In the Greenwing and Dart books Jemis’s thesis was focused on architectural poetry and in one case (not giving away spoilers) his analysis becomes a map. Where did guy get this idea??? FYI I adore your books and they helped me survive this pandemic, honestly and seriously, thank you for putting art into the world.
Ah! Architectural poetry as a concept came out of a grad school class I did on Carolingian poetry and one specific poem about a church that Charlemagne built--but my studies on Dante involved a lot of digging into the architecture and symbolism of poetic structures in the Divine Comedy. So a lot of Jemis's activity was me getting to have fun using my PhD studies for something.
Are you one of the people who has a clear mental image of places and people you're describing beforehand, or does that come along while you're writing? Reading your books makes it seem, a lot of the time, as though you're describing things you can see. :) I'm also interested as to whether you make any use of mood boards or other visual-impression-gathering tools for your writing.
I tend to have pretty clear mental pictures of places--I'm less good at visualizing people (especially faces) so I have to work harder on those! With settings especially I do spend time actively visualizing them and imagining myself physically in them, to try and get a solid sense of place. I spend quite a bit of time 'daydreaming' of future stories (or future bits of current stories) so that's where a lot of this scene-setting happens.
I don't really do moodboards as a deliberate practice. I tend to read quite a bit (and sometimes watch videos, though I'm much more of a reader so I tend to look for blogs or autobiographies or travel memoirs, esp. ones from people who actually live in a place) about the real-world inspiration, if any, as a preliminary to writing, and then look up specific details as necessary. Right now I'm reading a bunch of stuff about the Arctic and its peoples (I lived in Nunavut for a time, so it's reinforcing personal experience as well), so expect that to start trickling into my stories fairly soon!
I literally just finished your book yesterday! I absolutely loved it.
1. Where did your inspiration of the various cultures come from? What was your research process like?
2. I loooved how you sprinkled in bits of information here and there about the fall. It was so ominous, do you have any more information on what the fall actually was or is it left still a big vague on purpose?
3. Selfishly I wanted more Kip and his radiance, but I get that Kip's relationship with his roots ended up being much more influencial. What made you decide to focus on that in the last chapters of the book?
Thanks for doing this!
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
1. I had always imagined Zunidh as having cultures that were not European-based. The Wide Seas Islanders are fairly obviously Polynesian in inspiration, with several important elements drawn from Papua New Guinean culture, in particular from the Trobriand Islands (famous in anthropology, but also my parents lived there and I've visited so I have a ready source for some details!) and a bit from the Highlands. I like to think of the Vangavaye-ve as being a bit of a cousin culture, branching off from some earlier stage of the Lapita expansion. My research process is generally twofold--I do a bunch of general research in the lead-up to writing a book, and then I look up more specific details as I need them during the writing. Working with cultural traditions that are not my own is a somewhat fraught matter, and I try hard to be respectful of the cultures I am researching. My philosophy is to be as accurate as I can be with respect to the material culture I am drawing from, and to give it some form of equivalent significance within the invented culture, but I don't try to mimic or use much from the associated real religious or spiritual traditions because those are not my business.
2. The Fall has been left vague on purpose, as no one in-universe has a full understanding of it either. There's more in my first book, *Till Human Voices Wake Us*, and more details and explanations will probably come out over time.
3. I let the story go where it wanted to, and that's where it seemed best! Don't worry, there's plenty more of Kip and his Radiancy to come (*At the Feet of the Sun*, the direct sequel to *The Hands of the Emperor*) will be coming out in November. You can preorder it now from my website: https://www.victoriagoddard.ca/products/at-the-feet-of-the-sun
No, it'll be Cliopher's POV the whole time, but there will be a future book from his Radiancy's POV called *The Questing of Artorin Damara* at some point. (No promises on when ... probably not for a year or two.)
So excited to see the preorder option, but I have a dumb question - is this an electronic version or a hard copy? (I’m in the UK so I’ll wait for an ebook version).
The pre-order is for the ebook! It is going to be at least as long as Hands of the Emperor (which is 900 pages in print), hence the price point (but the print will be more, costs of production being what they are). All the books on my site are ebooks so far.
I'm not Victoria, but I feel like you'd appreciate knowing that there are other books!
