The Speculative Spotlight | A Word With Elspeth Cooper (Part 2)

Day before yesterday, I sat down (in spirit) for a tête à tête with the lovely Elspeth Cooper, author of the novel that's been called "the best fantasy debut of 2011." You can catch up on the first half of our discussion here, and while you're at it, if you haven't already, I just posted my review of Elspeth's novel. That's here - or of course you could just look down a couple of inches.

Go on, now. Due diligence and all that.

So we're all on the same page, right? Songs of the Earth is a fantasy "as fresh as flour from the mill, and as rich in power, and possibility," meanwhile Ms. Cooper "gives every indication of being a speculative star on a vertical trajectory, worthy of mention in the same breath as the likes of Brandon Sanderson and - yes! - Patrick Rothfuss."


When her first novel comes out two weeks from today, you should totally read it. :)

Anyway, last time on The Speculative Spotlight, after a good bit of bantering about social media, great expectations and the journey from keyboard to bookshelves, Elspeth and I had finally touched on the reason for the season: the release, a few short days from now, of Songs of the Earth. And we're going to pick up the conversation right where we left off...

***

How have you found the ramp-up towards D-day, Elspeth? In terms of marketing, I mean, and getting the good word out there; particularly in terms of what seems now an entry requirement for debut authors such as yourself, which is to say socialising with your core audience, whether by blogging, Tweeting, or poking people on... what is it? Facespace? 

Did the community welcome you with open arms, then, or more of a we’ll-wait-and-see attitude? Have we become half as insular and impenetrable to outsiders and newcomers as I often fear? 

And in the end, do you think it matters a whit? Do you expect this extra burden you and every other new writer to have come along in the last few years have been made to take on will translate into sales success... or are you after something else, perhaps? 

Anyone who's been part of the unpublished writers' community is aware of this notion that we all have to "build a platform" for ourselves, or we won't be taken seriously by the industry. From what I've seen, this idea is hammered home particularly hard in the US - certainly I saw it most on American agents' blogs and on American writers' sites. Here in the UK, the industry seems to be far less concerned about a new author coming to them with a ready-made audience of 3,000 blog followers and a 4-page marketing plan, and more interested in whether they can actually write a decent story... but anyway.

To me, it seemed like common sense to have a web presence. I'd had a personal site for years, so once my editor and I had settled on my pen name (my real name doesn't balance nearly so well on a cover) I registered www.elspethcooper.com, ported my blog over and built a site to get the Google machine grinding. Then I added an Elspeth Cooper page to my Facebook profile, and joined Twitter. I'm a natural chatterbox so communicating comes easily to me and I enjoy it - it just takes up so much bloody time! There's a load of fantasy fiction forums I'd like to browse and get involved with because I'm a reader as well as a writer, and I'd like to blog more frequently, but there's only so many hours in the day, so I have to ration myself. Twitter in particular can be a dreadful time-suck, and I have books to deliver.

In terms of how the fantasy community's welcomed me, so far it's been pleasantly warm, with enthusiastic spells and scattered showers of scepticism. From the chatter on some of the forums there appears to be a hard core of readers who are deeply suspicious of hype, and very difficult to impress. To be fair to them, the last few years have seen some truly outstanding debuts, so when another best-thing-since-sliced-bread comes along even the most dedicated reader can be forgiven for feeling a little jaded. Maybe I'll win them over, or maybe my book's just not their cup of tea. Although they won't know until they try!

Of course, the publicity machine has only just started rolling. It takes a while to mash through the gears and build up some momentum, get beyond the book bloggers and the web forums to the folks out there in reader-land. I'm trying to do my bit on the social media side, more just to keep my name out there in the collective consciousness than relentlessly plugging, which I find a bit distasteful to be honest. Whether it will result in sales, I don't know. I don't want to be perceived as some remote entity that spits out a book every year or two; I'd rather be seen as a human being: an approachable, enthusiastic, occasionally funny writer person, someone you can actually talk to. Maybe engaging with people on that level will make them more inclined to try one of my books. That'd be a win all round. 

Here’s to a resounding victory along exactly those lines!

