PL: What gave you the inspiration for Godblind and its characters?
AS: Godblind has been a long work in progress; I wrote
the first draft more than a decade ago. I originally wanted to write a
high fantasy like the ones I enjoyed reading so much, but I soon learnt
that I’m not meant to write fantasy like that.
It just doesn’t work when I put it on the page – it’s too overblown,
too melodramatic, and not real enough.
What I can write pretty well are characters who
have both light and dark in them. Characters with fears and jealousies
and petty irritations, who hold grudges and take revenge and betray. But
that’s not all they do. They’re also capable
of great love and compassion, of courage and comradeship,
self-sacrifice and a willingness to take the hard road when necessary.
It’s important to me to write characters that I
feel are as rounded as possible – none of them are purely good or purely
evil. Even Gilda, the old high priestess of the Dancer and the Fox God,
is happy to punch an enemy in the face now
and then.
I also wanted very much to write about things I’m
passionate about – gender and sexual equality, diversity of sexual
orientation, strength in women and weakness in men, all without making a
big deal out of it. By the end of Godblind, Dom
is in a terrible place, physically, mentally and emotionally. That
doesn’t make him any less of a man. Tara can be a stone-cold, practical,
ruthless killer when she needs to be. That doesn’t make her any less of
a woman. We are all of us these things and so
much more. Why wouldn’t anyone incorporate that into their work?
Godblind is the story of a bunch of ordinary people
in extraordinary circumstances – there are no superheroes here, no
‘Mary Sues’ (I hate that term and all it implies) and no ‘easy to hate’
bad guys. When the world is going to hell in
a handcart, you can try and slow it down or you can jump in and enjoy
the ride. Godblind has characters that do both, some who do neither. And
a couple who’d blow up the handcart just to see it burn.
PL: I'm sure that handcart had it coming - can't ask you
about that though, might be some spoilers there! What I can ask you
about is your characters. It sounds like you put a lot of thought and
love into your characters - are there any particularly favourites among
them? Any you're particularly looking forwards to seeing how readers
react to them?
AS: Yes, I do put a huge amount of effort into my
characters. For me, it’s about the people first and the plot second –
how they react to events rather than events for the sake of it. So the
infamous hammer scene in Godblind was more about
how Galtas and Lanta and Crys and Rivil behaved, rather than what was
being done to Janis. Don’t get me wrong, that was a fun scene to write
from a gross-out perspective, but it was more about how it haunted Crys
afterwards and made Galtas realise exactly
what it was they’d committed to that was important.
And speaking of Crys and Galtas, they’re one of my
favourites and my most hated character respectively. Crys has been with
me a long time; he was one of the first to appear after the initial trio
of characters existed (which was Dom, Rillirin
and Rivil). Back in the mists of time, in the first and second drafts,
Rillirin was a princess and was actually Rivil’s sister, one of the
heirs to the throne of Rilpor. You may have noticed a lot of names
beginning “Ri-“ – that was deliberate. It was to show
Rivil and Rillirin were born to rule Rilpor. When I realised the
fundamental flaw of that design – mainly that Rillirin was in no way,
shape or form a pampered princess – I changed her story but couldn’t
bear to change her name. She was, and always will be,
Rillirin.
So then Crys popped up, initially in a cameo role
that he proceeded to grab with both hands and refuse to let go. He
insisted on being in scene after scene and became a major – and then a
favourite – character really quickly. Both he and
Rillirin go on huge journeys of self-discovery at the same time as
their physical journeys, and I found the juxtaposition of the two to be
fascinating. Rillirin, in particular, in embarking on her inner journey
of discovery and building of courage, deliberately
agrees to put herself in harm’s way in her physical journey as a result
of what she learns about herself.
Galtas, however. Well, Galtas makes my skin crawl,
quite frankly. Readers might not quite understand how much I loathe him
because I had to tone down a couple of his scenes, but what I hate the
most is his undeniable, if oily, charm. He’s
so cocksure that despite the murders, rapes and assassinations, he
knows people like him. He makes people like him. And that sets my teeth
on edge. We talk about characters we love to hate; Galtas is a character
I hate to love.
PL: Ten years is a long time to have a story bubbling away inside your head.
How have you changed as a writer in that time? Has your approach to
making the story seen any drastic alterations?
