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Tad Williams and the Navigator's Children: How to Wrap up a Vast Epic Fantasy · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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  today it is my very great pleasure to be joined by a very well-known author from across
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  the pond. I'm joined today by Tad Williams, who many of you will know from his huge epic fantasy
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  series, such as memory sorrow and thorn and I mean I could list them. There are a lot of them,
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  the Dragonbone Chair, also he's dipped into urban fantasy series such as the Bobby Dollar series.
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  But today we're actually celebrating and talking about the Navigator's Children, which I have here
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  in a rather wonderful hard back which is the last instalment in the epic The Last King of
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  Austin Art series. So welcome to Tad. Thank you, nice to be here. So before we talk about the Navigator's
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  Children, Tad I wanted to ask you to cast your mind back to Little Tad when he was roving through
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  the library at school or in your local library. What were the books that were the ones you took off
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  the shelf, which were the ones where you're entry to writing fantasy? Well, I have to say my entry
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  to writing fantasy almost undoubtedly started even before that. It was I give a lot of credit
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  for this to my mother who was a great reader herself and read to me starting at a very young age.
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  So I was already immersed in what I would call a British children's fantasy from an early age.
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  We went through all of the normal stuff, the wind in the willows and the wind in the poo books
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  and various other things. I think the e-nesbit books or at least some of them.
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  Then when I was about 11, perhaps my mom gave me the fellowship of the ring and said,
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  you might want to try this. I know it looks long, but et cetera, et cetera.
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  Of course, I fell in love with it. I think it also influenced me toward Tolkien in a certain way
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  because of reading that before reading the Hobbit. So I didn't have those kind of expectations of,
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  oh, why is this different from the Hobbit, which was more my speed kind of thing.
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  And in fact, I was more, oh, no, this is my kind of speed and was thrilled by it, thrilled by
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  the depth of it and the perception of history beyond the worlds and beyond the present time and
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  the story and et cetera. So that was one of the things that definitely got me going.
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  And then various other writers not confined just to fantasy, obviously, but a lot of my
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  favorites kind of wandered back in and out of the fantasy genre I'm thinking about nominal science
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  fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Michael Moorecock for its library, Ursula McGuin.
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  So really all of those things kind of were in place even before I started going to the library
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  much on my own. And from that point on, I was not just picking up things that looked interesting in
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  terms of fantasy, but I was also picking up a lot of other things which informed me like
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  history. So you have a great map in your book. I'm just wondering if you were also responding to
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  illustrations and books with maps as well as part of course. Of course. Yeah, no, it's very much
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  part of what Tolkien referred to as secondary creation. I loved that and I realized I've loved
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  that for a long time probably even before I started reading books. One of my
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  profound revelations was that I realized that the whole kind of idea that spawned the other
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  land books, which are near future science fiction fantasy VR epic I wrote, was the fantasy land
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  boat ride at Disneyland when I was maybe six. And I didn't even know that for years. You know,
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  I had a whole other also true, you know, explanation for where I first started wanting to write
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  those books. But then one day I was on a stage in Germany and it suddenly came to me like, wait,
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  no, even before that, it was the fantasy land boat ride and you know, snow white with a microphone
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  saying, oh, look, and there's toad hall, you know, but it was that it was the compact size of
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  everything and the kind of the, you know, the fact that that it could all fit together and all
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  of that. And I realized that's kind of that sort of thing is feeds into my world building thing.
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  You know, I love the idea of being able to not be in control because it's definitely at a
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  certain point you give up control, but I love being able to be involved in all aspects of making
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  a world a replace. And that also very definitely came from Tolkien, you know, his internal
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  consistency and all that set a very high bar for me. And I think it's a bar I still operate with.
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  Yeah, that idea of being in control of your words, I, well, I've been a done school visit,
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  you know, as authors you go around in the school visits. And I've described that as being a
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  demi-god because I've always felt there's a slight chance that the world is taken out of your
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  control, but you all pretty powerful in it. So that's how I position myself in my world building.
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  Yeah, no, it's absolutely true at it. But it's also, I have to say, it's a humbling experience
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  because with these big, super complicated books, I have discovered that I am not always in control
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  in the way that I would like to be. Or, you know, that that seems attractive, but I realized that in
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  a lot of cases, I have to allow the complexity to, to turn out its own answers and its own
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  continuities. And, and to be honest, that is one of the things that has kept me writing long books.
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  That in an audience that seems to like them, but, but also just the surprises, the, the emergent
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  order that pops up out of the chaos of a very big, very complicated situation with many characters
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  and a history of the world and all that. And at a certain point, you realize, like, I can't make
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  this happen by sort of decreeing it, I have to find organic ways that make sense to the world or to
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  the characters. So yeah, it can be a very humbling experience, indeed, when you realize that, despite
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  the fact that technically you are the creator, or again, sub-creator as, as Tolkien had it,
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  you're not really in charge, something else is. And in my case, I'd like to think it's the subconscious,
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  but who knows? Yeah, it's mysterious, isn't it? So I, because you are so brilliant at the
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  creation of huge complicated, epic, fancy worlds, a lot of what I'd love to talk to you about
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  goes back to that. Yeah. But let's just think about the kid who was reading or having red winds
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  in the, wind in the willows, read to them. Were you already writing at that stage?
