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Stargazy Pies And Imperial Stories - Part 2 · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Yeah, I think the thing which I've taken away from it is the sense of love and fellowship
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  between these palace servants who have given up a conventional life to serve the Emperor
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  and the Emperor himself.
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  And they've been the person who dresses him, the person who guards him, that kind of
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  thing, the person who writes his letters.
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  And they've made this own little community, and a huge, huge amount of humour in it as
• 0:33
  well.
• 0:34
  And as you can get the perspective, even though it's all from Cleopher's point of view,
• 0:39
  you do understand their perspective on him because he's self-aware enough to know
• 0:43
  and they're sort of manipulating him into a yet more ridiculous outfit for some ceremony
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  or something.
• 0:50
  Yeah, that's absolutely lovely.
• 0:53
  So you've answered the question as you're in this one you were a character led, but do
• 0:57
  you just swap your technique depending on what sort of genre you've decided to write
• 1:03
  in in your extended world?
• 1:04
  Would you, in another one, for example, plot it out more entirely?
• 1:10
  To a certain degree, in general, I'm a character led writer and even with the Stargazepie and
• 1:18
  the Greenwing and Dark Books are more plot driven.
• 1:22
  But even there, I tend to focus on the character more.
• 1:25
  I tend to be a writer, and I write into the dark, which is to say I'm an exploratory writer.
• 1:32
  As I said, I usually know kind of where I want the story to end, and I know how it fits
• 1:37
  into my overarching kind of world building, but I leave a lot of it up to just figuring
• 1:44
  it out as I go along.
• 1:46
  And I find that very fun.
• 1:47
  I enjoy that process.
• 1:49
  Yes, I would say I'm not a character led.
• 1:54
  So do you, I mean, arguably the sort of very special thing about fantasy and science fiction
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  is that you do your own world building, though, of course, in historical fiction, you're
• 2:05
  also building a world, in a sense.
• 2:07
  But anyway, it's clearly more of a well-building task.
• 2:10
  Do you have any tips for people who are wanting to write their own fantasy, how to organize
• 2:17
  or approach well-building?
• 2:20
  Well, I wouldn't say I'm very organized, but if people are forever asking me if I have
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  maps and things like that, and I'm kind of like, well, no, I have sort of sketches that
• 2:26
  I've done on the back of a piece of an envelope kind of thing, I'm not very organized.
• 2:31
  I don't have a binder of all the useful measurements and stuff like that, which I probably
• 2:37
  could do with.
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  It's one of those things I keep thinking I should go back and make more notes for myself.
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  I keep a lot of it in my head.
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  From that point of view, one thing I do find is, as I said, I try and draw from like
• 2:52
  less obvious sources.
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  And for me, that's often, I read a lot of sort of micro histories, I guess you could
• 2:59
  say, about specific things and try and build out from there.
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  That's one element.
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  You read a history of, oh, garden design or costumes or, I don't know, just looking at
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  my bookshelves here, even something like topiary or the history of the teapots or something
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  like that.
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  There's some very silly and very, very precise, but at the same time, if you kind of think
• 3:27
  about, well, where did they come from?
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  Who builds those?
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  Give your characters slightly different things to do, because that's more fun, too.
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  Where's the cloth coming from?
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  Where's the food coming from?
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  Where's the water coming?
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  How is it being cleaned or not cleaned?
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  What effects does that have?
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  Where's the waste going?
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  I once went to the sewer museum in Paris, and that is ever after, made me question this
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  thing about, where is the water purification system?
• 3:55
  How is that working?
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  That could be working by magic.
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  That's how it's working on Zini, then in other places, it's much more traditional,
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  like, sort of, refused and rubbish, rubbish.
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  But that matters.
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  That's one element I do.
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  The other part that I find is, if I've made a mistake or something that's seen, if you're
• 4:16
  like, oh, in that book, I said this, and in this book, I said the other thing, and they
• 4:20
  those seem to directly contradict each other, and if it's a work in progress, the logical
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  thing is to fix the one that's a work in progress.
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  But I often find that if you stop and say to yourself, no, wait a moment, how can those
• 4:32
  both be true?
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  What can I do to make those both work?
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  Is that because Person A misunderstood it, or Person B understands it better, or there's
• 4:42
  something bigger that those are both elements of, or that kind of thing.
• 4:47
  I find that adds a real depth and nuance to the world, because I'm one of those people
• 4:54
  that I find if I do too much front of brain world building.
• 5:01
  It becomes a little too smooth, and there's not like a lot of the nooks and crannies in
• 5:05
  it for me.
