in paperback now in the UK, and should be hitting the States in hardcover later this month courtesy of Bantam Spectra. Hereabouts, Tor made the sequel available last Friday. I'll be reviewing on Friday coming - stay tuned for that (not to mention a guest post from Mark and the results of Tuesday's signed proof giveaway) - but let it suffice to say, for the moment, that CITY OF RUIN is really rather good.

Guest Post by Mark Charan Newton: Six Influences on the Legends of the Red Sun Series

Six months isn't such a long time at all, really. It's the halfway point between birthdays; it's the time it takes for Winter to turn into Summer, for the snow to become sun; it's how often you go on holiday, if you're anything like me. But let me tell you. In internet years - they're like dog years, only more nebulous - The Speculative Scotsman is positively claiming its pension. Sometimes it feels like I've been at this for ever, and so it's a pleasure, from time to time, to hand over the reigns to someone else. I don't do it terribly often - I'm not at all good at letting go, even temporarily - but this one time, in aid of the ongoing celebrations here on the blog, I'm making an exception.

Without further ado, then, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the one and the only Mark Charan Newton to TSS. Mayhap you've heard of him?

But enough of my burbling. Over to you, Mark...

***

 

One of the things I'm conscious of, as a writer, is to leave a trail of clues littered through my books so that people can see where I've been inspired by other writers. It's important to acknowledge these things. So, textual clues aside, here are six books which helped shape the construction of my own books, to varying degrees.

 

1) The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Now any such lists invite pretentious selections, but invoking this metaphysical classic of the 1950s isn't me trying to appear clever - I learned a very important lesson about what book sequences can do from reading Durrell's stylish masterpiece. Each book in the series undermines the previous novel, and minor characters suddenly become the focal point, giving the reader a completely different understanding on what went before. It was a revelation, and made me instantly consider such subtle tricks in my own books.

2) The Scar by China Miéville. I've harped on about this book in many places and interviews, but suffice to say I wouldn't be writing today if I my imagination had not been inspired by this book. Reading this was the first time I realised what fantasy fiction could achieve in scope and ambition. I remain somewhat disappointed by the lack of true weird wow-factor in the genre (though it does exist with writers such as Erikson or Gaiman, for example). It strikes me as if some writers are reluctant to put much radical fantasy in their fantasy fiction, which I admit is my own personal taste - I don't have any agenda here. Because of my perceived shortage of such weirdness at the time, I thought I'd have a go at writing my own book. So I did.

3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. In City of Ruin readers will meet a new character called Voland. Bulgakov's mesmerising political satire contains a character called Woland, which was, in turn, linked to Goethe's Faust (the knight Voland - a demon), and so I wanted that satanic force to appear again, but in my new guise (though I've made a few connections apparent). I won't go into too much detail, since I'll leak spoilers everywhere. But if people want a unique spin on good and evil (and a thousand other themes) then you could do worse than take a trip through Bulgakov's Moscow.

4) The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It's the definitive dying earth book, and outclasses Jack Vance's series for depth and imagery (though certainly not for madness). Whilst I can understand why readers would be frustrated with Wolfe's prose, I found this to be a beautiful book with so many layers, and it really captured the mood of how I viewed my own series. It informs much of how I view the dying earth sub-genre. I mean, you only have to look at the similar series title to see I'm conscious of this literary debt.

5) The Wallander crime series by Henning Mankell. My guilty pleasure is that I'm a huge fan of the detective Wallander, and Mankell's bleak Swedish crime series has been endlessly good fun for me when I wanted something a little less intensive to read. They're not mere entertainment though – they're very clever. In later books, Wallander constantly finds himself up against a certain political or social frustration, and I very much wanted to replicate such matters in my own books. Fantasy books don't have to just be entertainment (that should be a minimum) - if you want to talk about a theme or an issue, then where's the shame in that?