But speaking of spitting out a book a year, on the last page of SONGS OF THE EARTH – the ARC, again – there is the promise that Gair’s story will continue in TRINITY MOON, which is to say book two of THE WILD HUNT. 

So how goes the grander narrative? How far ahead of us are you, exactly? And I suppose I should ask, because it really seems to matter to some folks, do you expect to be publishing on an annual schedule? In fact, let’s make a meaningful question of that last and append the following: do you feel any pressure to deliver on such a timetable? 

Well, I was supposed to deliver TRINITY MOON in the autumn of 2010, but a run of illness and hospital admissions (culminating in surgery in October) delayed things a bit, and the manuscript I turned in was complete but not to my satisfaction. It's currently undergoing revisions, which obviously are impacting on book three. Publication of TRINITY is slated for next spring, and I'm confident we'll still hit that. I don't have a date for the final volume yet.

Pressure? Well, I'm on the company dime, as it were, but by far the greatest pressure I'm feeling is what I'm applying to myself. I certainly don't feel as if Gollancz are leaning on me at all. They are happy to give me some room to breathe. Of course, if the books take off and I have fans congregating under my office window day and night chanting "Why are we waiting?" that might change... 

Well thank you for being so frank with me, Elspeth. I think you’ve good and sold us on yourself. But let’s change gears a little, and talk about why we’re talking in the first place: the book. For anyone who’s still sitting on the fence as regards SONGS OF THE EARTH, could you paint a pretty picture? 

Oh God, I'm hopeless at summing up my books in one or two sentences!

It's about a young man called Gair who has an unusual gift: he can hear music in the world around him, and work magic with it. Sometimes. He doesn't know how to control it, and the only people who could teach him have been persecuted almost to extinction by the Church - who've put a price on Gair's head as well. So he's on the run, trying to get to grips with his abilities and stay one step ahead of the witchfinder on his tail, and just when he thinks he's found a measure of safety, he discovers he's in the middle of a much bigger battle, with much higher stakes. Then he has to decide whether he's going to keep running, or stand and fight.

There's a few big-ticket items like the difference between religion and faith, the many shapes of courage and why crusades of any sort are rarely a good idea, but mostly it's an adventure. Contains 100% of your guideline daily amount of magic, intrigue, a bit of romance, a smattering of self-discovery/coming-of-age, trace nudity, perilous things-from-the-Other-Side, and swords. Everything a growing boy (or girl) needs.

So what set off the voices in your head anyway? The magic - for it's a lovely thing, the Song is - or the magician? In other words, what came first for you, in conceiving The Wild Hunt: the chicken, or the egg? :) 

Have you ever sat in the garden on a still summer morning, dew on the grass and the sun only just up, and you could have sworn you could hear the plants growing? Or stood in a deep forest and felt sure that right at the limit of your perception, you could hear the trees breathe? No? Oh. Must just be me, then. I've been doing it for years. This could explain a lot.

Anyway, that's where the Song came from. As for the singer, he came later. The voices have always been there - I was never lonely as a child ;o) - but what triggered this particular book was rage. Incandescent, boiling-up-in-your-chest fury, the kind that you have to express somehow or you'll explode. The kind that makes you worry that if you do let it off its leash, you might do something worse than just smash up the crockery.

That gave me Gair, wrestling with his magic alone in the dark in the opening scene of the book. As for what made me connect that vague, nebulous concept for the Song with the magic he was fighting, I really have no clue at all. I often do things instinctively when I'm on a creative roll that if I sat down and tried to reason it out, would never occur to me. 

This rage, motivated I assume by the nasty break-up you mentioned before... do you still have it? Or is that a demon the process of writing Gair helped you exorcise? Because as of the end of SONGS OF THE EARTH, and not to give anything away, I... I get the sense that your man’s got a whole lot of rage ahead of him. 

Correct, it was. I channelled those negative emotions into writing - partly as therapy, partly as a safety valve: I couldn't sleep, so I wrote through the night for a week - and then the story itself took hold of me. I put the rage away a long time ago, and locked the door, but let's just say I know where the key is...

