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truepennyThe latest crop, starting with one I missed in the last post. Sorry, querent! The slight was unintentional!
Q: You have mentioned your strong resistance to removing the Felix/Kay romance. Why were you so desperate to keep it?
A: Because it provided a plot structure and something for both characters to do. Like training wheels or a safety net.
Q: There is a particular scene in Corambis that I really get a kick out of calling "the part where the train is attacked by a giant robot". One of the reasons I enjoy that segment so much is becuase it gives me what I can only describe as an out-of-genre moment. I simply don't think of DotL as being the kind of fantasy that has either robots or trains, let alone alone one attacking the other. In fact, the only fantasy-like genre where I'd imagine such a thing happening is Steampunk. You've mentioned that you were deliberately playing with and subverting genre tropes in these novels. Was this apparent "breaking of the rules" as to what can happen in "these kinds" of novels part of that?
A: Oh HELL yes. One of the first things I knew about Corambis was that I wanted to write secondary-world-fantasy-with-trains. And believe me, coming up with the Automaton of Corybant made me happy for days.
One of the things that irritates me about conventional (i.e., convention-bound) secondary world fantasy is that science and technology have been replaced with magic (rather than complemented, for instance), but neither magic nor science/technology are apparently enough to advance the poor benighted people of the secondary world beyond Western European Medieval/Renaissance limits of knowledge. So Corambis has trains and subways and the magicians in the Mammothium, and their annemer friends at the University, are clearly working their way toward Darwin. And I was very very pleased with myself.
Q: Do you think there is a chance there will someday be another Bone Key type collection? (I heart Booth!)
A: If I write enough Booth stories and somebody wants to publish the collection. So you know, God willing and the creek don't rise. *g*
Q: Is the Parrington Museum based on any real museums, or is it a sort of jumble warped by the literary influences involved? (Also, might the Parrington have any job openings? Summer internships?)
A: The Parrington is mostly imaginary, but I suspect insofar as it has a real world ancestor, it's the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna (yes, Vienna again). Since I've started writing Booth, I pay a lot more attention to museum architecture, so the Parrington has accreted several other museums to itself, including the Field Museum (which OMG has an exhibit on pirates through October 25) and the very weird Milwaukee Public Museum.
Q: What did Gloria Aestia et al DO to Stephen's mom? I find it very chilling to think they could have compelled her to kill herself.
A: Well, that's pretty much what Vey did. I suspect it was more along the lines of inducing suicidal depression than actually taking control of her body or the like, but yeah. Not nice people.
Q: This might get a bit involved, so I apologize in advance, but I've been thinking about this lately:
What do you think determines the genre of a piece of fiction? What makes a book sci fi versus fantasy versus horror, or has genre become more about marketing?
A: First of all, marketing categories and genres are quite different concepts. Genres are inherently fluid, and are really more a tool for saying, "This text (or other kind of art) is like these other texts in these ways." It's more genealogy than taxonomy, and even more about mapping conversations between texts. What makes a book science fiction or fantasy or horror is what other books it's like, and what books it's talking to and what books influenced it.
So my very unhelpful answer to your question is, "It depends on the book." :)
Q: As a follow up, what do you think drives an author to write one genre over another or mess around on the border between them?
A: I think it depends on what gets caught in your filters. I, for example, have never yet had an idea for a story that wasn't genre-affiliated in some way. That's not a decision I made; that's just what shows up. Of course you can train your filters to catch different things, but I think it's something about the way an individual is put together, what catches their attention and what doesn't.
Which is waffly and about as unhelpful as my previous answer.
Q: I have a question about your writing process: specifically, how you deal with the huge amount of detail and world building in your stories. In Doctrine of the Labyrinths you've created complexity in both world and plot, and in A Companion to Wolves you have the world, the plot and a co-writer to wrangle. I'm curious as to how you keep it all straight - do you have a really good memory, diagrams, copious notes or one of those story-writing computer programs?
A: Copious notes and a weirdly good memory for text. I remember things I've read in stories much longer and much more clearly than I do things that actually happened to me or things I've done, and that seems to hold true for stories I've written as well as stories I've read. But I also keep files of notes.
(Also, in ACtW, I think it's more fair to say that Bear had me and the plot to wrangle and we both wrangled the world.)
Q: What happens to the annemer half of the obligation d'ame if the wizard dies? You provided a graphic description of what would happen to Mildmay if Felix were burned to death but what would happen if he drowned? Dropped dead of a heart attack? Wasted away with consumption?
A: I don't know. The question never arose.