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  Whereas I find if you do kind of the back end world building as you go, and try and let
• 5:12
  it grow out logically out of kind of something unusual that it becomes much richer.
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  So for me, that's something I enjoy, and I try really hard to visualize places.
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  I'm not always great at that, and better with gardens, that's a kind of a hobby of
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  mind is gardening, and so I really think about the ecology of a place, and what that might
• 5:33
  feel like, and look up that kind of stuff.
• 5:37
  So I guess for world building, if you mistake, it can be an opportunity to make it much richer.
• 5:42
  Yeah.
• 5:43
  That's really interesting.
• 5:44
  I haven't heard anyone say it like that, actually.
• 5:48
  So how was your journey to publishing, what route have you taken?
• 5:54
  Well, I decided I was going to do kind of the indie publishing side, largely because
• 6:00
  I wanted to write these interconnected stories, and I wanted to be in control of what I was
• 6:05
  writing and when, and when I kind of really became serious about writing was when that,
• 6:10
  it was just after the kind of first flush of that, and the kind of, you know, 2012 was
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  really when it kind of started to really pick up, and I had a friend who was much more
• 6:20
  aware of how self-publishing and indie publishing was going, and we'd spend a lot of time
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  talking about it at that point.
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  And I thought to myself, because I wasn't writing conventional stories, because I like
• 6:30
  these ones that are like around the corners of the epic quest and things like that, that
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  I thought, you know, that's really something I want to do.
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  I don't want somebody to tell me that that's not like a going to sell, because it's not
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  a conventional story, you know, and which is a real concern, because of course they're
• 6:48
  businesses and they're trying to make money back as well, whereas if I was willing to do
• 6:51
  it myself, I could, you know, if I have something that nobody likes because it's a very strange
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  book, then that's okay, that's mine.
• 6:57
  So for me, it was that, and I've just spent, you know, I probably spent the last six or
• 7:03
  seven years working on building up my works, and for me, what I did was, I kind of decided
• 7:10
  to take the approach that my stories are interconnected, and my style is fairly consistent.
• 7:17
  Or I guess my voice, my authorial voice is fairly consistent across my books, even when
• 7:25
  they're in somewhat different genres.
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  And I thought to myself, you know, if somebody likes one of my books, they're largely going
• 7:30
  to like most of them.
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  We're all of them.
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  They're going to go and read the other ones.
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  And so my general plan was basically to just keep writing them until I got to some sort
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  of hopefully level where there were enough, and enough readers coming in that people
• 7:45
  would be, you know, enjoying finding the others.
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  And that's worked.
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  I am going full-time writing this week.
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  So I'm pretty pleased with that.
• 7:53
  Thank you.
• 7:54
  Yeah.
• 7:55
  Thank you.
• 7:56
  So I've been working on that.
• 7:58
  So how do you manage with the editing and all that kind of stuff?
• 8:02
  Have you got a team of beta readers behind you?
• 8:06
  I'm a one reader kind of person.
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  I like standing.
• 8:14
  I do have a couple of people that the other author friends particularly, and we kind of trade
• 8:20
  reading and talking about plots and kind of craft level things.
• 8:24
  And then I have somebody to do kind of copy editing of some form once we get to that point.
• 8:31
  I lay out in the cover design myself.
• 8:34
  So I've been working on that and that's something I may well outsource in future, but I enjoy
• 8:39
  it.
• 8:40
  And I enjoy the kind of that process of it too.
• 8:42
  So yeah.
• 8:43
  So that's how I do it, basically.
• 8:49
  So what next for you, are you remaining in your extensive world, where are you going?
• 8:57
  I am remaining.
• 8:58
  Well, actually, I'm writing as I've been working on a sequel to the hands of the emperor
• 9:05
  for the last couple of years.
• 9:08
  And this is I'm kind of moving to focusing on that over the summer.
• 9:12
  So I'm hoping that will be out in probably late October early November is the goal with
• 9:18
  that one.
• 9:19
  It's going to be another big honking book.
• 9:20
  So I'm not giving an exact date until it's a little closer to completion.
• 9:24
  It's more than halfway done right now.
• 9:25
  But you never know the kind of the final throws every once in a while, you write something
• 9:29
  and you realize the story's gone way off to a different direction that's much better
• 9:32
  and you have to throw it a whole bunch of it in order to make that work.
• 9:35
  So that could still happen.
• 9:37
  And so I'm working on that.
• 9:40
  The book I just had coming out come out last week is called The Redoutable Pali of Ramapul,
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  which is kind of the second in a in a new series about the red company.
• 9:53
  And so I'll be working on that.
