To start off, for those who haven’t read your work before, how would you describe your writing style?
In 40 years no one has asked me that before! Congratulations. Seriously, I avoid thinking of style. My father was a writer/director/producer, and he had two hints for me (he didn’t imagine I’d become an author). First was, ‘if you’re not writing action, you’re writing talking heads, and if it’s talking heads, they better be saying something important.” Second was, “Don’t fart around, tell the damn story!” So, efficiently? I hope so. I think my work mostly is character driven, for another thing the old man said was, “Give them someone to root for.” That’s about as self-analytical as I can get.
Your career in publishing started out in 1982 with the release of Magician: Apprentice, the first novel in what would turn into the Riftwar Cycle, a series with 31 novels. Can you tell me a little about how this came about?
Actually, it was It was split into two volumes for paperback release in the US. In the UK, for example, it was always one novel. It’s a long story, and the short version is I learned I was a pretty good writer in college, because I could hack out papers and get A’s. After I graduated I decided to turn my hand to fiction, looking for a second income possibility. I had majored in Mass Market & Public Opinion and had done a fair bit of political stuff, but now I was working for non-profits. We had a tax revolt in California in 1978 and funding was cut, and I was instantly a full-time writer. As I said, my dad had been in the entertainment industry, and his literary agent, the brilliant Harold Matson, and he saw something in Magician, so he represented me and eventually editor Adrian Zackheim at Doubleday bought it, and from there one thing led to another and I still haven’t found that other job in marketing.
Following the conclusion of Riftwar in 2013 with Magician’s End, you headed into retirement and the world expected your legacy to live on through your work. You then burst back into the spotlight with 2018’s King of Ashes, first in the Firemane Saga. Where did the inspiration come from for this new series?
Retirement? First I heard about it. Writers don’t retire; we drop dead or get put in a home. Anyway, I wanted to take a short break, which I did, and that unfortunately went on longer than planned due to some personal, family issues. The notion for King of Ashes was actually pretty odd. As I was waking up one morning, in that lucid moment coming out of sleep but not quite awake, I thought I heard a voice ask, “Who is the King of Ashes?” Once I got over my concerns of auditory hallucinations or a transient ischemic attack, I thought, that’s a great title for a book! So I had to figure out who the King of Ashes was, and why was he important, etc. And that turned into a story.
Initial estimates were that it would be a trilogy. Is this still the case?
That’s the plan. Most of my work has been “three act plays,” though I’ve had four books in one series and two in another, but for the most part my background in theater and film makes me think in the old, “chase your character up a tree, then throw rocks at him, then let him come down gracefully and win,” trope of drama. My characters do have an annoying habit of taking off on their own sometimes with prior consultation with me, so who knows? Something else might happen, and it could be four.
For those who have read King of Ashes and are moving on to July’s release Queen of Storms, can you tell us what we should expect in the forthcoming instalment?
Spoilers are evil. So, this will be spoiler free. As noted above, in the three act play model, this is the very end of act one and goes deeply into act two, the rock throwing. Lots of bad things happen to good people, lives are profoundly changed, and as I like to do a lot, we peel the onion. We find layers below the layers were previously peeling off. So, new major players are revealed, some things are not as they seemed to be, and a good time is had by all. Except for the people who die bloody deaths, of course. Seriously, we will learn a lot more about the characters and the world in which they live.
Hava comes into her own more during Queen of Storms with a greater proportion of chapters/page time being dedicated her journey. Having followed a very logical progression to superiority, was her destiny predetermined? Or did Hava as a character dictate her trajectory while you were drafting?
It’s always the character. I often say my subconscious is smarter than I am. Hava originally was a “woman of mystery” to Hatushaly, and it read horribly. I was going to introduce her half-way through the book and I ended up trashing literally hundreds of pages writing/rewriting. When I decided to make her a life-long friend, bang! It all fell into place. And like the whole “King of Ashes,” question, another morning I woke up and a voice said, “Hava wants to be a pirate.” I had a sort of “in this part of the story we deal with what Hava is doing while the other characters are off doing that thing over there,” and again bang! It all fell into place and she took over the story. Part of the reason I partnered with Janny Wurts on the Empire series was I have never been a teenage girl, so I didn’t think I had the chops to fake writing one. Because of that collaboration, I love writing strong women like Miranda, Sandreena, and now Hava.