6) The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges. Mythology informs much of my work - in fact, as the series unfolds, it will become apparent just how much the world depends on mythology. And there's no way to deny that I love a good monster – who doesn't? Borges's bestiary is a wonderful A to Z of, well, monsters, creatures from different cultures and mythologies – and specifically in my case, the garuda came from this resource. If you want one book where you can quickly look up a beastie to put in your own writing, then this is it.

The Speculative Spotlight on Mark Charan Newton (Part 1)

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Please, do pardon The Speculative Spotlight's absence for so long. I got it down from the attic just now, and it's a little dusty, perhaps, and the bulb needed replacing, but everything's in fine working order now, and what better reason to bring everyone's favourite interview feature back than for Mark Charan Newton, author of THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN - I might have mentioned it sometime this week? - and blogger extraordinaire.

He needs no introduction, of course, but given the length of time we spent chatting and how little of our chat actually revolved around the books, perhaps it's best for me to say a few words about Mark. Last year, he shot to fame with NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR, the first volume of a quintet of fantasy novels that took the blogosphere by storm. My review of that book went up yesterday - do have a gander if you haven't already. In short: I don't know that the incredible hype has done it any favours, but irrespective of whether or not you believe Mark is the second coming of Jack Vance or any of the other genre greats his work has been compared to, I had loads of fun with it. And the sequel, CITY OF RUIN - released last Friday and due for review on these very pages on Friday coming - really is all that; it one-ups just about everything that made NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR stand out in the first place.

But we'll get to CITY OF RUIN in due course. Today, dear readers, it gives me great pleasure to present to you the first part of my interview with esteemed troublemaker and epic fantasy author Mark Charan Newton.

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Afternoon, Mark.

And a very good afternoon to you.

I should start by saying that it’s an absolute pleasure to have you here on the blog. You were among the earliest and most vocal supporters of The Speculative Scotsman in the early going, and I think I have you to thank for much of the traffic the site sees to this day. So thank you, Mark, for using the power you wield over the blogosphere to point it in my direction - and for agreeing to this little sit-down, too.

It's my pleasure. To be honest, I'm all for highlighting promising and smart new blogs – there's so much white noise out there, that for new authors and bloggers (yes, I'm lumping them together in this) to be heard requires a lot of effort. So anything I can do to say to people "you really should look at this site" benefits the community at large, right?

With that aside, let’s set the tone for what’s to come. Mark Charan Newton, prestigious genre author and interim internet shit-stirrer: how does your garden grow?

I always find it funny, this new reputation of mine to be a shit-stirrer - I'm not sure I really am. I think you can look at it two ways: the first is deliberately going out there to wind people up, which is what I try not to do, and I think that is reflected in the quality of the debate in the comments section. If you go out there to deliberately provoke, you end up looking like a bit of a dick, let's face it, especially if you've not got the chops to back up and defend your argument. I think the great proof of this is the Death of SF post, which never once got into a flame war (though I'm always afraid I'll upset someone).

I like to think I take approach two, which is To Ask Awkward Questions. If there's some issue I genuinely think needs airing, I'll phrase it in such a way that - I hope - fosters debate. And I've worked on all sides of the publishing industry - from frontline bookselling, to being in an editorial seat, and now to writing – which helps me to know what questions can be asked. Plus, I understand what doesn't matter (the flap around cover art is always amusing, because covers aren't aimed at bloggers but the casual customers, whose money shapes the industry).

What I find really flattering, though, is that people really dig the blog – at a recent signing, people were commenting about the site as much as the books, and even io9 are now linking to some of my posts. I can't pretend it's easy to maintain it, to keep thinking up debates, and I hope I can, but it's nice for me - it's more instantaneous, and I get a reaction from people immediately. When you write, it's months - years - before people give you feedback.

I think we can see immediately that my garden grows in tangents.

And here I was hoping you’d regale me with a few choice tales of your vegetable patch!

