The Qwillery

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Craig:  Thanks for having me.

I’ve always written. Being alone and making things up — being the boss of the page — was a kind of powertrip. Somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21 I got serious about writing for an audience, though it took at least another five years for maturity caught up to ambition.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Craig:  A total hybrid. I’ve tried both. I have the abandoned manuscripts to prove it.

Nowadays I won’t start writing until I have some sort of schematic that shows how all the elements fit together (for The Mannequin Makers this was a PowerPoint slide with lots of colored boxes and arrows). Something with the shape of the novel, some key events, but still a lot of questions to answer. And once I start, I’m free to go in other directions.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Craig:  With novels, it is sustaining everything -- my energy, the narrative voice, the reader’s interest – over what is usually two or three years of work.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Craig:  I never take off my novelist’s hat, so everything I consume - books, movies, video games, the aggravations of social media – winds up shaping my own work. Even the worst book has some redeeming feature, be it a lesson in what NOT to do, a new way out of an old bind, or a turn of phrase that unlocks something I’d felt but not yet been able to say.



TQ:  Describe The Mannequin Makers in 140 characters or less.

Craig:  A father raises his twins to perform as the perfect mannequins and trump his rival, a former figurehead carver and castaway.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Mannequin Makers that is not found in the book description.

Craig:  Eugen Sandow, the strongman who appears in early on in the novel and whose influence is felt through rest of the story, actually did tour New Zealand in 1902-03, I just made him perform an extra show. He was a fascinating dude. The first body-builder, in many respects. You can watch him flex in one of Thomas Edison’s first films on YouTube.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  I had a bunch of ideas – a father raising his children to be living mannequins, a shipwreck in the Southern Ocean, something centred on Eugen Sandow - that I didn’t know would or could fit together, but they had three things in common. They needed to happen in the past. They seemed so far beyond my own experience and what I’d written previously (a.k.a. A CHALLENGE). And they felt like the sorts of scenarios or characters I’d encountered in the kinds of books I devoured as a kid: Dickens, Verne, Dumas. The more I looked into department stores and clipper ships and physical culture, the more connections I found and the harder it became to not take up the challenge.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  I read. A lot. Books on all the stuff I just mentioned (and more), but also a lot of newspapers from the time period, which were thankfully all digitised and searchable online by the time I started. I travelled around the parts of the South Island here in New Zealand, where the novel opens and closes, but I didn’t go to other major settings – Scotland, Sydney, the sub-Antarctic islands - while writing the book. I made do with photos, maps, documentaries, first-hand accounts and my own imagination.
The highlight was being taken behind the scenes at our national museum and getting to touch items from the old castaway depot on Antipodes Island, like the “looter’s suit” that I later dressed one of my characters in.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Mannequin Makers.

Craig:  Covers are weird. This is the fourth cover for this book. The New Zealand and Australian editions are like a game of spot the difference and there’s a Romanian translation. The US one goes in a very different direction. I like how, once you read about ‘human mannequins’ on the back cover, those tools on the front seem more sinister. That’s kind of how the novel works too: things often appear sinister on second glance.



TQ:  In The Mannequin Makers who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Craig:  The easiest: Avis, who narrates the second part of the novel. For some reason her voice for me clicked early. Perhaps it was all the reading I’d been doing set in that time period. Perhaps it was the diary entry form and/or her extreme ignorance thanks to how she has been raised. After a few days of channelling this sixteen year old female from a hundred years ago, I started to worry it was coming too easily and I was, in fact, writing rubbish. And some of that first rush of words did need to be pared back. But it was still much less work than the other narrators.
The hardest was Eugen, Avis’ brother. He narrates the final section and is looking back on events that took place more than half a century before. He’s changed a lot since then (for starters: he’s learnt to read and write) but he hasn’t changed in other ways as well. It took a long time before I felt he was really talking when I saw his words on my screen.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  Any novel worth its salt has something to say about the time in which it is written. So even though the setting is historical, The Mannequin Makers talks about the place of art and artistry within a capitalist society, the dynamics of power and the power of empathy – issues and ideas that are still pressing today.

You can also read it as a manual in how not to raise your kids.



TQ:  Which question about The Mannequin Makers do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Craig:  Q: You liveblogged the day you attempted to write at least 6,376 words on the novel’s first draft. How much of those words made it into the final book? Would you ever do it again?

A: Quite a lot survived, actually. Maybe 75%? It’s not like I wrote a large but terrible scene that had to be cut the next day. Would I spend 16 hours straight while writing a first draft again? No way. It took me a week to recover. Better to write 1,000 good words every day until the end!



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Mannequin Makers.

Craig:  Since I mentioned my struggles to get Eugen’s voice right, how about the first few sentences from his section, to show what he ended up sounding like?

‘Every winter I’m surprised when the wattle blooms. This year even more so for the battering we took in May and June. But somehow the buds clung to their branches as the easterlies clobbered the coast and our waves, shunted on by the king tide, gouged the beach from Collaroy baths to North Narrabeen.’



TQ:  What's next?

Craig:  I’m working on a novel about fatherhood, Hollywood and a levitating Franciscan friar. It’s set in 2017 and 2019, but dips back into the seventeenth century, when San Giuseppe da Copertino was doing his thing.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

The Mannequin Makers
Milkweed Editions, December 12, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 336 pages

Playfully literate and strikingly original, an unforgettable debut novel about art, imitation, and obsession.

Excitement is rare in the small town of Marumaru, New Zealand. So when a young Maori man arrives on the morning train one day in 1903—announcing the imminent visit of a famous strongman—the entire town turns out to greet him, save one. Colton Kemp, a department store window-dresser, is at home, watching his beloved wife die in premature childbirth. Tormented by grief, he hatches a plan to make his name and thwart his rival, the silent and gifted Carpenter: over the next sixteen years he will raise his newborn twins in secrecy and isolation, to become human mannequins in the world’s most lifelike window display.

From this moment of calamity emerges a work of masterful storytelling, at once wildly entertaining and formally ambitious. The novel leaps fearlessly from the epistolary to the castaway narrative to the picaresque, as Kemp’s plot goes awry and as he, his children, and the Carpenter converge in the New Zealand hinterland.

The Mannequin Makers is an adventure-filled and thoroughly delightful yarn, introducing one of international literature’s most promising young talents to American audiences.

About Craig

Craig Cliff is the author of The Mannequin Makers, a novel, and A Man Melting, a collection of short stories, which won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Both were previously published in New Zealand. In 2012 he was a judge for the inaugural Commonwealth Story Prize, and he is the recipient of a Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. He writes a column for the Dominion Post about his double life as a writer and public servant in Wellington, New Zealand.

Website  ~  Twitter @Craig_Cliff  ~  Blog

The Qwillery:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

K Arsenault Rivera:  The first thing I can remember writing is a story about the itsy bitsy spider. I named him Joaquin, and this was his totally dramatic backstory. I was maybe six at the time. It never really slowed down from there—I used to write new endings for things we’d read in class and hand them out to my friends on looseleaf!



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

K:  A hybrid! I like to have the major story beats in my head and a strong idea of my protagonist and her arc when I finally sit down to write. That said, I find a lot of joy in spontaneous creation. If a scene veers too far from the outline I tend to go with it. Sometimes your outline doesn’t quite match up with who the characters are at that particular moment, and since I’m such a character focused writer I like to let them lead a little.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

K:  Y’know, for someone who loves epic fantasy and sweet swordfights, I struggle a lot when it comes to fight scenes. It’s part of a larger issue—diction and cadence are important to me. Taking the time to think up the right metaphor for the occasion, or the right tone for a piece to have—all of these things fascinate and challenge me. I think the tone of a work is just as important as its characters, and in some cases more important than its setting.

Which brings us back to fight scenes. I can’t seem to get through one without using the word ‘slam’ at least four times. And fight scenes are so important in Tiger! They’re all over! What’s been helping me lately—a tip from one of my good friends—is to approach writing fights the way I approach writing horror. Focus more on the slow build up of things and the mood of the scene than the actual actions themselves, that’s been my strategy on the current project.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

K:  For Tiger I was specifically trying to recreate the feel of my favorite Classics: the Iliad and the Odyssey (I know, I’m really basic). I wanted to do a big, sweeping story, one that spanned decades; a story as epic as it was gay.

To keep the tone of the book appropriately epic I like to read poetry before I start work for the day; I keep coming back to If Not, Winter, and The Ink-Dark Moon in particular.

Of course, the other major influence on Tiger is my fascination with Gothic novels. The epistolary style and my gratuitous use of commas and em dashes are, I think, a direct result of how many times I read Dracula as a teen.

And I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t say that shows like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Avatar: The Last Airbender didn’t play a huge role in Tiger, too.



TQ:  Describe The Tiger's Daughter in 140 characters or less.

K:  Two princesses from rival nations are fated to fight a traitor god together. They weren’t fated to fall in love, but they do anyway.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Tiger's Daughter that is not found in the book description.

K:  I’m a huge fan of Hyakunin Isshu. All of the chapter titles from Shefali’s perspective are lines from a poem found there. In Phoenix Empress, I took a bit of a different approach with Shizuka’s—in general I have a lot of fun with chapter titles.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Tiger's Daughter?* What appeals to you about writing Historical Fantasy?

K:  Barsalai Shefali started her life as one of my roleplay characters! The whole of Tiger was a way to make my backstory interesting for my GM to read. I’m kind of notorious in my roleplay group for overly long character backstories and campaign fanfiction. Shefali’s isn’t even the longest character backstory I’ve ever written—but it was the one I thought best lent itself to a novel-shaped object.

