INTERVIEW | Peter Higgins author of Wolfhound Century

Every once in a great while a new author bursts on to the scene that is so different from everything else being published I have to sit up and notice and shout a bit about it. This year that author is Peter Higgins with his debut Wolfhound Century. It is a strange novel to be sure, but that is its greatest strength. Think China Mieville with more of a Slavic Folklore bent, but with the speed of a LeCarre novel. If that sounds like a heady mix it is yet a good one and making it feel startlingly original. Higgins has published short fiction in such places as Asimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, but his novel was my first exposure to his work. It certainly won't be the last.

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MH: Wolfhound Century is a dark, fast paced visage of a Russia that never was. But it is so much more than that. What is your barroom description of Wolfhound Century?

HIGGINS: If I’d just arrived in the bar, I’d say that Wolfhound Century is an SF-fantasy-thriller set in an immense totalitarian state, the kind that spies on and murders its own citizens, but it's also a world of giants and golems and sentient rain, with an alien presence deep in the endless forest. There are elements of Russian and central/northern European history, art and literature lurking beneath the surface, if you want to look for them.

If I’d been in the bar for a while, I’d say it was inspired by books like Gorky Park, but written by someone who’d read a lot of Gene Wolfe and John Crowley and the folklore of the endless Slavic forests, and had grown up in the Cold War, with a life-long attachment to the dark, extraordinary history of Soviet Russia. Someone who’d read Nabokov’s memoirs and random pages from the 1914 edition of Baedeker’s Russia. I might add that one of the root ideas is that painters like Chagall and Malevich weren’t painting abstract or fantastical parables, they were simply recording what they saw.

And if I was still there at closing time, I’d be talking about the archetypal 20th century struggle between, on the one hand, the totalitarian idea of the individual as an atom of the state, subjected and reduced by the overwhelming forces of history, party and state, and on the other hand, the conception of each and every human being as a huge and partly unconscious world of emotion, perception, imaginative potential and creative imagination. Then I’d have to get my coat and go home.

MH: What came first? The world, the angels, or Vissarion?

HIGGINS: The world came first, definitely, or rather, two worlds: a northern and central European world of slow rivers, birch forests, wintry Baltic shores, and that 20th century world of revolution and war, marching crowds and gulags and state police, writers and artists and composers and dissident intellectuals.

But it was when the detective, Vissarion Lom, came on the scene that the story really began to come together. A door opening. I saw that the book could be – needed to be – a thriller. And Lom, the decent policeman who realizes he’s working for an indecent regime, would have to confront the cruel realities of that regime. He meets a woman who works in a factory and wants to change the world, he’s opened up (quite literally), and he begins to explore the wilder, stranger extremes of his world. There’s potentially more in Lom’s future than being a detective. In some ways he’s like Severian, the wandering exile from the torturer’s guild in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun. (The near-anagrammatical relationship between Severian and Vissarion isn’t accidental.)

The ‘angels’ are immense beings that fall out of the sky, dying or already dead, and their mined, abraded torsos litter the continent. The regime appropriates them as a justification for its mythology of itself: in a sense, it’s a parallel with the way totalitarian dictators claim to embody wider, universal forces, the inevitability of history. When one angel survives the fall and starts to reach out, to speak, to influence, some people want to listen. They want to subject themselves to the greater, more certain power. And the really dangerous ones think they might be able to use it …

MH: One of the themes I was struck by was the land fighting back for its very survival and you've given them avatars of a sort with the palubas. Which gives it a very Robert Holdstock vibe.

HIGGINS: I’m glad you mentioned Robert Holdstock! I’m a huge fan of Mythago Wood, and even more of the sequels like Lavyondyss and The Hollowing, where the things in the wood get wilder and more extreme. It’s astonishingly vivid and free and unconstrained writing. I find Holdstock’s imagination massively inspiring. The idea in Wolfhound Century that the world – not just the forest but the rain, the air, the mud, the rivers – are watchful, active and potentially dangerous, owes a huge amount to him.

So the forest in Wolfhound Century – its endlessness, the avatars that come out of it – is proudly Holdstock-ish. But Holdstock’s wood is very English: superficially, on the outside, it’s small, only a couple of miles across, and in a specific, almost-mappable English location. Only when you go in and get lost there do you learn how immense it is on the inside. It draws you in, dilates time. And nothing escapes from it: the mythagos that cross its borders soon fade. The forest in Wolfhound Century, on the other hand (like the forests of Russia and central Europe) really is huge. It dominates the psychic terrain. The regime tries to close the forest off and blind the people to it, but their cities are full of forest things. Forest presences. Forest influence. Several of the principal characters themselves have forest roots, which they grow more aware of and try to understand. And the forest asserts itself: it reaches out and participates. As you say, it fights back. Fangorn and the ents are in there somewhere.

That idea, that everything is alive, has other roots too. It’s central to shamanism, for example. It runs deep in the Russian, Nordic and central European forests and Siberia, and comes through in the folklore from there. That world view was still influential in 20th century Russia, and not just as a primitive relic. There’s a fantastic quote from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Cosmist who drove early Soviet thinking about the human colonisation of space and transhumanism:
‘There is no substance which cannot take the form of a living being. The simplest being is the atom. Therefore the whole universe is alive and there is nothing in it but life.’

This concept – panpsychism, sentient matter – shaped my thinking about the Wolfhound Century forest, and also about the angels: where they come from, what they’re made of, how they do what they do. And what unfettered or assisted human perception can tap into.

MH: With Wolfhound Century you've subverted Stalinist Russia as well as Slavic mythology, but this is clearly not the Russia we know. Possibly a deep past alternative history, but this world appears very much separated for ours. Are you worried that people will feel you've appropriated a culture? Have you had any feedback from Russian natives?

HIGGINS: No, I really don't feel like I've appropriated another culture.

As you say, in Wolfhound Century I’ve drawn on Russian history and culture. I haven’t taken them straight, I’ve re-imagined them and mixed them up with other things that aren't Russian. I’ve felt a responsibility to my sources and I’ve tried to write as well as I can. I'm very much aware that the history which my book stands sideways to was real – millions died and millions more had their lives ruined – and I've tried to let that awareness show through in Wolfhound Century. How far I've succeeded, whether I've always got it right, that's something for readers to make their own minds up about. It's not for me to say. But I’ve never worried that this book, the way I've written it, was trespassing across some kind of frontier into another culture's territory, and personally I don’t think the artists whose work I’ve drawn on – including writers like Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Pasternak and Nabokov, and painters like Chagall – would recognize that idea of their cultural separateness – those barriers of difference – either.

If I can give you one example of what I mean, Mandelstam was Russian but he wrote about Charles Dickens, Beethoven, Rome, the ancient Scottish poet Ossian, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and Notre Dame in Paris. He saw continuity between ancient Greece and Russia: he said they met on the shores of the Black Sea. And he specifically denied the relevance of personal background to his work: of himself he wrote, 'it is enough to speak of the books he has read, and his biography is done'.

