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Chris Pickens

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

R.F. Kuang

Interview by Chris Pickens

R.F. Kuang’s superlative fantasy debut, The Poppy War, follows ambitious orphan Rin as she enters prestigious military academy Sinegard, attempts to survive her crushing workload and vicious fellow students, and discovers her shamanistic powers—as well as the ability to communicate with the gods through hallucinogenic drugs.

The Poppy War enthralls readers with a textured, well-crafted world inspired by both 20th-century and Song Dynasty China, before growing steadily darker and more mature as Rin and her companions encounter the brutality of war outside the classroom and Rin tries to come to terms with her destructive power. We talked to Kuang about discovering her inner editor and creating a heroine that represents her worst impulses.

Since this is your debut novel, what were the greatest challenges you encountered in the writing or editing process that you might not have encountered in writing workshops or during school?
I actually hadn’t taken received any formal writing training when I finished The Poppy War. That was weirdly liberating—I wasn’t aware of all the things that could possibly go wrong, so I just had a good time writing a story that I enjoyed. But that’s not a sustainable path to improving your craft, because it means you remain ignorant of your own faults. After The Poppy War and its sequels sold, I went first to the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. That’s when I developed some serious imposter syndrome and second book syndrome. All the techniques that felt so intuitive and effortless to me when I was writing my first book now seemed impossible (I always compare this to Lyra of The Golden Compass and her alethiometer). It took a long time for me to trust my writing voice again. But now I have a confident writing voice and a harsh inner editor, which is a good place to be.

The Poppy War draws inspiration from Chinese history. What periods of China’s past resonated most with you when writing? What resources proved the most helpful?
The book draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China, and its aesthetic from Song Dynasty China. I read all the standard Western historical works—Spence, Fairbank, Dikotter, the Cambridge History of China series, what have you. On the Chinese side I was reading historians like Ray Huang. I also drew heavily from Iris Chang’s work. Her historical analysis has been challenged by many historians since The Rape of Nanking was first published in 1997, but it touches on many themes—outrage, intergenerational memory and trauma, nationalism and erasure—that are defining features of the study of the Rape of Nanjing today.

The island nation of Mugen seems to reflect World War II-era Japan with its military might. Does The Poppy War seek in any way to reflect on Chinese-Japanese relations throughout history?
The Poppy War has deliberate parallels to Sino-Japanese relations during the 20th century. (So deliberate, in fact, that whenever I describe the world I just say “faux China” and “faux Japan.”) The map in the hardcover looks almost identical to the East China Sea! The similarities aren’t just aesthetic. The Poppy War’s plot is mirrored almost entirely on the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II). You see a deeply militarized, westernized society invading a comparatively backward, huge but fragile empire. You also get a fantasy version of the Rape of Nanjing, the experiments of Unit 731 and the Battle of Shanghai. And the themes of the book are, of course, intergenerational trauma and cycles of violence—extremely important topics in Sino-Japanese relations today.

There’s a great deal of detail and care given to the scenes in Sinegard, where Rin and her fellow students learn the ways of war. What was it like to write about student life? Did you find yourself feeling nostalgic or reliving your own experiences as a student?
I am still a student, so I wouldn’t say that writing about student life was nostalgic as much as it was cathartic. I like writing about the high-pressure academic rat race. I don’t think that many fantasy books explore the ways that students develop their own kinds of addiction to success and external praise. That mindset can ruin you. We should talk about it more.

As the war continues, Rin and her compatriots discover scenes of increasingly monstrous acts committed by the enemy. Was it difficult to conceive of and write some of the more intense scenes of brutality that your characters witness?
It wasn’t difficult to conceive. It’s never difficult to conceive of inhuman brutality—you just have to open a history book. But many scenes were very, very difficult to write. Parts one and two flew by during the drafting process, but parts three and four took me much longer because I could only write a few paragraphs at a time before I had to step out and take a walk.

In many ways, The Poppy War can be seen as an examination of the effects of suffering. Physical, psychological, mental and spiritual trauma informs the identities of many characters. Was this by design? Did the suffering these characters experience make for better or different decisions in your writing process?
Yes, The Poppy War was intentionally a study on pain, sacrifice, vengeance and trauma. There are two separate themes to tease out here. The first is pain as a necessary sacrifice for power. Rin has to give up so much, has to suffer so much, for where she ends up. She self-mutilates. She has a hysterectomy. She puts herself through brutal torture, both mental and physical, to keep her place at Sinegard. Was it worth it?

The second theme is the question of whether past trauma ever justify future atrocities, even if it explains them. The Poppy War explores this on both an interpersonal and international level. Take Altan. He’s been through so much shit, but he takes his inner issues out on others in a way that is inexcusable. What do you do with that? Do we forgive him for being both emotionally and physical abusive towards Rin just because his childhood was a string of horrors? Then take the Nikara Empire and the Federation of Mugen, who have been abusing each other (and Speer) for centuries. When your foreign policy decisions are motivated by national trauma, when does the cycle of violence ever stop?

Rin is a flawed and fascinating heroine, and the beating heart of this story. Do you see yourself in any part of Rin's character? How are you different from her?
I think Rin and I are quite different! I’m generally quite positive, and she’s generally quite . . . not. I just want to become a professor, settle down with my boyfriend and live a happy life with our two corgis (we don’t own them yet, but we will). Rin wants to . . . burn cities, I guess.