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  No, actually, I, my, the one, I guess, slightly odd thing about my journey was that writing was
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  never a primary thought, although I was always, I realized later a storyteller. But when I was young,
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  my main focus of anything was on art and illustration. I was very influenced by comic books,
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  specifically the 1960s Marvel comic books, when they kind of had their great burst of creativity.
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  And so that was kind of where I thought I would be going. And then I did a lot of other things as
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  well as I got out of high school and was in early young adulthood. I played music in a band and
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  did theater and radio and various other things. So there was always an aspect of performance and,
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  and, you know, as I said, storytelling and what I did. But it wasn't until I actually lived in
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  a fourplex apartment, you know, with four apartments with another writer who was actually the guy who
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  had the Wallace Stegner chair of literature at Stanford. And I liked him very much. He was a very fine
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  writer, man named Ron Hanson. But I also said, you know, I don't think Ron is that much more creative
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  than I am. And I decided, you know, I could try writing something because it's something I could
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  do in my free time, which was a bit of a misnomer because I was working two or three jobs at that time,
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  trying to make one of the creative things take off. So I did. I wrote my first book, Tale Chaser song,
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  which was a fantasy novel about cats, which by the way has a few little kind of joking nods to
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  Tolkien in it. And was lucky enough to sell it. And suddenly went, well, I can either write more
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  books that they're offering to pay me for or I can keep busting my hump on these other things
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  that I'm trying. And so it wasn't a natural thing, although, you know, I do come, I come from a
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  family of readers and I come from a family of language users and language lovers. So in retrospect,
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  it's not unusual. It's not surprising. But at the time, I was much more certain I would go in
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  another direction. But as I said, stories and storytelling has always kind of been at the heart
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  of who I am and what I like. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that facts about your roommate,
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  because I actually think it's, I'd like similar where I was, I was a diplomat. I was in the British,
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  and Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service. And it wasn't a friend of mine. His father was
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  author, had decided also to give himself a 40th birthday present of some time out to write.
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  And I thought, well, if John can do it, I can do it. Yeah. And so you go from this track,
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  and you think, actually, I'm going over there. And so that permission of seeing someone else do
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  it in your circle is, is very inspiring. So people listening, we're giving you permission.
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  Have a try. Absolutely. And as long as you mentioned that, Julia, I would just add a,
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  addendum to that, which is, you know, getting published is not the only point of writing.
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  By any means, you know, that you're talking to people who, that's, you know, we make our living
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  in that arena, but there are many, many values to be had from writing. Just one of it's just
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  learning how to formulate your own thoughts into something coherent, you know. But there's also
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  an element of self-inspection and learning and all kinds of things that come from writing as well
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  as just the discipline of trying to do anything creative regularly. So, you know, if you're
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  interested in writing, don't, don't set yourself only a goal of, you know, publish or perish,
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  kind of a thing. Be aware that there's a whole lot of really useful, lovely things that can come
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  out of a regular writing habit, whether you ever become a full-time author or not.
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  So, let's turn to the last king of Austin Art. Now, I've joined you at the end of a series. I
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  feel as though I only had a couple of weeks to read this. And so I really started at the beginning
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  of the series. So I would strongly encourage those listening, if they're going to start this
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  series to start with the Witchwood Crown. Because I feel as though I, it's like coming in at the
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  return of the king. I've, you know, no, I shouldn't have done that. And much like Lord of the Rings
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  in its original form, my big, multi-volume stories are not intended really as separate books.
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  It's just that the physical limits of binding technology prevent me from writing, you know,
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  4,000, 5,000 page books and publishing them in one volume. So they really, I mean, I try to give
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  a little bit of a separation between volumes, at least if only in the sense of some kind of
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  meaning that between, you know, what's going to happen next and what's already happened. But
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  generally, no, they're really one long story. So it is. I try to always put a synopsis in my books,
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  but that's really more to catch people up who haven't read the previous volume for a while.
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  I admire you for waiting in at the end. I did lots of research. So I tried reading the synopsis,
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  but realized that I should have read. So I also went to online summaries, which helped me.
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  But anyway, the book itself does stand because it starts at dramatic point.