Other writers and artists I've drawn on maybe wouldn't use such stark terms as Mandelstam, but they all have the same deep involvement with a culture that goes way beyond Russia. They're part of a shared, complex, three-thousand-year old, wide-ranging, multi-linguistic, allusive tradition. It's one culture, modernist and frontierless, that may take account of local and national differences and inheritances but isn’t limited by them. And the precarious existence of that culture in a totalitarian state is part of the story Wolfhound Century is trying to tell, and it’s part of its way of trying to tell it.

I’m sitting at home at the moment, about 1300 miles from St Petersburg. The idea that, somewhere between here and there, there might exist a line of separation, a cultural and historical boundary drawn across Europe, doesn't feel right. That’s one of the reasons the Cold War was so cruel and why we celebrated when the wall came down. But even when the Cold War was at its height, we read books and listened to music and watched films from the territories of the Eastern Bloc.

I don’t know if maybe someone 1300 miles away from me in St Petersburg is writing an SF fantasy about a weird version of London during World War II, with a Prime Minister who’s a bit like Churchill and with writing that draws on Dickens or Virginia Woolf or Dylan Thomas. But I hope someone is. That would be awesome. And it would be fantastic if Wolfhound Century finds Russian readers. I'd love to know what they make of it. Of course, they’ll see that it’s not written in the same way that someone who lives in Russia would have written it. The imagined elements in it are my response to, my engagement with, Russia and what happened there, but it’s written from my perspective and it couldn’t be anything else.

MH: Do you have a favorite Russian folk tale? And if so did you integrate it into the Wolfhound Century in some form?

HIGGINS: Well, there’s a fantastic tradition of Russian folk tales. Sadko. Prince Ivan. Baba Yaga. The Fire Bird. The Snow Maiden. They’re part of the background to Wolfhound Century, certainly, they’re in the air: but in terms of integration into the story, they’re not really primary sources, as far as I’m consciously aware.

More specific sources were Siberian shamanism and the Slavic folklore of the wild forest. The palubas that come out of the forest and the wind-walker in the White Marshes are based on Slavic conceptions of wood spirits. I found a lot of material for the forest in a collection from 1918: The Mythology of All the Races, edited by Louis H Gray, particularly the Slavic and Finno-Ugric volumes. And the Pollandore and the mythology that surrounds its creation owe a fair amount to the story of the Sampo and other parts of the Kalevala from Finland.

MH: Wolfhound Century ended a bit abruptly. What made that a good breaking place and what can we look forward to with the sequel Truth and Fear?

HIGGINS: I thought you might ask me about the ending! There is a longer story arc and I wanted to leave Wolfhound Century with a sense of doors opening rather than closing, and - for the characters - a return to battle with a greater sense of who the enemies are and what's at stake. Not an ending, but a moment to take breath. Like Gene Wolfe, "Here I pause, having carried you, reader, from gate to gate......"
Truth and Fear, which is coming out early in 2014, widens the story out. I'm not going to say too much, but you'll see a lot more of the bad guys and what they're up to, and more about some of the things that were off-stage rumblings in Wolfhound Century, as well as other quarters of the city of Mirgorod and some new places on the continent.

And some new characters. And some big surprises. And a finish that'll knock your socks off and leave you wanting more ...

MH: What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

HIGGINS: "If someone tells you you’re doing too much of something in your work, then do it more, because that's your true voice."
A friend who's an artist told me that.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

HIGGINS: For winter, a pull-on woolen cap: the acme is a Kangol Squad with a cuff. For rain and sun, a crushable bush hat in buffalo hide, easy to shove into a backpack. And for all seasons and all purposes except looking natty, there was my white canvas Tilley “Endurable” T3 Traditional, in many ways the finest of them all, which alas I seem to have lost.

MH: Sorry about the hatloss. Always remember a lost hat is never forgotten. I feel your pain having lost one of my old standbys last year. I also have a different hat for each season. Well, multiple hats for each season. Another important, life directing question: Scotch or beer?

HIGGINS: If I've just tramped twenty miles across Scottish moorland through mist and rain, then Scotch, but otherwise definitely beer.

MH: What books are you reading at the moment?

HIGGINS: Not for the first time, I'm making a determined attempt on the lower slopes of Gravity's Rainbow.

MH: That's a heavy one. I appreciate all your time. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

HIGGINS: Just to say, thanks for inviting me to do this. It's been a lot of fun. I'll be lurking somewhere at World Fantasy Con 2013 in October if anyone wants to say hello.

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INTERVIEW | Myke Cole author of Fortress Frontier

Myke Cole is the author of the Military Fantasy series Shadow Ops, which started last year with Control Point followed by the just released Fortress Frontier. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deep­water Horizon oil spill. I finished Fortress Frontier right after this interview and found it to be an even better read the the first in the series. Each book has brought something new to the table while giving a good view of life in the military, granted military with magic, but that just amps it up even more.

MH: Shadow Ops: Control Point introduced us to a world where magic has come alive again and people with abilities are conscripted into the military. Control Point is through the eyes of military lifer Oscar Britton, but Fortress Frontier moves the POV to someone else. Why the change?

MYKE COLE:  All of my favorite fantasy writers, from Peter V. Brett to George R. R. Martin, deal with ensemble casts. I know plenty of writers have been incredibly successful following a single protagonist (Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Devon Monk, etc . . .), but that has never been the story arc that appeals most to me. It's the interplay between characters that we know really well that draws me in. I love the sense of in-depth world building that we get when an author fully fleshes out even the most ancillary characters. The serving boy has a story, so does the guy who pumps your gas. Steve Martin does an amazing job of this in his novella, Shopgirl. Joe Abercrombie is another writer who does this really well. The three books following his outstanding First Law trilogy are all in-depth examinations of 2nd string characters from First Law.

I have worked really hard to give the reader a very different experience with each Shadow Ops book. I understand that this risks those fans who like to follow a single protagonist, but it's just not how I write. I'm proud of the fact that Fortress Frontier and Control Point do very different things. You'll be following an entirely different protagonist for Breach Zone as well.

MH: One of the biggest confrontations Oscar faces in Control Point is revealing his powers to his parents. But one of this things that keeps coming back to mind is Oscar's dad goes through a portal where everyone supposedly dies, but we learn that is not necessarily true. So is there a chance his dad is not dead?

COLE: I'm not going to give spoilers. I will only repeat what you saw in the text: A gate opened, Stanley Britton went through. When the gate closed, he was still alive. Schroedinger's Cat, brother.

MH: Holding out on me, I see. This brings up an old discussion. I understand why authors don't like to give spoilers of their stories, but as a reader do you think there are such a thing as spoilers? This is something I go back and forth on a lot personally, while when I write my reviews I try not to include big reveals, but rarely would learning something "ruin" the story for me.