That being said, I think Rin represents my worst impulses, exaggerated to the extreme. I get angry. Rin rages. I’m ambitious. Rin is addicted to her ambition. She’s impulsive, furious, vengeful, over-the-top angry. These are all the things that I try to rein back in myself.

What was your favorite part about constructing a universe full of gods and shamans? What other fantasy worlds gave you inspiration?
My favorite part by far was writing about psychedelics. It’s impossible to take a scene seriously if everyone in it is tripping balls. I haven’t seen this particular mechanism used as a magic system in other fantasy works before, so I wouldn’t say I drew magical inspiration from any fantasy worlds. It all comes from history. I’ve been obsessed with the Opium Wars for a long time, and it’s interesting to entertain a world where opium is not just a source of Chinese debilitation and humiliation, but also of unfathomable power.

When you reflect on the time you spent writing, what passages or sequences do you remember most vividly?
The chapter about Golyn Niis–that chapter–was extremely difficult to write. I remember that week very vividly. I did my research in the morning, took a mental health break, wrote in the afternoon and took another mental health break. I cried a lot. I was getting so depressed that my roommate made me stop working on the manuscript for a few days.

On the lighter side, I love the scene where Rin and Nezha fight back to back during the battle at Sinegard. It’s such a pivotal point in their relationship. It transforms from a petty schoolyard rivalry to something bigger.

Can you give us any information about the next installment in Rin's story?
Only that a draft of book two has been finished and you can expect it around a year from now (:

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Poppy War.

The Poppy War enthralls readers with a textured, well-crafted world inspired by both 20th-century and Song Dynasty China, before growing steadily darker and more mature as Rin and her companions encounter the brutality of war outside the classroom and Rin tries to come to terms with her destructive power. We talked to R.F. Kuang about discovering her inner editor and creating a heroine that represents her worst impulses.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Jacqueline Carey

Interview by Chris Pickens

Jacqueline Carey’s Starless is both deeply traditional and delightfully innovative. The fantasy icon’s latest book, where gods walk the earth and soul mates exist, is told with grand ambition and mythic prose. But within her epic framework, complexity abounds—prophecy is dizzying and frustrating, a character with physical disabilities isn’t magically healed and nothing is as it seems. We talked to Carey about keeping twists under wraps, the power of found families and which of her fictional gods she would worship.

On your website, you mention that you had “mixed feelings” about other reviews revealing a very important part of who Khai is. What sorts of conversations did you have with yourself and your publisher about how to present this element to the reader?
Ah, you’ve posed this question in a nicely non-spoilery way, and answering it in kind is tricky! Honestly, I was planning to be upfront about it. As the book is written, the reader is intended to suspect the truth about Khai’s nature long before he does, and I think the inspiration behind that creative decision is a fascinating talking point. No doubt some readers will think it’s a very contemporary postmodern choice, while in fact its roots lie in a rather unexpected place. (Pssst! If you’re curious, Google the term bacha posh.)

However, when Khai does learn the truth, it’s a huge, impactful revelation, and it was my editor, Claire Eddy, who pointed out that we ran the risk of depriving the reader of sharing in the emotional impact of that seminal moment of our hero’s journey. So we chose not to include the reveal in the cover copy or PR material and let the chips fall where they may when it came to reviews.

You mention that Starless both works within and actively subverts many tropes of the fantasy genre—I heartily agree! Do you think the genre has become too reliant on these tropes?
In some ways, yes, absolutely. As someone who loves fantasy, I want to be inspired and exalted; I want to read books that make me wish I’d written them. Work that operates solely within the framework of existing tropes doesn’t do it. Yet at the same time, there’s a comfort food factor. Sometimes you want a good old-fashioned PB&J sandwich. Sometimes you want to curl up on the couch and read something that feels familiar and reassuring because it ticks all those boxes—and not in a twisty, subversive way.

I may only be saying that because I binge-watched “Iron Fist” last year when I was home alone with a miserable head cold. Not my proudest moment.

Something you do in Starless that I love is that you examine what it might be like to see the future. It might mean lying to your student or not revealing a companion’s true fate to ensure Brother Yarit’s “If this, then that,” equation plays out. Is writing about prophecy confining or liberating?
A couple of years ago, I had the chance to contribute to a Cards Against Humanity fantasy extension pack as part of Patrick Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraising, and I was disappointed that one of my favorite suggestions, “Goddamn passive aggressive wizards,” wasn’t chosen for the final version. Inexplicably cryptic wizards, druids and seers of all ilk have annoyed me for ages. So I suppose one might consider Brother Yarit an explicitly cryptic seer! I tried to convey in a visceral manner what it might be like to see all those crossroads and possibilities, to sense the mental dexterity it would take to surf those waves, as well as the weight of that responsibility.

On the whole, I’d say it’s more confining than liberating to write about prophecy, as each choice does narrow one’s possibilities. But I’ve never minded working within strictures.

I can tell you had fun creating some of the gods in Starless. If you were an acolyte of any of them, which would you choose?
Probably one of those who only gets a passing reference, like Johina the Mirthful. Or possibly Aardo the Intoxicated!