Q: Much as I enjoy many of the conventions of the fantasy genre I have particularly enjoyed your subversion of them. Have you had much criticism/resentment from people who felt that you had led them to expect an outcome which you then failed to deliver?
A: Not that I'm aware of, no.
Q: Do the trains in Corambis actually run on what we would think of as magic or on what we would think of scientific principles but they think of as magic?
A: The Corambins don't think of scientific principles as magic. They think of magic as a scientific principle, which is why they drive Felix nuts.
And the trains are steam trains. The magic involved has to do with the transformation of matter into energy, but I never worked out the mechanics of it.
Q: Will Mildmay figure out what it is between Felix and Murtagh?
A: I have no idea.
Q: Felix seems to consider that the obligation d'ame and Malkar's rubies contributed to his self-destructive behaviour in The Mirador. Is he correct?
A: I think that's a question for the reader, not the author. But please remember there's a difference between an unreliable narrator and an untruthful narrator. Felix is not untruthful.
Q: Is there a possibility that the seasons of Shadow Unit will be collected, maybe through a POD format since that seems most appropriate for the project, for fans who like to physically hold books in their hands? I would love to death being able to put that on my shelf.
A: Shadow Unit has an agent, who is indeed shopping around a print version of Season 1. So it could happen!
Q: There are lots of details provided on what Malker did to Felix, but after Mildmay was captured and rescued from him,very little is mentioned about its effect on Mildmay. He doesn't remember what Malker did to him. He is messed up right after his rescue but seems to come back to himself after his assignation with Mehitabel. He does finally remember what was done to him, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on him - outside of nightmares. I love Mildmay and I love to read angst...why did you leave out the details of what Malker did to Mildmay? Was he raped like Felix was? Why was he able to move so quickly passed it?
A: Mildmay spends two years clinically depressed as a result of what Malkar did to him, so I don't think he moves past it all that quickly, and I wouldn't say he's "over" it in Corambis. He's just not talking about it, which is different.
And I left out the details because (a.) I don't know them, (b.) the story doesn't need them, and (c.) I like leaving waveforms uncollapsed. Use your imagination. Given that it's Malkar, you're unlikely to think of anything more awful than what he actually did.
Q: I've been wondering, does Stephen really hate Felix as much as Felix thinks he does? He comes across (from page 1) as one of the most reasonable people in the entire series, and seems a little more "ready to be annoyed" when Felix is around than to actually hate him. Also, Murtagh reminds me a little of Stephen (the general aura of, "yes, I'm in charge here" helps). Am I imagining similarities or was this on purpose? How freaked out would Felix be if someone drew the same connection for him?
A: Felix does self-dramatize, yes. And I imagine there were passages between Stephen and Felix back when Shannon and Felix first took up with each other that warrant Felix's belief. Stephen doesn't know how to handle Felix, and Felix exasperates him beyond bearing. But, no, I don't think he hates him.
I personally don't think there's any particular resemblance between Stephen and Murtagh beyond the generic "man in power" thing. The deliberate resemblance with Murtagh is between him and Malkar. And Felix is very aware of that.
Q: At some point, Mehitabel says: "tall, beautiful Felix, as molly as de Fidelio's dormouse". The only reference I can think about is Beethoven's opera... still, that "as molly as de Fidelio's dormouse" doesn't make a lot of sense to me (which could be only because English is not my native language). Yes, of course, that is "extremely molly", but, what's the reference about?
A: It's a made-up reference. We'd say "as queer as a three-dollar bill" or "as queer as Dick's hatband." But I couldn't use either of those, so I had to make up my own. I don't know who de Fidelio was, or why his dormouse is the standard of being a flaming queer in Meduse. (I did name de Fidelio for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fidelioscabinet, with her permission, but that's external to the text.)
Q: Though sometimes easy to get immersed in the characters, I really appreciated the fact that Mélusine was its own character, sort of lurking in the back of everyone's lives. Considering the city is what and how it is, I'm not the least surprised that Felix nor Mildmay grew up to be the men they did. In all of your questions, you've explained that Felix just sort of "showed up". I was wondering if Mélusine arrived with Felix or did it have a different means of evolving?
A: Some of Mélusine showed up with Felix, specifically the Mirador and the Arcane, but mostly it developed by accretion. I made up bits and pieces of it as I went along and fit them together as I needed to. (That's why my map of Mélusine is incomplete.)
Q: The relation Vey has to blood magic, cemeteries and the commerce of the underculture kept reading as a voodoo queen. I suppose that's just me being raised in close proximity of a supernatural culture and history. Was there any particular character that inspired her, historical or otherwise?