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  And there should be another Green Wing and Dart later this year, beginning of next year
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  as well.
• 9:59
  So keep on going with those ones.
• 10:00
  The Green Wing and Dart series is at six.
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  And I think there'll probably be 12 by the end time of that one's done.
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  So just sort of poke along with those.
• 10:07
  I don't like writing the same character point of view back to back.
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  I find it much better to switch to a new character.
• 10:15
  And so I tend to skip around a little bit like that.
• 10:19
  Well, put a link to your website in the show notes.
• 10:22
  So people can come and find all these books and decide which one they're going to start with.
• 10:27
  So Stargazing Pie for the people who don't know is actually a real dish
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  that you would find a traditional dish from Colmore, in fact.
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  And it's a pie where the pastry is laid so the fish and head and tail poke out
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  as though it's sort of breaking through from the crust.
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  So in our podcast, we always end up with where in all the fantasy worlds
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  is the best place for something.
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  And I thought I would ask you for where in all the fantasy worlds
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  that you've seen on television and films or read about in books,
• 11:03
  where do you think has the best sort of speciality dishes
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  that you'd like to sample?
• 11:11
  Well, surely we all want to eat the meal that Bilbo produces for the dwarves, right?
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  I've made CD-Cake a result of that particular encounter.
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  That one's always been the one that those stories.
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  And some of the ones in the Narnia books, too, to be honest,
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  I've always loved the food descriptions in both of those books.
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  Otherwise, I don't know.
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  Like I feel like in some ways, those are really high points
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  in terms of food descriptions.
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  You know, it's like that meal that Shasta gets given in the horse and his boy
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  is the first time he's ever had half of it.
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  You know, the description of the wine and all that kind of stuff.
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  But yeah, Bilbo's thing.
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  And then I've also the picnic and the wind and the willows.
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  Those are the classic kind of British ones.
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  And I don't know.
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  I'm not sure that there's been a lot more that kind of peak over those.
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  But I was reflecting on this not long ago
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  and thinking that I really needed to up my food descriptions,
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  something kind of work on that a little bit more.
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  Really have some sort of great feasts that are like,
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  but not necessarily like spectacular banquets,
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  but just really delightful dishes.
• 12:20
  Yeah, and it can be used for comic effect as well.
• 12:22
  For me, the one I was going to pick is comes in the film Galaxy Quest.
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  Have you ever seen that?
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  It's one of my favorite films.
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  Very funny one.
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  The bit where they're all giving them what are theoretically
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  all their like, their, their original qualities for the characters they are.
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  That is such a fun movie.
• 12:38
  I really enjoy that.
• 12:40
  So I like this.
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  But as you haven't seen it, what happens there is an alien culture has taken
• 12:47
  a television sci-fi series as being historical.
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  So when the characters are taken by this culture to try and help them
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  solve a baddie problem they've got, they've built everything for real.
• 13:01
  And this is all very well for the human characters who are given, I know,
• 13:05
  burgers and french fries or whatever.
• 13:07
  But poor old Alan Rickman, his character Dr. Lazarus, is given this,
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  this sort of soup to reen of life bugs.
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  Crawling out when he's supposed to eat this because on the program that was supposed to be his
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  his food, it's just areas.
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  And of course, nobody did Sardonic better than Alan Rickman, much missed.
• 13:33
  Yes, so that's my pick.
• 13:35
  Victoria, thank you so much for joining us.
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  And it's a delight to find somebody who has taken a lot of her inspirations from the
• 13:43
  Inkling writers and from, of course, we also mentioned briefly Dorothy L. Sayers, but you've said
• 13:49
  that she's another person who that you've really enjoyed reading on your route to your own writing.
• 13:56
  So it's been wonderful to meet you and thank you very much for joining us.
• 13:59
  Well, thank you very much.
• 14:00
  I thank you for having me.
• 14:01
  I'm delighted to enjoy the hands of the emperor.
• 14:04
  And I hope a few of your readers do as well.
• 14:06
  And yeah, the Inklings have been a huge part of my of my formation as a as a writer.
• 14:12
  And in many ways, I kind of keep reflecting back on them.
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  Probably the Green Wing and Dart ones are little books are a little more obvious,
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  especially as you get later on into the series, you will see some much clearer kind of echoes
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  of some of the Seas Lewis and elements in particular.
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  But overall, the questions that they raise and the joy they have in description
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  and in food and in characters, world building is something that I've always really, really admired.
• 14:42
  So thank you, really enjoyed getting the chance to talk to you about this.
• 14:46
  Thank you very much.
• 14:47
  Okay.