The idea of family gets several different definitions over the course of the narrative. Did writing about Khai and his companions’ quest inform how you think about families?
In contemporary society, one thinks about the families into which we’re born, the families into which we marry or otherwise bind our lives, our work families, the families of choice that we create for ourselves. Writing this did make me think about the way a shared destiny—and a very extreme experience—forges unlikely familial bonds.

Let’s talk a bit about Zariya. How did you decide that you wanted to give her a physical handicap? Did any of your choices for her in the story change as a result?
Sometimes character decisions are conscious; other times, not so much. This time, it was the latter. Zariya’s physical disability was simply a part of her backstory and who she was. But I will say that I’m so, so very grateful to have read several of author Nicola Griffith’s discussions of what she calls “crip lit” during the writing of Starless. Griffith has an aggressive form of Multiple Sclerosis—I have friends and family members with MS, and while it sucks across the board, some forms are definitely more debilitating than others—and in recent years has been writing candidly about the difficulties it engenders, as well as opening up a conversation about the depiction of characters with a wide range of disabilities.

Before reading on this topic from the perspective of a variety of people with first-hand experiences, I was thinking, oh, perhaps I will magically cure Zariya! And then she can walk, yay! And be better equipped to save the world! Reading these conversations made me realize, “Whoa, that’s a lousy trope and a cheap-out, and it’s offensive! Do not do it!”

I did equivocate a little bit, because for narrative purposes I needed to unblock Zariya’s chi, basically. But I didn’t make her fully able-bodied and having a character that’s unable to, say, traverse uneven terrain at speed when in a life-or-death situation created some interesting challenges. And I think how those challenges are met speaks to both Zariya’s inner strength and courage, as well as the idea of unlikely families.

What do Rhamanthus seeds taste like? Would you take one, given the chance?
Rock-hard pomegranate seeds. And I want to say no, but I imagine that’s something one never knows for sure until the option is presented.

When you reflect on the time you spent writing, what passages or sequences do you remember most vividly?
In Starless, it’s a toss-up. Khai learning that he’s bhazim, and that word echoing over and over in his head. Zariya’s ordeal inside the Green Mother’s hut on Papa-ka-hondras . . . eeek! The Hieronymous Boschian nightmare of the risen dead at the end of the world.

There are probably readers out there with whom Khai’s personal conflict will resonate more than others. Do you have any advice or thoughts about coming to peace with yourself, whatever doubt you might be feeling inside?
Just be kind to yourself; be gentle and patient. Understanding your own identity is a lifelong process, and it’s one that’s in a constant state of evolution. Who you are today doesn’t have to be dictated by who you were yesterday, nor does it have to determine who you are tomorrow.

In the final passage, Khai and Zariya are on their way back to the Fortress of the Winds. What do you think Brother Yarit would tell them when they arrive?
“Nice work, kid. Did you bring me any oranges?”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Starless.

Author photo by Kim Carey.

Jacqueline Carey’s Starless is both deeply traditional and delightfully innovative. The fantasy icon’s latest book, where gods walk the earth and soul mates exist, is told with grand ambition and mythic prose. But within that epic framework, complexity abounds—prophecy is dizzying and frustrating, a character with physical disabilities isn’t magically healed and nothing is as it seems. We talked to Carey about keeping twists under wraps, the power of found families and which of her fictional gods she would worship.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Rena Rossner

Interview by Chris Pickens

A fairy tale fractured by prejudice and the pitfalls of adolescence, Rena Rossner’s The Sisters of the Winter Wood is a mesmerizing update of Hassidic legends, with a bit of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” thrown in for good measure.

Set in the early years of the 20th century, Rossner’s story begins at the edge of a tiny town named Dubossary, where a Jewish population lives a simple life next to a forbidding, dark forest. Sisters Liba and Laya have grown up on the outskirts of this community, and when their parents are called away, they learn something shocking about their family. Their parents are shape-shifters, and the girls have inherited their power. Liba can turn into a bear, and Laya into a swan.

We talked to Rossner about writing in both poetry and prose (one form for each sister), the importance of food and creating the stories she wishes her younger self could read.

What kind of folk tales did you grow up with and how did those stories influence this book?
I grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales, having been born and raised in Miami, Florida, (three hours from Orlando and Disney World) and my mom also read to me from Andrew Lang’s Fairy Tale books that were collections of fairy and folk tales from around the world. But more than all of that, I was raised on Hassidic tales, many of which have magic and supernatural elements to them. From the Wise Men of Chelm to Isaab Bashevis Singer’s stories, Jewish folk tales were a large part of my childhood and my father, who worked in Jewish education, was great storyteller. He often told stories as part of the speeches he made and the lectures he gave. I only wondered why I never found any of these magical tales in any traditional fantasy novels: Why were there no Jewish fantasy novels? Why did I never see Orthodox Jewish teens like myself as the heroines of their own fairy tales? As I got older I was determined to write these stories so that my daughter would be able to someday see someone like herself in a fantasy novel that drew on the stories and tales of my childhood.