MYKE COLE: I'm with you. Learning what's going to happen in a story seldom cheapens the experience for me. That said, I recognize that there are people for whom so called "spoilers" really do ruin the experience. I always keep that in mind when talking about stories. It's like a wedding that way: you think it's about you, but it isn't.

MH: Your military experiences permeates Control Point. Did you always plan to go into the service? And were any of the characters based off officers you worked with?

MYKE COLE: If you'd come to me in college and told me I'd be a mercenary and eventually a uniformed officer, I would have laughed until milk came out of my nose. I was raised as a scrawny, nerdy aesthete, and only developed physically because working out was less shameful than sitting alone in the cafeteria during lunch. 9/11 spurred a reinvention for many Americans, myself among them. It created a perfect storm of opportunity: A passionate desire to DO SOMETHING, coupled by a glut of opportunities to do them. As the smoke from those planes cleared, the public was suddenly willing to let contractors do a lot of things they would never permit if they weren't frightened half to death. Once I was working for a private company in a war zone, I felt like my service was cheapened because it ultimately served a for-profit entity. That planted the seed that grew into my deciding to join up.

MH: I had a friend join up as well. I think that's something that ran though a lot of people's minds during that time.

You've an acknowledged Dungeons and Dragons player and last year helped DM and organize the Author D & D event at ConFusion. After watching that I couldn't help but wonder if you ever had a game going during your tours of Iraq.

MYKE COLE: I worked 18 hour days, 7 days a week, so that was definitely not happening for me. However, when I was at the US embassy, I did note with pride that there was an advertisement for a Warhammer 40K game right along side the yoga class flyer on the community bulletin board. Space Marines in Baghdad. Real life is *way* stranger than fiction.

MH: Grueling hours, man. But I'm glad gaming is still out there. Back to Fortress Frontier. What are the biggest differences between Oscar Britton and Alan Bookbinder? Both are military men, but one from the grunt side and the other bureaucratic.

MYKE COLE: Oscar Britton is a *lot* more conflicted than Alan Bookbinder. This is because Oscar never had a sense of being moored somewhere. He didn't get along with his family, never established a lasting romantic relationship, and . . . well, he's a black guy in rural Vermont. He always had a sense of being out-of-place. The army filled that role for him, it became the home he never felt he had. So, when he's suddenly faced with the choice between the army and his own identity, he is really, really, REALLY torn over it.

Alan is the opposite. His life was smooth sailing from jump. Stable, supportive childhood, wife and kids, great career. He is as grounded as they come.

And then there's one more critical factor: Oscar Britton is a Probe. Alan Bookbinder self reports and is embraced by the system. Bookbinder faces some hard choices, but they're not morally conflicted choices. His path is clear. It's just a matter of finding the will to get it done.

MH: Fortress Frontier is the second volume of Shadow Ops with Breach Zone being the third. How will that differ from the first two? 

MYKE COLE: I'm very proud of having made each of the SHADOW OPS books very different from each other. Each book does something totally different (which also plays into my decision to vary protagonists for each book).

BREACH ZONE does two things that the first two books don't do. It is a tragic love story and an in-depth look at a single battle (a la Joe Abercrombie's THE HEROES). It also shifts focus to the political landscape in America following the upheaval resulting from . . . certain actions by the protagonists in books I and II. It has been the most difficult of the 3 books for me to write, and that's likely because it's the most ambitious. Here's hoping I pulled it off.

MH: You've also mentioned that you're writing a media tie-in novella. Is there anything you can say about that publicly?

MYKE COLE: Only that it won't be media tie-in. I have worked very hard with a few companies to find ideas that work with their franchises, but unfortunately, my writing just doesn't seem to be wired to fit those molds. In the one case where we were able to agree on an idea, the contract specifications were, frankly, unacceptable. I am certainly open to media tie-in work, but I'm not going to write something my heart isn't in just to make money.

MH: What is one your favorite D & D character names you've created?

MYKE COLE: When Pete (Peter V. Brett) and I played D&D in college, he got the Complete Book of Humanoids (2nd ed) and I rolled up a Wemic fighter. I a lot of . . . leonine stuff, I guess. Kicking down doors, killing people without talking to them and generally mucking up the campaign. Pete shook things up by killing me, then binding my soul into a statue. The resultant character had 18 in every stat, but was completely immune to all magic, including positive spells. Made for a fascinating game.

Oh, wait. You wanted to know his name. I don't remember.

MH: Do you have any celebration rituals when a new book is out?

MYKE COLE: I grab my agent and we hit every bookstore in the area, signing as many copies as we can find. I also try to chat up all the booksellers, even buying them a copy if they're willing to give it a read. A lot of the people working in bookstores are serious genre fans, and getting them interested in your work (or thinking you're a nice guy) is a great way to accelerate a launch. Sadly, this ritual takes less time every year, as more and more bookstores are closing.

MH: What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

MYKE COLE: It's the same advice I've been given as a military officer, government drone and human being: quit your bitching and get to work.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

MYKE COLE: Of course it's my Mich 2002 combat helmet. Here's a shot of me posing with it during my 2nd tour.

MH: Awesome. What books are you reading at the moment?

MYKE COLE: Joe Abercrombie's Red Country and 2 other books for prospective blurbs. This is probably the most frustrating thing about being a pro writer. You barely have time to read as it is, and when you do, you can't simply get lost in a book and enjoy it. You're either deconstructing the reading experience as you try to improve your own craft, or you're reading a manuscript that your publisher sent you and feeling like a jerk because you're either too busy to finish it by the blurb deadline or don't like it enough to attach your name to it (I only blurb books I *really* love. So far, that's been just two: Daniel Polansky's Tomorrow, The Killing and Wes Chu's Lives of Tao). Going pro really does suck a lot of the joy out of leisure reading, which is ironic, because that's what made you want to go pro in the first place.

MH: Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

MYKE COLE: My blog, FB and Twitter are great places to see what I'm up to. I'd also like to call on your readers to consider a commitment in the military reserve. Seems like the nation has been going through some tough times lately, and nothing has done more for my mental health than feeling like I was able to ante up and HELP. I've deployed for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Hurricane Irene and now Hurricane Sandy, and I sleep so much better at night knowing that I pitched in and did something. If you can, I think you should. Stand with me.

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INTERVIEW | John Brownjohn on Walter Moers and Translation

Walter Moers' Zamonia novels are some of the most creative humorous Fantasy I have ever read. Yes, even better than some of Terry Pratchett's work. Moers is also one of the biggest authors in Germany, but in the English speaking world he has more of a cult following. To date there have been four Zamonia novels published with the fifth The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books coming out November 8th. I'd recommend on checking out the first book in the series, The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear first or The City of Dreaming Books, not to be confused with the latest Labyrinth. Though all except Labyrinth standalone quite well

Today joining us is a very special guest. I'm use to interviewing authors and editors, but this is a first for me with translator John Brownjohn sitting in the hot seat.