But hey, I’ll take it. Perhaps shit-stirrer isn’t the right phrase, then, nor even troublemaker. Certainly, though, you post incredibly regularly, and every other question you pose helps to create the sort of debate that keeps us bloggers on our toes. You engage - something of a contrast to many authors, who blog only occasionally, and presumably more that they might be seen to satisfy some publicity rep’s advice than because they genuinely want the sort of discourse between writer and reader that you advocate.

We’ll get to the ups and downs of that, shall we say… “special relationship” a little later. For the moment, though, I have to ask: how in God’s name do you do it, man? How do you balance the writing life and all its associated obligations with such provocative and sustained blogging and still have time to spare for anything approaching a life?

I can bore people about my vegetable patch, too. Actually, it is linked to the internet question - in that I felt I was spending too much time on things that weren't... real, you know? So growing vegetables is a great distraction from the artificial digital world. It makes you feel vaguely human again.

Yeah, a lot of authors get the blogging thing very wrong, don't they? There's nothing worse for a potential fan to see then one dry post every four months, is there? Or indeed authors that constantly talk about themselves, or a review of their book, sell, sell, sell. That said, some writers maintain hugely entertaining blogs - Jonathan Carroll, for one, and Neil Gaiman - who, let's face it, did it as well as anyone.

How do I manage it? Well, you know - it doesn't actually take that long to actually write a blog post, but on top of a full-time job, and the novel writing, it doesn't leave me with a huge amount of free time, I'll admit that. I'm lucky that I can work hours that get me home and writing at a reasonable time - and I can do stuff like exercise in my lunch hour - which leaves the evening free for the books and associated fluff. I don't have a TV, and you often find that you sacrifice nights out with friends because you have to keep working, which is the unspoken difficult part of this career.

The blogging, though, is often a quick reaction to something I've seen online – a news item, or just something that prompts a thought - but it's finding worthy topics that take up the majority of the thought-time. Then again, part of the way I always viewed the blog was to have it as my notebook - I'll put snippets of something I'll find amusing, or music that I like and think others would write. Now that I think about it, I'm doing the blog for exactly the same reason I decided to write novels - because I couldn't find the material I really wanted to read, so I thought I'd do it myself. As long as it's fun - and for me, primarily - then it'll continue.

I do want to stress though that it doesn't interfere with the writing, and for any new writers out there, nor does it have to. Like anything, do it because you enjoy it. And don't view any of this as a big task - I just do enough each day to keep things ticking along, and it doesn't stress me out.

A day job as well? Good lord...

Speaking of which, you were one of the founding fathers of Solaris, “a mass market, original SF, Fantasy and Horror imprint,” so it is told, which you and your co-conspirators sold on last year to Rebellion, who make, uhh... the ALIENS VS PREDATOR video games.

Wait, what?

But let’s gloss over that rather unusual pairing. I only bring Solaris up because I want to know: how was the transition between publishing and professional writing? Did your experience behind the scenes of the industry play into your approach when you opted to take a more creative role? Did that knowledge and understanding make breaking in any easier, or conversely, did it complicate matters?

I always tried to keep them as separate as possible. I was a writer before this point (I had my agent a few months before I landed the job). If anything, it made writing at home more difficult - I was reading manuscripts all day and then working on my own all night. That said, I think I can say that I had more of an awareness of the industry, but did that inform my writing? Honestly, I doubt it. I'm very much aware that nepotism exists in publishing - it is cringeworthy, but apparent in any industry where there are, you know, people; but I wanted to stay well away from it, because I'd be cheating myself. First and foremost, I want my writing to succeed on its own merits - that's all that has ever mattered.

And all that ever should. Would that more industry figures partook of that sort of transparency...

But before we move away from Solaris entirely, a related question: in May, the genre imprint you helped to launch published SHINE, an (outstanding, I should say) anthology of optimistic sci-fi shorts. That sense of optimism has been, in my humble opinion, missing from science fiction for so long we hardly knew to miss it anymore; we were, before SHINE reminded us what we had lost, at a point where endlessly dreary dystopias had become the status quo within the genre.