Readers might not know much of the history of the real town of Dubossary, which you mention in the author’s note. Do you find its history inspirational? Or tragic?
The truth is that I didn’t know much about the history of the real town of Dubossary either. I was simply looking for a place to set my tale, and I decided to start reading some of my family’s genealogy books (which I had never read before). I found a poem online that was part of the Dubossary Yizkor (Memorial) book that echoed some of “Goblin Market,” it mentioned that the town was full of orchards and vineyards, berries, grapes, pears, apples and melons, and I knew where I had to set my book. On the one hand, I was inspired to write a story about Jewish resistance not set during the time of the Holocaust, and I was proud that the Jews from the town that my ancestors came from fought back and made sure that a pogrom didn’t happen in their town. On the other hand, starting in September 1941, the Nazis came to Dubossary and forced 600 Jews into the main synagogue and burnt it to the ground, after which they systematically wiped out the entire Jewish population. Today, there are 18,000 Jews buried in mass graves in the forests surrounding the town and only about 100-150 Jews left from the town. It is a bittersweet tale, but I wanted to bring to life the shtetl as it was before tragedy befell the town, to tell a story of courage, resistance and resilience, not a tale of tragedy.

Let’s talk about writing prose and poetry in the same book. First of all, what drove this choice? Did you alternate each style as you wrote, just as the chapters alternate? Did you find yourself liking one style versus the other while writing?
I originally set out to write the book in prose. But when I was trying to differentiate Laya’s voice from Liba’s voice I started to hear Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” melodies in my head—the plodding sound of the grandfather or the wolf, and the flute-like sound of the bird, and I realized that I needed to do this in literary form. I was a poet first, well before I decided to try my hand at writing fiction, and I love a good novel-in-verse, so I thought, why not a novel written half in verse and half in prose? It’s not something that we see very often, and it just felt right. I was really excited to play with this new format and see where it took me. I think that writing Laya’s sections was more fun, and it was nice to take a break from Liba’s sections and write a little poetry in-between. It kept things interesting.

This book is full of Yiddish phrases and Hebrew words, which gives the story a feeling of authenticity and place. How did you choose what words to employ and when to employ them?
When I realized that the book was going to be set in the shtetl of Dubossary I knew that I had to put Yiddish into the book. You can’t write about turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe without including some Yiddish. I was very much inspired by the way Laura Ruby used the Polish language in Bone Gap, and I really wanted to do the same kind of thing for Yiddish (and Hebrew) in my novel. As I looked up phrases that I knew had a good Yiddish equivalent, I often found that the right word popped into my head before I had even completed a search on the internet. My grandmother’s voice came to me as I worked, and this book is dedicated to her, for she taught me all the Yiddish I know. But I also spent hours reading lists of various colorful Yiddish phrases and spread them all out around me so that when the right opportunity arose I could use a choice phrase in the novel so that I would be incorporating as many authentic Yiddish turns of phrase into the book as possible. To me, more than anything, I hope this book helps keep the Yiddish language alive in the minds and hearts of readers.

Food is important in this story. The sisters each crave different foods and are heavily affected by them. Is this rooted in the part of the world the book is set in? Did you use food as a way to impact the story?
Food is a really important part of Jewish culture. Every holiday, every weekend (Shabbat) is centered around shared meals, customs and symbolic foods. Besides that, I am a foodie myself and my first book was actually a cookbook. Anyone who has eaten at my table knows that about me, so it was only natural that food should find its way into the books that I write. I think that food is very much a part of how we define ourselves culturally, and “Goblin Market” itself is a poem filled with descriptions of luscious fruit—I love books that are super evocative, where you can see and smell and taste the world that is being described, and I was determined to make sure that readers could literally taste my book on their tongues.

Tell me about writing a story centered on two sisters with two very different perspectives. Was it difficult to unify these perspectives into one story? Are there parts of how they’re tied together that you’re most proud of?
I think that a lot of the work of being a sibling and being part of a family is forgiveness. There is a lot of petty stuff that happens on a day-to-day basis between siblings, and from a very young age we are constantly forgiving and forgetting. The bigger challenge is what happens when we grow up and grow apart. What happens when your siblings start to make important life choices that you don’t agree with? This is something that happens in every family. And I think the parts I’m most proud of are the places where the sisters have to work hard to forgive each other and to love each other despite how different they are. It’s a hard lesson, and one that I think is really universal. The places where the sisters love and fight for each other even though they don’t agree with the choices that the other is making are the parts that I hope come across as nuanced and real—those are the parts I’m most proud of.

What are some of the defining elements of folklore that comes from Russia, the Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe that were inspirations here?
I started with the Hassidic folk tales I was familiar with—taking a man who dances in a bear cloak to save a fellow Jew (from the tale of the Shpoler Zaiyde) and making the leap from that to a man who can actually turn into a bear wasn’t that hard! But there are magical elements to a lot of Hassidic tales—they are just not as well-known as traditional fairy and folk tales. I discovered that the bear is the national symbol of Russia and that in the Ukraine, it is traditional to dance in a bearskin (head and all) to welcome in the new year. There is a line in “Goblin Market” that compares one sister’s neck to that of a swan, and that was the jumping off point for me to making Laya and her mother into actual swan-maidens. Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian folklore are chock-full with swan-maiden and swan-prince tales, often in epic poems called blyini.