King of Ashes ends with the revelation that Donte has escaped the clutches of the Sisters of the Deep but we don’t know how or why. Can readers expect more of the sinister merfolk in Queen of Storms and the final novel in the series?
That would be telling. It’s a line from an old TV show, The Prisoner, and I love using it. We will see more of Donte and deal with the magic used on him by the Sisters of the Deep, and it plugs into a much bigger reveal on powers at play in the conflicts facing all the characters. But it is not forgotten, and it shall be explained. I promise.
The Flame Guard play a greater part in Queen of Storms, attempting to reach their goal of spiriting Hatushaly off to their hidden base of operations in order to teach him to control his magic. Whilst they believe they are serving a higher purpose, in fact they may been seen as the lesser villain of the piece.
How do you as the writer tackle plotting the juxtaposition between portraying them as the good guys and them committing evil deeds to achieve their purpose?
This is sort of “writer neepery” stuff. The trick is understanding perspective. You reveal something from one point of view, and then add data which shifts the reader’s perspective. The first time I did that was in A Darkness At Sethanon, when I showed the reader the character of Guy du Bas-Tyra wasn’t a “villain” but a guy with a different agenda, one that made sense from his point of view. As for what the Flame Guard are really up to, we’ll know by the end of the series.
The introduction of the Border Ports and the Azhante provide new locales and characters in Queen of Storms while the return of past characters allows the story to speed on ahead. My question is, when introducing new elements into your narrative, do you plan ahead for their introduction? Or does the flow of the narrative cause their inception?
You plan ahead, else you’re all over the place and the story becomes a patchwork. When things show up is more a function of narrative flow.
Throughout the Firemane Saga, there are many points whereby the reader witnesses gross atrocities in the form of epic battles or sneaky assassinations. Talk me through how you formulate your character deaths with such breathtaking precision?
There is no formula, per se. What most non-writers don’t understand is reflected often with the question “did it bother me to kill off so-and-so?” The answer is always no. A character is merely one of many components of a story, which is made up of many moving parts. They serve a narrative function and when it’s done, it’s done. The manner of killing off a character is part of creating that narrative. So if it’s “off camera,” or “up-close-and-personal,” is mostly a function of coming to the best possible use of that death in propelling the narrative and finely a satisfactory end point. Not satisfying the reader if he or she has grown attached to the character, but rather maximizing the dramatic impact of that ending. I learned early on there’s an interesting emotional response to an “off-camera” death. Which is why when Pug returned from Kelewan in Magician, he’s told of Squire Roland’s death by Princess Carline, rather than having me show his death. To me it’s a lesson learned from my own life, starting when I was very young and my father died in New York whole I was a little kid in California. Not every character gets an heroic death scene.
What are you hoping readers will pull from the story?
First and foremost, entertainment. If there’s any insights into deep philosophical truths, or profound life lessons for a reader, that’s up to them. I take no responsibility for that, and am not trying to do more than spin a “ripping yarn.”
I have heard tales of you playing World of Warcraft in order to aid mapbuilding and planning of ideas. True or false? If true, what got you into the game?
That’s a conflation of things. The world building was during college, an old paper and pencil RPG. I play Warcraft because a friend got me hooked, and now play online with my kids now and again.
QUICKFIRE ROUND
- Fiction or nonfiction? Nonfiction
- Plotter or pantser? Pantser
- Favorite bookish trope? Adventure is just outside the door.
- Least favorite bookish trope? Life is a sea of teas, an endless struggle, so resign yourself. Usually ending with someone walking alone on a beach somewhere.
- Coffee or tea? Coffee
- Beach holiday or hiking in the bush? Beach, with chair side drink service.
- Convention crowds or smaller signings? Smaller signings are more fun.
- If you could pick a single holiday destination for the rest of your life, where would it be? I live in the number one vacation destination in the US, San Diego. So, I’m already here.
- If you could recommend five authors to the general public that are must reads, who would they be? Only five? That’s impossible. First five to spring to mind today (subject to change every five minutes) Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman, Samuel R. Delany, and Ray Bradbury, and that’s just in fantasy & science fiction. Oh, honorable mention for that Shakespeare guy.