Without offering any spoilers, I can confirm that Gair's about to find himself sorely tested, torn between his personal desires and the greater good, and facing some hard, hard choices. 

Now a moment ago you wrote that you often do things instinctively when you're on a creative roll. I'd be very interested to hear of those turns SONGS OF THE EARTH took during the writing process that most surprised you. 

Tanith's conversation with her father. That scene came straight out of my subconscious and practically wrote itself, solving about three different problems at once. Gair's recurring nightmare is another one. I wrote that and it was only when I went back to edit it that I realised it is rich with symbolism and foreshadowing. I looked at it and thought "I don't remember being aware of any of that, but it bloody works..." 

How much of what did happen - as opposed to what you'd imagined would - went according to plan? 

You said the P-word - wash your mouth out, young man!

I'm not a big planner. I don't write character profiles, or cover a pin-board with chapter summaries on index cards - I've tried, and I write more fluidly without it. SONGS was seat of the pants, all the way, though I had the luxury of time to pull it together and prune it into shape.

I've had to be much more disciplined with TRINITY MOON. For that I actually had a synopsis to work to; my agent asked for one when he was selling SONGS, so having laid the groundwork in the first book it was just a case of decanting my brain onto paper from the end of Act I through to the natural conclusion of Act II. Now that has gone to plan - bar one thing - although there's a fair bit of meat in it which was never described in the synopsis, that just evolved on its own out of the characters and the situation I'd put them in. My instincts were more on target in the second book - I'd had more practice by then, I suppose, or else I just trusted them more. 

“Decanting my brain onto paper” - what a wonderfully disturbing picture. I like it! :) 

With that in mind, can you see yourself decanting anything else in the foreseeable, Elspeth, other than THE WILD HUNT? A couple short stories, perhaps; or even - God above! - a standalone novel? What other voices might you be tamping back, the better to tell Gair’s tale? 

I've never mastered short-form fiction - and never been particularly interested in it, to be honest. Those two facts are probably related. I'm most comfortable with novels, where I've got room to flail around a bit - I guess you could call me a literary claustrophobic!

So my next project will be a standalone novel, I think, but set in the same universe. I fell utterly in love with the White Havens: the high society of the Kingswater with its grand salons and glittering parties, and the grimy underbelly of Haven-port. The city was almost a character in its own right - part New Orleans, part Regency London, part Venice at the time of the Borgias - and I desperately want to explore it further.

There's also an annoying young lad wandering around my brain who I might have to do something about. All he's got is a name and a grin that's either going to get him into trouble or get him out of it, but he's in no hurry to leave, the little git. 

Is it a frustration at all, that now you’ve started down this road you can’t very well take the time to enjoy the sights? By which I mean to say, is beginning a fantasy saga as you have done not something of a deal with the devil, in that you’re practically obliged to see it through before you can devote your attentions elsewhere? 

Sometimes it's frustrating, yes. With SONGS I had no deadlines, and I could dawdle, pick daisies and chase butterflies as much as I wanted. Now there's a timetable, and other people counting on me to finish this thing. I always knew I would finish it, publication or no publication, but now I'm expected to do so, and in a reasonable time, so there is a little voice in the back of my head now telling me chop-chop, you haven't got all day you know.

The corollary to this is that there is so much... *searches for the words*... stuff in my head to do with THE WILD HUNT that I worry I'll lose something if I allow my focus to shift too far away from it before it's done. There again I've been living with these ideas for so long that I probably couldn't lose anything even if I tried, but still. I'm a bit of a worrit. 

Can you see yourself writing outside the genre, going forward? Or do you feel you’ve found your place in fantasy? 

Fantasy's always been my first love, but I confess, I've not been entirely faithful to it. I have ideas on the back burner for some what do they call it, contemporary women's fiction, which if they ever come to fruition will no doubt appear under yet another pen-name, but despite the occasional flirtation I think that I'll always keep coming back to fantasy. It feels like coming home. 

And home is where the heart is. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer note to wrap things up on than that. 

But I’m all about outstaying my welcome, so: one last quick hit before I let you get back to the writing cave. It’s practically a tradition, this question. To wit, if Songs of the Earth were edible, what kind of food would it be? 