When you think back on writing the book, are there parts of the writing process that stand out in your mind?
Once the bare bones of the novel were finished, it took me many drafts to get it to the place that it’s at now. But to a certain degree—revising is kind of my favorite part. I’d say: “Ooh, I need to put Yiddish into my novel,” and then start from the beginning and braid the threads throughout. Then my agent suggested I make the woods creepier and add more of a sense of foreboding, so that was fun, too—going back in and making the woods come to life, while setting the stage for more of a sense of fear and uncertainty in the air. Writing is rewriting. The hardest part of working on a project for me is getting down the bones. Painting in the muscles and sinews and fleshing out the skin is the fun part.

You also mention in the author’s note that you’re a great fan of both history and fantasy. Are there other works out there that you would recommend for readers itching for similar tales?
I think that the further you go back in history the more mythological or fantastical historical fiction becomes. Mark Noce writes books that are categorized as historical fiction (Between Two Fires and Dark Winds Rising) but that skate on the edge of myth and have fantastical elements to them. J. Kathleen Cheney’s The Golden City series is one of my favorites and one that truly combines a sense of history and fantasy, Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville does this as well, and Naomi Novik’s most recent Spinning Silver is absolutely magical, but firmly rooted in elements of history.

Okay, be honest . . . would you rather be a bear or a swan?
I think that I am most like Liba in my personality, but, if given a choice, I would much rather be a swan. Perhaps it is because I am very un-swan-like in reality. I think there is a little of me in both sisters, and like Liba, I often wish that I could be something other than myself—something a bit wilder and more free.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Sisters of the Winter Wood.

Author photo credit Tomer Rottenberg.

We talked to Rena Rossner about writing in both poetry and prose, the importance of food and creating the stories she wishes her younger self could read.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Molly Tanzer

Interview by Chris Pickens

Many advocates for Prohibition believed that alcohol was sinful—but in Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Want and Ruin, one particular batch of moonshine is quite literally demonic. The second book in a loose trilogy that began with last year’s Creatures of Will and Temper, Tanzer’s latest historical fantasy follows Long Island bootlegger Ellie West as she tries to uncover the secrets of the dangerous hooch. During her quest to protect her family and community from the diabolical people who brewed it, Ellie joins forces with visiting socialite Fin, who has her own struggles to overcome. We talked to Tanzer about why she shifted the supernatural action in her series from Victorian London to Roaring ’20s America and what demonic alcohol would taste like.

One of the things I loved about this book is the yin and yang relationship of Ellie and Fin. Do you see them as two sides to the same coin? Or shades of the same sort of person?
Thank you so much! I really enjoyed writing their dynamic, and was eager to showcase two women on Long Island living very different lives while living only one or two streets away from one another, so I’m glad it works.

That said, I’m really not sure how to answer this! I don’t think I intended them to be yin/yang . . . they both have flexible ethics and believe in doing the right thing even when it’s hard—though, understandably, their different backgrounds mean they come at those problems in different ways.

It’s funny—Fin’s character was so hard for me to get right. I really struggled with finding her a believable toehold with Ellie, in spite of their similarities. It really didn’t “get there” for me until I realized that giving Fin a mild criminal past would do a lot to soften Ellie up.

Prohibition, as we know, didn’t mean the absence of alcohol. It seems like everyone had a bottle at home. Did this historical perspective make for some interesting character decisions? For example, having the character of Jones, a cop who was meant to enforce the law but was still buying booze from Ellie?
Creatures of Want and Ruin is taking its cues from H.P. Lovecraft and F. Scott Fitzgerald but also crime fiction of the era. I love the trope of the cop on the take . . . the combination of risk and safety a corrupt law enforcement official presents to a protagonist is always so delicious. Keeping Ellie off balance in regards to not knowing Jones’ feelings about her added even more spice, I like to think!

I think my favorite perspective I gained while researching Amityville under Prohibition informed setting rather than character. When I visited the Amityville Historical Society, I got talking with them about the volume of tunnels in Amityville that were all purely for bootlegging liquor. They pointed out a few homes that still have them today, and when I heard about that, I knew I had to incorporate a shed and tunnel into the novel as at least a minor set piece!

What was it like being a woman in Long Island during this time? Are Fin and Ellie direct reflections of those experiences?
The Roaring ’20s is a favorite time period for writers and readers—it’s a period of social change and transition, the art and literature of the time still feel very modern and relevant and frankly, the clothes were super cool. Long Island is the setting of one of the most iconic novels of the period for a reason: The disparity between the working-class and moneyed residents made it a compelling “America in miniature,” and what could be better for someone commenting on the American dream?

I picked it as a setting for some of the same reasons—Long Island’s population in the 1920s was made up of the rich and the poor, people of various races and religions, those who came to America on the Mayflower and those who emigrated somewhat more recently. And of course, it also had women and men that fit into all those different groups! What I’m getting at here is that “being a woman” on Long Island was deeply informed by race, class and social standing, and I’ve definitely done my best to represent and honor that in the book. That said, I was indeed inspired by the real lives of the women of Long Island! Ellie is a pulp reboot of my own grandmother, who was a baywoman of Amityville and a nature poet. While my grandmother might not recognize herself in some of Ellie’s more hard-boiled character traits, she was the “tomboy” of her family, who used to hunt duck with her father and always went out with my grandfather to fish for snook and dig for clams.