AS: Ten years is a very long time! Some other writers
have said they’d have given up by then, produced something new, but for
me, it always had to be this story first. If I was going to be
published, Godblind would be the first book deal I
got. I don’t know why; it’s just how it was.
So because of that, I always wanted to improve – as
a writer, a plotter, a moulder of characters. At the time it was
probably painful, but looking back now, I love the world and the
characters so much that I was happy to reread, revise,
rewrite after every round of rejections.
I can safely say there’s nothing in Godblind that
was in the original draft except for the names – Dom, Lim, Rillirin,
Rivil, Rilpor. That’s the sum total of similarities. As I mentioned,
Rillirin was a pampered princess of Rilpor, sister
to Rivil. Dom and Lim were ‘sword masters’ tasked with her protection,
and it was just high-blown rubbish, absolutely melodramatic and utterly
unpublishable.
So I have definitely learnt a lot over the
intervening decade – I learnt that I can’t write high fantasy, but I can
write gritty. I can’t write traditional fantasy tropes but I can write
war and graphic killing. I can’t write purely good
and purely evil characters, but I can write real people with a mix of
light and dark within them.
My writing style has changed utterly, and for the
better. It’s a lot sparser these days, without long segments of
description of place or person. Some people don’t like that, and that’s
fine, and maybe it’s something I’ll experiment with
incorporating at some point, but I like to keep things pared down to
focus on the action and the inner monologue. What a character is feeling
is just as – if not more – important to me as the environment in which
they move. As I favour multiple close points
of view, sticking in grand descriptions of sweeping vistas as well
would just cloud the issue further – who is seeing this vista? What do
they care, they’re about to be stabbed?
I think my next project after the Godblind trilogy,
whatever it may be, will always veer closer to the dark and the
gruelling. I’m not a depressive person who only ever sees the bad in
people – I’ve actually got a rather sunny disposition
– but these are the themes I’m drawn to. I enjoy exploring the dark
side (Star Wars pun totally intended) even though I wouldn’t want to
live there.
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| How can you not buy a book with a cover like that? |
PL: See, that's how I feel about Florida... enjoy exploring but wouldn't want to live there!
Okay, back to seriousness. What's the best and worst bits of writing advice you've ever received?
AS: I think in this respect I’ve actually been quite
lucky, in that I haven’t really been told how to do my job by
non-writers so there hasn’t been a lot of bad advice.
Okay
one final question! If you had to pick one scene from Godblind to sell
it to prospective readers and really show what the book is about, which
one would you pick?
Because I never really talked about being a writer
to anyone other than family and close friends, it wasn’t until I signed
with my agent that colleagues and acquaintances really knew about it.
Then when they did, it was more a case of them
asking me questions, usually “where do you get your ideas” – yes, that
old chestnut – or asking where I found the time to write. They all
seemed quite surprised when I told them before work, after work,
evenings and weekends.
As for the best advice, a lot of that probably came
from reading On Writing by Stephen King, which is the single best guide
to writing I know of. Also, some advice from my agent and editor along
the lines of “you don’t have to explain everything
to everyone. Don’t assume your readers are stupid and need everything
spelling out – mystery and misdirection can be really effective”. So I
took that to heart as well.
PL: What was the process of getting an agent and then working with a pro
editor like for you? There seems to be a lot of mystique about that part
of the business among would-be authors, so I thought it made sense to
ask someone who's been through it pretty recently how it worked.
AS: Getting an agent is always the hard part, I think.
That’s what takes the time. You need to pick someone who is actively
looking for your genre, actively has space on their client list to take
you on, and actively likes your work! That’s
a lot of coincidences and chances that need to all come together at one
point.
And there’s always the question that once you’ve
submitted to an agent and been rejected, at what point can you submit
again? The short answer to that is if you are planning to re-submit the
same manuscript, it needs to have had extensive
work done to it. You’re best to acknowledge that you submitted to them
before and explain in detail what you’ve changed and why.
But it’s also not a one-way street – it’s not just
about the agent liking your work and you. You have to like your agent as
well. There has to be a strong connection between you, because this is
the person who is going to represent you,
sell your work, promote you. If you have any doubts about their ability
to do that, or about them doing everything possible in your best
interests, then the relationship may never work.