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  It was more of the question of I was aware that I could have got so much more detail about the
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  backstories by having done the other volumes, but it was still a very enjoyable, enjoyable,
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  the wrong word. It's stirring epic. I mean, there are such high stakes in this story. I
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  didn't very much enjoyed reading it, but it kept me grit as to how you were going to tie up all
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  these ends together. So for the benefit of those who perhaps haven't heard much about this series
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  before, can you just tell us a little bit about the kind of world you enter into for navigators
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  children? Okay. Well, first of all, it is going back to the world of the Dragonbone Chair
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  series, which is memory sorrow and thorn, but about 30 years after the events of the first set of
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  books. So in one sense, anyway, it's not just tying up three volumes. It's actually tying up
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  really almost 10 volumes because they, in paperback form, there's four volumes for the Dragonbone
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  Chair books and then two short volumes and four more long volumes. So be aware of that. It is
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  a mountain to climb. But if you like the sort of thing, then maybe that will be a benefit.
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  But anyway, the idea of the world itself, and really this does start in the first set of books,
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  but is very clear in the second set as well, is that the situation itself, at least where we begin,
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  is much like say 13th century Europe. So it's pre-Ranassans, pre the first stirrings of industrialization,
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  of course, as is common with a lot of fantasy novels. But it's also European in the sense that
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  the main characters live with all of the kind of medieval ideas about the world. And then
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  as Simon, who along with Miriam Aller, the characters that are two of the characters who extend
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  all the way through both series of books, as Simon goes out into the world, he begins to realize
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  that he had a rather limited view, and he begins to meet not just other kinds of people,
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  but other races, actually, other kinds of creatures, and things of that sort. And discovers not
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  just that the world is bigger and stranger than he knew, but that a lot of the sort of home
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  truths on which he was raised are pretty dubious also. So it's really a book, a fantasy novel
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  that that focuses on the journey into adulthood that we all make. This is thematic stuff,
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  obviously, trying to whack people over the head with it. And the new set of books, the one that
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  ends with an navigator's children, as I mentioned, is 30 years later. So Simon and Miriam Aller
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  are essentially teenagers, although that term obviously doesn't exist, but they are around that
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  age, which is the beginning of adulthood in a pre-industrial society. At the end of the first set of
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  books, and then in the next set of books, they are not just adults, but they are older adults.
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  They are middle age adults. But the troubles have returned and et cetera, et cetera. And I don't
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  want to give too much away because, of course, what the troubles are and what they actually
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  signal is a big part of the series. But it is essentially, so it appears on the surface,
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  I like to think, as a bog standard post Tolkien fantasy. But as a lifelong Tolkien fan and a
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  critic of fantasy and science fiction, just in my own personal mind, there's a lot of
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  discussion about the tenets of modern fantasy fiction. There's a lot of, and of Tolkien,
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  and of the things not, as I hope is clear by now, I'm a huge lover of Tolkien and all of his work,
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  not just the Lord of the Rings, but I'm a different person from a different time. And one of the
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  things that I was least satisfied with in the fantasy novels that were being published before I
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  started to write myself was that a lot of them seemed to be using Tolkien as a kind of holy
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  writ in terms of all the tropes that he chose to bring in from folklore and history and things
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  like that, which was his choice. And therefore, perfect for what Tolkien wanted to do. But that
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  a lot of other writers had kind of said, oh, you know, this is how it has to be. So they had gone
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  for his kind of Nordic elves and various other things that that's fine, but those were choices
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  Tolkien made. And I knew that. And I was a little annoyed with a lot of the post Tolkien writers that
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  they didn't seem to realize. And it's like if every detective novel writer post Conan Doyle
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  had a, you know, all the detectives had to be a ceramic bachelor's who smoked pipe, shot cocaine
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  and played the violin, you know, is that that's how it all has to be. So that was another thing that
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  was going on for me as I wanted to lance some of these tropes that I didn't necessarily personally
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  agree with. And which Tolkien had in his work because they were real and important for him,
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  like the idea of a golden age of a fallen world, all that kind of stuff. That's very Tolkien that's
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  less so me. So I wanted to, to approach some of these themes and tropes from a different perspective
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  because I'm a different writer. And I don't want to simply try to imitate what Tolkien had already
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  done better than I could hope to. So yeah. And people will be reassured to know there is no dark
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  lord. You know, there's that famous Terry Pratchett quote about dark lord should be rationed.
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  You've kept away from that. He's kept them in your ration book.