I wouldn’t necessarily call Tiger historical fantasy so much as historically inspired. Even then it’s not a one-to-one sort of deal in a lot of respects. Shefali’s mother, for example, led a life much like Genghis Khan’s—but Shizuka’s mother has no historical parallel. That said I’ve always been a huge fan of Guy Gavriel Kay’s work.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Tiger's Daughter?

K:  Obviously a setting like Tiger’s requires a lot of research. For the Qorin I turned to Jack Weatherford’s Secret History of the Mongol Queens and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. There was a lot more poetry involved in the creation of Hokkaro: Ink-Dark Moon again and the Hyakunin Isshu come to mind, as well as The Tale of Genji. Romance of the Three Kingdoms has also been a long time favorite of mine, and I started a new read of it before really getting to work on Tiger.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Tiger's Daughter.

K:  So, true story, my editor Miriam (who is incredible, by the way) first showed me the thumbnails for my cover while we were huddled on the street outside Books of Wonder. The thumbnails—just the thumbnails—were so beautiful I started crying like a total dork right there and then. For the next five months I told everyone how amazing they were, and I think they got sick of hearing about it, but I mean—look at that cover!

Jaime Jones, who has also painted some of my favorite Magic: The Gathering cards, is the artist. It’s not really something directly from the novel but it definitely could be—the girls make a lot of long journeys throughout, all on horseback. Shizuka, especially, is spot-on with how I’ve always pictured her—the red and gold, that defiant look on her face. Shefali’s coat also looks especially fluffy. And the horses! God, I could go on about the cover forever.



TQ:  In The Tiger's Daughter who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

K:  Shefali was the easiest for me, which is fortunate, since we spend most of our time in her head. I’m not as quiet as she is, but I have a lot of the same hesitation around crowds and new people, the same idealistic outlook. Although, unlike her, I think I’d implode if I had to live in the woods for more than two days, and I’ve never ridden a horse!

Shefali’s brother Kenshiro gave me the most trouble. First off, I’m an only child, so sibling dynamics have always been something I’ve admired from a distance. Second, Kenshiro makes some pretty terrible decisions over the course of the novel. It’s hard to see him in a sympathetic light because of that—but those decisions also come from a place very dear to my heart. Unlike his sister, Kenshiro has never felt like he belonged in either Hokkaro or among the Qorin. His constant struggle to fit in and be liked is something I see a lot of myself in, as well as his clashing sense of identity. The hard part was writing him so that the audience didn’t hate him on sight.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Tiger's Daughter?

K:  Tiger was from the beginning a queer love story, and from the beginning a story centering people of color. Even when it was a character backstory this much was true. When I translated that backstory into a full novel, those aspects were important to me—I wanted to write both the kind of fantasy novel I wanted to read.

On top of the main queer romance there are also lots of queer side characters, too. It isn’t necessarily a big deal, except for Shizuka and Shefali themselves, but that’s because they’re young for most of the novel.



TQ:  Which question about The Tiger's Daughter do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

K:  Hey K! If you were going to stat out your heroines for Pathfinder, what classes would they be?

I talked about this with my friend Paul once! He made a good case for a Ranger Shefali, which I agree with. Your other option for her would be a cavalier, I think, but that doesn’t allow you to have an animal companion—and Shefali’s not going anywhere without her horse. Shizuka is a bit harder to pin down—I think I’d go with a paladin, but even that’s not quite right.

Stats wise, Shefali is high wisdom, con, and dex; low cha. Shizuka is high cha, dex, and very, very low wisdom.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Tiger's Daughter.

K:

“Home, for me, means two things. The first is you. Above all, you are my white felt ger, you are my bright red door, and you are my warm fire. But if I cannot have you, then I will have silver—the silver of the steppes’ swaying grass, the silver of winter, the silver clouds coloring Grandmother Sky.”

“I am Burqila Alshara. O-Shizuru entrusted me with the care of her daughter. If you doubt me, you are welcomed to try and stop me. I have killed in front of my children before.”



TQ:  What's next?

K:  The Phoenix Empress, out in July! It picks up right where Tiger left off. This time, we spend most of the novel in Shizuka’s head as she tells her wife about the War of Ink-on-Water.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

K:  Of course! Thank you for having me!

The Tiger's Daughter
Their Bright Ascendency 1
Tor Books, October 3, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 528 pages

K Arsenault Rivera's debut, The Tiger's Daughter, the beginning of a new epic fantasy trilogy

"Rich, expansive, and grounded in human truth...simply exquisite.” —V. E. Schwab, New York Times bestselling author of the Shades of Magic series

Indie Next List October 2017 Pick
Paste Magazine's 10 Most Anticipated Books in October 2017
io9's Best Books Coming in 2017
The Verge's SF/F Books to Read in October 2017
BookRiot's Most Anticipated Titles of 2017
Medium's Most Anticipated Books of 2017
Bookish's Fall 2017's Hottest SF/F Books

Even gods can be slain

The Hokkaran empire has conquered every land within their bold reach—but failed to notice a lurking darkness festering within the people. Now, their border walls begin to crumble, and villages fall to demons swarming out of the forests.
Away on the silver steppes, the remaining tribes of nomadic Qorin retreat and protect their own, having bartered a treaty with the empire, exchanging inheritance through the dynasties. It is up to two young warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, to save the world from the encroaching demons.
This is the story of an infamous Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, a spoiled divine warrior empress, O Shizuka, and a power that can reach through time and space to save a land from a truly insidious evil.
A crack in the wall heralds the end…two goddesses arm themselves…K Arsenault Rivera's The Tiger’s Daughter is an adventure for the ages.

About K Arsenault Rivera

Photo by Charlie Fernandez

K Arsenault Rivera was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, but moved to New York when she was a toddler. When not managing a nutritional supplement store in Brooklyn, K is an avid participant in the roleplaying community, from which she drew inspiration for her debut novel, The Tiger’s Daughter. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her partner.










Website  ~  Twitter @arsenaultrivera

The Phoenix Empress
Their Bright Ascendency 2
Tor Books, August 28, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

The Phoenix Empress, the sequel to K Arsenault Rivera' the wildly buzzed about The Tiger's Daughter, an epic historical fantasy in the vein of Patrick Rothfuss and Naomi Novik

"Rich, expansive, and grounded in human truth...simply exquisite.” —V. E. Schwab, New York Times bestselling author of the Shades of Magic series on The Tiger's Daughter

The Tiger's Daughter was...
Indie Next List October 2017 Pick
Paste Magazine's 10 Most Anticipated Books in October 2017
io9's Best Books Coming in 2017
The Verge's SF/F Books to Read in October 2017
BookRiot's Most Anticipated Titles of 2017
Medium's Most Anticipated Books of 2017
Bookish's Fall 2017's Hottest SF/F Books

Since she was a child, the divine empress O Shizuka has believed she was an untouchable god. When her uncle, ruler of the Hokkaran Empire, sends her on a suicide mission as a leader of the Imperial Army, the horrors of war cause her to question everything she knows.

Thousands of miles away, the exiled and cursed warrior Barsalyya Shefali undergoes trials the most superstitious would not believe in order to return to Hokkaran court and claim her rightful place next to O Shizuka.

As the distance between disgraced empress and blighted warrior narrows, a familiar demonic force grows closer to the heart of the empire. Will the two fallen warriors be able to protect their home?

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Ash:  Thank you for having me! I’ve always loved reading, and writing gradually became an extension of that. I wrote my first novel at nineteen, and I was hooked.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Ash:  When I first tried my hand at long-form fiction, I was a pure pantser—I had ideas and general thoughts about scenes, but I felt my way along. With time, I’ve become a plotter. I may not map out every moment in the story before I begin, but I like to have more than a notion of where I’m headed and how I’m getting there. If nothing else, plotting helps me memorialize ideas for scenes I may not write for months, and it’s always nice to go back to your notes and have one of those, “Oh yeah, right,” moments when you think you’re stuck.

Of course, there’s always room for improvisation in writing, and characters tend to surprise you. Once you get to know your cast, some of those carefully plotted chapters begin to unravel. I’ve found that while you can try to force a plot upon characters, it seldom ends well.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Ash:  Finding enough time! I’m the sort of person who needs to stay at it daily—I get antsy when I’m away for too long, and the story starts to become stagnant in my mind. But responsibilities don’t disappear just because I’d like to spend some quality time with my computer, which can lead to a lot of odd-hours work and a touch of guilt every time I turn on the television.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Ash:  I’ve always had a fondness for the fantastic. Fairy tales, mythology, folklore, urban legends, science fiction, horror, and fantasy have long been staples of my bookshelves.



TQ:  Describe Stranger Magics in 140 characters or less.

Ash:  A lovelorn half-fae bookseller, his amoral brother, a smartass wizard, and an ersatz knight race to save magic and the world. We may be doomed.



TQ:  Tell us something about Stranger Magics that is not found in the book description.

Ash:  Wizard is an ungendered term in the story, and my wizard protagonist is a talented young woman who’s peeved that she’s been unjustly prevented from using much of her power. But that may be about to change…



TQ:  What inspired you to write Stranger Magics? What appeals to you about writing Urban Fantasy? What do you think is the continuing appeal of stories about the fae?

Ash:  There are so many current interpretations of the fae, ranging from benevolent (or at least benign) to malicious, making them fairly malleable for story purposes. But even when they look like us, they remain something other, which I think is a large part of their appeal.