Mad Hatter: You've translated many books of all genres (History, Biography, Fantasy) including the classic The Neverending Story. How did you get involved in translation?

John Brownjohn: In an age when translation has become an academic subject in its own right, I hesitate to admit this after translating the better part of 200 books from German and French, but I came into the trade quite fortuitously. I started life as a classicist and won an open classical scholarship to Oxford, then spent ten years in a commercial job in the City of London. Around halfway through those ten lucrative but uncongenial years, a cousin of mine who happened to be a director of the venerable publishing house of Jonathan Cape said to me, “You write decent English and have a knowledge of German and French, how about trying your hand at translating a book for us on the side?” The book was a juvenile novel for which I earned the princely sum of £70.00. I enjoyed the challenge, Jonathan Cape liked what I’d done, and one thing led to another until I was being offered so much translation work by several publishers that I chucked my City job and have devoted myself to the keyboard ever since. Incidental note: I didn’t translate Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, though I did do his Momo.

MH: The internet led me astry yet again. How does the translation process work for you? Are you generally in contact with the author? Do you go through multiple drafts? Are you approached by publishers about translating or do you try to pitch them?

JBJ: It varies from author to author. I’m regularly in touch with Walter Moers, for example, but my only contact with the onetime bestselling author Hans Helmut Kirst, sixteen of whose novels I translated including Night of the Generals, was a brief letter from him thanking me for my efforts. (Dead authors can present a problem. I once caught one out in a bad bit of continuity. Being naturally unable to contact him, I corrected it on the assumption that he’d have been grateful!) No, I don’t make multiple drafts. I compose my translations as I go, then print out my drafts and give them a final polish before delivery. I have to read and correct everything in hard copy - can’t assess what I’ve done solely on the screen. As to sources of work, the first move always comes from my publishers. I’ve tried to pitch books but never succeeded.

MH: Were you aware of Walter Moers’s work before you were asked to translate The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear?

JBJ: Yes, but only of his work as a cartoonist.

MH: The Zamonia books are quite wacky and strange. There are literally hundreds of made-up words, names, and anagrams galore. How did you handle it all?

JBJ: Producing English versions of Walter’s made-up names certainly taxes one’s ingenuity. Sometimes I have to diverge completely from the original German. Elsewhere I often draw on the remnants of my classical education and resort to Latinizing bits of them. For instance, the “Living Books” in German became the “Animatomes” in English. As for the anagrams, which are great fun to do, I took Walter’s advice and got out my old Scrabble set, which proved a great help!

MH: Did the illustrations ever come in handy while translating?

JBJ: Yes, they’ve often provided me with an insight into the author’s wealth of imagination.

MH: Will we ever see Moers' Hansel and Gretel novel in English? Also, do you know the status of the next Zamonia book given The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books ends on quite a cliffhanger note?

JBJ: Unfortunately, I don’t think his Hansel and Gretel book lends itself to translation into English. The sequel to The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is already taking shape..

MH: Is there a book or series you'd love to see translate into English?

JBJ: No, I don’t have anything special in mind.

MH: Why do you think in other languages about half of the published books are translated from English, but the percentage of books translated into English is less than 10%?

JBJ: Sadly, if it’s a toss-up between two books of roughly equal merit, one of them written in English and the other in some foreign language, US and UK publishers will ten to go for the former. This is partly because translation fees represent a not inconsiderable part of the production costs, and it’s possible (I don’t know) that British and American translators are better paid than their European counterparts. I suspect there is also, even now, a hangover from the days when a lot of very poor translations appeared after World War II, often done by European expatriates whose command of idiomatic English was less than adequate. This created a prejudice against translated works in general. My own “philosophy” - though some would disagree - is that a translation should read as if it were an original. After all, readers who are continually brought up short by unidiomatic turns of phrase will soon lay a book aside in disgust.

MH: What projects are you translating at the moment? 

JBJ: I’m taking a few weeks off while awaiting the imminent arrival of another two new German novels by existing authors of mine, Alex Capus (Leon and Louise) and Alain Claude Sulzer (A Perfect Waiter).

MH: You're certainly keeping busy. Thank you for all your time. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

JBJ: Yes, I’d like to thank all the US publishers and reviewers who never fail to mention the names and appreciate the efforts of those who render foreign literature accessible, i.e. translators. The same cannot, alas, be said of UK reviewers and literary editors, whose neglect of us is shameful.

MH: Thanks for making it possible to read so many foreign works.

You can catch-up with the whole Walter Moers Blog Tour at these fine establishments:
Thursday, Nov 1 - Introduction to the Blog Tour - BookSexy Review
Friday, Nov 2 - Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews will post an Overview/Presentation of Moers’ Books
Saturday, Nov 3 - TNBBC will post a review of The City of Dreaming Books
Sunday, Nov 4 - BookSexy Review will post a Travel/Tour Guide to Bookholm
Monday, Nov 5 - SJ @ Book Snobbery will post a fan letter to Optimus Yarnspinner
Tuesday, Nov 6 - Anastasia at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog will post a review of The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books
Thursday, Nov 8 - Theresa will pot the giveaway at the Winged Elephant blog (Overlook's Blog)

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Me in the Aether

No, not that kind of aether. I'd probably not be able to type had I been around that. I'm out there in the Internet aether being interviewed by Mieneke over at A Fantastical Librarian. In it we chat bookshelves, rating, and negative reviews. Enjoy my nattering!

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INTERVIEW | Jim Hines author of Libriomancer

Jim C. Hines has been one of favorite writers since long before I started this blog. It all started with a little book found at my local bookstore called Goblin Quest starring a little blue near-sighted goblin named Jig and his trepidatious fire spider companion Smudge. From there Jig's adventures got bigger with Goblin Hero and Goblin War. Hines's prominence then grew with a quartet of novels based on fairy tale princess stories starting with The Stepsister Scheme and his latest novel Libriomancer--out this week--is his first in the Urban Fantasy series Ex Libris, which is also his first hardcover release.

*****

MH: You've done your Quest Fantasy series, which turned into something of an Epic with the Goblin books, tackled the Fairy Tale genre with the Princess novels, and now you're after Urban Fantasy with Libriomancer. Is your plot to cover the breadth of Genre literature?

HINES: YES! Though I'm finding this one-book-at-a-time approach to be painfully slow. This is why my next book will be 50 SHADES OF BLUE, an erotic romance about goblin detectives in the old west. It will be a picture book.

MH: That's a best-seller waiting to happen. Despite my reluctance on erotic romances that would certainly be something to behold. Smudge, originally scene in the Goblin books, reasserts his role as a sidekick/companion in Libriomancer. You mentioned in the introduction that a short story was the impetuous for Smudge coming back. Did you ever feel pressure on bringing a character you've used so much into a new world?