A: Not to the best of my recollection, which may, I freely admit, be flawed. I don't think I'd read anything about Marie Laveau when I came up with Vey, but I could be wrong.
Q: Ah... The convoluted first person POV question. The answer you gave was enlightening and much appreciated, but I blame myself for not articulating the question well. I suppose I should ask how difficult was it for you to stay interested in writing from any one character's perspective? As far as the redundancy - although you "retell" from different perspectives, it's that very multifaceted lens that keeps things interesting. Better put, I think my question should've read "was there any point where you realized a character was repeating him/herself or echoing someone else a little too much?" And how do you determine how much of an event to repeat in the various voices?
A: I had to teach myself to be interested, first in Mildmay, then in Mehitabel. And then I must have caught the knack of it, because I didn't have any trouble being interested in Kay. The rest of it, as I said in answer to an earlier PoV question, I really mostly do by feel. Which is useless as far as giving advice goes.
I guess the question is, what story do you want to tell, particularly in terms of the characters and their arcs and their relationships to each other? When I retell an event from more than one point of view, it's because something in the comparison of those PoVs is important, and something that I can't get at if I only have one narrator's interpretation. That's particularly important when you're talking about discrepancies in the way a character views him/herself and his/her actions and the way s/he is seen by others.
Q: I'm working on a story right now - and maybe it's my lack of experience containing multiple FP-POV in a single work - but I'm making myself crazy trying to figure out how to synthesize the individual POVs into a single story. One POV is utterly complete, having been written in full about 3 years ago. The other just knocked insistently every time I reread the original piece. And, his voice is as strong as the original narrator's. Any suggestions on techniques of synthesis?
A: That's what I had to do with the first seven chapters of Mélusine: find spaces in Felix's narrative to fit Mildmay in--which was also when I had to teach myself to be interested in Mildmay. You'll notice that this also involved inventing a bunch more plot and world-building and all sorts of other things. In my experience, you can't add a narrator to a story and leave the story unchanged--or, if you can, there's no point in adding the narrator. Each narrator/PoV character should bring something to the story that is absolutely essential, that you can't tell the story without having, and thus any pre-existing narrative has to be affected by another perspective being added, up to and including being radically changed.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
Q: You have mentioned your strong resistance to removing the Felix/Kay romance. Why were you so desperate to keep it?
A: Because it provided a plot structure and something for both characters to do. Like training wheels or a safety net.
Q: There is a particular scene in Corambis that I really get a kick out of calling "the part where the train is attacked by a giant robot". One of the reasons I enjoy that segment so much is becuase it gives me what I can only describe as an out-of-genre moment. I simply don't think of DotL as being the kind of fantasy that has either robots or trains, let alone alone one attacking the other. In fact, the only fantasy-like genre where I'd imagine such a thing happening is Steampunk. You've mentioned that you were deliberately playing with and subverting genre tropes in these novels. Was this apparent "breaking of the rules" as to what can happen in "these kinds" of novels part of that?
A: Oh HELL yes. One of the first things I knew about Corambis was that I wanted to write secondary-world-fantasy-with-trains. And believe me, coming up with the Automaton of Corybant made me happy for days.
One of the things that irritates me about conventional (i.e., convention-bound) secondary world fantasy is that science and technology have been replaced with magic (rather than complemented, for instance), but neither magic nor science/technology are apparently enough to advance the poor benighted people of the secondary world beyond Western European Medieval/Renaissance limits of knowledge. So Corambis has trains and subways and the magicians in the Mammothium, and their annemer friends at the University, are clearly working their way toward Darwin. And I was very very pleased with myself.
Q: Do you think there is a chance there will someday be another Bone Key type collection? (I heart Booth!)
A: If I write enough Booth stories and somebody wants to publish the collection. So you know, God willing and the creek don't rise. *g*
Q: Is the Parrington Museum based on any real museums, or is it a sort of jumble warped by the literary influences involved? (Also, might the Parrington have any job openings? Summer internships?)
A: The Parrington is mostly imaginary, but I suspect insofar as it has a real world ancestor, it's the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna (yes, Vienna again). Since I've started writing Booth, I pay a lot more attention to museum architecture, so the Parrington has accreted several other museums to itself, including the Field Museum (which OMG has an exhibit on pirates through October 25) and the very weird Milwaukee Public Museum.
Q: What did Gloria Aestia et al DO to Stephen's mom? I find it very chilling to think they could have compelled her to kill herself.