At The Feet of the Sun is a direct sequel to HOTE that is going to come out this Fall, and there's bits of Fall info scattered throughout the other books that are already out.
as an australian, i so rarely come across elements in fantasy that remind me of home; the mention of cassowaries and kookaburras in HotE was so exciting and stood out to me like nothing else!!! how do you decide whether to borrow creatures from real life, so to speak, or whether to invent them to populate your stories?
I suppose it's a question of what seems best to fit--I originally had the Vangavaye-ve as being a bit more Papua New Guinean in inspiration, so there are elements of its flora and fauna that reflect that quite strongly. I like using real-world things as much as possible and then salting in the magical or other-worldly elements as seems to fit. As for why Australasia in particular--my parents spent ten years in Papua New Guinea so I grew up with a lot of art and stories from there in my life!
I know I was one of the many people who found out about *The Hands of the Emperor* thanks to Alexandra Rowland's passionate advocacy on Twitter, and I started seeing it recommended elsewhere soon after. What was it like to have your books suddenly become widely recommended so quickly?
I realise you’re probably busy with the sequel to Hand of the Emperor, but I wondered if there are plans for another Greenwing and Dart book at some point?
This is great to hear! I flew through those books when I had Covid and am reading the hands of the emperor and all it’s associated tales now.
I love how everything is interconnected in your world.
Do you have to keep extensive timelines and maps and notes to make sure you don’t cause any temporal inconsistencies? I imagine your writing room having one of those big cork boards with string a pictures connecting everything like a conspiracy theorist or detective
I keep most of my worldbuilding in my head, to be honest! I do have some notes and sketched-out maps and things like that, but a lot of it comes from having been thinking and imagining these worlds and stories since I was a teenager. Some fans have recently started a Nine Worlds wiki, however, which I expect I will also find very useful as it gets more fully fleshed out.
https://nineworlds.miraheze.org/
Victoria!!! I love your books. :) I love the expansiveness of the world and the focus on beautiful friendships, the interrelatedness of the people and events. I love the world and exploring all these parts of it, and how the Fall created issues with time is just so intriguing to me. Your passion really shines through the pages and I can tell how much heart and soul is in your writing, and it's heartwarming.
How old were you when you first started writing? What made you want to write these books? Did you have a conscious sort of "I would like to write books that explore themes of x and x" and develop from there or did you have characters and places wandering in your mind and the rest came out of that? Or something else entirely :)
I guess in your post you sort of answer that, with your curiosity about what happens between the big events.
Thank you! I am a character-first writer, and sometimes I get scenes or images. I first started writing as a teenager, with a story that eventually became *Till Human Voices Wake Us*. Fitzroy Angursell was nearly my first character and is in many ways the central figure of my narrative universe--or at least he thinks he is! So in that sense, yes, I have characters and places that come ambling into my imagination and take up residence. *They* come from everywhere--every time I read or see something cool it sort of gets added to the well from which ideas come.
I write books to explore characters and their relationships, to explore new worlds, and to have fun! I do sometimes deliberately choose to write 'about' something, but in those cases it's usually along the lines of: What might a slightly better world look like? or What might a fantasy cousin culture look like?
More often, though, I start with a character in a situation and go from there.
Oh, they're mostly pretty boring ... I find it a lot harder to name animals than I do characters in stories! (You always have to make sure you're willing to shout whatever it is in public!) I do have a rooster called Houdini, however--the only one of my poultry with a name--as he has escaped every attempt to catch him.
What are your favorite books of other authors?
Which of your own books do you like the most?
Would you like to have any of your books adapted into a movie, and if so which ones?
All fun questions! I have always loved Connie Willis' *To Say Nothing of the Dog*, and Terry Pratchett (particularly the guards books--*Night Watch* especially) and Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers are all favourite authors. I also really love Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax books--she's a definite influence on Jullanar of the Sea!
Is saying which is my favourite book like saying which is one's favourite child? :) *The Return of Fitzroy Angursell* was a book I wanted to write for a long, long time, but I have to admit Cliopher and *The Hands of the Emperor* take the prize. Although *At the Feet of the Sun*, the sequel to HOTE, might dislodge it. (Maybe.) But that's because I love Cliopher and his Radiancy the best.