HINES: That would be "Mightier than the Sword," in Gamer Fantastic, yes. I was (and still am) very nervous about bringing Smudge back. I love that little fire-spider. I'm not fond of spiders in general, but Smudge is just fun. I wanted to be true to his character, and I didn't want to bring him back as just a gimmick. He needed a real role in the story, both in terms of the plot, and in his relationship with Isaac. Smudge has changed a little since his time in the goblin caves. The transition to another world has made him a little ... let's call it "quirkier." But the core of his character is very much there, and I had a blast exploring how he'd relate to our world. One of my favorite bits is when Isaac remarks on how Smudge likes to ride on the dashboard, and that a fire-spider works well for defrosting the windshield during those Michigan winters.

MH: I love that little fire spider too. Libriomancer is peppered with genre literary references from both classic and new works. How much were you bribed for those mentions? And did you go back and re-read a lot of books to get the little details right?

HINES: How much did they bribe me? Well, looking at my bills for this month, IT WASN'T ENOUGH! There were actually only a few instances where I deliberately snuck a friend's name in. Ann Crispin has done tremendous work through Writer Beware, and I remember loving her Star Trek novels when I was younger, so I asked if I could put her in as the author of Vulcan's Mirror. My friend Catherine did a quick consult for me on the idea for Rabid, so I listed her as the author for that one. Mostly though, I just looked for the books that fit, and the kind of books Isaac would want to use for various situations.

As for rereading, I wish I had time to reread every book I mentioned. I read some, skimmed through others, and queried the groupmind on Facebook and Twitter for a few.

MH: You're become known as a humorist Fantasy writer. What moment(s) made you feel that was the direction you should head and make your niche in? Were you know as a funny guy growing up?

HINES: When I started seriously trying to make it as a writer, I concentrated on serious stories. I wanted to be deep and powerful. The first time I made someone cry with one of my stories, it was a huge triumph. But none of that stuff sold. Finally, in a fit of annoyance, I wrote a quirky, humorous sword and sorcery story about a magic bunny knife. It won first place at Writers of the Future, and remains the highest-paying short story I’ve ever done. That was my first clue that maybe lighter stuff was a better fit for me. I still pushed myself to learn how to write dark and serious, but I have more fun when I can work humor into the story.

Growing up, I was mostly known as that skinny, geeky kid. But I did enjoy making people laugh. That hasn’t changed. When someone tells me a story of mine cracked them up, or a blog post made them laugh-snort their coffee, it makes my whole day.

MH: Labeling is something many reviewers seem at odds about, especially YA. I find the Jig the Goblin books YA friendly even going so far as to give them to my niece. If you could have had a say and had them published in the YA category would you? Granted the YA category barely existed when Goblin Quest came out.

HINES: YA was growing when Goblin Quest came out, and a part of me wondered if it would have done better had it been marketed that way. It’s one of those books that could go either way, I think. DAW (my publisher) doesn’t have a YA line, so it came out as regular adult fantasy here in the U.S. But the French editions of the goblin books were published as YA. Who am I to try to unravel the mysteries of book marketing?

MH: Sometimes I think it is whatever works that day for publishers. Have you begun work on the sequel to Libriomancer? Any thing you can share such as a title or direction?

HINES: If you'd asked me about the title 24 hours ago, I would have said no, but I just last night emailed several suggestions to my editor. I think my favorite is "Codex Born." I don't know if that will be what we use, but I like it. I'm currently about 25K words into the second draft of book two. I'm exploring Lena's character a bit more, as well as the history of the Porters and some of the enemies Gutenberg made along the way. I'm also pissing off my protagonist, which is what a good author is supposed to do, right?

MH: That's exactly as it should be. Just hope he doesn't pop out of the book one day. More on the history of the Porters and Gutenberg is definitely what I'd like to see. Do you have any celebration rituals when you finish or sell a new book?

HINES: I don't, and I really need to start some. Any suggestions?

MH: A bottle of wine and reading a good book seems like the way to go. Or how about dancing a merry jig? What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

HINES: Always ... no, never ... forget to check your references. Also, sit your butt in the chair and write!

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

HINES: THIS ONE, BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME! (And the bonus sonic screwdriver takes that picture up to 11.)

MH: Now that is a swank hat. What books are you reading at the moment?

HINES: Lots of good stuff! I'm halfway through N. K. Jemisin's Kingdom of Gods, the final book in her Inheritance Trilogy. I've also been reading various works from the Hugo Voter Packet, and recently finished Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons, which comes out in February of 2013.

MH: I love the cover for Brennan's book. I'll have to make time for it. And thanks for all your time. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

HINES: Thanks for inviting me to do the interview. This was fun! For anyone who's read all the way to the end, you can check out the first chapter of Libriomancer at www.jimchines.com, or follow the links on that site to come hang out with me on the blog, Twitter, Facebook and such. Finally, always stock up on emergency cupcakes, never piss off a platypus, and try not to get too jealous of my hat.

MH: I'll try not to get jealous, but it is going to be hard.

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INTERVIEW | Nick Harkaway author of Angelmaker

Nick Harkaway is a former screenwriter and the author of the very well lauded The Gone Away World. His second novel Angelmaker., was just released, which combines Spy Thrillers, mechanical wonders, and a gonzo sensibility. Harkaway is also a blogger for Futurebook.


MH: Thanks for joining us. Now your latest book Angelmaker seems to be a departure from The Gone Away World in terms of scope yet it still carries on with some themes such as coming of age and war, but is a much more focused story. What is your bar room description of Angelmaker?

HARKAWAY: Oh, wow - my writing is hell on précis... that was part of the point for me when I stopped doing movie script - I didn't have to do back-of-an-envelope pitches... Well, okay: guy switches on doomsday machine, has to break all the rules to save the world. But if there's table service I might get away with a few more lines about how it's about gangsters and spies and elephants, and patrimony and love and self-creation... But in the first place it's an adventure. I want people to have fun.

MH: Angelmaker is many different things. It is a spy thriller, a secret history of the world, and a story of multiple legacies. But what it most reminded me of were old school pulp adventures. What were you reading that led to Angelmaker?

HARKAWAY: Well, I do love the old pulp stories - and some of them are way better than people give them credit for. There's a massive discipline of plotting required if you're going to write at the speed those guys did and turn in a coherent story. And don't forget that Dickens and Conan Doyle both wrote episodically, too - their novels were written for magazines. But what was I reading... it's four years ago at least for me, so it's hard to remember. Rex Stout, I think. Robert Anton Wilson was in my mind, and DeLilo and Chabon, for sure. But it's a cinematic heritage, too - Little Caesar, Maltese Falcon, The Third Man... And obviously some of it is more James Bond. The Bond novies are great because - at least in the good ones - they understand the most important aspect of an adventure: the villain. A good villain makes the hero glorious. An insipid one makes him look weak - because how can it take so long to beat this dummy?