As for Stranger Magics, it began as a bit of rumination: take an ancient being with extraordinary power, mostly human sensibilities, and a strong aversion to iron, plop him down in the modern world, and what would he do with himself? The rest of the story and its setting gradually came forth.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  I revisited the folk and fairy tales I knew, looked into the mythology surrounding the older interpretations of fae creatures, dusted off my Shakespeare, and used all of that as a jumping-off point. On a more nuts-and-bolts note, once into the story, I spent considerable time on Google Maps, trying to plot routes (sometimes from nonexistent places!) and keep a plausible timeline. Juggling multiple time zones can be tricky.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  The cover design is by Alicia Tatone, and I love how it turned out. An old book is featured heavily in the story, and…nope, no spoilers!



TQ:  In Stranger Magics who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Ash:  Toula, the wizard, was probably the easiest character for me to write. She seemed to appear fully formed—blue-tipped hair, attitude, and all. Robin, a faerie, was less forthcoming, but since he’s at best an annoyance to every other character in the story, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he was sometimes difficult to pin down.



TQ:  Which question about Stranger Magics do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Ash:  “This is your first novel, right?”

Published novel? Absolutely. But as I mentioned, I wrote my first novel back in college. It was a 270,000-word doozy, a great learning experience for me but unpublishable at the time. That realization came as a disappointment back then, but in retrospect, I’m glad that novel wasn’t “The One.” After all, writing is like any other skill: it takes work and plenty of practice, and your first attempt will probably not be your best product. By my count, and depending on whether I choose to remember an unfortunate cycle of short stories, Stranger Magics is my thirteenth novel-length work.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Stranger Magics.

Ash:  Sure thing. Robin to Colin, in a moment of brotherly…well, tolerance:

He stood, took a long last draw, then stubbed the cigarillo out and threw it toward the street. “You’re a high lord of Faerie,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “Try to act like it. Right now—and I’m quite serious about this—you’re embarrassing me.”

TQ:  What's next?

Ash:  While nothing is set in stone yet, I’d love to continue the story begun in Stranger Magics. We’ll see!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Ash:  Thank you!

Stranger Magics
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 21, 2017
eBook, 400 pages

No one holds a grudge quite like a faerie . . .

All Colin Leffee wants is to be left alone: to run his used bookstore in peace, and to quietly drink himself to sleep every night in an attempt to drown out the memories of eight-hundred-plus years of existence.

Unfortunately, when a sullen teenage changeling is flung out of Faerie and onto his doorstep, the long-suffering, wayward son of Titania knows his dreams of solitude are dust. Colin—or Lord Coileán, as he is known to the Faerie court—must track down Meggy, the love of his life, and figure out how her child ended up in Titania’s clutches to begin with.

But with family, it’s never simple. He finds Meggy, only to see her yanked into Faerie—and the doors between the realms slammed and locked behind her. Now, it’s not just her life& at stake . . . but the fate of magic itself.

Always the loner, Colin reluctantly joins forces with an intensely stubborn wizard, a young priest-in-training who fancies himself a knight, and his half brother Robin (the last most definitely not by choice) on a quest to reopen the doors and restore the balance between the realms. And with exiled queen Mab plotting in the shadows to take Titania’s throne, and the wizards of the governing Arcanum hiding their own agenda, Colin can’t be sure whom to trust—or whether he’ll live long enough to see the mission through.

About Ash

Photograph courtesy of Art Meripol

When not writing fiction, ASH FITZSIMMONS is an appellate attorney and an unrepentant car singer. Visit her at www.ashfitzsimmons.com.














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TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Tracy:  Thanks for having me! I started writing when I was very young -- second or third grade -- and my earliest projects were all comics, mostly featuring talking animals in Sunday morning funnies-type situations. I read broadly, everything from Beverly Cleary to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. By the time I was in middle school, I’d graduated into creating what folks today would call fan fic, though I don’t know that I knew the term or if it was really widely in use in the early 90s. My first major project was a James Bond fan fic novella written entirely in longhand in a spiral notebook that was supposed to have been for history notes. I wrote because I admired certain storytellers and I wanted to understand how they created these remarkable things I admired so much. I’d gone to writing workshops and been in writing clubs, but all but the best of those experiences felt like the blind leading the blind. The only way to figure out how the magic was done was to crawl up inside the stories and reverse engineer them myself, in my own way. I kept in the habit throughout high school, writing episodic series on demand for friends with really specific tastes, and writing short stories featuring characters my friends and I played in tabletop RPGs. I loved writing to my friends’ prompts best of all; it was this perfect gift for them I could create, something we shared together. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized I really wanted to write professionally. Prior to meeting some really formative peers and instructors there, it had always just been something I was good at, but felt like a bit of an impostor actually doing.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Tracy:  Oh, I’m definitely a hybrid -- just one trouser leg on at any given time. I tend to start with a very vivid concept or character, and I start building up scenes and situations to explore it. I keep myself moving by jumping from each clearly visualized moment to the next. After I’ve built a good head of steam doing that, I step back to review what I’ve created and figure out what pulls it all together. What are the events I’m focused on, and how are plot beats coming into being? Do I have things in the right order? What’s the throughline? It’s during that pause, answering those questions, that I plot out the gaps in my narrative, and only then do I resume writing. The fact that I love writing in close third from multiple characters’ points of view means this kind of hop-around drafting process works when I’m getting a project off the ground. The downside is that knitting all the pieces together can be intensely surgical -- and sometimes leads to dead ends, scenes that end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I admire writers with fast, efficient plotting and drafting processes, but I’ve never been able to create a project that interests me if I have to imagine the whole narrative from a cold start.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Tracy:  I work full time as a teacher at a public boarding school for gifted students. I know a lot of other writers who are also teachers and parents, too, of course, but the particular kind of school where I teach involves a level of hands-on stewardship of the students -- involvement in their clubs, their social events, their lives in the early and late hours of the work day -- that’s pretty atypical. Everyone struggles to achieve work-life balance. But in a lot of senses, my work is my life, and I tend to wear myself down serving both masters. I can’t stand disappointing people, so if something’s going to get short shrift when time and energy are at a premium, it will almost always be me.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Tracy:  I grew up reading comics (X-Men, Elfquest, Wolverine, Bone) and playing tabletop board games, so my whole youth revolved around variations on the “mismatched people bound by circumstance save the world” theme. I love that trope and there’s always some piece of it in anything I write. I love it because it’s much less about the “save the world” stuff and really more about a given story’s take on “found family.” I grew up far away from my nearest relatives, aside from my parents and brother, and so the “family” I turned to most often was the family of friends I collected, through school and writing and general geekdom. The way people who love each other because they chose each other bond, and how those bonds push and pull at them just as fiercely as blood-bonds, fascinates me because it’s so much a part of my lived experience. My husband teases me all the time about plot just being my excuse to get people in a room being emotional at each other. Really, he’s not wrong.



TQ:  Describe The Nine in 140 characters or less.

Tracy:  2 ret. mercs & a teen thief are nobody's 1st choice heroes, but when God's lab book is stolen, its 2nd best or seconds left 2 save humanity



TQ:  Tell us something about The Nine that is not found in the book description.

Tracy:  I wrote The Nine to be a fantasy work that mashes up a lot of my favorite things -- political machinations, conspiracies, heists, found family, “mandatory unretirement,” steam- and clockpunk stylings, redemption arcs, interspecies conflict, gray morality. That’s far more than back cover copy alone could address, sure. But the thing I’m proudest of was Publishers Weekly’s review of The Nine’s “nearly flawless writing.” I about fell out of my chair in shock -- and relief that the effort had been recognized! I wanted to give my readers a feeling of prose-level care and craft that no back cover copy can effectively promise. I wanted to make a beautiful monster. It’s up to everyone else to decide if I succeeded.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Nine? What appeals to you about writing Fantasy?

Tracy:  The idea for The Nine actually comes from Talmudic legend: the lamed wufniks, which Jorge Luis Borges writes about briefly in his Book of Imaginary Beings. Reading Borges piqued my interest and got me reading the Talmud and Kabbalah for details that eventually became important to the idea of the fate of mankind resting on the shoulders of a kind of “sample” population.

It’s only through a genre like fantasy that I could take my next thought -- that this seemed like a very strange cosmological variation on a scientific experiment -- and turn that into the premise of a novel. I love the slipperiness of fantasy, how it bends everyday logic and supplants it with its own sets of rules of conditions. It can be heroic, cautionary, escapist, political, pessimistic, or hopeful. I knew The Nine needed to be fantasy because I needed to bend and break a lot of rules and fuse together a lot of different visual and narrative styles to pull it off. But really, much more than it being the right tool for this particular story, it was the one I wanted most to explore and push into the shape I desired. They say you should write the book you wish was already out there for you to read. The Nine is the book I needed and wanted but never quite found.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Nine?

Tracy:  Oh, God, so much research. I researched autopsies and human anatomy. I researched Gothic architecture. I researched early photographic technologies, and deadly toxins, and period hats and footwear, guns and ammo, rappelling gear, and particle physics. And all of that was before my first round of revisions.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Nine.

Tracy:  Adam Doyle (whose amazing portfolio of work you can find here) was my cover artist, and I couldn’t be happier. I hope he does the art for the rest of the series. He’s done covers for Chuck Wendig and Maggie Stiefvater (which was great for my six degrees of publishing separation ego, let me tell you) and illustrations for Fantasy Flight Games. That last credit was hugely exciting for my friends and me, because we’ve played many of the games he’s contributed to. Adam starts with sketches and ultimately creates paintings which are later rendered into the cover images. That’s what gives The Nine’s cover that murky, swirling depth. If you look closely, there are a lot of smaller images buried in the background of the city behind the pictured characters -- gears and pipes and skulls, great atmospheric notes. Adam read the book in manuscript form and asked me for some additional information about the named character from it so he could refine his vision of individual figures. I’ve never asked him if he had a specific moment from the book in mind for the cover, but honestly, that’s because I feel I already know the answer, down to chapter and page. This “Avengers, assemble!” moment featuring Rowena, the Alchemist, and Anselm really helps focus the sprawling narrative around the characters whose actions will do the most to shape its outcome.