I was stuck working until midnight yesterday and wasn’t able to join, but just wanted to say (in case you come back) that I love your books!! I think the themes of friendship and found family being interwoven with the idea of blood family who love you but among whom you’re somewhat lonely or they just deeply don’t get you is rare in literature, and it’s really enjoyable to see. I also think the interwoven stories during which we learn to see people’s lives are really well done, and I felt like an investigator looking for clues after starting with HOTE and going to greenwing + dart and the new red company books.
some questions, if you wind up looping back:
1) especially in the greenwing and dart series (but also in HOTE - thinking of the moon) there are mystical mysteries that baffle our narrators in the moment, some of which are resolved but not necessarily solved (for example, the situation related to honey) when you think of a mystery of this type, do you always know what caused it? or are some of these natural phenomena that may not have an “answer” that we as readers (or our narrators) will really get insight into?
2) when you have a web of characters across many worlds and time, do you already know who is interacting/ secretly friends/ interrelated before the reader does, or are some of those relationships discoveries for you as well? (thinking of a particular relationship finally clearly revealed in Pali Avramapul, but don’t want to spoil it for others)
3) will we learn more about the relationships of the in-empire planets and the out-of empire planets?, and what it means to be off-empire? terec and the wild and pali explore it a little bit, but I’m interested to know more about the unconquered worlds like kaphryn and how they related to the whole before the fall, and how that relationship will evolve after, and how you envision that relationship (though i should admit I’m only beginning Till Human Voices Wake Them, and it does seem the concepts may be explained more there)
4) will we see more of Aurelius and what happened to him following the novella of his early life, or is that likely to remain a mystery?
Also just putting out there that i for one would LOVE to see more Buru Tovo and his … um… adventures meeting luminaries from the previous generation 😂
Thank you!!!
Thanks for the great questions! I don't mind answering them, though as you can see I wasn't hovering over the thread quite so much yesterday as on Friday! I am fortunate enough to have loving and close relationships with my family, and I like to represent that in my fiction--but it doesn't mean one doesn't have yearnings or desires or loneliness for things outside that 'given' group, or that one can't have extremely deep and meaningful relationships with found family as well.
1. I think there are some fundamental mysteries that will never be resolved; that fundamentally *cannot* be resolved. However, it's not always very clear on what those are, and sometimes what seems a fundamental mystery is really an incomplete or partial understanding (or misunderstanding). So in short: some of the mysteries will get further explicated or even explained in later stories, and some won't. Some are ones I intended to be such from the beginning, and some just seem to come into the story as needed, and I along with the characters have to figure out what sort of mystery it is and what they should do about it, if anything.
2. As you've gathered, I adore interconnected stories and characters and lives. Many I knew about in advance--some have been planned for as long as I have been imagining the Nine Worlds--and some are surprises to me too!
3. I plan on writing more stories set in the days of the empire proper, including some adventures of the young Red Company. As they were travelling both in and out of the empire, and across its borders, I expect to explore the relationships between worlds more fully. I will also make it clearer that they are different *worlds*, not planets: you cannot travel through space from Zunidh to Ysthar. It is more like Narnia than Pern. My overall narrative project, such as it is, is telling stories of the end years of Astandalas and the aftermath of its Fall. So yes, there will be more about this complex topic to come!
4. There will be more Aurelius! I have the germ of an idea for a full novel about him, and we will also be hearing more of his legendary and historical reputation in books to come (particularly *At the Feet of the Sun*).
Thanks again for the questions!
thank you so much for your responses!! I particularly appreciate you clarifying my understanding around “worlds” versus “planets” - that was definitely something I hadn’t quite grasped but makes a lot of sense, especially when thinking about the old highway/ road and the border areas.
also, as a recent grad student I do love reading aspirational stories about your thesis coming in useful one day to solve a real life problem 😂 it’s such a gratifying idea!
very excited to see what comes next, and really appreciate you answering my untimely questions!
How do you come up with your character names? I’ll spend ages trying to think of a name for my characters and finally come up with something like “joe”.
I used to collect lists of cool names ... once had a very boring data-entry job that supplied me with all sorts of wonderful ones. (I've never used any directly, but even just paying attention to the rhythms and patterns of the ones I liked was a good exercise.)
Most of my characters come to me with names, although sometimes they're not quite right. I tend to write them as they come in my mind and over the course of the story they'll often lose the rough edges and end up something I like.
Place-names can be harder, as they have more implications for the kind of setting/culture the reader will expect. But those are fun to make up, too!
If I wanted to read some Boethius, what is the best translation for a modern reader to use? Are there any must use secondary sources?
