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Q: Are the stories in The Bone Key arranged in publication order, or did you get to/have to rearrange them to be chronological to Booth's life (which I assume they are, though I guess most of them don't have to be in a praticular order).
A: Yes, they are in internal chronological order, although the only thing that matters is that "Bringing Helena Back" has to be first, because ( spoiler ). There are other little tiny internal consistency things, but since the stories are all meant to be standalones, it's never anything that has an impact on a reader's ability to understand the story.
Q: And part b, when you write a series of short stories around the same character, like Booth or BPI, how much does chronological order matter in the process?
A: Booth's stories got written in completely random order--although the stories that have been published since The Bone Key are all also post-"Listening to Bone" in the internal chronology. I don't know why that is, and I don't know if I may go back to an earlier point for some stories that I haven't thought of yet. I just work here.
Chronological order matters only insofar as I have to keep from tripping myself up. "A Night in Electric Squidland" isn't the first story in the internal chronology of the Ghoul Hunters--which really won't matter if I can't finish any of the others.
Q: Do you have any idea why the Bone Key came out with a different cover, or was that a surprise to you too?
A: It was my publisher's decision, made because the buyers for Borders and Barnes & Noble did not like the original cover.
Q: Do the Booth stories share any "blood" with Manly Wade Wellman's work? They remind me of him almost as much as Lovecraft.
A: I haven't read very much Wellman at all, and what I have read I think was not his best work. So, no, there's no direct influence.
Q: If you could teach a class (assume intelligent students) on any subject, what would it be, and what would be on the reading list?
A: Oh dear.
Do you want the Renaissance revenge tragedy syllabus or the twentieth-century science fiction, fantasy, and horror syllabus?
Q: What is the "best" or scariest story you have read?
A: "'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (M. R. James) is right up there. There's a story by (I think) Robert Bloch that I read as a teenager, about a ghost that haunts mirrors and other reflective surfaces, that still creeps me out. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House. Also "The Lottery," for different reasons.
Q: This may be a big spoiler, but how reliable are our narrators? I've wondered ever since Melusine about this- do they tell us the truth as they perceive it, like we've jacked into their internal monologue, or do they lie to us or dissemble as they might with another person (I especially wonder about this when Felix says he doesn't remember being crazy)?
A: I don't think this is a spoiler, but just in case ... ( click )
Q: Mildmay has a wonderfully believable dialect. (As a fellow Southerner, am I right in guessing that you picked up some of the quirks of speech he has from down here?) Do you have any advice you would give to a fellow writer also trying to create some kind of authentic-sounding speech patterns for characters?
A: Mildmay's dialect is based on, yes, the dialect of eastern Tennessee.
Writing in dialect is, of course, one of those things that writing advice books warn you very sternly against, and I would agree emphatically to avoid at all costs phonetic renditions of any character's speech. It's obtrusive, and it's like having the author nudging you in the ribs every time the character opens his or her mouth: Doesn't he talk funny? Isn't that a stitch and a half?
No.
I ended up giving Mildmay the dialect he has because (a.) I needed something to distinguish him from Felix (see this post for a demonstration) and (b.) that was the dialect I could hear clearly enough in my head to write. I initially tried a Cockney accent (because I'm as brainwashed as anybody else when it comes to assuming that all secondary worlds are default Europe), but, since my knowledge of Cockney is limited to Oliver!, My Fair Lady, and Mary Poppins (i.e., stage Cockney), I kept having to guess about the grammar*, and it sounded fake. "Write what you know" is, if applied sparingly enough, good advice.
I have to be able to "hear" a dialect in my head to be able to write it. I don't know how other people do it. In general, I would say, don't mess around with dialect unless you actually know a specific dialect well enough that you can be definitive about whether a particular word or phrase is or isn't kosher.
("Commence," for example. Someone online somewhere was complaining about Mildmay using that word, but in point of fact it is a quirk of the dialect. My locus classicus is the Junkers, god love 'em, and "The Susan B. Anthony Dollar Rag": "Folks took one look and they commenced to holler/ Said we got no use for no quarter-sized dollar.")
---
*Just because a dialect doesn't have standard grammar, doesn't mean it doesn't have a grammar of its own.
Q: ( spoilers, I guess, for The Virtu )
Q: if Doctrine of Labyrinths were to be made into a film and you had the last word in casting it with no restrictions, who would you cast as which character and why?
A: Look over here.
Q: I was also wondering whether there are any plans (however nebulous) for signings in the UK? It would be great if the series got some more publicity around here!
A: If I ever get to the UK and bookstore owners are interested, I will do signings. However, my getting to the UK is, um. Well. Magic 8-Ball says ? It could happen, but there are certainly no plans for it to happen. (Nor is there money for it to happen, so, you know.)
Q: I've been rereading the Doctrine of Labyrinths series lately, and one thing that really Shocked me this time around (enough to capitalize that) was how young the protagonists are. It made me wonder if, since you are, I believe (smack me if I'm wrong) older than Felix or Mildmay, you had any difficulties writing that age. Were there? Is there any specific reason you chose 20 and 27? Especially since it seems to me that they both have been through a whole lot of life for how little they've actually lived.