TQ:  In The Nine who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Tracy:  Often, my easiest character to write is Anselm. He’s easy because his way of seeing other people is so entirely alien to me. He’s a cynical, manipulative, self-assured egoist, smart and acid-tongued -- the sort of person you want on your side because it’s too dangerous having him against you. Writing characters less like me is easier than the ones more like me, because I think of it as deep character acting. (I worked in theater quite a bit years ago, and though I’m an indifferent actor, I’m a very good line coach, and in a lot of ways, that’s what writing a close POV really is -- line coaching yourself as author.) When the character itself chafes me, I’m more conscious of the need to stay in character, and that keeps me focused.

Haadiyaa Gammon, on the other hand, is very hard for me to write most days. I understand her completely, and even relate to the pressures she feels. That makes me work harder to ensure I’m examining her choices thoughtfully. She’s done things she regrets, but did them because she didn’t trust anyone else to do the right thing in her place. Gammon isn’t afraid of the sacrifices it takes to serve the pragmatic good or of being the bad guy for the right cause. I’ve been there, in my own way.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Nine?

Tracy:  I don’t even think twice about “including social issues” in my writing because if I’m doing my job right, they’re already there. Part of the reason genre fiction is so powerful is that it defamiliarizes the conditions of our world, or extrapolates them through thought experiment, or supplants them with foreign elements, all with the hope of giving us insight into human nature. Authors and readers stare down a funhouse mirror of reality through so-called “escapist” fiction. Genre has always done this, to varying degrees. It’s just begun to do it more overtly in recent years, which is what makes it seem to some readers as if “social issues” are suddenly everywhere. They always were there. Now, authors are simply doing more to highlight them in their narratives.

As for this book, the world of The Nine is full of the problems caused by plutocracy, imperialism, xenophobia, and exceptionalist ideas of power and influence. Sometimes, these issues are present the way air in a room is. Other times, they’re spoken of directly. Since the crux of the plot is about mankind’s survival -- whether it can prove itself worthy of its place in existence -- I have to hold humanity accountable for what it’s done. That’s where the anxiety about our fate really lies. Are we worth it? Do we deserve this world? Is it too late to make good on the ills we’ve done, as individuals or as a people?



TQ:  Which question about The Nine do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Tracy:  You know, nobody asks about character names, and I wish they would. There’s a specific story behind almost every one. I agonize over names. They do a lot to form a character, and often to Easter egg in details about who or what they really are. Probably the best name story of all is Rare’s.

Rare is an important secondary character in The Nine, and part of the web of happenstance and conspiracy that pulls the three main characters (Rowena, Anselm, and the Alchemist) together. I was listening to an excellent BBC radio drama production of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris at the time I was first drafting The Nine. There was a character whose name I kept hearing as “Rare.” (Important to remember here that the actors all had quite perfect English accents, and so the rhotic pronunciation was strongly in evidence throughout the recording.) I thought it was simply marvelous that this character -- a love interest central to the main character’s emotional trauma -- had such a lovely, unusual name. I also knew the character I was writing at the time was going to be at the center of a lot of bad emotional history for the main characters in The Nine. It was perfect, so like a good little magpie, I stole the name.

Much later, long after the first draft was complete, I was in a used bookshop and saw a copy of Solaris on the shelf. I grabbed it and started leafing through, only to discover that the character in question’s name was actually Rhea. The actors’ rhotic “r” following the “a” had totally thrown me. But by then, I was too attached to Rare being Rare to possibly rename her.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Nine.

Tracy:  It’s up to readers to find where these moments come from. This first one is for the sheer pleasure of banter: “Turpitude is my problem, not degeneracy. A law-abiding life was out of the question from the start.”

This second comes from a moment a little further on: “He could feel his convictions yawning like an unknotted purse, dropping in bits and pieces from his mental vault.”



TQ:  What's next?

Tracy:  It’s time for The Nine’s sequel! It has a working title and hopefully it doesn’t change along the way, but I’ll be keeping it secret for at least awhile longer. You can expect to hear more about the series and what’s in store for its characters soon. For now, suffice it to say the drama surrounding the missing book, the Ecclesiastical Commission, and the aigamuxa and lanyani species is far from resolved. Pursuing its loose ends will take the characters outside of Corma, the city setting for the first book, and into the rest of the world the so-called Grand Unity shaped.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Tracy:  Thank you! I’d love to hear from your readers. Talk to me via email at tracy at tracytownsend dot net or on Twitter (@TheStorymatic).

The Nine
Thieves of Fate 1
Pyr, November 14, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

A book that some would kill for…

Black market courier Rowena Downshire is doing everything she can to stay off the streets and earn enough to pay her mother’s way to freedom. But an urgent and unexpected delivery leads her face to face with a creature out of nightmares.

The Alchemist knows things few men have lived to tell about, but when a frightened and empty-handed courier shows up on his doorstep he knows better than to turn her away. What he discovers leads him to ask for help from the last man he wants to see—the former mercenary, Anselm Meteron.

Reverend Phillip Chalmers awakes in a cell, bloodied and bruised, facing a creature twice his size. Translating a stolen book that writes itself may be his only hope for survival; however, he soon learns the text may have been written by the Creator himself, tracking the nine human subjects of his Grand Experiment. In the wrong hands, it could mean the end of humanity.

This unlikely team must try to keep the book from those who would misuse it. But how can they be sure who the enemy is when they can barely trust each other? And what will happen to them when it reveals a secret no human was meant to know?

About Tracy

Debut author Tracy Townsend holds a master’s degree in writing and rhetoric from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from DePauw University, a source of regular consternation when proofreading her credentials. She is chair of the English Department at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, an elite public boarding school, where she teaches creative writing and science fiction and fantasy literature. She has been a martial arts instructor, a stage combat and accent coach, and a short-order cook for houses full of tired gamers. Now she lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois with two bumptious hounds, two remarkable children, and one very patient husband. Her short story “Late Arrivals” was published by Luna Station Quarterly in March 2016.


Website  ~  Twitter @TheStorymatic  ~  Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

R.E.:  I've been writing short stories for as long as I can remember. I write to think, and because I have a terrible memory. When I discovered NaNoWrimo in 2008, I started writing novels.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

R.E.:  I rely on enormous, color-coded plot outlines and accompanying color-coded timelines.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

R.E.:  Emotional scenes are challenging, because I am not an emotional person. I have to set my writing mood with music and pictures, and it's stressful and melodramatic. Then my agent or editor reads those supposedly melodramatic scenes and says "That's a pretty chill reaction for what just happened," and I do it all over again.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

R.E.:  Real-life space exploration is very exciting! In fiction, the Expanse series (James S. A. Corey, 2012), Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), and Firefly (Joss Whedon, 2002) all contributed to the foundation of this novel.



TQ:  Describe Barbary Station in 140 characters or less.

R.E.:  Two join a pirate crew, two engineers take on a security AI which has trapped the crew, and our heroines, on an abandoned space station.



TQ:  Tell us something about Barbary Station that is not found in the book description.

Adda and Iridian are romantic partners, not just professional ones.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Barbary Station? What appeals to you about writing Science Fiction?

R.E.:  SpaceX was just beginning to have success with its Grasshopper rocket when I was writing up ideas for Barbary Station. That got me thinking about what it would be like if modern corporations were given absolute freedom in scientific development and resource exploitation simultaneously, perhaps in the aftermath of a colonial war for independence. That's all a solid sci fi setting, but it wasn't anything like a novel until Iridian and Adda came together as characters. Sci fi is appealing because our present is always changing, which means the future is always changing in big ways. There are fewer locked-in expectations in sci fi than in fantasy.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Barbary Station?

R.E.:  I am conveniently married to a computer engineer, so I pestered him with questions like "Does this sound plausible?" and "Is this how you'd say that?" I also spent a lot of time reading on the NASA website, and downloading articles in college libraries. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (2010) was a great resource, too. It's full of expert observations on the logistics of life in space, and it was so funny and disturbing that I kept having to remind myself to take notes.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Barbary Station?

R.E.:  That cover is amazing, isn't it? That is Martin Deschambault's beautiful rendering of Barbary Station itself. I love that you can see the station's ring shape on the edges. The planets were necessary for lighting purposes but aren't present in the narrative, so in story terms, this is what Adda might see if she put the station exterior into her hallucinographic workspace.



TQ:  In Barbary Station who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

R.E.:  Adda and I have a lot in common, so she was the easiest. We're about the same size, we obsess over projects we're working on, and we are similarly disconnected from most people around us. The main antagonist, the security AI, was toughest. It's hard for experts (which I am not) to predict what will go right and wrong with the learning algorithms we have today, let alone the monstrously complex stuff I'd expect to be developed 400 years from now. I had to make, and then keep track of, a lot of assumptions.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Barbary Station.

R.E.:  That was Earther thinking, as if air, light, humidity, temperature, pressure, and gravity were unrelated forces outside human control. It would’ve been enough to say the enviro wasn’t healthy.



TQ:  What's next?