A: Well, that's pretty much what Vey did. I suspect it was more along the lines of inducing suicidal depression than actually taking control of her body or the like, but yeah. Not nice people.
Q: This might get a bit involved, so I apologize in advance, but I've been thinking about this lately:
What do you think determines the genre of a piece of fiction? What makes a book sci fi versus fantasy versus horror, or has genre become more about marketing?
A: First of all, marketing categories and genres are quite different concepts. Genres are inherently fluid, and are really more a tool for saying, "This text (or other kind of art) is like these other texts in these ways." It's more genealogy than taxonomy, and even more about mapping conversations between texts. What makes a book science fiction or fantasy or horror is what other books it's like, and what books it's talking to and what books influenced it.
So my very unhelpful answer to your question is, "It depends on the book." :)
Q: As a follow up, what do you think drives an author to write one genre over another or mess around on the border between them?
A: I think it depends on what gets caught in your filters. I, for example, have never yet had an idea for a story that wasn't genre-affiliated in some way. That's not a decision I made; that's just what shows up. Of course you can train your filters to catch different things, but I think it's something about the way an individual is put together, what catches their attention and what doesn't.
Which is waffly and about as unhelpful as my previous answer.
Q: I have a question about your writing process: specifically, how you deal with the huge amount of detail and world building in your stories. In Doctrine of the Labyrinths you've created complexity in both world and plot, and in A Companion to Wolves you have the world, the plot and a co-writer to wrangle. I'm curious as to how you keep it all straight - do you have a really good memory, diagrams, copious notes or one of those story-writing computer programs?
A: Copious notes and a weirdly good memory for text. I remember things I've read in stories much longer and much more clearly than I do things that actually happened to me or things I've done, and that seems to hold true for stories I've written as well as stories I've read. But I also keep files of notes.
(Also, in ACtW, I think it's more fair to say that Bear had me and the plot to wrangle and we both wrangled the world.)
Q: What happens to the annemer half of the obligation d'ame if the wizard dies? You provided a graphic description of what would happen to Mildmay if Felix were burned to death but what would happen if he drowned? Dropped dead of a heart attack? Wasted away with consumption?
A: I don't know. The question never arose.
Q: Much as I enjoy many of the conventions of the fantasy genre I have particularly enjoyed your subversion of them. Have you had much criticism/resentment from people who felt that you had led them to expect an outcome which you then failed to deliver?
A: Not that I'm aware of, no.
Q: Do the trains in Corambis actually run on what we would think of as magic or on what we would think of scientific principles but they think of as magic?
A: The Corambins don't think of scientific principles as magic. They think of magic as a scientific principle, which is why they drive Felix nuts.
And the trains are steam trains. The magic involved has to do with the transformation of matter into energy, but I never worked out the mechanics of it.
Q: Will Mildmay figure out what it is between Felix and Murtagh?
A: I have no idea.
Q: Felix seems to consider that the obligation d'ame and Malkar's rubies contributed to his self-destructive behaviour in The Mirador. Is he correct?
A: I think that's a question for the reader, not the author. But please remember there's a difference between an unreliable narrator and an untruthful narrator. Felix is not untruthful.
Q: Is there a possibility that the seasons of Shadow Unit will be collected, maybe through a POD format since that seems most appropriate for the project, for fans who like to physically hold books in their hands? I would love to death being able to put that on my shelf.
A: Shadow Unit has an agent, who is indeed shopping around a print version of Season 1. So it could happen!
Q: There are lots of details provided on what Malker did to Felix, but after Mildmay was captured and rescued from him,very little is mentioned about its effect on Mildmay. He doesn't remember what Malker did to him. He is messed up right after his rescue but seems to come back to himself after his assignation with Mehitabel. He does finally remember what was done to him, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on him - outside of nightmares. I love Mildmay and I love to read angst...why did you leave out the details of what Malker did to Mildmay? Was he raped like Felix was? Why was he able to move so quickly passed it?
A: Mildmay spends two years clinically depressed as a result of what Malkar did to him, so I don't think he moves past it all that quickly, and I wouldn't say he's "over" it in Corambis. He's just not talking about it, which is different.
And I left out the details because (a.) I don't know them, (b.) the story doesn't need them, and (c.) I like leaving waveforms uncollapsed. Use your imagination. Given that it's Malkar, you're unlikely to think of anything more awful than what he actually did.