But you’re a fantasy man, of course - for the moment, at least. In light of which, I’d be fascinated to hear what you think the genre within whose boundaries you currently work is missing, in the same way SF seemed to have given up all hope.

It's important to stress first how wide-ranging fantasy is - from magic realism to the Big Fat Fantasies of Robert Jordan - so I'll speak mainly of the epic fantasy department, in which I find myself currently. So what's missing?

For one thing (and these are purely personal reflections) somewhere along the lines people have mistaken blood and guts for true experimentalism in themes and concepts. Violence isn't strictly adult (one only has to look at a school playground) or radical, but I've noticed there is much weight on it being so these days. Books (perhaps even films?) are valued for their violence. It's like a Cthulhu-like God of Genre is playing a trick, a sly flick of the wrist to make us avoid thinking about true thematic experimentation. Violence is fine in the text - I use it a lot - so much of this point concerns what happens outside the books, in the surrounding discussions. As an extension of this "mistaken radical" quality, I've noticed how people seem really into subverting tropes - I mean, WARHAMMER has been subverting tropes for a couple of decades, so for a start, the concept is no new development. (As an aside, I loved Scott Lynch's essay a while back on embracing tropes.) And it's all harmless, but with all of this, it's like we're thinking far too much about the stuff that doesn't matter. Steven Erikson is someone who I think is a radical Epic Fantasy writer, and isn't afraid to try new things out - and not everyone might love his books, but I'd certainly want more writers like him in this genre, because it makes things interesting.

I also think the genre in general (though there are examples otherwise) lacks enough experimental style - or rather, it frustrates me to read how many of us think that transparent prose is the apogee of style (and yes, I confess these things are a matter of taste). I often wonder where this comes from. (Perhaps business-type creative writing programs that teach simplicity is key in communications?) In fiction, prose can take many forms and styles, and other genres - especially SF - have played with such things no end. But I find there's a great deal of too-clean writing, and I mean no offence by saying this - there's nothing wrong with clean writing, and I like many books with such prose - but I'd love for a little more soul, just to make things interesting. Let's put this another way - one of the most common cars in the UK is the Ford Focus. Nothing wrong with that - it's a perfectly adequate car, does the job - but we all turn our heads when we see, for example, an Alfa Romeo Brerra driving by. I don't want to sound grumpy about our genre - there is indeed much to like out there, and all of what I've said is purely me pushing for more variety, rather than homogenising the shelf - something which, in the age of giant corporations in charge of production of The Novel, is something to think about.

Well, THE LEGENDS OF THE RED SUN certainly haven’t lacked in soul thus far. In fact, that’s one of the most distinctive things about your books: your voice, the sophistication of your prose. So sophisticated, in fact, and so set apart from the “too-clean” norm, that when NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR hit nearly a year ago to this date, critics started bandying about comparisons between you and China Mieville. Not to mention Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Mervyn Peake.

That’s some pretty serious company for you to be keeping, even in the abstract, so early in the game. And while I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind complaining about such flattering comparisons, I might as well ask: have you any qualms about new readers coming to your work with such expectations? Ultimately, is such like-for-subjective-like association really necessary in literary criticism. Is it even helpful?

Whilst it's hugely flattering even to be whispered in the same company from time to time, I appreciate that every reader has a different interaction with a writer's work - so what works for one, doesn't for another. I can appreciate some kind of marketing need to make such comparisons, and somewhere along the lines, that filtered from publishing houses through to the internet: people needed those quick comparisons. Blog reviews aren't all academic essays - they're communicating to fans.