R.E.:  I'm working on the sequel to Barbary Station!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Barbary Station
Saga Press, October 31, 2017
Trade Paperback, Hardcover, and eBook, 448 pages

Two engineers hijack a spaceship to join some space pirates—only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Now they have to outwit the AI if they want to join the pirate crew—and survive long enough to enjoy it.

Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren’t able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.

But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury—they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave—so there’s no way out.

Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.

There’s a glorious future in piracy…if only they can survive long enough.

About R.E. Stearns

Photography by Carlos Romero

R.E. Stearns wrote her first story on an Apple IIe computer and still kind of misses green text on a black screen. She went on to annoy all of her teachers by reading books while they lectured. Eventually she read and wrote enough to earn a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Central Florida. She is hoping for an honorary doctorate. When not writing or working, R.E. Stearns reads, plays PC games, and references Internet memes in meatspace. She lives near Orlando, FL with her husband/computer engineer and a cat.

Website  ~  Twitter @re_stearns  ~  Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Michael:  I have been composing my own stories since I was a young child. I guess I've always felt compelled to write, although it is impossible to say why!



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Michael:  I definitely write by the seat of my pants. It comes from composing stories as a child, where you would begin a story and have no idea where it would lead.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Michael:  Coming up with an attractive form that interests me.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Michael:  Great writing and ideas by other writers--especially living with a great writer like Jaclyn Watterson to bounce ideas off.



TQ:  Describe Queen of Spades in 140 characters or less.

Michael:  The story behind the Strangest Hand Ever Dealt.



TQ:  Tell us something about Queen of Spades that is not found in the book description.

Michael:  It was originally started as a long short story or novelette, and not a novel.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Queen of Spades? What appealed to you about Pushkin's Queen of Spades?

Michael:  Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" is one of my favorite short stories--and one of the few stories that elevate gambling to a high art.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Queen of Spades?

Michael:  Although I didn't know it was research at the time, I spent over two years working as a poker dealer in a small cardroom in Lake Stevens, Washington, learning the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Queen of Spades?

Michael:  The cover was designed by Forest Avenue's brilliant in-house designer, Gigi Little. She really hit it out of the park with this one!



TQ:  In Queen of Spades who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Michael:  The easiest was Barbara because she was the most fun to follow. The hardest was Chan because in many ways he began as a blank slate that I had to fill in along the way--even still, he remains something of a mystery to me.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Queen of Spades?

Michael:  I intentionally made all the traditional "power roles" filled by women. It might seem like a small thing, but it's a start to reconditioning (or deconditioning) our gender expectations.



TQ:  Which question about Queen of Spades do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Michael:  How would you like readers to be transformed by reading the novel? First, I hope the novel offers readers some consolation in very challenging and difficult times. Second, I hope readers become better persons in some small but not insignificant way. Finally, I hope reading the novel makes readers want to take some risks as a means of improving their life.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Queen of Spades.

Michael:  Everything coheres with what comes before--and what comes after.



TQ:  What's next?

Michael:  I am working on a novel-in-stories tentatively entitled Portmanteau.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Queen of Spades
Forest Avenue Press, October 10, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 256 pages

Queen of Spades revamps the classic Pushkin fable of the same name, transplanted to a mysterious Seattle-area casino populated by a pit boss with six months to live, a dealer obsessing over the mysterious methods of an elderly customer known as the Countess, and a recovering gambler who finds herself trapped in a cultish twelve-step program. With a breathtaking climax that rivals the best Hong Kong gambling movies, Michael Shou-Yung Shum’s debut novel delivers the thrilling highs and lows that come when we cede control of our futures to the roll of the dice and the turn of a card.

About Michael

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael Shou-Yung Shum eventually found himself dealing poker in a dead-end casino in Lake Stevens, Washington. Two doctorates bookend this strange turn of events: the first in Psychology from Northwestern, and the second in English from University of Tennessee. Along the way, Michael spent a dozen years in Chicago, touring the country as a rave DJ. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his spouse and three cats. Queen of Spades is his first novel.


Website  ~  Twitter @dr_shum

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Adam:  Thanks for inviting me! I suppose there are three answers to this question. I've always enjoyed creative writing from a young age. I remember in fifth grade, my teacher had all of her students write a "book". We made these covers of cardboard and contact paper and drew our own cover art. Then, some of us volunteered to read our stories in front of the class. I remember mine was called "Cops" and it was about two detectives, a young rookie and an old gumshoe, bringing down an evil crime boss. The gumshoe died leaving the young rookie to carry on the never ending search for justice, only now as a veteran as he's given a newbie partner at the end of the tale. I recently reconnected with an old classmate who still remembered me reading the story in front of the class.

Later, I lost this confidence to write fiction as school teachers focused more on analytical, essay writing and I wasn't as good with that. When I did try to write stories, I often felt like they weren't good enough in other's eyes, or were considered cliche. Part of the problem is that I was a teen! All I knew was cliche! People are more willing to tear down other's work than build it up. So I stopped, thinking I just wasn't good enough to write.

As an adult, I moved to Los Angeles after college to be an actor and I joined a writer's group founded by Jim Uhls, who had adapted Chuck Palahniuk's, Fight Club, for the big screen. The group would cast performers to read their material for feedback. Eventually, I worked up the courage to start offering the writers my suggestions on their work. Some of them thought my observations were pretty darn good and I thought to myself "Hey! Maybe I can write too!" Of course, I quickly realized it was a lot easier to discern what wasn't working in others' material versus generating my own. Still, I started to develop a practice of writing regularly, even if terribly.

My friend from the writer's group, Philip Eisner, a really smart guy who wrote the cult classic, sci-fi movie Event Horizon in the 90's, starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne, invited me to table-top game with him. I'd never done that before, but learned it was a perfect blend of collaborative storytelling, acting, and socializing. I had a blast creating a character and after our gaming sessions, writing the story from his point of view. However, the group eventually disbanded as people's schedules and real life superseded fun and I was left with all these "diary entries" and nothing to do with them. I missed my friends and I missed writing for them. A friend said, "Why don't you just keep going? I think it would make a good book!" So that's how Song of Edmon, and its upcoming sequel, Roar of the Storm was born!



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Adam:  Okay, I'm going to admit that I didn't know what a "pantser" was, and had to look it up on urbandictionary.com. I guess that tells you which one I am!

My feeling is that writing by the seat of one's pants is fun and perhaps useful to create a daily practice of just putting words on the page, but it's not professional. Once I am done "pantsing" for the day (usually through a daily journal ala Morning Pages), I set that aside and I plot. Stories need to have structure for maximum effect and I personally need to know where the finish line is before I start the race. Once everything is outlined fairly extensively, I go for it.

I want to make it clear that this doesn't mean that I do not leave myself open to changes and discovery in the process. If something hits me while brain transmits to fingers which in turn transmit to keys, I don't tune out the muse, as it were. I heed the call, but I always make sure that it fits within the structure I've given myself, or I go back and restructure the outline to make it fit.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Adam:  It's hard to put my finger on just one thing. There always several challenging aspects to the process. The first is my own fears and doubts about whether I am worthy enough to tell a story, whether my ideas are worthy enough to be told. However, I set those aside and tell myself, "All I have to do today is a little bit, and it doesn't have to be perfect." I do that everyday and after a while...

Once I finish a draft, it's knowing that the first pass is always going to be crappy, that my ideas and writing actually AREN'T good enough. They need to evolve to be better. So then it's going through everything again as many times as I can stomach, section by section, always asking myself if I've made the strongest choices, in the fewest words possible.

One thing I am good at, though, is trusting my beta readers and editors. When they tell me something isn't working, I believe them. I was lucky to have a lot of allies that took the time to do that with Song of Edmon (and probably still have a few readers who might say it upon finishing the published book). I "kill my darlings" easily and honor my faithful publishers and editors and Beta readers' suggestions to make the story better. Still, it always stings a bit to hear that they didn't like something.

My first experience reading reviews is a little like that, too, even though the majority are positive. Yet, I know that the sequel to Song of Edmon, Roar of the Storm, takes things in such a direction that it addresses many of the negative reviewers' feelings! Just stick with me, folks!



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Adam:  We're all a product of our influences right? The first movie I saw in the theater was Return of the Jedi. Ever since, I've been a huge Star Wars nerd. Even the prequels! Blasphemy, I know, but I think the prequels' failings inspired me to write my own stories just as much, if not more than the classic trilogy because I wanted to accomplish what they sort of failed to. I read all the expanded universe books and comics before Disney bought the franchise.

Star Wars definitely turned me on to the work of Joseph Campbell and the mono-myth. A great book is The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler, which breaks down that structure for writers. Robert McKee's, Story, is a good resource for screenwriting as is The Coffee Break Screenwriter which has great exercises to just do a little bit at a time.

Otherwise, there is so much great Sci-Fi/fantasy out there, old and new, it's impossible to list everything. Tolkein, Ursula K. LeGuin, HG Wells, Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Dragonlance was big when I was an adolescent. Dune by Frank Herbert is one of my all time fave's and Kevin J. Anderson who writes the sequels and spin-offs with Brian Herbert was always super supportive in his e-mails to me. Dan Simmons, Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, George RR Martin... the grittiness and reality of his series was a revelation. Each of his characters feels like a complete person with a fully fleshed out history and personality. Pierce Brown's Red Rising series is killer and he sent me a supportive e-mail before I even had an agent. I've also always been a huge Greek Mythology buff, too, and Madeline Miller's, Song of Achilles, was inspirational (you can see that just looking at my title)! I highly recommend it to anyone.