In the same vein, Fin and Ellie are both sexually empowered women and their sexual experiences help inform each one’s sense of self. What was it like writing about this freedom with this particular era in mind?
In Creatures of Will and Temper, I had two fairly traditional romance plotlines, so in Creatures of Want and Ruin, I wanted to do something a little different. I had been thinking about how it’s easy to get people together in books, but it’s harder to keep that spark alive between two established characters. Thus, I gave Ellie a fiancé, and gave them both some specific but fairly common deviant interests, just to keep things interesting—for them and for us. Fin’s romances are a bit less wholesome, it’s true, but the thing is every generation thinks they invented sex and scandal. Matters of the heart were just as lurid back then; they just weren’t spoken about or spoken about in ways we can easily understand.

Basically—and speaking more to my drawing on the pulps—I wanted to create two co-tagonists who behave like the pulp protagonists they’re modeled on. Sex was a big part of the pulps, and while it might have been a little less explicit—or, well, “consent-forward,” let’s call it—I wanted to incorporate that same element into Creatures of Want and Ruin in honest and naturalistic ways.

Something I found myself thinking about while reading was belief. That is, the threshold at which we believe what we see. And the characters here see some pretty unbelievable things. How do you navigate what is believable for the character? Is it a conscious choice you make as a writer to say, “This character has to believe what they see now?”
I struggle with this every time I write a novel about supernatural or fantastical things happening to everyday people!

Truthfully, I think I’d melt down and experience a psychic break if I had to deal with pretty much anything my protagonists need to deal with, but hey, fiction is often aspirational! And people are actually so much more capable of coping with the absurd and the terrifying than we give ourselves credit for. So, in the interest of moving a story along, I often draw on the strength of my characters and do a bit of hand waving. While I have enjoyed stories about people being unable to cope with the paranormal—I mean, I did in part base this book on the works of H.P. Lovecraft—at the end of the day, I was telling a story about people rising to the occasion, not failing to.

Both Ellie and Fin are compelling, intriguing people. Do you see more pieces of yourself in one versus the other? What’s the benefit of writing multiple perspectives in a story like this?
I do tend to incorporate my experiences into my writing, but it’s rarely autobiographical. That said, I do identify more with Fin than Ellie. Ellie is so self-confident; she’s so sure of herself and secure in her identity. While that’s #goals for me, it’s not my reality. Fin’s struggle to figure out who she is is much more relatable to my life. But it isn’t activism that is my core, it’s writing. The multiple times I’ve lost my way in my life, writing has brought me back to myself in the way that activism does for Fin.

As for the other part of your question, the benefit of multiple perspectives is just that—multiple perspectives! I couldn’t have told this story just from Ellie’s point of view, or just from Fin’s. At its core, this is a book about how we must not set aside, but rather work through our differences in order to come together and effectively fight our battles, thus I had to make that bridge-building a part of the tale.

When you look back on the writing process, what moments in the story do you remember writing most vividly?
I remember writing the summer luau sequence during a freak late-season snowstorm here in Colorado. I built up a fire in the fireplace to warm my place up, put on ukulele music and tried to imagine summer!

What do you imagine Ellie’s demon-hooch really tastes like?
Probably super gross! You know, a few years ago, there was a movement to make moonshine whiskey the hot new artisanal booze out there on the better liquor store shelves. I’ve had exactly one fancy white dog worth drinking; the rest always makes me feel like someone is hammering nails into my eyes but through the back of my head. (Also, none of it can hold a candle to the apple pie moonshine a friend’s former roommate used to make in a pressure cooker on the stove, but that still also made me feel like nails were being driven into my skull.) I imagine the usual moonshine “tasting notes” of Gojo and burning hair would be augmented if not enhanced by the taste of the water you pour off canned mushrooms. I think I also invoke kerosene, so let’s go with that!

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Creatures of Want and Ruin.

Author photo © Max Campanella.

Many advocates for Prohibition believed that alcohol was sinful—but in Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Want and Ruin, a batch of moonshine is quite literally demonic. The second book in a loose trilogy that began with last year’s Creatures of Will and Temper, Tanzer’s latest historical fantasy follows Long Island bootlegger Ellie West as she tries to uncover the secrets of the dangerous hooch, and protect her family and community from the diabolical people who brewed it. We talked to Tanzer about why she shifted the supernatural action from Victorian London to Roaring Twenties America and what exactly demonic alcohol would taste like.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Interview by Chris Pickens

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest idiosyncratic novel leaps easily from the micro to the macro, beginning with two cryptid-hunting friends and expanding to encompass an entire alternate history of the development of life itself. Through it all, Tchaikovsky’s irrepressible wit and effervescent intelligence serve as lifelines for the reader as The Doors of Eden take them on a truly unique and fantastical ride. We talked to Tchaikovsky about crafting his latest awe-inspiring trip through space and time.

You excel at creating a tone that bounces between humor and horror. How do you strike that balance as a writer?
That’s kind of you to say. I suspect the rather appalling truth is that while I’m aware of various things that horrify others, they don’t necessarily horrify me in the same way. The human-spider interactions in the middle of Children of Time, say, or certain adventurous scenes in its sequel, aren’t written as horror, because they’re written from the point of view of the thing that horrifies, rather than the beneficiaries of that emotion. That discontinuity also tends to produce the horror, and the incongruity of the horror makes the humor, and the humor makes the horror that much worse.