Being mentioned alongside those writers is particularly tricky - Wolfe, for example, has a very special kind of following, and any young whippersnapper being compared to him is unlikely to be received favourably. Particularly since the market is very different these days, and has different expectations and (sales) requirements - I'm writing in a much more contemporary style, not in the style of Wolfe. And this is nothing new - you saw it when China's PERDIDO STREET STATION hit the shelves, a few readers seem angry about him being compared to Peake. How dare he! These authors are institutions, and simply being compared to them is enough to cause upset. That's part of the territory, but I guess if you're upsetting some people so much, you're onto something good. :) One thing I'm not going to do is go all Terry Goodkind on readers who don't like these comparisons, and say they just don't get me, or they're stupid, or whatever. Every reader is a different species, and gleans their own unique experience from a book. It's as simple as that.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that I've been hyped to death, and I think many people are approaching the books with huge expectations. I really don't like that - I just want people to come with an open mind and hopefully enjoy what they read. But there's nothing I can do about it - I'm just grateful reviewers are talking about me at all.

They certainly are. Which is pretty incredible, all things considered: if, as you advise, we ignore THE REEF, your small press debut, you’ve only really been on the scene in your current capacity a year or so. And yet the entire blogosphere is abuzz with reviews of CITY OF RUIN; your name seems to be on everyone’s lips.

Did you wish upon a star - is that your secret? Going from the acknowledgements of your latest novel, out this month in the UK courtesy of Tor alongside a lovely paperback edition of NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR for those that missed it the first time around, it seems there might be a more rational, if no less remarkable causal factor behind your rise to fame...

The blogs have helped a huge amount. I mean, it's not just the reviews - forget about those. Many of the bloggers I mentioned at the time of writing CITY OF RUIN had constantly linked to my site, or championed the book on forums, or whatever. That's been a huge help - and sure, I've been constantly a part of online debate, but the bloggers have played a key role in raising my profile, which in turn has helped sell the book. In fact, most of my sales have been through online venues thus far (though hardcovers do well online in general), but that's decent evidence. Does one blog site hold huge influence? Probably not, but as a collective, then yes, bloggers are changing things - it's access to a direct reader community. Magazine and newspaper reviews are all well and good, but how many of those who buy a copy of said publication are fantasy book readers? It's hard to say. But we know people who cruise online sites are looking for hot books, and we know this audience is growing.

In essence, yeah - I'd be a fool not to thank those early adopters. They've helped me get this far.

Conversely, do you think it’s possible that bloggers can be hindrance to some, in as much as they’re a help to others? It’s certainly nice to think of us as a single collective, and no doubt what sway we hold over our readers would grow immeasurably if we could all band together, but in practice it seems more apt to describe us as a collection of relatively distinct cliques. As in so many things, circles of like-minded bloggers have come together over common interests, and surely the cost of such inclusion is the exclusion of those readers and indeed fellow bloggers who simply don’t quite fit in. Could it be that your close association with the particular sphere of bloggers to which I belong – the speculative sub-sect of the blogosphere, I suppose we could call it – is a turn-off to those outwith it?

Can bloggers be a hindrance? I suppose that's like asking if a particular TV channel is a hindrance - but if you don't like something you can always turn over and watch something else. If someone doesn't like a certain blog, then there's bound to be something else out there.

The cliques are a natural development, I suspect - but this industry is full of cliques. Just look at a convention and see the authors and publishers, or certain groups of fans or reviewers take to their own corner of the bar.

What the internet offers, though, is the chance for others to join - I mean, you yourself are a relatively new blogger, and you've already got a widely respected site. So if a reader sees nothing but cliques, and doesn't like it, then they can start something up on their own, and with the right amount of appropriate publicity, make a great job of things. I hate to channel FIELD OF DREAMS, but if you build it they will come - eventually, and that's surely what the blogosphere has done with regards to the previously perceived cliques of print review venues - blogosphere has built something new, and in my opinion is much more powerful than the print venues. What I will say though is that the more quality blogs, the better, because it keeps people involved, keeps readers coming back, and that can only benefit the genre in the long run.