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  Well, I had used it in the first set of books, but with a caveat, which was that as somebody pointed
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  out that basically it's the old saying one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
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  That, you know, for a certain group of people in the story, he was a hero, you know, the dark lord
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  quote unquote, and was also actually a tragic figure. So whereas the main antagonist in this book
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  not quite so tragic. No, and not very, she's not very appealing, but she has her grip on power,
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  which is obviously one of the huge, well, I'm not going to say too much because you don't want to spoil
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  people before they even get to this point, but there is a battle between relative, relative good
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  and evil in this, but it's not in one place. It's happening in different. So sometimes it's
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  the, I'm calling them human, but the the Simon and his lot, yeah, they've got politics going on
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  in their world. So there's a kind of evil element breakaway faction within that, but you've also
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  got other other races with other divisions and other battles going on, including one very big one
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  with the sort of mistakes element in it. So I don't know how many points of you you have in your
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  story. It's possibly 10. At least I think there's probably more, but yeah. Yeah. So lots of moving
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  parts. Indeed. What is the writing process like for somebody? So someone's listening and they've got
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  a very ambitious fantasy world, which they're planning. What are the tips for keeping everything
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  happening? Do you write one story all the way through or do you write sequentially or do you
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  got a huge cork pool of everybody's journey on? Well, I'm not sure how much help I can be because I
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  have a rather idiosyncratic method of doing this stuff. But first of all, to kind of take those
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  questions and in order, the order in which you read the book is pretty much the order in which I
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  wrote it. So the fact that there are many different storylines is a structural choice I made years
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  ago back in the Drydenbone chair. And if you want to, we can talk about that at some point. But
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  so the way you read the book, which is skipping from storyline to storyline is pretty much how I
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  write it. So I'm moving everything forward one little bit at a time. I have found over because,
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  as you noted, these are rather complicated stories with a ton of characters, all of whom have
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  agency and viewpoint and all that. Because of that, I spend every day before writing. I usually
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  spend a couple of hours just thinking about what I'm going to be working on. And that's a vital
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  part of my process is before I hit a key on the story itself, I think about what I'm going to be
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  working on. And one of the reasons is because I have found that with this, that material is
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  complicated as this and as interlocking and, you know, the sort of butterfly effect everywhere,
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  you change something in one part of the story and it's going to have a knock on effect in another
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  part of the story. So because of that, I have found that actually I do best keeping it all in
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  my head, which doesn't mean I don't make any outlines. For one thing, you have to make an outline
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  before your publishers will get up off any money, especially for a multi-volume series. You have
• 23:06
  to let them know that, yeah, no, I actually know something about how it's going to end. I'm not
• 23:10
  just going to stop before the last book. But because of the need to, you know, sort of keep things
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  open. And again, the complexity, I do tend to keep much of it in my head because it feels,
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  and this is a weird way to talk about my own head, but it feels more fluid. It feels more as though
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  I can try many different possibilities without impacting the kind of core that I've already agreed on
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  with myself. You know, so I'll get to a point and I'll say, okay, this set of characters could do
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  this. They could do that. They could have an argument and fall out. They could do how will all
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  these different possibilities play out? How will they ramify along the larger story? And then I,
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  you know, kind of sort through them, try different thought experiments until I find something that
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  feels satisfying, not just for what it does to the rational control I'm trying to, you know, assert,
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  but also what feels good with the underlying story, you know, it does this feel like it's
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  in character. Does it feel as though it's happening at the right time to keep the audience
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  informed and involved, et cetera, et cetera? So because of the need to literally weave together
• 24:30
  so many strands, I find that it works best for me to not make many outlines or anything. I will
• 24:37
  kind of have an abstract so I can go back later on when I want to quickly edit things and say,
• 24:42
  okay, which chapter is that in? And that sometimes acts kind of as a not an abstract, but it shows me
• 24:49
  the pace and the order that things have happened into that point. And occasionally, if I'm trying to
• 24:56
  think certain things through, I'll make little tentative notes and stuff. But generally, I find that
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  for me personally, it works best to keep as much as possible in the brain until it proves to me
• 25:09
  that it's ready to be written. I'm presuming that whilst you're doing that, you do have a sense of
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  your ending. I have to. Yeah. And Julia, that's one of the things that for those who are embarking
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  into the world of possibly writing multi-volume stories, one of the problems that I have that many
• 25:27
  writers who write single volume stuff do not have is that by the time my last book is being
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  published, you know, or let's put it this way, by the time I'm writing the final volume,
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  usually one or two parts of the earlier story have actually been published. So I have no way
• 25:49
  to fix them if I realize I've made a tragic mistake and I used to have a joke when I was doing
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  readings and stuff about going door to door with a red pen and taking, you know, see that guy?
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  See, dead? No, crossing that out, putting breathing very shallowly and handing the book back to people.
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  You know, you can't do that, obviously. So as a result, I have to know something about how it's
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  going to end. But they're also so long and complicated. These stories to write that if I knew
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  everything in advance, first of all, I don't think I could because you learn as you work, I'm sure
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  you know, but also I could not encompass that level of complexity before I start writing. So I kind of
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  have to have, I don't know what you'd call them touch points along the way that I figure out
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  in advance because I can't fix it if I get it wrong. Now that doesn't mean I always know what's
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  going to happen three volumes later at the end of the story with every single touch point,
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  but there are ways to be creatively vague where if I know something is important, I can give it to
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  the reader, even if it's in volume one in such a way that I can interpret it to fit in properly
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  later on. So as I said, a certain creative vagueness with some of these key crossing points or
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  action points or whatever. Well, City on the shelf behind me is a first edition and then a later
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  edition of the Hobbit and famously talking changed his mind about the whole of that golem scene.