You dreamed up a menagerie of beasts both small and large for this book. Did you scrap any concepts for other life-forms from the great beyond? Care to share any?
There’s the whole of evolutionary creation to plunder. I’d have liked to do more with anomalocarids and other Cambrian explosion fauna, because a real seed for this book was Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, which includes a detailed description of the mainstays of that fossil biota. And I leave large gaps—there’s about a hundred million years of dinosaurs I never touched, mostly because dinosaur speculative evolution is one of the more common areas of thought. And it might have been fun to depart further from current evolution—have some wild card rise to dominance in a later era, such as a tertiary invertebrate, or late birds or fish. Most vertebrates are teleost fish after all and there’s no reason why they couldn’t have a resurgence. However, having a narrative that follows each “new” group from when it made its grand mark in the fossil record is probably easier for the reader.

“. . . to expand the mind with grand ideas is a great thing.”

The relationship between Lee and Mal anchors the book. What characters or people did you draw from, even informally, when shaping their relationship?
I think I drew a little from a lot of people to construct the pair of them. Mal is very much based on an old live-action role-playing friend of mine, plus a few other people. Overall, they are each about 50% made up and 50% stitched together from many, many friends and acquaintances.

Julian’s character shows the potential effects of understanding more than we ever wanted to. Do you think most of us are unready or unwilling to have our worldviews totally turned upside down?
I think most of us would be just as lost as poor Julian is, but you can never know until it should happen. A lot of portal-fantasy/science-fiction characters, having gone through the mirror, display a sang-froid about the whole business that I know I wouldn’t. I can certainly think of a few people of my acquaintance who I feel would be absolutely in their element if they woke up in another world.

A phrase that kept playing in my mind while reading was the phrase "a sense of wonder." Does that phrase ring true to you when thinking about this book?
Absolutely, yes. The whole book is kind of a background hymn to the wonders, not of any particular imaginary world, but the actual real world, past and present, which we so often take for granted. Life (back me up, Sir David Attenborough) is so varied and so intricate and so beautiful, and we waste a great deal of it. And beyond that, yes, I think a sense of wonder is an integral part of a certain kind of science fiction—to expand the mind with grand ideas is a great thing.

I found myself completely riveted by the interludes from the fictional book within this book, Other Edens. How did these fit into your plan for the story? Did you want to use such a structure from the beginning?
Honestly, I had to practice a great deal of discipline to bring them down to just what’s in the book! The interludes and their thought experiments are absolutely the inspiration for the book, without which it wouldn’t exist. And of course, many of them provide the useful background on what is going on, which would be cumbersome to try and insert in the actual text, but many others are just there for the hell of it, to show the myriad variety of the worlds I’m presenting.

In a lot of ways, The Doors of Eden challenges us to think about what we don't know or see in the world around us. What frontiers in science do you think hold the most promise for opening our eyes to something important that was there all along?
If we achieve anything like a real artificial intelligence (not just a complex algorithm that can learn how to fake being people) then that should show us a great deal about how we ourselves think, and might also find a lot of priceless but unintuitive solutions to other problems we have, in that way that computers sometimes can. Similarly, if the recent discoveries on Venus lead to the discovery of actual extraterrestrial life, that would teach us so much about the possibilities of evolution and biology in very non-Earthlike conditions (or in the buried oceans of Europa, say, or some other place within the solar system—or even an exoplanet, although that has its own raft of practical issues).

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Doors of Eden.

When you think back to writing this book, are there passages that you remember writing more vividly than others?
The museum sequence, frankly, was an absolute bear. I rewrote it several times over, and ended up breaking it up a lot between the characters to try and tame it. So, I remember that vividly enough, for all the wrong reasons. Beyond that, my chain of evolutionary logic that led to immortal giant trilobites is something I’m pretty damn proud of. . .

If you could dream up another Earth, a unique paradise just for you, what would it look like?
I wanted to make some cheap joke about having lots of legs and a warning that it contains spiders, but honestly I think what my perfect paradise would have would be variety—multiple viewpoints, multiple minds, complexity built of diversity. And not in danger of being extinguished by monstrous short-sighted greed, for preference.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest idiosyncratic novel leaps easily from the micro to the macro, beginning with two cryptid-hunting friends and expanding to encompass an entire alternate history of the development of life itself. Through it all, Tchaikovsky’s irrepressible wit and effervescent intelligence serve as lifelines for the reader as The Doors of Eden take them on […]
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Sarah Beth Durst

Interview by Chris Pickens

In a genre filled with sprawling sagas, Sarah Beth Durst has been delighting readers with meticulously crafted, breathtakingly creative standalone fantasies. Her previous novel, Race the Sands, took place in a world where the wicked were reincarnated into terrifying beasts who competed in dangerous races. In The Bone Maker, Durst furthers her fascination with the porous boundary between life and death by creating a world marked by resurrection, the ghosts of the past and a magic system that allows people to see the future, give life to constructs and create talismans through bones.

The magic system you use here is so simple and elegant. What sorts of choices did you make when coming up with the rules of how bone magic works? How did the idea first come to you?
I had this image in my head of a silver-haired woman in a faded blue leather coat. She reaches into her pocket and . . . "What?" I asked myself. "What's in her pocket?" And my brain immediately answered, "Bones."