MH: One of the most beautiful aspects of Angelmaker were your descriptions of the devices created by the mechanical artisan group the Rushkinites. Where did your fascination with old mechanical objects begin? Was there one device that fascinated you as a child? Or was your own grandfather perhaps a tinkerer of some sort?

HARKAWAY: My mother's father had a clockwork music thing - there's a technical term but right now I've completely forgotten what it is - which is amazing. Metal punched discs played on a kind of grown-up music box, producing and absolutely beautiful tone. It's a magical object. But I've always loved strange and baroque objects. They have a humour and a joy about them. I fell in love with Jean Tanguely's machines and Rowland Emett's, with Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg. The Ruskinite notion is near to my heart as well: artisan objects, with a personal narrative, affirm humanity in a way machine made products do not. But I have no idea where it all starts - it's been with me as long as I can remember - like telling stories.

MH: Angelmaker does have a Steampunk appeal to it to a degree stemming from the stylized mechanics, but I wouldn't call it Steampunk. I heard one person refer to it as Beepunk. How do you feel about labels in fiction?

HARKAWAY: I think they're almost always going to be inadequate with interesting writing. They're a shelving convention from the days when bookshops were isolated and catalogues weren't online, yet they continue to govern how we talk about stories. There are noble exceptions, books which plot the dead centre of a given label and become iconic as examples of it, but most labels are shorthands within which there are huge and exciting differences. You can't really say that The Difference Engine and The Diamond Age are the same kind of book. Sure, they have some similar architecture, but they take place at far distant ends of the timeline and have completely different feels. In the same way, Goldeneye and Brighton Rock are both spy movies, but liking one really does not guarantee liking another. Or even understanding it.

Which is not to say I don't love BeePunk, or LitPop, or whatever else, as concepts. But seriously, even there you get drift. Why 'punk'? I mean, obviously to make the connection to steampunk, but actually the punk part is missing from the book. Body modding and youth counterculture - which you see in cyberpunk and to a limited extent in some steampunk - are just gone. Angelmaker is a thriller, but it's not a bad boy with a ripped jacket. It's more like Bruce Wayne: garrulous and tipsy and pretending to be kind of a jackass, but it knows Kung Fu.

MH: The US cover for Angelmaker has some sort of puzzle worked in. Was this of your own devising or was the designer Jason Booher the culprit? The cover is quite amazing to behold. Online certainly doesn't do the print version justice.

HARKAWAY: This was Jason's idea. I contributed, but he made it happen. It was weirdly like editorial, only backwards: my publisher had this crazy dream and I complained and advised until it was ready to go... I suppose the US edition, technically, is slightly longer than the UK one... Yeah, I love the design!

MH: You seem to have a bit of fun in naming characters. Billy Friend and Rodney Titwhistle for example. Are names something you struggle with or do they pop into being quickly?

HARKAWAY: Usually they just show up along with the character. Occasionally they have to change, either because I was wrong about who that person is, or because they're out of whack with the tone. I tend to let names be a statement of some sort, which of course in real life they're not. And I try not to look back. Calling Billy "Friend" is an insane thing to do. Because that is his role. He's the friend. I could have called him McGuffin, too, because he's the guy who issues the Hero's Call, albeit sort of without meaning to. So then I thought about changing that, but it worked. It worked for me on the don't mess level of writing, the bit which runs the show and for which writers are pretty much passengers. So I ended up hanging a lantern on it, making jokes about how "he's a friend" is a gag they've done over the years. The Coen brothers say you have to write yourself into a corner so that you can write yourself out again, because that's when you do your best stuff. Names can be corners. Or they can just work.

MH: Just like how Rodney Titwhistle is a bit of tit. Your characters are incredibly rich, and it's usually the small details that make them seem less creations and more translations. How much do you draw from people you know or have met when you're developing characters, and how much is fabricated?

HARKAWAY: It's almost all fabricated. The shape of the story dictates the kind of person needed, and then the characters and their nature strengthens my grip on the world and what goes on. (Rodney, incidentally, got his funny name in part because he's very, very not funny, and I suppose to some extent because it sounds like one of those regretable English names which kick around until someone can't stand it any more and just changes it to something else.)

MH: In the same vein your fiction has such a fractured style and many seemingly loose ends that come into play late in the game. Do you ever lose yourself in the story structure? Also, one thing you're style has been known for are digressions. What do you see as the purpose of digression in a story?

HARKAWAY: Almost all my digressions fill a function, and usually it's to give you information you need without appearing to do so. Exposition is boring, and it can flag what's happening. But if you bury a piece of information in a flood of random detail - and somehow manage to make it stand out just enough - people get to your surprises and go " Oh, of course!" rather than "What the hell?" I don't generally get lost because I know why I'm there - my problem is not holding onto whatever secret it is I'm passing to you, it's burying it deep enough that you don't know you know it.

MH: I wanted to turn a bit of attention on to The Gone Away World while I have you. The narrative in The Gone Away World is essentially circular, mimicking the world-encircling pipe. Is structure a conscious decision when you're writing or do you let it develop naturally?

HARKAWAY: I wasn't deliberately mimicking the pipe, or the snake which eats its own tail  I was basically using the classic bookend style. TGAW is a hero story, a straightforward hero's journey dressed up in complexity. Take out the backstory and it's remarkably linear - you just have to know a bunch of things all the characters would already know in order to understand what's going on, so I have to show you those things and yet not let you know you're being told the answers. Hence, indeed, all the digressions.

MH: Who would win in a street fight: Ike Thermite or Bruce Lee?

HARKAWAY: It's like that sequence in Seven Samurai: neither of them would have any interest in a fight. They might well get drunk, though.

MH: Scotch or beer?

HARKAWAY: Scotch in its time and place, but beer with my club sandwich.

MH: You've been surrounded by writerly-types your whole life. What's the best piece of advice you've received?

HARKAWAY: When you're a pro, you work. You work when you're sick or hung over, when you want to sleep in. You keep going when you're heartbroken or scared, when everyone else goes to the pub. You don't give yourself a free pass. And sooner or later, you finish. And go back to the start. It's a stamina game.

MH: Okay, you've pretty much destroyed the world with The Gone Away World and almost destroyed the existence with Angelmaker. What's next? I've heard rumblings of your first non-fiction book.

HARKAWAY: Yeah, I've written a book about digitisation and the individual - The Blind Giant. It comes out in May... Wow, non-fiction is hard! What I hope is that there's enough interesting stuff to make up for whatever mistakes there are. It's about concepts, though I've tried to tie it to real world examples and studies.

But I've also done a draft of a third novel, which I'm itching to get back to. Novels are my thing.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

HARKAWAY: I wear a Swaine Adeney & Brigg "Poet". It is genuinely the best hat I have ever owned, the Indiana Jones heritage being a bonus.

MH: Very swank. What books are you reading at the moment?

HARKAWAY: Planet Ponzi, The Teleportation Accident, and The English Monster. I also have Isaac Marion's new collection waiting for me.