Ooh, now that's a poser. I've been told that SONGS is more like an adventure than fantasy, and even non-fantasy-readers have enjoyed it. So it tastes like... something that's more delicious than it sounds, but is so enjoyable that you keep going back for just one more piece... Montezuma dark chocolate with chilli in it.

With which, I’d like to say thank you, Elspeth, for taking the time, and sharing so many of your words with me. They’re your stock-in-trade now, and I really appreciate you being so free with them. 

Needless to say, it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. We should do this again sometime! But for the very moment, let me wish you all the best with the launch of SONGS OF THE EARTH in June. Here’s hoping the stars align come the day. 

The pleasure has been all mine, Niall. Thank you for letting me clutter the place up for a bit.

***

And that's a wrap! It's been fun though, hasn't it?

Now, go pre-order Elspeth's book, follow her on Twitter, and bookmark her blog.

And stay tuned to hear how you could win a signed and personalised hardcover copy of Songs of the Earth, direct from the lovely lady herself!

The Speculative Spotlight | A Word With Elspeth Cooper (Part 1)

It's been an almighty while since we did one of these, hasn't it?

Well, in my absence, I figured all the other bloggers kinda had it covered. But upon reading Songs of the Earth a couple of months ago - my full review of which will be going live, at long last, sometime tomorrow - there were questions I don't mind saying I wanted answers to; questions only Elspeth Cooper could answer. Questions which, furthermore, I wasn't sure anyone else would ask, if I didn't step up to the plate.

So I did! :)

We talked for a good long while, Elspeth and I. She's really a lovely lady - not to mention a tremendously promising new genre novelist. She has cats, and a Kindle, realistic expectations, and a refreshingly frank and frankly refreshing perspective on the business of publishing. This from a woman whose fantasy debut has been likened to The Name of the Wind - and not just by optimistic marketing muchacos.

But let's get the ball rolling in earnest. In this first half of our chat, Elspeth and I get right into it, discussing the role of social media as it pertains to the industry today, particularly to the new novelist. Thereafter, there's talk of e-reading, book hoarding, and neither last nor least, the sort of great expectations Songs of the Earth has been burdened with.

Or is burdened the right word? Are unbidden comparisons to some of the greatest success stories of recent literary history a blessing, or a curse?

Let's find out!

***

Hello there, Elspeth. 

Hello Niall! Thanks for taking the time to interview me. There's a long-time-listener, first-time-caller joke to be done here; I've had you on my blogroll for yonks. 

Why that’s very kind of you, Elspeth. And on the ol’ Twitter, too! Why earlier today you were telling me you’d downloaded a sample chapter of FAITHFUL PLACE to your Kindle on the back of a certain someone’s recommendation. To wit, I wish you good reading. 

But there we are already. My oh my, things have changed a great deal of late, haven’t they? With blogs reaching farther and wider than ever, myriad social media bolstering authors new and old... don’t even get me started on the awesomesauce of e-reading. 

So how is it, coming into the industry at a time like this, with everything in flux? Exciting, or terrifying? 

Coming into this industry at any time is exciting and terrifying, period. Only the ratio between the two varies.

The internet has made everything so much more immediate, and with social media like Facebook or Twitter we can reach literally thousands of people we'd never otherwise know. This can be fantastic if you catch the mood of the moment with an interesting or provocative post: viral marketing campaigns have been very successful, because there's always someone awake and at the keyboard/Blackberry/iPhone, somewhere in the world. But it also lets you make a fool of yourself on a global stage, and when that goes viral, oh boy. Because not only does the internet never sleep, it never forgets. Once upon a time, a bad book review in the press on Friday was wrapped round Saturday night's fish supper, and then landfill by Monday. Not any more.

To me as a newbie, the whole e-book thing is quite daunting. There's so much going on: piracy on the rise; agents getting bullish about royalty rates; customers complaining that the price is too high and accusing publishers of using "agency pricing" as a way to bolster sales of dead-tree-books; you can't open a newspaper (do people still do that?) or click on a news site without seeing another story about someone selling 100,000+ copies of their novel on Kindle and flicking the vees at traditional publishers... Scary scary stuff.