Not sure what this says about my brain, but that's the moment The Bone Maker was born.

I love to create magic systems with specific, clear rules. Everything that happens—and everything about the society, the history and the culture of the world—spills out as a consequence of those rules. To be clear, you don't necessarily have to have a fully defined magic system in a fantasy world, but I think that the world feels more real if the magic functions logically and consistently.

For my bone magic, I decided there were three different kinds of bone workers: bone makers, who use bones to animate inanimate objects; bone wizards, who imbue bones with specific powers such as strength or stealth; and bone readers, who use bones to tell the future.

"Even in the darkest times, people find a way—they need to find a way—to laugh."

All stories rely on a character's past to inform and shape the present of the book, and that feels particularly true here. Was it easier or more challenging to write these characters' stories after you formulated such rich backstories?
In order for me to write any character, they need to feel real to me. And real means having a backstory. We all have backstories. You, me, Darth Vader, everyone. So I believe it's not that it's easier or harder to write a character with a rich backstory; it's necessary.

It was especially essential with The Bone Maker, because this is a book about what happens after. It's set 25 years after the Heroes of Vos defeated a corrupt magician and his inhuman army made of animated bones. The heroes think their story is over. But it's emphatically not.

On a slightly related sidenote . . . I've always secretly wished it were socially acceptable to walk up to a stranger and say, "Tell me your story. How did you get to be who you are?" I love people's backstories!

This book frequently bounces between humor and solemnity. How did you control and balance the tone as you went back and forth?
I am deeply suspicious of any story that doesn't have humor. It's such a basic human coping mechanism. Even in the darkest times, people find a way—they need to find a way—to laugh.

All the humor in my epic fantasies arises from the characters. I control the tone by trying to be as true to the character as possible. If I think a character's most honest reaction to a particular situation would be to scream, then they scream. If I think they'd cope with snark, then snark it is! I think it was Ursula K. Le Guin who said that fantasy isn't real, but it's true. The more true you are to your characters, the more real your story will feel.

A lot has been said about how history repeats itself and we're doomed to relive our mistakes over and over. Does that idea ring true for you when you think about Kreya and the gang?
I . . . don't think so, actually. If it's only those who cannot remember the past who are doomed to repeat it, then Kreya and her team can't suffer that fate. None of them can forget the past. Especially Kreya. Her husband died years ago, and she's willing to cross any number of lines to bring him back.

I found myself thinking about regret while reading this book. These people have lost a lot over the course of their lives and in some cases, it heavily impacted who they are. Was that a planned decision or a happy accident? Which character's arc came together most easily?
It was a planned decision. I knew from the start that I wanted to write a book about second chances, and I sculpted the characters to be people in need of a second chance in one way or another. I wanted them to be bearing the wounds and scars of what came before and to explore how that would impact their ability to cope with an epic adventure.

As Zera says, "You know, the last time we saved the world, you people didn't have so many issues." I think Zera's arc was the one that came together the most easily. At the start of the novel, she's chosen a shallow life. By the end . . . I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say I really, really loved writing her!

All fantasy worlds are filled with magical beasts and strange contraptions. Care to share any of your favorite creations that fill Vos?
I love creating creatures! I knew from the start that I wanted a slew of deadly creatures in the valley between the mountains—the people of Vos live in cities built high on the sides of the mountains because the mist-shrouded valley is deadly. Loved creating my crocoraptors and the venomous stone fish.

If I had to choose, though, I think my favorite creations in The Bone Maker are Kreya's rag dolls. She animates them with bones so that they can assist her in her tower. They're thoroughly creepy. So fun to write.

When you think back to writing this book, are there passages that you remember writing more vividly than others?
Loved writing every interaction between Kreya and Zera. They mock each other quite a bit and also truly care about each other—they're best friends who haven't seen each other in 25 years, didn't part on good terms and need to find their way back into each other's lives.

I also loved writing every scene where a character demonstrates strength—I adore writing about characters who have to rise to meet a near-impossible challenge. I believe that fantasy is a literature of empowerment. Nearly all my books are, on some level, about characters who must discover or rediscover their own power. And in this case, a lot of bone magic.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Bone Maker.

Is the ability to resurrect someone who is dead a question of morality? If you could do what Kreya did after reading Elkor's forbidden journals, would you?
In The Bone Maker, there's a cost to bringing someone back from the dead: one day of your life for every day they live. The kicker is that you don't know how many days you have left to spare. Only the magic knows.

I think the would-you-should-you depends on who died, how, when and what their wishes were. It's certainly not a power to be used lightly, and I don't think there's any easy or right answer.

Would you rather be a bone reader, a bone wizard or a bone maker?
I've spent way more time thinking about this than I probably should have! I don't think I'd like to be a bone reader—the power to predict the future is, frankly, too much responsibility. It shattered Marso. Bone maker is tempting. I love Kreya's contraptions: the bird skeleton, the ragdolls, the crawler. (A reader called my book "bonepunk," and I adore that term.) But I think I'd choose bone wizard. Make the right talisman, and incredible powers can be yours!

Very curious to hear what other people would choose . . .

In a genre filled with sprawling sagas, Sarah Beth Durst has been delighting readers with meticulously crafted, breathtakingly creative standalone fantasies.

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