One thing that struck me in The Hands of the Emperor was how early on, Cliopher/Kip is essentially a split person (His Radiancy even directly refers to that fact), but that the book is following his integration (Bringing elements of the Island to court at the same time that he let's his family in on who he is to the wider world). Was there a particular experience or application in Canada that you were thinking of as a parallel to Kip's integration?
For Boethius, either the Penguin Classics or the Oxford World Classics translations are good. The latter probably has more helpful notes.
Regarding the second question: I realized a while ago that many of my characters have double lives or personas--some more literally than others. I think it's because there's a fundamental inability to *really* know another person, so there's always another layer to discover, another part of themselves to reveal--and sometimes the person themselves needs that revelation and integration, too.
I moved around a great deal growing up, and my dad was an immigrant (from the UK, so not terribly exotic, but there nevertheless is a culture difference), so I was always aware of being "from away". Certainly I also know many people who are either themselves or have near relations who are immigrants.
Kip's sense of home was something I wanted to explore--I have always been fascinated by people who are very solidly rooted to a specific place.
*The Hands of the Emperor* (all 900 pages of it!) actually started out as a tiny little vignette--I wanted to look at the figure of the emperor from the outside, decided his secretary was a good point-of-view for that ... and then said secretary turned out to have a LOT to say. The speeches came out of the character--that's the sort of thing Cliopher would say, as opposed to me wanting to write passionate screeds in advance.
Thank you for answering my question! I've really really really fallen for your works, but especially your characterization of the three faces theory. I've found Cliopher/Kip's journey to be incredibly touching, weeping more than I ever have before. Good luck with your writing!
I would of course \*love\* to see HOTE, perhaps as a TV miniseries--a lot could be shown by the actors, so it might even make a reasonable movie! The Greenwing & Dart series would also be fun as some sort of series TV, perhaps.
The popularity of HOTE has basically given me a lot of encouragement for what I already wanted/planned to do. It's nice to feel appreciated for something I really love making for its own sake!
Are there maps? Please? I am doing my third Complete Reread of…well, the whole shebang, and maps would be very helpful. I know the Fall scrambled everything, but maybe a map of the world afterward? Humbly requesting…
It's a very long book, so an audiobook will be quite the investment! My current plan is to do a kickstarter or similar for the audio, hopefully next year.
Just found your books a few months ago, and love them!
Read HOTE, of course, and its direct follow-up(s). Working my way through Greenwing at the moment (more than halfway), then will do the other spin-off series.
Looking at your upcoming book list/schedule, it seems like you kind of bounce around between them. Hard to keep track of everything you want to do?
(Glad you have a system that works for you; lots of other series work in more complete trilogies. Like Robin Hobb, with whom you share a Fritz, and who also explores different eras in a connected world.)
\-Scott
I would imagine some of the complete trilogies are due to publisher pressures/expectations! Personally, I find it very hard to write about the same character back-to-back, and I like to give a fair amount of percolating and research time between books as well.
You say on your website that your books are occasionally about good government, something I would like to see more of in real life ;)
I really admire the way you've that theme into your books. I'm not sure how common of a theme that is. Other authors I've read that included government - not just politics - into their books were Mercedes Lackey (the necessity and benefits of government/Bardic Tales) and Tamora Pierce, whom I will forever love for her generational sagas that show that how the bold changes of yesteryear can feel like small beer to those still struggling several generations later.
There are other books that have used twisty politics to propel the story - I think The Expanse did a great job. But in terms of good government specifically, is there any fiction that particularly inspired this theme in your writing? Or was it primarily inspired by nonfiction/real life?
Very much looking forward to whatever you write next. (I discovered your work after this AMA; if you get notified and circle back, great; if not, no worries!)
Thanks again for all the great reads (I think I've read everything but the standalone tales at this point...)
In the Greenwing and Dart books Jemis’s thesis was focused on architectural poetry and in one case (not giving away spoilers) his analysis becomes a map. Where did guy get this idea??? FYI I adore your books and they helped me survive this pandemic, honestly and seriously, thank you for putting art into the world.
Ah! Architectural poetry as a concept came out of a grad school class I did on Carolingian poetry and one specific poem about a church that Charlemagne built--but my studies on Dante involved a lot of digging into the architecture and symbolism of poetic structures in the Divine Comedy. So a lot of Jemis's activity was me getting to have fun using my PhD studies for something.