MH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

HARKAWAY: Just that for me it's about telling stories and enjoying them. As long as you're having as much fun as I am, I'm good. Oh, and come and say hello on Twitter - @Harkaway. And thanks for having me :)

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Special thanks go out to Adam Callaway for helping out with questions. Watch out for him. He's going to be huge one day.

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INTERVIEW | Martha Wells author of The Serpent Sea

Martha Wells is one of those "where have you been all my life writers" having only discovered her last year with The Cloud Roads. But the best thing about finding an already established author is they have plenty of older works to tide you over until the newest book is released. She is the author of twelve novels, including the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as a number of short stories and nonfiction articles. Her first novel, The Element of Fire, was published by Tor in hardcover in July 1993 and was a finalist for the 1993 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award and a runner-up for the 1994 Crawford Award. The French edition, Le feu primordial, was a 2003 Imaginales Award nominee. Her third novel The Death of the Necromancer (Avon Eos) was a 1998 Nebula Award Nominee and the French edition was a 2002 Imaginales Award nominee. Her most recent release is the Fantasy The Serpent Sea, sequel to The Cloud Roads, both from Night Shade books.

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MH: Thanks for joining us today, Martha. You've now published about a dozen novels and been nominated for numerous awards including the Nebula. Was there ever a moment when you felt like you made it as a writer?

WELLS: Not really. There are a lot of moments that stand out for me. Nothing beats finding out you've sold your first novel. Except possibly finding out I had sold The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea after a three year sales drought. Finding out I was nominated for the Nebula award for The Death of the Necromancer was wonderful, once I'd been persuaded to believe that it was actually happening. My mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's that year, so it was a very stressful time, and that was one of the few bright spots in the year.

Nowadays, unless you have a super-mega-hit bestseller, I don't think you ever make it as a writer permanently. I think you have to make it all over again, prove yourself all over again, with each book.

MH: The Cloud Roads portrays a world with a seemingly endless history of immense cultures and species that have risen and fallen. There are no humans per se in the world, but many that are humanoid. What made you want to develop this world in such a manner?

WELLS: I wanted to do something different. The last fantasy novels I'd written were the Ile-Rien trilogy, where I was working with two different worlds: Ile-Rien, which was heavily based on 1920s France and Europe in general, and already had a background of history that I'd established in The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer, and the alternate world of Cineth, which had Greek and Roman influences and a more sword and sorcery feel. I did enjoy using historical settings as inspiration, but I felt like it was time to really push myself to do something beyond that.

I also wanted to get back to the SF/F novels I'd read when I was growing up, the ones I used to find in the library when I should have been staying in the children's fiction section. The ones with wild pulp covers and two moons and people riding animals with three eyes and horns and being green for no reason. I really enjoyed those books, and I wanted to recapture that sense of wonder, and that feeling of starting out somewhere strange and travelling somewhere even stranger. That's always been one of my favorite things about SF/F. I like to read about places where I have no idea what's going to be over the next hill or around the corner.

MH: Is it any different or harder to write so many non-human characters. Most Fantasy books have at least one focal human while the Raksura books don't feature any.

WELLS: I don't think it's different or harder. I do the characterization in basically the same way. I try to think about what this person's life would be like, what their likes, dislikes, loves, fears, and so on would be. All that is affected by physical appearance and abilities, the environment where the characters live. When the person you're characterizing isn't human, you just have to use more of your imagination.

MH: You just recently finished the first draft of the third Raksura book. Any details you can tell us? Title perhaps? The Serpent Sea sees Moon and company travel to another colony. Are things getting more Epic? Do we get to learn more mysteries of this world?

WELLS: I actually haven't decided on a title yet. With every book I've done, I either hit on the title effortlessly at some point while I'm writing it, or I finish the book without a title and agonize over trying to pick a good one. With this book I'm in the agonize stage now.

There is a lot more in it about Moon's past and what happened to the court he originally came from, and it brings the whole story full circle, I think. They encounter the Fell again, too.

MH: By the same note do you see yourself doing anything else placed on this world? It seems so rich that you might be able to even do something in the deep past of the world given how many cultures have risen and fallen over the eons.

WELLS: I think that's a definite possibility, and I know I'd like to do more books set there, either with the Raksura or with another set of characters. It's a fun world to explore.

I have written one short story set in the Three Worlds with different characters than the books. It's "The Almost-Last Voyage of the Windship Escarpment" and it's posted for free on my web site.

MH: You just announced you've got a contract for the third Raksura book so big congratulations are in order! Do you have any celebration rituals when you sell a new book?

WELLS: Thanks! I don't really have any one thing that I do, except collapse in relief. Usually I go out to dinner with my husband, but the day I got the email about the third book, I was about to leave to drive to ConDFW in Dallas. So it was a lot of fun getting to see some friends there and tell them in person. Going to a convention is a great way to celebrate!

MH: What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

WELLS: I've been given a lot of great advice over the years, but I think the best critique I've had was from Bruce Sterling at a Turkey City Writers Workshop in Austin, Texas. This was a few years before I sold my first book, and I'd been trying to write short stories. He was very good at breaking down the prose and telling you exactly why this one sentence worked and exactly why this one didn't. It was the most helpful workshop I ever went to.

MH: You've published a couple media tie-in novels in the Stargate universe. Is that something you'd consider again? Was it very different from writing your own original fiction?

WELLS: I wouldn't do it again unless it was a show I loved as much as I did Stargate: Atlantis. I'd been watching SG1 since the first season, so I was already a big Stargate fan when SGA started airing, and the first season had me hooked. The only thing that was different from my original fiction was that I had to work hard to match the character's voices to the actors' performances, and to make sure I was getting the details of the technology right. I felt a big obligation to try to get everything right, and to come up with an adventure that would mesh with the kinds of things they do on the show. I really enjoyed writing those characters, so I had a lot of fun with those two books. It was very different from what I had been writing in my fantasy novels, and I think it was a creative break that I really needed.

MH: Many people discuss how e-books are the future and you've been re-releasing many of your older titles. What has your experience been like so far? Do you feel like they've helped your career and exposure in some way?

WELLS: It's been a pretty good experience. The one that was the most work was Wheel of the Infinite.  I didn't have a Word file of the final version of the book to use, so I had to cut apart a hardcover to scan it. That was a surprisingly unpleasant thing to have to do; destroying a book felt very, very wrong, even though I was doing it for a good reason.

I don't think having them available has helped my career or exposure any. I think they're mainly found/bought by people who are already searching for my name on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's mainly nice to have them still easily available to new readers who have read The Cloud Roads or The Serpent Sea and want to check out my older books.

MH: Now on to the important stuff. What is your favorite type of hat?

WELLS: I have a floppy canvas hat that I love, mainly because I can roll it up and cram it into a pocket without hurting it.

MH: What's the book you're most looking forward to this year?

WELLS: There are a lot of books I'm looking forward to, but I think the one that's coming up the soonest is The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin.