Mostly, though, the team I gamed with was the biggest inspiration- Phil Eisner (Event Horizon), Samantha Barrios, Jack Conway, Matt Bramante (who worked on Bladerunner 2049), Abby Wilde (of Zoey101 fame), and Matthew Mercer (of Critical Role). I was really writing to entertain them and just their intelligence and humor and creativity inspired me to no end.



TQ:  Describe Song of Edmon in 140 characters or less.

Adam:  A boy chooses between violence and peace on a distant planet divided between light and dark. The outcome determines the fate of the world.



TQ:  Tell us something about Song of Edmon that is not found in the book description.

Adam:  Well I've already mentioned how the inception of Song of Edmon was a D&D game. However, I can also tell you that Song of Edmon is merely the backstory of the character I rolled! In fact, the "real" adventure doesn't even begin until book 2, Roar of the Storm, out in January.

Part of this was due to the fact that I felt it would have been disingenuous of me to take the story that my entire group told as a team and "cash in" on it, so to speak. (Let's forget the fact that I'd never written a novel before, didn't have an agent or a publisher and the likelihood of me even getting either of these was slim). I felt like I needed to earn their endorsement to write the story. If I could turn Edmon into a book that people wanted to read, then I would have gained their trust to continue the adventure.

So, I told Edmon's history, using only what I had created to craft my tale. This led to some pretty fancy maneuverings to set up minor details that will come back in book 2, which initially had nothing to do with Edmon's personal journey. Additionally, I had to tailor Book 2 to tie up story elements that were never addressed in our game. There are also a few things my team suggested that I steer clear of because they have their own, possible future stories in mind!

Also, I narrate the audio book and it was a great way for me to combine my acting and writing.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Song of Edmon? What appeals to you about writing Science Fiction?

Adam:  Since I've answered the first question in detail, I'll tackle the second. Science Fiction is a place I can imagine fully "What if?" There really are no limitations, besides what my brain can think up. Additionally, it is just a great forum to working out problems, be they personal, or societal, under the guise of a fantastical background.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Song of Edmon?

Adam:  The great thing about speculative fiction is that, again, one isn't really constrained by reality, so long as the rules of the created world are well established and not consistently violated. The "research" is about establishing and refining the rules from gravity, to technology, to space travel, to the names of things, and the fictional history. Then, maintaining the consistency in the writing with what has been established during my world-building/plotting phase.

I do think the best science fiction has one foot in the real world and real world physics, though. So some of the research included looking up things like drones that hovered on sound. I wanted to make the technology and culture of Tao, Edmon's home planet, of a piece. In Song of Edmon, everything is centered around music, sound, and water. I was lucky enough to discover such technology had basis in reality and felt that gave justification for creating a society that was centered around it.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Song of Edmon.

Adam:  The cover was done by Adam Hall @atomcreative, an artist my publisher 47North, found. It's not so much something specific from the novel as much as a feeling or tone the novel gives. The story takes place in the distant future on a far-flung planet within the network of wormholes collectively called The Fracture. The Nightsiders of Tao, whom are at the center of the novel, are a warlike society that hearken back to cultures of antiquity- The Samurai, the Vikings, the Spartans.

I think Adam's cover really knocks it out of the park conveying the melding of ancient warriors with tech in space.



TQ:  In Song of Edmon who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Adam:  This is an interesting question, and I'm not sure there is a clear-cut answer. The novel is written in first person and while Edmon is a fabrication, he is by nature a lens through which my own thoughts and feelings are focused. I kind of had to go back to my own adolescence and remember how I felt about certain things growing up, different relationships I had. Granted, none of them are as extreme or necessarily as traumatic as Edmon's are, but the feelings Edmon has are not dissimilar from my own. Additionally, a lot of authors write protagonists, who are so clearly extensions of themselves or their ideal. Ultimately they come out on top or do the right thing most of the time. One aspect I remember from my youth was that it always felt like I did things wrong. While Edmon gets to be evolves into a bad-ass, he's not a Gary Stu. He makes a lot of dumb decisions and he pays for them. Of course, I'll remind readers who are frustrated by this to remember their own adolescence and that there has to be failure before there can be success. Hopefully, the subsequent triumph is so much the sweeter because it is earned by the suffering.

Other than that, I will say Faria was a bit challenging because I was constantly questioning whether or not his philosophies were consistent and made sense. I think, often, one comes into contact with these mentor figures in heroic stories who give the protagonist fortune cookie wisdom. When one stops to think about their cliche sayings, often they don't really make a whole lot of sense. Part of my solution to this problem was recognizing that Faria is not a perfect master, in fact a lot of the wisdom he dispenses is the opposite of truth. It's part of the reason why Edmon emerges from his training with his master definitely stronger, but also a bit flawed, a bit twisted. In a way, it's my take on a Sith Lord training someone rather than a Jedi Master.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Song of Edmon?

Adam:  Honestly I hate when stories are solely pedagogical. If the characters are merely stereotypes or there only to service the author's ideology, then it is a boring and worthless story in my opinion. So, yes there were some social issues I wanted to include within the story, but first and foremost, Song of Edmon couldn't be about that for me. It had to be about character. It had to be about Edmon, his emotional journey, and the emotional journey the reader takes with him. The social issues are part of the world that he lives in, just as they are part of the world you and I live in. I doubt you or I walk around everyday seeing ourselves as a mouthpiece for one particular social issue or another. I feel like I am fully three-dimensional, integrated human being, and my beliefs and caring about social issues are just aspects of me. Edmon had to be that too- a fully realized human being, as did the other characters in the book.



TQ:  Which question about Song of Edmon do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Adam:  "Do you think we could turn Song of Edmon and the Fracture World Series into a best selling film or television series? What about into a graphic novel with beautiful artwork?"

My answer to those questions are a resounding YES!!!!



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Song of Edmon.

Adam:

“You expect to shut that feeling away?” he asks. “No, I ask that you feel it more. There’s no other way to stand over your enemy and cut out his heart. Accept your hatred and you won’t be rash or stupid, you’ll be cold. Don’t quiet the maelstrom. Become the storm.” - Faria, Song of Edmon



TQ:  What's next?

Adam:  As far as Edmon and the Fracture World Series, book 2, Roar of the Storm comes out in January. If people like it, I definitely have a third book in mind! But we'll have to wait and see!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Adam:  Thank you! These were great questions and a lot of fun to answer!

Song of Edmon
The Fracture Worlds 1
47North, September 1, 2017
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 444 pages

In Adam Burch’s thrilling series debut, a young man must choose between violence and peace in a distant world divided between those who thrive in endless sunlight and those who survive in eternal darkness.

The isolated planet of Tao is a house divided: the peaceful Daysiders live in harmony while the pale Nightsiders pursue power and racial purity through the violent ritual of the Combat.

Edmon Leontes, the gentle son of a ruthless warrior noble and a proud Daysider, embodies Tao’s split nature. The product of diametrically opposed races, Edmon hopes to live a quiet life pursuing the music of his mother’s people, but his Nightsider father cruelly forces him to continue in his bloody footsteps to ensure his legacy.

Edmon’s defiance will cost him everything…and spark a revolution that will shake the foundations of Tao. His choice—to embrace the light or surrender to the darkness—will shape his own fate and that of his divided world.

Roar of the Storm
The Fracture Worlds 2
47North, January 23, 2018
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 412 pages

About Adam

Born in the SF Bay Area in California, Adam graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a BA in Media/Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and worked in many small "hole in the wall" theaters playing everything from Shakespeare and Moliere to Pirandello and Tom Stoppard.

He also holds a black sash in the martial art of Wing Chun Kung Fu.

He came to Song of Edmon through a meeting with screenwriter Philip Eisner (Event Horizon), who asked him if had ever played D&D. Subsequently, the character of Edmon Leontes was born.

You may catch Adam on the random episode of ABC'S Scandal or in the cult classic Nazis at the Center of the Earth

Website  ~  Twitter @adam_mouthsoff  ~  Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Melissa:  I’ve been writing for my entire life. Before I could actually write words, I dictated stories for my dad to type, or drew them in pictures. When I was a little kid and had insomnia, one of my parents suggested telling myself a story in my head to fall asleep, which was the worst advice ever because then I would lie awake in bed composing a serial epic fantasy novel in my brain instead of sleeping. The stories have always been there.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Melissa:  Definitely a plotter. I have long, detailed outlines and pages of notes for each major draft of a novel. But I don’t bind myself strictly to the outline—if inspiration strikes or the story or characters seem to want to go in another direction, I roll with it and then update the remaining outline to adjust.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Melissa:  Transitions! Getting into and out of a scene that doesn’t have a natural dramatic start or finish built in is the worst. I’ll know I have to write a scene where one character tells another a shocking revelation, for instance, but where are they having this conversation? What were they doing before the conversation got to that point? And once I’ve delivered the revelation, how do I end the scene on a sufficiently riveting note that will make the readers keep turning pages, rather than just tailing off lamely? I spend more time trying to figure this stuff out than I do writing the actual scene, sometimes.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Melissa:  Everything I read, every place I visit, every person I meet. It all goes in a big funnel at the top of a wacky Dr. Seuss machine in my brain and gets spat out the other end as stories. That said, whenever I read something by an author where some aspect of their craft really blows me away—say, the way Neil Gaiman immerses you in a world and makes it feel like a familiar story someone has been telling you since you were a tiny child, or how J. K. Rowling builds plot clues into the very first Harry Potter books for major twists that don’t happen until the last one, or the rhythms of Roger Zelazny’s dialogue, or how Hiromu Arakawa can deliver a huge emotional punch in a scene through the subtlest little details—I try to figure out how they did it and learn a small piece of their magic.