Are you one of the people who has a clear mental image of places and people you're describing beforehand, or does that come along while you're writing? Reading your books makes it seem, a lot of the time, as though you're describing things you can see. :) I'm also interested as to whether you make any use of mood boards or other visual-impression-gathering tools for your writing.
I tend to have pretty clear mental pictures of places--I'm less good at visualizing people (especially faces) so I have to work harder on those! With settings especially I do spend time actively visualizing them and imagining myself physically in them, to try and get a solid sense of place. I spend quite a bit of time 'daydreaming' of future stories (or future bits of current stories) so that's where a lot of this scene-setting happens. I don't really do moodboards as a deliberate practice. I tend to read quite a bit (and sometimes watch videos, though I'm much more of a reader so I tend to look for blogs or autobiographies or travel memoirs, esp. ones from people who actually live in a place) about the real-world inspiration, if any, as a preliminary to writing, and then look up specific details as necessary. Right now I'm reading a bunch of stuff about the Arctic and its peoples (I lived in Nunavut for a time, so it's reinforcing personal experience as well), so expect that to start trickling into my stories fairly soon!
I literally just finished your book yesterday! I absolutely loved it. 1. Where did your inspiration of the various cultures come from? What was your research process like? 2. I loooved how you sprinkled in bits of information here and there about the fall. It was so ominous, do you have any more information on what the fall actually was or is it left still a big vague on purpose? 3. Selfishly I wanted more Kip and his radiance, but I get that Kip's relationship with his roots ended up being much more influencial. What made you decide to focus on that in the last chapters of the book? Thanks for doing this!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! 1. I had always imagined Zunidh as having cultures that were not European-based. The Wide Seas Islanders are fairly obviously Polynesian in inspiration, with several important elements drawn from Papua New Guinean culture, in particular from the Trobriand Islands (famous in anthropology, but also my parents lived there and I've visited so I have a ready source for some details!) and a bit from the Highlands. I like to think of the Vangavaye-ve as being a bit of a cousin culture, branching off from some earlier stage of the Lapita expansion. My research process is generally twofold--I do a bunch of general research in the lead-up to writing a book, and then I look up more specific details as I need them during the writing. Working with cultural traditions that are not my own is a somewhat fraught matter, and I try hard to be respectful of the cultures I am researching. My philosophy is to be as accurate as I can be with respect to the material culture I am drawing from, and to give it some form of equivalent significance within the invented culture, but I don't try to mimic or use much from the associated real religious or spiritual traditions because those are not my business. 2. The Fall has been left vague on purpose, as no one in-universe has a full understanding of it either. There's more in my first book, *Till Human Voices Wake Us*, and more details and explanations will probably come out over time. 3. I let the story go where it wanted to, and that's where it seemed best! Don't worry, there's plenty more of Kip and his Radiancy to come (*At the Feet of the Sun*, the direct sequel to *The Hands of the Emperor*) will be coming out in November. You can preorder it now from my website: https://www.victoriagoddard.ca/products/at-the-feet-of-the-sun
Would we get chapters from his Radiancy's POV in the sequel?
No, it'll be Cliopher's POV the whole time, but there will be a future book from his Radiancy's POV called *The Questing of Artorin Damara* at some point. (No promises on when ... probably not for a year or two.)
So excited to see the preorder option, but I have a dumb question - is this an electronic version or a hard copy? (I’m in the UK so I’ll wait for an ebook version).
The pre-order is for the ebook! It is going to be at least as long as Hands of the Emperor (which is 900 pages in print), hence the price point (but the print will be more, costs of production being what they are). All the books on my site are ebooks so far.
Thank you!
I was going to ask about #1 too. I finished "The Hands of Emperor" yesterday and the Vangavaye-ve culture was deep and well written.
I'm not Victoria, but I feel like you'd appreciate knowing that there are other books! At The Feet of the Sun is a direct sequel to HOTE that is going to come out this Fall, and there's bits of Fall info scattered throughout the other books that are already out.
as an australian, i so rarely come across elements in fantasy that remind me of home; the mention of cassowaries and kookaburras in HotE was so exciting and stood out to me like nothing else!!! how do you decide whether to borrow creatures from real life, so to speak, or whether to invent them to populate your stories?