MH: That's on my list as well. Is there anything you like to add to close us out?

WELLS: My web site is http://www.marthawells.com and has sample chapters of all my books, free short stories, and lots of other stuff. I also just put up an "extras" section for The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea, with the short stories, a missing scene from The Cloud Roads, some information on the world, etc. It's at http://www.raksura.com.

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INTERVIEW | David Tallerman author of Giant Thief

I've always had a penchant towards thieves in Fantasy. From Robin Hood and my old days playing DnD all the way up to Lynch's Locke Lamora and Hulicks' Drothe, thieves have always come across as great characters because they often fight with themselves about what to do and just happen to get in scrap after scrap. So I was immediately drawn to David Tallerman's very fun debut Giant Thief from Angry Robot in late January. Tallerman has been busily writing short stories for a few years having his work published in Lightspeed,  Bull Spec, and many other places, but it was the first line in Giant Thief that really drew me in and wouldn't let me put the book down.

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MH: Thanks for joining us today David. To begin can you tell us a little about yourself and your road to becoming an author? You've published quite a bit of short fiction over the last 4 years, but Giant Thief is your debut novel. Did Giant Thief have its origins in any short story in particular?

DT: I'd been talking about wanting to be a writer since I was in my teens, but six or seven years ago it sank in that it had to be a lot more more than talk. I'd spent maybe five years writing a book I knew would never sell (and which no one will ever read!) and I finally realised writing was too important to me to treat that way. I wanted to write stories I liked and cared about, I wanted to work towards a point where doing that was more or less my life, and I finally felt like I was willing to put in the time and effort to make that happen.

I had an actual full-on Stalinist five year plan at the start there, but I don't remember what it actually was, and it changed a lot as things went on. At first I wrote vast numbers of short stories, which was a lot of fun. I tried to keep pushing myself, to be getting a little bit better all the time, or at least learning how to do something I'd never tried before.

There came a point, maybe three years into that, where I began to realise I'd have to have another go at a novel. Giant Thief didn't originate with any one story, but it did come out of not wanting to make the mistakes I'd made with my first attempt at novel writing. I was writing one or two short stories a month, and I didn't want to lose that pace. So it had to be something fast-paced, fun, not too convoluted. Something I could throw myself into and just keep moving with.

MH: Why giants?

DT: You know, I have no idea.

The image it all started with was a guy escaping on a giant ... I don't remember the particular train of thought that took me there, but it came from somewhere and I liked it, on a whole lot of levels. It met the criteria. What's more fast-paced, fun and linear than a chase? Then close on the first idea came the realisation of what kind of a character would think stealing a giant as an escape vehicle was a good idea - and there was the core of Giant Thief.

MH: Giant Thief is told in the first person from the titular thief Easie Damasco. Was there ever a time when the story was told third person?

DT: No, never. I guess that goes back to what I was saying above. I figured, not entirely correctly, that it was harder to tie yourself in knots with a first person narrative. Then again, once Damasco started to take shape it was obvious it had to be his voice doing the telling - because there was no way he'd ever shut up.

MH: Easie definitely has a tongue on him. Darker characters or what is becoming known as gritty, grey, and ambiguous characters have been on the rise in Fantasy the last decade and Easie seems to fit in that somewhere. When you were growing up what characters in Fantasy were you interested in? More of the reluctant born hero types like Aragon? Or someone who wants to do good, but isn't above doing a bit of evil to get their way? Or just an out and out bastard?

DT: With a couple of exceptions, those being Pratchett and Gaiman, I wasn't a big fantasy reader in my youth. It's really only in the last five years that I've been seriously reading fantasy. I guess both Gaiman and Pratchett did leave their fingerprints on Giant Thief, though. They're both terrific writers of protagonists you can't help rooting for despite, or because of, their overwhelming defects as human beings. My instinct with Damasco wasn't so much that he'd be gritty or ambiguous, but that he'd stay true to a few basic traits that were bound to come with the lifestyle he'd been leading. He's a thief. That means he steals stuff and doesn't beat himself up over it. He's used to getting by on his own, and he's got far too big a mouth. I'm okay with any kind of hero, good, bad or indifferent, so long as they have that kind of consistency.

MH: If you met Easie in a bar and he struck up a conversation are you more likely to buy him a drink or slap him for trying to steal your wallet?

DT: I'd buy Easie a drink, I owe him that much. But then I'd get the hell out of there. Even if he didn't make a grab for my wallet, there'd be sure to be trouble close behind him.

MH: Will we get to learn more about Giant culture in Crown Thief? Speaking of which where does the story go from Giant Thief?

DT: Not so much their culture, but we'll certainly see much more of the giants in Crown Thief, and get more of a sense of what makes them tick.

I don't want to say too much plot-wise about Crown Thief, for obvious reasons Suffice to say that it picks up directly where Giant Thief ends, with our heroes (that is, all the main characters who aren't Damasco) quickly realising that everything isn't just going to return to normal, that there are some major pieces left in the wake of the first book's events still to be picked up - in fact, that by trying to do the right thing they may have opened the floodgates to an even bigger threat. In amongst all that, we have Damasco heading off to meet the King, with the Castoval's greatest assassin at his heels ... and you just know that's not going to end well.

MH: Now on to the important stuff. What is your favorite type of hat?

DT: A plain straw hat is fine by me. They never seem to last though. I've had my current one for a couple of years now, which has to be a record.

MH: Besides the release of Giant Thief what are you most looking forward to in 2012?

DT: Why, the release of Crown Thief of course!

No? Okay. Well, I'm hoping to finish the decorating and refurbishment of the house I bought a couple of months ago. That's pretty exciting.

MH: Since you're still early in your career I'm going to throw some good old standard questions at you that every novelist has to answer at some point. First, who is the one author living or dead you'd like to have dinner with?

DT: I'm going to say Terry Pratchett. Asides from the fact that I'm sure he'd be good company, I can't think of any writer, save perhaps King, who's struck such a balance between popular success, critical approval and tending to his own writerly needs. Long after the point where the Discworld should have got tired, long after the point where he ever needed to work again, you can tell Pratchett's still loving what he's doing.

MH: Next what are 3 of your favorite novels ever?

DT: Without giving it too much thought, I'm going to say...

Rogue Male - Geoffrey Household
The War of the Worlds - H G Wells
Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

MH: Very nice picks. Lastly, if you could live in a Fantasy world, which would it be?

DT: Tough question. Most fantasy worlds are fairly unsafe places to live in, aren't they? I'm going to opt for Vance's Lyonesse; it might not be significantly less dangerous than anywhere else, but at least I'd never be bored.

MH: Thanks for playing along. Besides January's release of Giant Thief is there anything you'd like to mention to close us out?

DT: Well, it would be lovely if a few more people read my blog at http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com. And if anyone happens to be at the UK SFX weekender in February, come say hi at the official Giant Thief book launch.

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