TQ:  Describe The Tethered Mage in 140 characters or less.

Melissa:  When bookish aristocrat Amalia binds thief Zaira’s fire magic, the reluctant partners must thwart a deadly intrigue before it incites a war.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Tethered Mage that is not found in the book description.

Melissa:  Amalia’s mother, La Contessa, is one of my favorite characters, and her presence looms over Amalia throughout the whole book. She’s a powerful political force in the Serene Empire, and in Amalia’s life—but she cares deeply about her daughter, even when she’s at her most manipulative and domineering. Their relationship is complicated, and an important thread throughout the story.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Tethered Mage? What appeals to you about writing Fantasy?

Melissa:  I got the idea for The Tethered Mage on a long car ride with my husband, when we were talking about how the presence of mages in history would have affected the structure of society. The idea for the Falcon/Falconer system popped into my head— a non-mage linked to a mage, with the ability to bind or loose the mage’s power—and I immediately wanted to write characters negotiating that difficult relationship.

As for what appeals to me about writing fantasy, I’d love to say something deep and profound, but honestly? Because it’s awesome. Magic, dragons, swordfights, fancy clothes—what’s not to love? I also love the freedom to make up an entire world that will support and enhance the story I want to tell.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Tethered Mage?

Melissa:  I’ve traveled to Venice twice, and I always wanted to set a book there (though The Tethered Mage is set in an original world, the setting is heavily influenced by Venice). I looked up all sorts of details from the late 17th century period I wanted to evoke—boats, military ranks and units, courtship customs, firearms, dance and music, fashion, you name it—but it all kept coming back to Googling delicious Italian food, somehow. I got so hungry researching this book.



TQ:  Please tell us about cover for The Tethered Mage.

Melissa:  I LOVE MY COVER SO MUCH!!!! The design is by Lisa Marie Pompillo, and the art is by Crystal Ben & Arcangel. The bird silhouette is a symbol of the Falcons (the mage military unit into which Zaira is conscripted), and you can see shadowy details inside it evoking characters, scenes, and settings from the book. I love that the initial impression of the raptor silhouette is so striking, but the closer you look, the more you see inside it. It’s SO PRETTY!



TQ:  In The Tethered Mage who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Melissa:  The easiest might have been Istrella, who is a side character (teen mad scientist artificer, basically)—I love her, and she’s really fun. The hardest was probably La Contessa, because everything she said had to be brilliant. I kept going back and making her dialogue sharper and smarter.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Tethered Mage?

Melissa:  I think all speculative fiction at least touches on some social issues, since it’s part of worldbuilding to determine what social issues your imaginary society faces. Sometimes it’s more central to the plot or theme of the book than others, of course. In THE TETHERED MAGE, the biggest social issues impacting the characters and plot are how mages fit into society (and the empire’s current policy of mandatory conscription), class differences between the main characters, and political conflicts over how independent the empire’s client states should be. As for issues I chose NOT to include, the world of THE TETHERED MAGE has gender and racial equality and same-sex marriage, because I wanted my characters who are female, gay, and/or PoC to be able to just be their awesome selves in this fantasy world without weighing them down with real-world prejudices to struggle against. I think we need books that show that struggle, but we also need fantasy that shows, say, girls with swords kissing each other without anyone trying to be like “STOP THAT, IT’S TOO AWESOME TO BE ALLOWED!"



TQ:  Which question about The Tethered Mage do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Melissa:  My favorite questions are ones that pull out fun little details in the answers, so maybe the question I wish someone would ask is “Tell me a random cool piece of Tethered Mage trivia!” Of course, then I have to pick one. Hmm… Here’s one: the general aesthetic of wirework artifice (one of the types of magic in the world of THE TETHERED MAGE) is loosely based on the work of my friend Kendra Tornheim’s jewelry studio, Silver Owl Creations. She does some gorgeous stuff with wire and beads, and is also a computer programmer, and I was thinking of her when I designed this type of magic where the twists in the wire and the position of the beads act a bit like a magical circuit board, forming a logical spatial language that dictates the terms of the spell.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Tethered Mage.

Melissa:  Amalia frequently calls to mind her Machiavellian mother’s advice, so I’ll give you a couple of those:

“Power wields a light touch, because a light touch suffices.”


“Tell them nothing, and they will fill the meaninglessness of your words with exactly what they want to hear."



TQ:  What's next?

Melissa:  Right now I’m working on editing the second book in the Swords & Fire series, THE DEFIANT HEIR. It continues Amalia and Zaira’s story, and introduces some new characters and settings I really can’t wait for readers to meet!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Melissa:  Thank you! My pleasure.

The Tethered Mage
Swords and Fire 1
Orbit, October 24, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 480 pages

In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled — taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon Army.

Zaira has lived her life on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage-mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that threatens the entire empire.

Lady Amalia Cornaro was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations.

But fate has bound the heir and the mage. And as war looms on the horizon, a single spark could turn their city into a pyre.

The Tethered Mage is the first novel in a spellbinding new fantasy series.

The Defiant Heir
Swords and Fire 2
Orbit, April 28, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 480 pages

Across the border, the Witch Lords of Vaskandar are preparing for war. But before an invasion can begin, they must call a rare gathering of all seventeen lords to decide a course of action.

Lady Amalia Cornaro knows that this Conclave might be her only chance to smother the growing flames of war, and she is ready to make any sacrifice if it means saving Raverra from destruction.

Amalia and Zaira must go behind enemy lines, using every ounce of wit and cunning they have, to sway Vaskandar from war. Or else it will all come down to swords and fire.

“Charming, intelligent, fast-moving, beautifully atmospheric. I couldn’t put it down.” – Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library

“The best kind of fantasy.” – Rosalyn Eves, author of Blood Rose Rebellion

The Defiant Heir is the second novel in a spellbinding new fantasy series.

About Melissa

Photo by Erin Re Anderson

Melissa Caruso graduated with honors in Creative Writing from Brown University and holds an MFA in Fiction from University of Massachusetts Amherst.











Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @melisscaru

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Mareth:  Thank you, very pleased to be here. I started writing seriously in 2009, a few months after being laid off from a job at a theater. I had worked in theater as an audio engineer for several years, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, leaving the world of theater meant that I needed to find some other creative outlet. That outlet turned out to be writing.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Mareth:  I tend to be more of a pantser, but my process changes from project to project. I am definitely a fan of the concept of zero drafts. That is, a draft where you have absolutely no idea where the story is going (or maybe where the story is going but no idea how it’s getting there) and you blindly charge forward anyway, writing enough to get a sense of what the narrative arc looks like, what motivates your characters, and what the emotional high points are. The first draft of Court of Twilight was written this way - entirely in the dark. For example, I didn’t consciously know the ending until about a day before I wrote the scene. Once the first draft was done and I knew what the story was about, I went back and wrote an outline, and then rewrote the story to fit that outline – which cut a few scenes I’d written and didn’t need, and added in a few scenes that were absolutely essential.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Mareth:  First drafts. I seem to be an outlier in that I find the editing and revision process a ton more fun than churning out new material – I think because in the editing process, you actually get to see the story get better and better. First drafts, for me, are like army-crawling across a white carpet wearing very muddy clothes (how’s that for an image?) If you look back, you can see where the story’s going, but nothing about it looks pretty, and you know it’ll take forever to clean up…

Participating in my first National Novel Writing Month was hugely beneficial to me, because in addition to producing the first draft of Court of Twilight, it also helped me learn how to write drafts without looking too hard at the mess I’m leaving behind me as I work.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Mareth:  I am a huge fan of Connie Willis and Barbara Hambly. You can pretty much wring emotion out of any chapter of anything they’ve ever written. Also Laurie R. King, whose Beekeeper’s Apprentice was the first novel I read as a teen where I identified heart and soul with the narrator. In particular, Barbara Hambly’s Windrose books and Connie Willis’ Blackout both had huge influences on Court of Twilight – and where Ivy’s story is headed in future books – though I don’t know how much of that actually shows up in the novel. Doctor Who – the Tom Baker era as well as the modern series – is also a big influence. I have a rule that I don’t watch television – partly due to lack of opportunity, partly to make time for writing – but I always make an exception for Doctor Who.



TQ:  Describe Court of Twilight in 140 characters or less.

Mareth:  20-year-old Dubliner discovers her flatmate’s a runaway fairy ruler, who’s due to be murdered in days.



TQ:  Tell us something about Court of Twilight that is not found in the book description.

Mareth:  Let’s see – that covers quite a lot!

The fist sentence in what was to become Court of Twilight was written somewhere in a hostel in New Zealand during the six months I was there on a working holiday visa. It was: ‘Your lot had a very good king - he only had to die but once. Ours are very wicked kings, so nothing will suffice but that we kill them over and over.’ In one evening, I wrote two pages of dialog between Hunzu and a young narrator who would eventually turn into Ivy. Following that evening, I did nothing else with the story for nearly two years.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Court of Twilight? What appeals to you about writing Contemporary Fantasy?

Mareth:  The original idea for Court of Twilight came from reading two works of real-world ethnography back to back – Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland by Eddie Lenihan and Carolyn Eve Green, and Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca. Both books dealt with the idea of outsiders – groups of Others who are literally or figuratively invisible to the predominant culture around them. It got me thinking about how the some of the elements traditionally ascribed to fairies – they’re invisible, they’re often malevolent, and unwary human visitors can sometimes get trapped in their world – might play out as cultural, rather than magical, differences.