As for my close association with the blogosphere being a turn-off? Well, if it is, then tough! I'm an author who happens to be a fan, I'm part of this community, and I'm having fun. And the rules of the internet have changed how authors and readers and reviewers interact, so I guess we're still defining our etiquette, but the response so far has been positive. So as long as I'm not pissing off too many people, I'll carry on regardless. :)

And fair play to you for that, Mark. For myself, I think - as we discussed earlier - you’re a singular example of an author at the forefront of an era of change. In much the same way Neil Gaiman was, years ago - though his involvement with a certain meddling Dresden Doll (I won’t go into it again) seems to have rather detracted from his place in this brave new world.

But as you say, the interaction between author, reader and reviewer has changed dramatically since the advent of the internet and the rise of the blogger thereafter. And I’m wondering, largely because I found myself pondering this very conflict whilst reviewing NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR for The Speculative Scotsman, if that relationship can also work as a detriment. I mean, I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but you’ve been so supportive of this site, and so generous with your time, that I’d damn near consider you a friend. I certainly will when you finally get on down to Scotland to sign my books and partake in a few of the local ales - come on, Mark!

And so, when I cast a critical eye over your work, there’s a voice in the back of my mind... a friendly devil sat on my shoulder reminding me always to be decent - not that I ever aim to be otherwise - because I know that the chances are you’ll read what I write, and the last thing I want to do is offend you, or worse, hurt you somehow. You said yourself, on your blog if I recall correctly, that “Little do online commentators realise how fragile creative egos can be. You might chuckle, but to some, a damaging comment can prevent a writer from doing his or her job properly. Some might crumble for a week, who’s to say?”

Worth adding to this, that I didn't strictly mean that nothing bad should ever be said - I'm always willing to listen to a decent, justified criticism. It was more the kind of antics you get on, for example, certain forums, where readers show no regard for the effort, or who bring their own agenda to a review. By all means, flag problems with the text - that is one of the most important things to help new readers with their buying decisions. And also, as an author, if there is a certain issue which crops up in many reviews, then it's something for us to think about.

Forum trolls have been giving friendly everyday internet-goers a bad name since the advent of the technology, of course. I’m of the mind that everyone with access to the web should have a sort of electronic ID card with points on like a driver’s license. Too many ROFLs and you lose a point; compare something to Hitler and you’re docked three. Certain message boards will require a clean record for participation, and if you have any more than twelve points your license is revoked - although behave for a bit and the Grand Moderators wipe the slate clean. In an ideal world, I suppose!

Enough beating around the bush, though. What I’ve been getting around to asking is simple enough, when you cut to the chase, but again, I can’t help but couch it - and this in itself goes to my argument. Do you think your proximity to the blogosphere, your networking within it as well as without, has in any way affected criticism of your fiction? Do you think bloggers perhaps find it easier to overlook a problem with your work than they would the work of someone who doesn’t trade Tweets with them, and indeed engage in the dialogue we spoke of before, because they’re afraid to jeopardise your interest?

Possibly. The same opportunities have existed for decades, for authors to be friends with reviewers, though at least the internet is more open about it. You see reviewers and authors mingling at conventions all the time. I like that Twitter and blogs are honest and open - these aren't the unspoken liaisons in a hotel bar.

But I suspect this is something to deflect to reviewers - because the question is, are bloggers likely to let the fact that they know someone (albeit digitally, in most cases) interfere with their reviews? Would you let your relations with authors get in the way of what you had to say about a book? Only you can answer that. As an author, I'm just out there having fun.

I honestly doubt it's had much of an effect - I've seen reviewers numerous times declaring that they wish they could have liked so-and-so more because they exchanged emails with the author, and I've had more than my fair share of lively exchanges with bloggers on Twitter to risk pissing people off, so it works both ways. Also, don't forget that, when the main reviews came in this time last year, no one had heard of me, and I didn't have the blog in full swing.

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What a note to leave things on...

Apologies, all, but I can't resist a good tease at the best of times. So reviewers, what say you? Ever found yourself in a similar position?

Do stay tuned for the second part of my interview with Mark on Thursday, when we'll be talking politics, Nottingham, burn-out, the death of publishing and much, much more.