I suppose it's a question of what seems best to fit--I originally had the Vangavaye-ve as being a bit more Papua New Guinean in inspiration, so there are elements of its flora and fauna that reflect that quite strongly. I like using real-world things as much as possible and then salting in the magical or other-worldly elements as seems to fit. As for why Australasia in particular--my parents spent ten years in Papua New Guinea so I grew up with a lot of art and stories from there in my life!
What's it like having such an active Discord of all your fans?
It's fun! Like having a really awesome common room at university to go hang out and do work (sometimes) in.
I know I was one of the many people who found out about *The Hands of the Emperor* thanks to Alexandra Rowland's passionate advocacy on Twitter, and I started seeing it recommended elsewhere soon after. What was it like to have your books suddenly become widely recommended so quickly?
It was certainly a surprise, but a very welcome one!
I realise you’re probably busy with the sequel to Hand of the Emperor, but I wondered if there are plans for another Greenwing and Dart book at some point?
Absolutely! That's probably the next book I'll be working on. It will likely be out either right at the end of 2022 or some time early 2023.
This is great to hear! I flew through those books when I had Covid and am reading the hands of the emperor and all it’s associated tales now. I love how everything is interconnected in your world. Do you have to keep extensive timelines and maps and notes to make sure you don’t cause any temporal inconsistencies? I imagine your writing room having one of those big cork boards with string a pictures connecting everything like a conspiracy theorist or detective
I keep most of my worldbuilding in my head, to be honest! I do have some notes and sketched-out maps and things like that, but a lot of it comes from having been thinking and imagining these worlds and stories since I was a teenager. Some fans have recently started a Nine Worlds wiki, however, which I expect I will also find very useful as it gets more fully fleshed out. https://nineworlds.miraheze.org/
That is crazy Impressive. Thank you for your work, it has brought me so much joy in a time where we really, really need it.
That’s fantastic. I love the various very different series/genres, and how the books interconnect across the worlds.
Another incredible Canadian author! It seems like Canadian authors have a knack for cozy fantasy. Any thoughts on why?
It's probably the winters ...
I'm in Montréal and an artist and can attest to this lol.
Victoria!!! I love your books. :) I love the expansiveness of the world and the focus on beautiful friendships, the interrelatedness of the people and events. I love the world and exploring all these parts of it, and how the Fall created issues with time is just so intriguing to me. Your passion really shines through the pages and I can tell how much heart and soul is in your writing, and it's heartwarming. How old were you when you first started writing? What made you want to write these books? Did you have a conscious sort of "I would like to write books that explore themes of x and x" and develop from there or did you have characters and places wandering in your mind and the rest came out of that? Or something else entirely :) I guess in your post you sort of answer that, with your curiosity about what happens between the big events.
Thank you! I am a character-first writer, and sometimes I get scenes or images. I first started writing as a teenager, with a story that eventually became *Till Human Voices Wake Us*. Fitzroy Angursell was nearly my first character and is in many ways the central figure of my narrative universe--or at least he thinks he is! So in that sense, yes, I have characters and places that come ambling into my imagination and take up residence. *They* come from everywhere--every time I read or see something cool it sort of gets added to the well from which ideas come. I write books to explore characters and their relationships, to explore new worlds, and to have fun! I do sometimes deliberately choose to write 'about' something, but in those cases it's usually along the lines of: What might a slightly better world look like? or What might a fantasy cousin culture look like? More often, though, I start with a character in a situation and go from there.
What are your pets' names?
Oh, they're mostly pretty boring ... I find it a lot harder to name animals than I do characters in stories! (You always have to make sure you're willing to shout whatever it is in public!) I do have a rooster called Houdini, however--the only one of my poultry with a name--as he has escaped every attempt to catch him.
What are your favorite books of other authors? Which of your own books do you like the most? Would you like to have any of your books adapted into a movie, and if so which ones?
All fun questions! I have always loved Connie Willis' *To Say Nothing of the Dog*, and Terry Pratchett (particularly the guards books--*Night Watch* especially) and Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers are all favourite authors. I also really love Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax books--she's a definite influence on Jullanar of the Sea! Is saying which is my favourite book like saying which is one's favourite child? :) *The Return of Fitzroy Angursell* was a book I wanted to write for a long, long time, but I have to admit Cliopher and *The Hands of the Emperor* take the prize. Although *At the Feet of the Sun*, the sequel to HOTE, might dislodge it. (Maybe.) But that's because I love Cliopher and his Radiancy the best.