Also, Court of Twilight is a contemporary fantasy only by accident. As I’d originally conceived the story, it was set in the year prior to the potato famine. Then, on impulse, I decided to write the first draft during National Novel Writing Month. It quickly because apparent that I would never be able to do the amount of research necessary to set the story in a historic period, and also finish the draft. So, the story got bumped into the modern day.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Court of Twilight?

Mareth:  As mentioned above, time for research was in very short supply. I did very little research specific to the story, (other than spending a ton of time on Google Maps looking up various Dublin neighborhoods, average bartenders’ salaries, local haunted houses, and believable public transit options). Most of what else shows up in the story came from things rattling around in my head. It helps that I’ve lived in both Scotland and Ireland (the North, though, not the Republic), so I was able to draw a lot on those experiences.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for Court of Twilight.

Mareth:  The cover was done by Lovely Creatures Studio, and they did an amazing job. The cover doesn’t depict an event from the book, but more the idea of an observer looking at something – a stained glass image of two figures – and the idea of a meeting of something historic with something modern. And the fact that the figures are translucent also works very well with the images in the text.



TQ:  In Court of Twilight who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Mareth:  The trows were all pretty much a ton of fun to write, because they all can be a bit oddball, and all of the characters have their own angles and motivations. Ivy has good reasons to distrust all of them at one point or another. Hunzu especially was fun to write – he was a bit of a rascal in the early drafts, but as I got deeper into working on the book, the heart of the character is that he’s basically a nice guy who’s continually in over his head. Demi was probably the hardest to write – because she has to be compelling enough to justify Ivy’s friendship with her – while still being true to the fact that she’s hiding huge secrets at the start of the book.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Court of Twilight?

Mareth:  I think of Court as more of an adventure story than as any sort of issues book – that being said, I also don’t think writers are serving their readers well by ignoring such issues in other sorts of fiction. (Anyone who’s not convinced of this should spend some time with @heidiheilig’s Twitter feed.) One thing I deliberately put into the narrative were female authority figures – Ivy’s bosses are both women, and the authority figures in the trow world are female as well.

Otherwise, all I can say is that there is more to the trows’ world – and the story of how the trows’ world intersects with our own – in future books that definitely enters into societal issues territory.



TQ:  Which question about Court of Twilight do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Mareth:  Ok, here goes - Why is the story all about a girl trying to save her flatmate, as opposed to a best friend, or a girlfriend, or a close relative?

There are lots of stories about a protagonist going on a quest to save their child, or parent, or romantic partner – and a ton about protagonists who are on mission to save the whole world. But in real life, I think we very often have more opportunities to save or damn complete strangers or casual acquaintances than we do close relations. It changes the stakes in an interesting way – Ivy has to really consider how much she’s willing to risk herself for the sake of her friend, (as opposed to a situation where she’s so close to the person at risk that her throwing herself into danger is sort of assumed). How far she’s willing to go down Demi’s rabbit hole changes over the course of the book as Ivy calculates and re-calculates the stakes – as well as how closely she herself is involved.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Court of Twilight.

Mareth:  There was someone here, mingling with the shadows and the stone, and Ivy’s very life depended on not seeing him, because that’s how you save yourself from the monsters. You stay under the covers. You shut your eyes and never, ever look.

I have been free at least, and happy at times, though the two are not nearly as synonymous as many would believe.



TQ:  What's next?

Mareth:  I am currently turning the zero draft of Court’s sequel – currently titled Changeling - into a first draft that is actually coherent enough to send out to my lovely beta readers. Right now, it’s mayhem.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Mareth:  Thank you for having me! It’s been a pleasure.

Court of Twilight
Parvus Press LLC, October 17, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 342 pages

Explore the hidden world of ancient magic within modern Dublin.

Six months ago, Ivy stumbled into the deal of a lifetime – great rent in a posh Dublin neighborhood and a flatmate, Demi, who was only a little weird. It didn’t matter that their flat is packed with exotic plants or that her flatmate does all her shopping on-line but refuses to meet the delivery man at the door?

Now, though, Demi’s gone missing, there are strange men hiding in the flower boxes, and a lot of strangers have suddenly taken interest in the whereabouts of her peculiar flatmate. When the police won’t help, Ivy knows she’s going to have to solve this mystery on her own.

Ivy dives headfirst into a secret Dublin, hidden in plain sight, and discovers that the longer she stays in, the more she risks losing the world she always knew. Can she save Demi without losing herself?

About Mareth

Mareth Griffith bounces between summers along the Alaskan coast and winters in various warmer locations.  She lives in Seward, Alaska, and continually tells people that the winters there aren’t as bad as people think.

When she’s not writing, she works as a naturalist and wilderness guide, leading adventurous souls on epic quests to seek out glaciers, bears, and whales in the wilds of coastal Alaska.   She’s also lived and worked in Scotland, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland – where her nearest neighbors included two thousand puffins and the ghost of a spectral black horse.

Originally from West Virginia, Mareth attended  Smith College in Massachusetts, and the University of Glasgow in Scotland, studying music and theatre.   Prior to moving to Alaska, she worked as an audio technician for several east coast theater companies, eventually discovering that while she loved working in theatre, she didn’t love living in cities.

Mareth plays classical violin well and rhythm guitar badly, and her writing has previously been featured in the Redoubt Reporter, Alaska Magazine, and Pen the Kenai, an essay exhibit documenting life on Alaska’s Kenai coast.

Twitter @MagpieMareth

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Catherine:  I got laid off from my university teaching job so I had a lot of time on my hands.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Catherine:  I had a rough idea of the structure of The Visitors before I started writing but it certainly changed a lot by the end. I think if you stick to a too rigid outline you risk limiting yourself. Having said that I might try plotting a bit more the next time. I suppose that means I’m a hybrid?



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Catherine:  Self-discipline is difficult when working from home. Keeping off the internet and Netflix long enough to get something done.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Catherine:  I haven’t had any formal training but I thought that Stephen King book on writing was pretty good. Also just the stuff I read, Shirley Jackson, Chekhov short stories, an author called Barbara Pym (not sure if she’s very well known in the US).



TQ:  Describe The Visitors in 140 characters or less.

Catherine:  Marion lives in a creepy mansion. Brother John spends all his time in the cellar. She hears screams from below, should she tell the police?



TQ:  Tell us something about The Visitors that is not found in the book description.

Catherine:  Marion has some self-esteem issues. Her nickname at school was Manatee.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Visitors?

Catherine:  A few real life cases where people had protected loved ones who committed horrible crimes. I was trying to understand why someone would do something like that and I wanted the reader to ask themselves what they would do if the person they loved most in the world did something terrible.



TQ:  Is the "crumbling mansion" and seaside resort where Marion and John Zetland live based on a real building/place?

Catherine:  The crumbling mansion isn’t real but the house I grew up in had a cellar and I was always a bit spooked by it. The town of Northport is fictional but it’s based on a number of real life northern British seaside towns, particularly Southport(!) and Blackpool. I always felt these places were a little on the gothic side with their creaky fairground attractions and kiosks selling smutty postcards alongside candy for children. I suppose Coney Island in the US has a similar vibe.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Visitors?

Catherine:  I don’t want to give away any spoilers but there is some internet ‘Catfishing’ going on in the book. I actually created fake social media profiles to see if the plotline was realistic. I got quite a lot of positive responses!



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Visitors?

Catherine:  Just want to say I think the US cover is delightful, you can’t tell from pictures but the paper is textured so you can feel the ridges in the wood and even the back of the wallpaper feels different from the front! Amazing! I suppose on the most literal sense it evokes decaying grandeur of a rather stuffy, middle-class variety. I didn’t have anything to do with the cover however, and I don’t know if my interpretations are what the designer intended, but it reminds me of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and there is certainly a lot of female repression in the book. I also get a slight Georgia O’Keefe vibe but maybe that’s just my grubby mind.



TQ:  In The Visitors who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Catherine:  I find Mrs Morrison the housekeeper comical so I think she was the most fun and therefore easiest to write. Marion was the hardest of course, because a lot of her choices are rather difficult to empathise with but if I had made her too unlikeable the reader would have just given up on her and the book.



TQ:  Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Visitors?

Catherine:  I touched somewhat obliquely on the issue of immigration but I don’t want to say too much as this would give important plot points away!



TQ:  Which question about The Visitors do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Catherine:  Are Marion and John’s parent to blame? I honestly don’t know, maybe if you say yes to that question you could equally blame their parents, i.e. Marion and John’s grandparents, where does the evil originate?



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Visitors.

Catherine:

‘Like a white bird, the scream flew up from the depths of the cellar, then became trapped inside Marion’s head.’


‘You are the kind of evil that comes from nothing, from neglect and loneliness. You are like mold that grows in damp dark places, black dirt gathered in corners, a fatal infection that begins with a speck of dirt in an unwashed wound.’



TQ:  What's next?

Catherine:  Just finished another manuscript but so far I’ve only shown it to close friends. About to start a third. I really enjoy writing in the gothic/thriller genre, might veer towards more conventional horror next!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Catherine:  Thank you for your consideration.

The Visitors
Gallery Books/Scout Press, September 26, 2017
Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages

“Once you start Catherine Burns's dark, disturbing, and enthralling debut novel, it's hard to stop. The Visitors is bizarrely unsettling, yet compulsively readable.” —Iain Reid, internationally bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things

With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, Catherine Burns’s debut novel explores the complex truths we are able to keep hidden from ourselves and the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door...and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret. Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side....

About Catherine

Mark Frith Photography

Born in Manchester, Catherine Burns is a graduate of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She worked as a bond trader in London before studying at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography and teaching film theory at the University of Salford. The Visitors is her debut novel.


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