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  It's different from the second edition and then in Lord of the Rings, he has the chance to
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  at the council of Elron. Billbo says, I'm sorry, I told some of you a different story.
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  Right. I didn't want to come clean then. So he kind of does this elaborate excuse within
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  that. I did that several times in the navigators' children because as I mentioned,
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  some of these things are payoffs, not just of what's happened in the first the previous three volumes,
• 27:58
  but of stuff that happened back in the Dragon Bone Chair series, which were never officially
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  explained or I never there was no other need to explain them, but they actually have an underlying
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  tie-in. But part of the reason that there's so much tying up of things is because
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  those kind of dangling ends drive me mad. And I totally understand why talking with whatever
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  freedom he then later had said the heck with it, I'm going to go back and fix that because I don't
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  like the fact that I don't like my first take. So I don't do that necessarily by fixing something
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  for another addition. I just try to explain it later on. And that's what I do in the navigators'
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  children with a few things that had come up in the past that I had noticed. Oftentimes,
• 28:45
  it's continuity stuff that not even I noticed until rereading something or whatever, let alone
• 28:52
  any readers. So do you have some kind of what I would call stroding a cat characters who you may
• 28:59
  have possibly killed up, but maybe this is a live earlier on. And then you only decide what's in
• 29:04
  the box later on. I think particularly, I'm sorry, I've forgotten the name of the character who's
• 29:11
  the brother, the older who has gone missing. And yes, he's mentioned as missing for one. I have to
• 29:19
  say, oh, is he dead or is he alive? Like this for a long time. And obviously, yeah, I mean,
• 29:24
  that's that's spoilery. But it not said which he is. He's the show.
• 29:31
  You didn't say anything. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I have to be careful about
• 29:35
  how much I say. But no, absolutely. That is, it's either Schrodinger's character or it's
• 29:43
  Schrodinger's plot point or it's Schrodinger's, you know, thematic bit. But yeah, no, absolutely.
• 29:51
  That's precisely what I what I have to do sometimes is, as I said, kind of a kind of creative
• 29:56
  vagueness that or what I sometimes think of as node points where I can explain them several
• 30:02
  different ways later on, once I myself am sure of the chain of logic, because, you know, when you
• 30:10
  write big complicated fantasy books, there is a certain amount of wiggle room, but only so much. And
• 30:17
  that is reinforced by the reader's willingness to suspend disbelief. So if you too obviously
• 30:25
  use that wiggle room to change things later on, I have very smart readers. I always impressed by
• 30:34
  how closely they are reading and rereading. It's actually part of the game is to to write in such
• 30:40
  a way as to baffle and confuse and occasionally irritate those really smart readers. So yeah,
• 30:47
  no, you have to do it, but you have to deliver it when the time comes in such a way that the reader
• 30:53
  does not feel cheated that you, you know, leftist thing vague and then bam, it becomes important at
• 30:59
  the end. They have to have known that it would be important. And the solution when it arrives
• 31:05
  does not should not look like something that you just pulled out of your back pocket at the last
• 31:09
  moment. So absolutely. Coincidences don't work. You have to earn them. You have to earn them.
• 31:16
  Coincidences, hot and cold running magic, there are all kinds of things that just, you know,
• 31:21
  readers will get to that point and just go, oh, and especially after you've made them read 1600
• 31:28
  pages, 3000 pages, whatever it is, that's the last thing you want is to get to one of those
• 31:34
  crucial bits and have them throw the book up in the air and frustration. So yeah, it's a constant
• 31:40
  struggle. I, you know, that makes it sound more dramatic than it really is, but yeah,
• 31:45
  it's that's part of the craft of of doing this kind of work.
• 31:49
  So I was picking out lots of this look. I mean, it's a huge book, so there are lots of themes,
• 31:53
  but there some of the things that were coming forward to me were relationships between
• 31:59
  generations is a huge theme amongst all the different races and how that's negotiated and
• 32:06
  how people get on. And there were also also relationships between the races, particularly in
• 32:11
  the case of one particular pairing. Lots to talk about there, but one theme I wanted to sort of
• 32:17
  pick up, which I kind of found most surprising, was the nature of the magic as represented by now,
• 32:27
  my pronunciation may be off, but to Nuke Daya, to Nuke Daya group of people, I found that
• 32:37
  element really fascinating and sort of more unusual than we've read about generations before,
• 32:44
  we've read about relationship between the races, but I was fascinated by the kind of magic that
• 32:49
  was coming out of these people. Do you want to tell a little bit about your budget for your magic
• 32:54
  system? Okay, well, and you did a lovely job. The only thing I would say is that when I pronounce
• 33:02
  them, and I'm just telling you this, so you do not see it as being some kind of a,
• 33:07
  you know, any whatever, it's not a comment, but is that I emphasized the last syllable,
• 33:12
  so they become to Nuke Daya, but other than that nicely done, the other thing very quickly that
• 33:18
  I always tell people is please do not worry about how you pronounce the words in my stories,
• 33:23
  because oftentimes, and this is absolutely true, oftentimes I invented names and things before I
• 33:29
  had the language rules for various languages. And as a result, there are many names that I
• 33:35
  pronounce incorrectly by my own canon, so the last thing I could ever do was be snobby about how
• 33:41
  to pronounce any of the names. I just tell people whatever feels right to you, that's good for me.