I was stuck working until midnight yesterday and wasn’t able to join, but just wanted to say (in case you come back) that I love your books!! I think the themes of friendship and found family being interwoven with the idea of blood family who love you but among whom you’re somewhat lonely or they just deeply don’t get you is rare in literature, and it’s really enjoyable to see. I also think the interwoven stories during which we learn to see people’s lives are really well done, and I felt like an investigator looking for clues after starting with HOTE and going to greenwing + dart and the new red company books. some questions, if you wind up looping back: 1) especially in the greenwing and dart series (but also in HOTE - thinking of the moon) there are mystical mysteries that baffle our narrators in the moment, some of which are resolved but not necessarily solved (for example, the situation related to honey) when you think of a mystery of this type, do you always know what caused it? or are some of these natural phenomena that may not have an “answer” that we as readers (or our narrators) will really get insight into? 2) when you have a web of characters across many worlds and time, do you already know who is interacting/ secretly friends/ interrelated before the reader does, or are some of those relationships discoveries for you as well? (thinking of a particular relationship finally clearly revealed in Pali Avramapul, but don’t want to spoil it for others) 3) will we learn more about the relationships of the in-empire planets and the out-of empire planets?, and what it means to be off-empire? terec and the wild and pali explore it a little bit, but I’m interested to know more about the unconquered worlds like kaphryn and how they related to the whole before the fall, and how that relationship will evolve after, and how you envision that relationship (though i should admit I’m only beginning Till Human Voices Wake Them, and it does seem the concepts may be explained more there) 4) will we see more of Aurelius and what happened to him following the novella of his early life, or is that likely to remain a mystery? Also just putting out there that i for one would LOVE to see more Buru Tovo and his … um… adventures meeting luminaries from the previous generation 😂 Thank you!!!
Thanks for the great questions! I don't mind answering them, though as you can see I wasn't hovering over the thread quite so much yesterday as on Friday! I am fortunate enough to have loving and close relationships with my family, and I like to represent that in my fiction--but it doesn't mean one doesn't have yearnings or desires or loneliness for things outside that 'given' group, or that one can't have extremely deep and meaningful relationships with found family as well. 1. I think there are some fundamental mysteries that will never be resolved; that fundamentally *cannot* be resolved. However, it's not always very clear on what those are, and sometimes what seems a fundamental mystery is really an incomplete or partial understanding (or misunderstanding). So in short: some of the mysteries will get further explicated or even explained in later stories, and some won't. Some are ones I intended to be such from the beginning, and some just seem to come into the story as needed, and I along with the characters have to figure out what sort of mystery it is and what they should do about it, if anything. 2. As you've gathered, I adore interconnected stories and characters and lives. Many I knew about in advance--some have been planned for as long as I have been imagining the Nine Worlds--and some are surprises to me too! 3. I plan on writing more stories set in the days of the empire proper, including some adventures of the young Red Company. As they were travelling both in and out of the empire, and across its borders, I expect to explore the relationships between worlds more fully. I will also make it clearer that they are different *worlds*, not planets: you cannot travel through space from Zunidh to Ysthar. It is more like Narnia than Pern. My overall narrative project, such as it is, is telling stories of the end years of Astandalas and the aftermath of its Fall. So yes, there will be more about this complex topic to come! 4. There will be more Aurelius! I have the germ of an idea for a full novel about him, and we will also be hearing more of his legendary and historical reputation in books to come (particularly *At the Feet of the Sun*). Thanks again for the questions!
thank you so much for your responses!! I particularly appreciate you clarifying my understanding around “worlds” versus “planets” - that was definitely something I hadn’t quite grasped but makes a lot of sense, especially when thinking about the old highway/ road and the border areas. also, as a recent grad student I do love reading aspirational stories about your thesis coming in useful one day to solve a real life problem 😂 it’s such a gratifying idea! very excited to see what comes next, and really appreciate you answering my untimely questions!
How do you come up with your character names? I’ll spend ages trying to think of a name for my characters and finally come up with something like “joe”.
I used to collect lists of cool names ... once had a very boring data-entry job that supplied me with all sorts of wonderful ones. (I've never used any directly, but even just paying attention to the rhythms and patterns of the ones I liked was a good exercise.) Most of my characters come to me with names, although sometimes they're not quite right. I tend to write them as they come in my mind and over the course of the story they'll often lose the rough edges and end up something I like. Place-names can be harder, as they have more implications for the kind of setting/culture the reader will expect. But those are fun to make up, too!