For me, Harry and I got on really well from the
start. We met for lunch before I signed the contract, and he’d already
got some ideas about how to improve Godblind, and I suppose that could
have gone one of two ways – I could’ve been outraged
that he had OPINIONS, or I could think: now this is someone who knows
what he likes and wants to make it even better. Fortunately, I took the
latter attitude.
So Harry and I tightened up the plot and the prose
further, and then we got the Harper Voyager deal, and at that point I
was thinking it was pretty much done. Sit back and let the money flow
in.... boy, was I wrong.
Getting a publishing deal is only the first step.
Because it turned out that Natasha also had OPINIONS on Godblind – and a
whole lot of them. I think the biggest thing for people looking for a
deal to realise is that an agent and an editor
will never, NEVER tell you to rewrite or edit your book in a way that
will make it worse. A lot of people think that suggested edits are
criticisms and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Some people
think that the editor can never know your book as well
as you do, and that’s correct – but that’s also not a bad thing. A step
removed from a precious manuscript is often the best place to be – you
can see the big picture, see past favourite scenes or characters, to the
actual story.
The editor is there to improve your book. You may
not agree with their improvements, but you have to realise that now
you’re in a partnership that is designed to make money. And that may
mean that certain elements of your novel, your plot,
your characters need to change to better tap into the market. Some
authors can’t handle that. They freak out at the suggestion of changing a
name or a line or a plot point. And if it’s going to affect you that
badly, then you need to return your advance and
cancel your contract, because there does come a point when artistic
integrity and business sense collide.
For me, I found it difficult to lose some of my POV
characters, but I trusted in the process – and not because of the
money, either – and I found that Godblind is a much better book because
of that input. It was hard to do, but I’m glad
I did it. I want to write the best books I can, and that means having
someone I trust point out the flaws and working with me to correct them.
 |
| If you think I've done an insufficient job of grilling Anna, turn up to this and do some more, I hear authors love that... |
PL: Do you think the whole process will make/has made writing your next book
easier? What can you tell us about your future writing plans anyway?
AS: I’ve learnt a huge amount from the editorial and
publishing process so far, and this definitely did make writing book 2
easier – and harder, in one specific way. When I was waiting for the
last round of edits to come back for Godblind,
I started drafting Darksoul and then at the last minute we made the
decision to alter the ending quite significantly. This meant that of the
100,000 words I’d already written of Darksoul, about 15,000 of them
were useable. In the end, it was easier to scrap
the entire draft, finish editing Godblind, and then start again.
That was ... distressing.
I’m currently awaiting the first editorial letter
and suggestions for Darksoul, which should drop any day now, so we’ll
have to wait for those to see whether I’ve learnt as much as I think I
have! I had a very reduced timescale to write
book 2 after all those changes got scrapped, so it was a very different
experience writing to a deadline that couldn’t be changed. I had to sit
and get the words down no matter what. But it was great to exercise
that self-discipline and come up with a manuscript
that, while it isn’t perfect, is, I think, a very good starting point
and something we can work on together to perfect for publication.
Other than Darksoul, which should be published in
May 2018, I’m working on an anthology submission and a short story,
batting around ideas for a brand new trilogy, and trying not to worry
too much about my impending edits!
PL: Ouch. I mean... ouch. But, yes, that does sound like a good lesson.
AS: OK, so you saved the most difficult question to last, I see! Only one? ARGHH.
Alright, I think the one that gives a sense of two
of the three factions within the world – Mireces, Watchers/Wolves and
Rilporians – is the scene where Corvus leads his Mireces army to the
Wolf village in the foothills in pursuit of the
escaped slave Rillirin, who he thinks witnessed the murder of the
previous king and who he wants to question. Rillirin has been captured –
or saved, depending on your point of view – by the Wolves, the civilian
warriors guarding the border of Rilpor. They
have elected to fight to defend her, rather than fleeing or giving her
back up to the Mireces.
The scene shows the Mireces’s viciousness – they’re
there to kill everyone who isn’t Rillirin – and the honour and duty of
the Wolves, who fight and die in defence of a stranger.
It not only gives you the general impression of the
two peoples – though only general, of course – but it hints at the
importance Rillirin has to play to both parties. The Mireces have led a
raiding party in her pursuit, and the Wolves
are prepared to die for her.
Thanks to Anna for her time (and sticking to only one scene!). Godblind is out now in kindle and paperback. To hear more from Anna, visit her website or seek her out at the Fantasy Faction Grim Gathering.
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