A: Actually, when I started writing these books, I was younger than either of them. I'm older than they are now (although only a little older than Felix), but that's because fifteen years have passed for me and only about five for them.
A: Yes, they are in internal chronological order, although the only thing that matters is that "Bringing Helena Back" has to be first, because ( spoiler ). There are other little tiny internal consistency things, but since the stories are all meant to be standalones, it's never anything that has an impact on a reader's ability to understand the story.
Q: And part b, when you write a series of short stories around the same character, like Booth or BPI, how much does chronological order matter in the process?
A: Booth's stories got written in completely random order--although the stories that have been published since The Bone Key are all also post-"Listening to Bone" in the internal chronology. I don't know why that is, and I don't know if I may go back to an earlier point for some stories that I haven't thought of yet. I just work here.
Chronological order matters only insofar as I have to keep from tripping myself up. "A Night in Electric Squidland" isn't the first story in the internal chronology of the Ghoul Hunters--which really won't matter if I can't finish any of the others.
Q: Do you have any idea why the Bone Key came out with a different cover, or was that a surprise to you too?
A: It was my publisher's decision, made because the buyers for Borders and Barnes & Noble did not like the original cover.
Q: Do the Booth stories share any "blood" with Manly Wade Wellman's work? They remind me of him almost as much as Lovecraft.
A: I haven't read very much Wellman at all, and what I have read I think was not his best work. So, no, there's no direct influence.
Q: If you could teach a class (assume intelligent students) on any subject, what would it be, and what would be on the reading list?
A: Oh dear.
Do you want the Renaissance revenge tragedy syllabus or the twentieth-century science fiction, fantasy, and horror syllabus?
Q: What is the "best" or scariest story you have read?
A: "'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (M. R. James) is right up there. There's a story by (I think) Robert Bloch that I read as a teenager, about a ghost that haunts mirrors and other reflective surfaces, that still creeps me out. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House. Also "The Lottery," for different reasons.
Q: This may be a big spoiler, but how reliable are our narrators? I've wondered ever since Melusine about this- do they tell us the truth as they perceive it, like we've jacked into their internal monologue, or do they lie to us or dissemble as they might with another person (I especially wonder about this when Felix says he doesn't remember being crazy)?
A: I don't think this is a spoiler, but just in case ... ( click )
Q: Mildmay has a wonderfully believable dialect. (As a fellow Southerner, am I right in guessing that you picked up some of the quirks of speech he has from down here?) Do you have any advice you would give to a fellow writer also trying to create some kind of authentic-sounding speech patterns for characters?
A: Mildmay's dialect is based on, yes, the dialect of eastern Tennessee.
Writing in dialect is, of course, one of those things that writing advice books warn you very sternly against, and I would agree emphatically to avoid at all costs phonetic renditions of any character's speech. It's obtrusive, and it's like having the author nudging you in the ribs every time the character opens his or her mouth: Doesn't he talk funny? Isn't that a stitch and a half?
No.
I ended up giving Mildmay the dialect he has because (a.) I needed something to distinguish him from Felix (see this post for a demonstration) and (b.) that was the dialect I could hear clearly enough in my head to write. I initially tried a Cockney accent (because I'm as brainwashed as anybody else when it comes to assuming that all secondary worlds are default Europe), but, since my knowledge of Cockney is limited to Oliver!, My Fair Lady, and Mary Poppins (i.e., stage Cockney), I kept having to guess about the grammar*, and it sounded fake. "Write what you know" is, if applied sparingly enough, good advice.
I have to be able to "hear" a dialect in my head to be able to write it. I don't know how other people do it. In general, I would say, don't mess around with dialect unless you actually know a specific dialect well enough that you can be definitive about whether a particular word or phrase is or isn't kosher.
("Commence," for example. Someone online somewhere was complaining about Mildmay using that word, but in point of fact it is a quirk of the dialect. My locus classicus is the Junkers, god love 'em, and "The Susan B. Anthony Dollar Rag": "Folks took one look and they commenced to holler/ Said we got no use for no quarter-sized dollar.")
---
*Just because a dialect doesn't have standard grammar, doesn't mean it doesn't have a grammar of its own.
Q: ( spoilers, I guess, for The Virtu )
Q: if Doctrine of Labyrinths were to be made into a film and you had the last word in casting it with no restrictions, who would you cast as which character and why?
A: Look over here.
Q: I was also wondering whether there are any plans (however nebulous) for signings in the UK? It would be great if the series got some more publicity around here!
A: If I ever get to the UK and bookstore owners are interested, I will do signings. However, my getting to the UK is, um. Well. Magic 8-Ball says ? It could happen, but there are certainly no plans for it to happen. (Nor is there money for it to happen, so, you know.)
Q: I've been rereading the Doctrine of Labyrinths series lately, and one thing that really Shocked me this time around (enough to capitalize that) was how young the protagonists are. It made me wonder if, since you are, I believe (smack me if I'm wrong) older than Felix or Mildmay, you had any difficulties writing that age. Were there? Is there any specific reason you chose 20 and 27? Especially since it seems to me that they both have been through a whole lot of life for how little they've actually lived.
A: Actually, when I started writing these books, I was younger than either of them. I'm older than they are now (although only a little older than Felix), but that's because fifteen years have passed for me and only about five for them.
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jonquil