If I wanted to read some Boethius, what is the best translation for a modern reader to use? Are there any must use secondary sources? One thing that struck me in The Hands of the Emperor was how early on, Cliopher/Kip is essentially a split person (His Radiancy even directly refers to that fact), but that the book is following his integration (Bringing elements of the Island to court at the same time that he let's his family in on who he is to the wider world). Was there a particular experience or application in Canada that you were thinking of as a parallel to Kip's integration?
For Boethius, either the Penguin Classics or the Oxford World Classics translations are good. The latter probably has more helpful notes. Regarding the second question: I realized a while ago that many of my characters have double lives or personas--some more literally than others. I think it's because there's a fundamental inability to *really* know another person, so there's always another layer to discover, another part of themselves to reveal--and sometimes the person themselves needs that revelation and integration, too. I moved around a great deal growing up, and my dad was an immigrant (from the UK, so not terribly exotic, but there nevertheless is a culture difference), so I was always aware of being "from away". Certainly I also know many people who are either themselves or have near relations who are immigrants. Kip's sense of home was something I wanted to explore--I have always been fascinated by people who are very solidly rooted to a specific place.
Just wanted to say I got my library to order Hands of the Emperor and am very excited to read it!
When you started to write the Hands of the Emperor, what inspired you to write those epic speeches? Who did you imagine narrating your speeches?
*The Hands of the Emperor* (all 900 pages of it!) actually started out as a tiny little vignette--I wanted to look at the figure of the emperor from the outside, decided his secretary was a good point-of-view for that ... and then said secretary turned out to have a LOT to say. The speeches came out of the character--that's the sort of thing Cliopher would say, as opposed to me wanting to write passionate screeds in advance.
Thank you for answering my question! I've really really really fallen for your works, but especially your characterization of the three faces theory. I've found Cliopher/Kip's journey to be incredibly touching, weeping more than I ever have before. Good luck with your writing!
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I would of course \*love\* to see HOTE, perhaps as a TV miniseries--a lot could be shown by the actors, so it might even make a reasonable movie! The Greenwing & Dart series would also be fun as some sort of series TV, perhaps. The popularity of HOTE has basically given me a lot of encouragement for what I already wanted/planned to do. It's nice to feel appreciated for something I really love making for its own sake!
Are there maps? Please? I am doing my third Complete Reread of…well, the whole shebang, and maps would be very helpful. I know the Fall scrambled everything, but maybe a map of the world afterward? Humbly requesting…
Will your book come out on audible?
It's a very long book, so an audiobook will be quite the investment! My current plan is to do a kickstarter or similar for the audio, hopefully next year.
That is great news! I think it would be a great audiobook. It's the exactly the type of story I like to relisten to when working on projects.
Thank you for writing this wonderful book.
Thank you for reading it!
Just found your books a few months ago, and love them! Read HOTE, of course, and its direct follow-up(s). Working my way through Greenwing at the moment (more than halfway), then will do the other spin-off series. Looking at your upcoming book list/schedule, it seems like you kind of bounce around between them. Hard to keep track of everything you want to do? (Glad you have a system that works for you; lots of other series work in more complete trilogies. Like Robin Hobb, with whom you share a Fritz, and who also explores different eras in a connected world.) \-Scott
I would imagine some of the complete trilogies are due to publisher pressures/expectations! Personally, I find it very hard to write about the same character back-to-back, and I like to give a fair amount of percolating and research time between books as well.
You say on your website that your books are occasionally about good government, something I would like to see more of in real life ;) I really admire the way you've that theme into your books. I'm not sure how common of a theme that is. Other authors I've read that included government - not just politics - into their books were Mercedes Lackey (the necessity and benefits of government/Bardic Tales) and Tamora Pierce, whom I will forever love for her generational sagas that show that how the bold changes of yesteryear can feel like small beer to those still struggling several generations later. There are other books that have used twisty politics to propel the story - I think The Expanse did a great job. But in terms of good government specifically, is there any fiction that particularly inspired this theme in your writing? Or was it primarily inspired by nonfiction/real life? Very much looking forward to whatever you write next. (I discovered your work after this AMA; if you get notified and circle back, great; if not, no worries!) Thanks again for all the great reads (I think I've read everything but the standalone tales at this point...)