Fright-o-meter: E---------|-T

But the flipside of all this is the tremendous opportunity this state of flux presents. Someone once said that an obstacle is just an opportunity in a dirty mac (I paraphrase). Take Kindle as an example: you can download a free sample of a book you're thinking about buying, like I just did with that Tana French. How cool is that? Once upon a time I would have had to get dressed, go into town and loiter furtively in Waterstones to read a few pages and get hooked. Now I can browse from a deckchair in the garden. I don't even have to change out of my jammies! It's effortless. And the easier it is, the more likely a sale will occur; it's just a couple of clicks.

Fright-o-meter: E-|---------T 

It’s never been easier to be a reader, agreed, nor more exciting. There’s a lot to celebrate, a lot to be grateful for. But to be an author and stand to make something of a living from your efforts... has it ever been harder, I wonder? For even as social media and e-publishing and so on appears to narrow it, I fear the gulf between us widens with every year. With more choice, an upswing in cynicism, ever more competition, and demand after demand on your time in the hope you might make a mark in some imagined mindshare; these are terrifying times, too. 

And into this climate, enter Elspeth Cooper. 

Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, Elspeth? 

I was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1968. I grew up something of a solitary soul, completely happy in my own company, or with my nose in a book. My parents encouraged me to read, and I quickly developed a voracious appetite for stories and storytelling - even in primary school, my "What I Did on My Holidays" essays were six or seven times the length of anyone else's. Looking back, of course, this should have been A Clue.

Although I excelled academically, I chose not to go to university. I did my A-Levels right in the middle of the teachers' strike, and I was frustrated and bored with formal education, so I eschewed the college scarf and Lennon specs in favour of a job with a local software house, which somehow became a 20 year career in IT. I'm not quite sure how that happened.

I've always had a creative streak. Gardening, cooking, carpentry, cross-stitch - anything that lets me make stuff or grow stuff. But what I really wanted to do was create stories. I never imagined that I'd ever be published - quite frankly, I didn't think I was good enough - but there was a flame burning way down inside that never went out. And I fed it words. Every book I could get my hands on, and long hours of my spare time, scribbling and scribbling, falling further in thrall to What Happens Next.

A couple of years ago, my worsening health meant I could no longer sustain a job with a long commute, and I escaped the world of IT to become a full-time writer. I live in Northumberland with my husband, two cats, and every book I've ever bought. 

You’ve not gotten to the point yet where you have to start parting ways with old favourites, then, or else buying houses with room enough for all your beauties? Elspeth, I envy you already! 

Anyone who attempts to part me from any of my books, even the ones I didn't enjoy very much, is likely to get hurt. We're fast approaching breaking point, though. The shelves are full, and there's little room to put up more. Much as I hate the idea, I may have to start thinning the herd... 

So we come to that eternal question, the thrall you spoke of a moment ago: what happened next? How did you go from devout scribbler to published author? 

My route to publication wasn't one of endless rejection, heartache and strong liquor. It was more a case of chronic self-doubt, editing 'til your eyes bleed, and sheer good fortune.

I'd been kicking around some ideas for a story since about 1992 or 1993 - I'd go and check but the files are all on 3.5" disks and not one of the numerous computers in this house has a floppy drive - but I hadn't really got far beyond some names and places and the odd disconnected scene. I hadn't even admitted to myself that I was thinking about writing a book.

The catalyst was breaking up with my then-fiancé in late 1997. In the midst of all that rage and hurt and sleepless nights I started writing as a form of therapy. I wrote about a young man, naked in the dark, with a force inside him that he didn't understand and could barely control, and it was getting stronger. I didn't know who he was or how he'd got there, but I knew I had to find out.

Over the next decade the story progressed in fits and starts. The closer I got to the end, the more motivated I became to finish it. Up to this point, no-one had read it but me, because I was so afraid it was rubbish. I put some samples up on a couple of writers' websites, and the feedback blew me away. People liked what I'd written. One lady - who's a friend to this day - complained that the story was so engrossing she'd let a pan of rice boil dry on the stove for one more page. She still won't let me buy her a new pan.