• 33:47
  As far as the Tanuka Daya, they are very definitely one of the things that is quite different
• 33:53
  about the new books over the old books. Now, the old books, they were there, there's nothing about
• 33:59
  them that is dramatically different from what we knew. It's just the depth of what we learn about
• 34:05
  them and their role in the scheme, the larger scheme of things is bigger in this second series.
• 34:12
  And in fact, they are the navigators children referred to because the sort of, they're sort of
• 34:18
  most famous progenitor was a character named Ruyin, the navigator. And it kind of hit him and his
• 34:26
  fate, he and his fate kind of ripple all through this book. And what you may have noticed in
• 34:34
  the story and you may be reacting to is I have always been not just cautious about magic
• 34:42
  because that was one of the lessons that I took from talking not because Tolkien did it,
• 34:47
  that's the way to do it, but because I could see the effectiveness of a very lean and budgeted
• 34:54
  use of magic in terms of the stakes of things, in terms of the reader's feeling of insecurity,
• 35:02
  which is vital, you have to make the reader believe I don't know what's going to happen next.
• 35:09
  I may feel that since these are main characters, they will probably survive, but I don't want to
• 35:14
  feel like they are in no danger. And when a character can suddenly whip out a wand or a magical
• 35:21
  talisman and suddenly dismiss whatever the threat is, that for me personally doesn't work.
• 35:29
  There's also an element without going into too much detail. There's also an element in
• 35:35
  the Tanuka Daya, which verges on some people might say, like almost like science fiction,
• 35:41
  in the sense that it's a little weirder than some normal fantasy magic. But part of that is also
• 35:49
  because, as I said, I'm not Tolkien. I actually come from a background of having read science
• 35:54
  fiction all my life when my wife and I, Deborah, my wife and I did the ordinary farm books,
• 36:02
  which is about a farm where there's actually a hole into the past and there are dragons and
• 36:09
  unicorns and all this stuff, which turned out to be actual real animals. I worked really hard to
• 36:15
  figure out how dragons and unicorns and all these other creatures actually could live in the world
• 36:21
  and what they would be like if they had actually evolved and then eventually disappeared.
• 36:27
  So, you know, I don't like the sort of wavelon kind of magic. And even the magic, the big magic,
• 36:35
  when it shows up in my books, I try to make it feel as though it could happen in a real world. Not
• 36:42
  necessarily the real world that we all share, but in a real world. So, and the Tanuka Daya
• 36:50
  are definitely that and they are both of and not of the world of the story. And as a result,
• 36:58
  their effect on it is chaotic and often unexpected. I guess, if that makes sense, that's kind of the
• 37:05
  most I can say without giving you anything. Yeah, it felt to me, so obviously it's such a huge area
• 37:12
  of influences or any of us writers sort of absorb, but I felt as though there might be other
• 37:19
  traditions of myths and legends coming in informing them from what you expect to find in
• 37:27
  your usual epic fantasy. Yeah, having lived in England, I always say bog standard and I have no
• 37:33
  idea if that's yeah, that's it works. Yeah, I mean, if that, but yeah, no, absolutely. And
• 37:39
  but yeah, as I said, I mean, my influences were also people like Ray Bradbury and his
• 37:44
  Martian chronicles and things like that. And the otherness of those kinds of characters too.
• 37:50
  No, I very much, I'm a strong believer that any writer is a better writer when they bring
• 37:59
  things into whatever they're writing that is of them that is, you know, their own choices and
• 38:06
  interests and, you know, for instance, you know, most most visual artists begin going to museums and
• 38:13
  copying and, you know, or looking in books or nowadays online and copying the great masters.
• 38:18
  Well, it's not just copying the great masters, it matters which great masters you copy and
• 38:23
  and and what aspects of their work that you when you take your first steps into creativity,
• 38:28
  which aspects of that creativity that you're trying to learn from are you going with? And, you know,
• 38:36
  it's very obvious from talking what much many of his sources were where they came from what he
• 38:42
  was moved by what he loved in his academic life, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm trying to do
• 38:49
  that also in my own way. I'm bringing in my love of history and science and science fiction and
• 38:56
  many kinds of fantasy and mainstream fiction, you know, and I mean, for God's sake, Jane Austin,
• 39:02
  you know, I mean, I'm sure there are bits and pieces of Jane Austin creeping into some of my
• 39:06
  dialogue some places, you know, and Dickens and other kind of things that influenced me.