Q: I've been wondering, does Stephen really hate Felix as much as Felix thinks he does? He comes across (from page 1) as one of the most reasonable people in the entire series, and seems a little more "ready to be annoyed" when Felix is around than to actually hate him. Also, Murtagh reminds me a little of Stephen (the general aura of, "yes, I'm in charge here" helps). Am I imagining similarities or was this on purpose? How freaked out would Felix be if someone drew the same connection for him?
A: Felix does self-dramatize, yes. And I imagine there were passages between Stephen and Felix back when Shannon and Felix first took up with each other that warrant Felix's belief. Stephen doesn't know how to handle Felix, and Felix exasperates him beyond bearing. But, no, I don't think he hates him.
I personally don't think there's any particular resemblance between Stephen and Murtagh beyond the generic "man in power" thing. The deliberate resemblance with Murtagh is between him and Malkar. And Felix is very aware of that.
Q: At some point, Mehitabel says: "tall, beautiful Felix, as molly as de Fidelio's dormouse". The only reference I can think about is Beethoven's opera... still, that "as molly as de Fidelio's dormouse" doesn't make a lot of sense to me (which could be only because English is not my native language). Yes, of course, that is "extremely molly", but, what's the reference about?
A: It's a made-up reference. We'd say "as queer as a three-dollar bill" or "as queer as Dick's hatband." But I couldn't use either of those, so I had to make up my own. I don't know who de Fidelio was, or why his dormouse is the standard of being a flaming queer in Meduse. (I did name de Fidelio for
fidelioscabinet, with her permission, but that's external to the text.)Q: Though sometimes easy to get immersed in the characters, I really appreciated the fact that Mélusine was its own character, sort of lurking in the back of everyone's lives. Considering the city is what and how it is, I'm not the least surprised that Felix nor Mildmay grew up to be the men they did. In all of your questions, you've explained that Felix just sort of "showed up". I was wondering if Mélusine arrived with Felix or did it have a different means of evolving?
A: Some of Mélusine showed up with Felix, specifically the Mirador and the Arcane, but mostly it developed by accretion. I made up bits and pieces of it as I went along and fit them together as I needed to. (That's why my map of Mélusine is incomplete.)
Q: The relation Vey has to blood magic, cemeteries and the commerce of the underculture kept reading as a voodoo queen. I suppose that's just me being raised in close proximity of a supernatural culture and history. Was there any particular character that inspired her, historical or otherwise?
A: Not to the best of my recollection, which may, I freely admit, be flawed. I don't think I'd read anything about Marie Laveau when I came up with Vey, but I could be wrong.
Q: Ah... The convoluted first person POV question. The answer you gave was enlightening and much appreciated, but I blame myself for not articulating the question well. I suppose I should ask how difficult was it for you to stay interested in writing from any one character's perspective? As far as the redundancy - although you "retell" from different perspectives, it's that very multifaceted lens that keeps things interesting. Better put, I think my question should've read "was there any point where you realized a character was repeating him/herself or echoing someone else a little too much?" And how do you determine how much of an event to repeat in the various voices?
A: I had to teach myself to be interested, first in Mildmay, then in Mehitabel. And then I must have caught the knack of it, because I didn't have any trouble being interested in Kay. The rest of it, as I said in answer to an earlier PoV question, I really mostly do by feel. Which is useless as far as giving advice goes.
I guess the question is, what story do you want to tell, particularly in terms of the characters and their arcs and their relationships to each other? When I retell an event from more than one point of view, it's because something in the comparison of those PoVs is important, and something that I can't get at if I only have one narrator's interpretation. That's particularly important when you're talking about discrepancies in the way a character views him/herself and his/her actions and the way s/he is seen by others.
Q: I'm working on a story right now - and maybe it's my lack of experience containing multiple FP-POV in a single work - but I'm making myself crazy trying to figure out how to synthesize the individual POVs into a single story. One POV is utterly complete, having been written in full about 3 years ago. The other just knocked insistently every time I reread the original piece. And, his voice is as strong as the original narrator's. Any suggestions on techniques of synthesis?
A: That's what I had to do with the first seven chapters of Mélusine: find spaces in Felix's narrative to fit Mildmay in--which was also when I had to teach myself to be interested in Mildmay. You'll notice that this also involved inventing a bunch more plot and world-building and all sorts of other things. In my experience, you can't add a narrator to a story and leave the story unchanged--or, if you can, there's no point in adding the narrator. Each narrator/PoV character should bring something to the story that is absolutely essential, that you can't tell the story without having, and thus any pre-existing narrative has to be affected by another perspective being added, up to and including being radically changed.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