Mixing with other writers gave me the confidence to give the manuscript a good hard edit, and in 2009, armed with my trusty Writers & Artists Yearbook, I drew up a shortlist of eight agents who handled fantasy and got to work on submissions. The first one rejected me, but with a complimentary handwritten note. The second one rang me at work and requested the full manuscript. Two days later he offered to represent me, and I accepted. Two weeks later Gollancz offered me a three-book deal.

And the other six agents? They all said no, but by then it was far too late! I sometimes wonder if any of them have realised what happened, and are kicking themselves... 

I’m sure they are, Elspeth. Certainly Gollancz seem beside themselves to have you a part of their storied roster. It’s not every book that comes adorned with such a bold statement as that in caps on the cover of the ARC of SONGS OF THE EARTH. 

Speaking of which, how does it feel to have written the fantasy debut of 2011? The bar’s been set dizzyingly high, hasn’t it? 

I nearly swallowed my tongue when I saw it. No pressure, right? Wow. I mean, this is just some stuff I made up in my spare time. Voices in my head. In any other line of work I'd be medicated for that.

Obviously, it's a sign of how much Gollancz believe in me and my book. As an author, that degree of faith is overwhelming. Reassuring, supportive, but still overwhelming. If I try to be dispassionate and look at it in purely business terms, as a debut author I represent a significant investment for them, and they're working hard to make sure it pays off, which in its own way just cranks the bar up another few notches. *Shades eyes, squints at sky* Is it snowing up there?

I can't help but feel I've got a target painted on my back now, too. I worry that if someone doesn't like the book (and someone won't) they'll use that line as a stick to beat me with. "Call that the fantasy debut of 2011? You must be joking" etcetera. It raises expectations, and not everyone in the market is going to feel those expectations have been met when they read the book.

But really, being totally sensible about it, it's just words on the cover. What counts is what's inside, and people can make up their own minds about that. 

I’ll readily confess: the day before we started chatting, I wrote up my own review of SONGS OF THE EARTH for TSS, and was almost exactly as predictable - if in a different direction. A proclamation along those lines... it must be affirming, in a sense - as you say - but a target is exactly what it will seem, to some. If that’s how Gollancz hope to sell your debut, then the question has been begged, you know? It’s over to critics and reviewers to zero in on what makes it so, or not so, or something entirely its own when removed from the hyperbole. 

I suppose it’s all you can do in such times, to take the long view, as you intimate, Elspeth. Because of course, there will be criticism. Already there’s been criticism, and we’re months out from release yet. So now that your baby’s a book and the book’s poised to sail the seven seas, if you will, how ready do you feel for that? How has the letting go gone? 

Is a debut author ever truly ready? I've never been here before. It's all new and daunting and exhilarating and freakin' terrifying all at once, like riding a rollercoaster for the first time. The last 15 months or so have been the slow crawl to the top of the first hill, then at the turn of the year we hit the apex, six months to go, and now it's hands-in-the-air-oh-dear-god-I'm-gonna-die-wheeeeeeeee! all the way down to June. If you see what I mean.

I think I'm as ready as I can be. There's no point working myself into a tizzy about it, is there, because there's nothing I can do to influence how the book will be received. It's up to the readers now.

Letting go wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I knew when the story was finished and ready for submission, because it resonated; I got that quiet, contented "Yes" in the back of my mind. So when it came to the edits that Gollancz requested, I was able to be quite detached and objective, almost as if I was looking at someone else's book. It wasn't "my baby" any more. Baby's all growed up and on his own. 

Well fare the wean well on his travels!

Of course, now the real work starts – isn’t that what they say?

***

But wait! There's more!

Except I'm saving the rest for Thursday, because honestly, Elspeth and I talked a lot.

In the meantime, stay tuned for my review of Songs of the Earth tomorrow - and come back the day after, when The Speculative Spotlight returns. Among the discussion to come: Elspeth expounds on how the personal feeds into the professional, we talk contemporary women's fiction, planning, chilli chocolate...

...and oh! The book, too. ;)

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.