• 39:11
  So I think that's the main thing is that it for any writer is if you can bring in things that
• 39:19
  make you different or that inform you and that you love and get excited about, you have a much
• 39:25
  better chance of writing something that's going to make a difference because other people will
• 39:29
  recognize, oh, this is a kind of way of working that I haven't run across before or here.
• 39:35
  Here's an interest that I haven't run across before. So again, I hope that makes sense.
• 39:39
  It's a rather large. No, it definitely does make sense. So if people out there have been waiting
• 39:44
  for the last installments, I know there are some people looking at you, my daughter, who won't start
• 39:49
  a series until it's finished. Yeah. I don't blame them to be honest. They've been burned by some
• 39:55
  people who will remain nameless finish their series. You can now read the entire series of the
• 40:01
  last King of Osternard, but you can of course go back and start right at the beginning of all of
• 40:06
  this and have a wonderful, I think it'll take you half a year probably to. Oh my god, it's a
• 40:12
  serious commitment. That would be a great 2025. So a couple of sort of more like hearted questions
• 40:20
  at the end here. So Ted, I've got my magic wand. I don't know, you don't like them, but
• 40:26
  and I've dissolved the the barrier between you and your fictional world. If you walked into your
• 40:33
  fictional world, who do you think you'd be? Would you last long? I would probably be one of the
• 40:40
  advisory characters. You know, there's a character named Tiamac who originally came from the swamps
• 40:47
  in the south and has managed to become a royal advisor, despite being from an outcast culture,
• 40:57
  et cetera, et cetera. I suspect that is one of the few things that I could, unless I had all my
• 41:03
  knowledge as writer, in which case I could cheat and be a fortune teller, but assuming I couldn't,
• 41:10
  yeah, I would probably be some kind of an advisor because that would be the only thing I could count
• 41:15
  on that I could do as well as most people. I certainly wouldn't be, you know, the greatest
• 41:20
  sword fighter or, you know, a horse writer or whatever, since I have limited experience with both.
• 41:26
  So yeah, I'd be one of those people saying, actually, in these kinds of stories, that's going to
• 41:33
  be a bad decision. Don't don't do that. It's going to prove to be a poison chalice. And yeah,
• 41:38
  you know, the equivalent of saying, don't go upstairs to see what that noise is, you know, that
• 41:43
  that would be my job. I quite fancy being a friend to Simon Miriam L. Some kind of little, you know,
• 41:51
  lady in waiting row, they sat in like nice people to get on with. I really, you know, that's one of
• 41:58
  the things about, and I wonder if sometimes I have a very, very nice, but, but fairly steady audience.
• 42:05
  And I'm wondering if part of it is that, I mean, I do, I am a sort of an optimist in life. I
• 42:12
  think that humans tend to rebound from, you know, bad times and that essentially most people are good.
• 42:20
  That's, I guess that's my underlying thing. And Simon and Miriam L. I, you know, are a good example
• 42:25
  of that as protagonist. I mean, they make mistakes. They lose their temper. They do all these
• 42:29
  things, but they're fundamentally good people. And I hope that's why we root for them and not simply
• 42:35
  because they're the designated protagonist. And when they make mistakes, I hope the reader
• 42:40
  recognizes that and says, okay, I'm not so pleased with them right now. Instead of just giving
• 42:46
  them the blanket, you know, well, the, the, the ends justify the means kind of a thing. So, yeah,
• 42:52
  I think they are nice people. And I think there are a lot of nice, interesting people in my work.
• 42:56
  And that's because as I look around the world, as I meet, you know, others and, and, and travel and
• 43:03
  all that, that's my feeling is that the world is full of kind people and good people.
• 43:09
  And I don't, yes, I will put those kind and good people in my stories in terrible jeopardy.
• 43:16
  No question about it. Yeah, that's my job. But, but I also believe in reinforcing that idea,
• 43:24
  that it's never hopeless that that that humans and the variants of humanity that I introduce
• 43:32
  have more to them than simply doing what is expeditious, you know, that there are other things
• 43:39
  that we think about and consider as we make our decisions in life. Whether we're deciding
• 43:44
  about fighting a dragon or simply, you know, is it time to move to a new apartment? You know,
• 43:49
  we have complicated and oftentimes fairly optimistic approaches to these things.
• 43:55
  So, we didn't talk about the sort of mythic background to your story because partly,
• 44:01
  that will give away some of the key things that happened towards the end. So, I don't know
• 44:06
  this, but that's very hard last volume. There is a very satisfying creation story or a Genesis
• 44:13
  story, should I say, to the, to this work, which is the main, see how carefully I'm choosing my
• 44:23
  work? No, you're doing very well. The journey of it informs the end to give it the big tie-up.
