Self-Interviewing
There's a very enthusiastic review of Winterbirth over at The Fantasy Review. Good stuff.
At the very end, there's a plea for someone to get out the thumbscrews and extract an answer from me to a particular question. In an effort to cut out the middleman, and because one or two other people have been curious about the same subject, I thought I'd short-circuit the system a bit and do a quick interview with myself. So here we go ... Oh, this will make basically no sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn't read Winterbirth, by the way. Sorry.
Q: Is there going to be any more information on the Anain, Saolin or Whreinin?
A: Well I don't want to stray into spoilerish territory. The safest thing to say would be that a little more info on all the races can be found in the Gazetteer on this very site, and more is likely to appear there eventually.
Q: 'Little' is a very accurate description of what's currently in the Gazetteer. You can surely be a bit more revealing than that?
A: Okay, okay. First off, the Whreinin are extinct, so the chances of them taking an active role in this trilogy are ... slim. They may get talked about now and again, though. For those interested in the archaeology of the writing process, back in the mists of time there did once exist a draft of Winterbirth, and a notional outline of the next two books, in which there was considerably more stuff about the Whreinin floating around. It didn't survive the slaughter that is revising and rewriting.
As far as the Anain are concerned, the short answer is yes, there's more to come on the subject of the Anain in both Bloodheir and Book 3. The focus stays on humans and Kyrinin, but the Anain won't be staying entirely passive. What part they play, I obviously can't tell you or I'd have to kill you.
Q: That's slightly more illuminating, I suppose. Still seems a little coy as answers go. You haven't even mentioned the Saolin, for example. Couldn't you ... Hello? Hello? Oh, our interviewee seems to have gone off to boil the kettle. I guess that's the end of the interview.
At the very end, there's a plea for someone to get out the thumbscrews and extract an answer from me to a particular question. In an effort to cut out the middleman, and because one or two other people have been curious about the same subject, I thought I'd short-circuit the system a bit and do a quick interview with myself. So here we go ... Oh, this will make basically no sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn't read Winterbirth, by the way. Sorry.
Q: Is there going to be any more information on the Anain, Saolin or Whreinin?
A: Well I don't want to stray into spoilerish territory. The safest thing to say would be that a little more info on all the races can be found in the Gazetteer on this very site, and more is likely to appear there eventually.
Q: 'Little' is a very accurate description of what's currently in the Gazetteer. You can surely be a bit more revealing than that?
A: Okay, okay. First off, the Whreinin are extinct, so the chances of them taking an active role in this trilogy are ... slim. They may get talked about now and again, though. For those interested in the archaeology of the writing process, back in the mists of time there did once exist a draft of Winterbirth, and a notional outline of the next two books, in which there was considerably more stuff about the Whreinin floating around. It didn't survive the slaughter that is revising and rewriting.
As far as the Anain are concerned, the short answer is yes, there's more to come on the subject of the Anain in both Bloodheir and Book 3. The focus stays on humans and Kyrinin, but the Anain won't be staying entirely passive. What part they play, I obviously can't tell you or I'd have to kill you.
Q: That's slightly more illuminating, I suppose. Still seems a little coy as answers go. You haven't even mentioned the Saolin, for example. Couldn't you ... Hello? Hello? Oh, our interviewee seems to have gone off to boil the kettle. I guess that's the end of the interview.
Labels: Interviews, Reviews, Winterbirth
posted by Brian Ruckley at 7:33 PM :: Permalink ::
4 Comments:
Thanks for the answer! You are an excellent interviewer and interviewee!
Great answer, the way you pulled information from your interviewee was just...illuminating. Looking forward to Bloodheir :)
The second and final part of our interview is now up.
Chris
A question from me... How do you feel about the 'heroic fantasy' tag? This was used in the Times review and quoted on the UK pb back cover (so someone must like it.) As it happens it was one reason I bought the book! It's hard to make these terms mean anything - 'high fantasy', 'sword & sorcery', 'epic fantasy' plain ol' 'fantasy' - they're all pretty slippery. My own £0.02 worth is that 'heroic fantasy' usually denotes a fantasy tale with a focus on the heroic action of an individual or small group of characters. Did you have a sense of the type of fantasy you were writing while you were working on Winterbirth?
I don't think it's as easy as it used to be - if it ever was easy - to distinguish between the different strands of fanasty. For what it's worth, when I first started writing Winterbirth I thought I was writing pretty straightforward epic fantasy. The 'heroic' tag arises, I think, from the tone that emerged as I wrote the book, rather than the structure of the tale. I can see why people think it fits, and I'm not averse to it as a label. I've kind of ended up thinking of myself as writing 'epic heroic fantasy'. It sounds better than 'gritty fantasy', at least, which is probably the single commonest description of it I've heard so far!
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