• 44:32
  I wanted to ask you, we always end with where in all the fantasy world is the best place for
• 44:36
  something. And it can be from film or TV or books or an artwork, it really doesn't matter.
• 44:44
  And I was thinking, whereas for you, the best place other than your own work for us of creation
• 44:51
  or a foundation myth, it could be that you want to go into a world and write one for it,
• 44:56
  like you want to go into Beatrix Potter and write a foundation, you know, Peter Rabbit or something,
• 45:02
  have at. But you can go anywhere, where would you want to go in and share the foundation
• 45:08
  creation myth? Well, I have to say this, and this is, this is not meant to, to suck up to
• 45:15
  Oxford or anything like that, but I would definitely be leaning towards Middle Earth and the
• 45:23
  larger Tolkienian universe for an odd reason, which is that it's one of those places where you know
• 45:32
  there is actually, again, that kind of optimism, that kind of idea. Now, don't get me wrong, I am
• 45:40
  not a religious person. Obviously, JR Tolkien was. But as I said, I am an optimist, which is to some
• 45:47
  people that may seem a paradox, it doesn't to me. But I like the certainty that you get in a fantasy
• 45:54
  world, and especially in the war of the rings, that no matter what happens, that there is a fundamental
• 46:02
  purpose. And because of course, I think that's one of the reasons that we read fantasy in the first
• 46:08
  place, you know, and as I've often said, it's one of the few places where you know that somebody's
• 46:14
  actually in charge of the world. You know, that's like, right, if you're, if you're not a religious
• 46:20
  person, that's one of the few places where you know you can go and you know somebody is actually
• 46:25
  paying attention. In this case, it's a writer. So, you know, but, and in that same sense that
• 46:31
  expanded slightly, in Tolkien's world, there is an eluvitar, you know, there, there are
• 46:39
  Valar and Mayar and you know, there are entities that are trying their best to keep creation on the
• 46:46
  right side of where it should be. So, I find that very reassuring. I'm not sure that I would enjoy
• 46:54
  all the dark ages aspects of the books, you know, like I do like things like indoor plumbing.
• 47:00
  But I genuinely like the fact that as with Tolkien himself, there is a faith built into the
• 47:08
  world that that allows the characters, at least from a reader's point of view, to have something
• 47:16
  behind them. And interestingly, it's paradoxically not something I make a point of in my own works.
• 47:22
  I'm kind of cheating here. I'm saying, my characters don't get to live in that world, but I would,
• 47:28
  if I had the choice. Yeah, well, this is the point of this is you're allowed to go anywhere you'd like.
• 47:32
  And just picking up, like you said, right at the beginning about your various careers you had,
• 47:38
  the foundation myth in the Silmarillion is music. Yes. So, the whole theme is played and it's already
• 47:45
  played and already done and dusted and the evil has been folded into the theme again by eluvitar.
• 47:51
  And then the Valar go into the world to live it out. It's similar to the, that, that dual thing is
• 47:57
  similar to what happens in Paradise Lost. It's told once and then you go into the world to see it
• 48:02
  played out. So, as you were musical, you can come and join in the music. So, give your own little
• 48:10
  theme. I think similar to you, that would probably be top pick for me, but there is actually a
• 48:16
  version of this in CS Lewis. If you remember in the Magician's nephew, because he was this magpie
• 48:25
  of a brain, I think he might have nicked this from home talking possibly, but when Narnia's created,
• 48:30
  it's created by song and it's the darkness and Aslan is walking through and it's a beautiful
• 48:37
  description of through the point of view of Polly, I think that character. That is the most
• 48:46
  of music, which then corresponds to trees and flowers coming up. So, she sees it immediately
• 48:51
  realized. So, I think I would go there just to watch that wonderful symphony. It reminds me of
• 48:59
  Fantasia when they have the, the world being created. It's all that wonderful moment of watching
• 49:06
  it unfolding before you. So, thank you so much for joining us. Okay, yeah, yeah. No, I would do
• 49:12
  the last thing. I just want to say very quickly, which is, yeah, that the musical thing comes
• 49:17
  through in the books too, because it would be a whole other discussion. So, I won't go into
• 49:22
  depth, but yeah, no, I feel storytelling very much as music and the ideas that come to me about
• 49:29
  pacing, rhythm, tones and timbres are very musical, and that's one of the reasons the metaphor
• 49:36
  of song is used for magic in these books. So, I just want to, I need to get that off my chest.
• 49:42
  Well, that ties it up all nicely, actually. It brings back the theme of your book to
• 49:46
  and to complete Sarkoda for today's episode. Thank you very much, Tad, and all the best with
• 49:51
  the completion of this series and to whatever happens next, which I'm sure will be epic.
• 49:58
  Thank you very much for having me, Julia.
• 50:05
  Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast.
• 50:08
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• 50:15
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