Latest / Mythmakers / The Rainshadow Orphans: Naomi Ishiguro and Anime Inspired Fantasy

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The Rainshadow Orphans: Naomi Ishiguro and Anime Inspired Fantasy · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
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  brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I'm
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  doing one of my favourite things which is talking to a fellow author and we've got now
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  the Ishi Guru with us who is just releasing the fantastic The Rain Shadow Orphans for
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  those of you who are watching this, I'm holding up the beautiful British edition of this
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  book and so welcome to MythMakers and Ermi. Hi thanks so much for having me it's great
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  to be here. Hi everyone thanks for listening and watching if you're watching. It's super
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  exciting when you get to that point where your book is just arrived through the post and
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  you're looking at this little, well very big in your case, your firstborn as it is. I
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  was wondering what the child would have thought knowing what the grown-up near me is facing
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  now and were you that kind of girl who loved books and roamed through libraries or did you
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  come to it late? I definitely grew up loving books and stories and yeah in all forms actually
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  I was thinking about I was very much like a Disney kid as well I loved animation and like
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  all sorts of visual storytelling as well so this book is very influenced by anime specifically
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  but also I just wrote it like I wanted it to feel sort of animated as if it was sort of hand-drawn maybe
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  so yeah I think I think I was I was sort of always captivated and specifically by fantasy as well
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  I've always been a huge reader of fantasy so yeah I think I don't know child I haven't changed
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  very much so I think probably the child in the adult's love of having this similar a similar response
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  which is just I'm very excited and I'm I'm feel very lucky and I'm excited to share it with readers
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  yeah and for those of you who like books as you know they actually physical thing of books
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  it's a it's a lovely addition to hold and read yeah but the the American one came in the in the
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  post the other day which I think is it's just so beautiful they've got these beautiful spread edges
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  and stunning endpapers as well which is sort of wonderful cat going down the endpapers so I think
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  actually get the American addition guys if you if you've got access to it because it's beautiful
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  so which was the first book that you can remember having read to you or reading yourself that
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  really lit up your imagination can you watch your entry entry drug to this you know obsession with
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  literature books that are really captivated me as a child well when I was thinking I had a
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  bit of a think about this and actually I did I think the first the very first thing from when I was
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  about like two was was actually watching things rather than reading things it was again animation I
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  loved I loved fairy tales relate to me like Aladdin and things like that sort of it became
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  visually I think animation is like sort of real magic in the real magic in the real world
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  and so many of those stories kind of really are just about imagination and infinite
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  possibility like the magic carpet in Aladdin the sort of that whole sequence or the under the sea
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  sequence in the little mermaid so I think it was honestly it kind of stories stories like that
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  that just were very transporting because I was obviously too young to read myself I remember having
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  these lamps in my bedroom that had like a light bulb in the middle and then like a paper thing
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  that would spin around because of the heat of the lamp and it would project images on the on the
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  walls and one of them was sort of out of space things and one of them was under the sea
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  things which I think fits well with the Aladdin magic carpet obsession and the little mermaid
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  being under the sea obsession and as with books so like I think I read like a lot and had a lot
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  read to me like you know just the usual kind of like standard 90s British childhood but I think
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  possibly like Terry Pratchett was the the thing that really got me kind of obsessed with like
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  the possibilities of what you can do with fiction I loved Mort as a child's the one that's death is
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  the sort of actual character walking around doing things speaking and I think the idea that
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  you know it was the first time I've heard the words anthropomorphic personification and
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  think I was about eight or something and just the first child yes but the idea that you could
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  you could take this kind of abstract idea that we are afraid of a lot of the time and turn it
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  into something that maybe wasn't so fearful or that yeah was was part of this kind of very humane
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  kind of humanist kind of vision that the Discworld presents I think was extremely compelling to me
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  at the time yeah so you've you've had various jobs involved with or tasks involved with literature
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  I have noticed that you were a bookseller for a bit and you've done various creative writing
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  further degrees yeah so when when people pick up rain shadow orphans which is the first in the
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  series what are they going to be entering into here yeah so it is almost that it's very anime
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  inspired as inspired by sort of Japanese shown an anime it's yeah an anime inspired adventure
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  story sort of epic fantasy urban fantasy and it's very much there's a sort of heist
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  a slight sort of undercover spy sort of story a bit of a revenge plot and it's really about
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  marginalized young people standing up for their place in society and resisting kind of injustice
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  and corruption in all of their forms but I've tried to make it like there is a political edge
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  obviously there's a lot of fantasy does have but it's also I've tried to make it very hopeful
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  because I feel like that is political in itself it's it's like what's what's what's the point
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  in just handing people despair we have enough of that in the world and yeah it's fun I wanted
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  to be fun for readers I've spent some time as a as a high school teacher and yeah if anything
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  if that told me anything is that your lessons and your the things you create to share with people
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  they have to be fun so there's a funny cat and martial arts battles there's dragons of course
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  there's a cool magic system hopefully and lots of like entertaining snacks and lots of like
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  found family and solidarity so that's that's what you that's what you can expect yeah so your
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  rangehead of orphans live on a island a large island which has the geography is quite important
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  to the plot because the southern side of the island is where the dispossessed the the stateless
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  individuals the undocumented workers in that parlance live whereas you've got an emperor who's a
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  female emperor to start with and the court and the privileged people who've got through the hoops
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  to be citizens live in a sort of more privileged area and then there's a kind of no man's land
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  area in between were you thinking of any particular model of a place when you came up with that
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  there was like a real world society or did it kind of just organically grow as you began to
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  explore the world around your characters it very much started with theme so I've always been
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  interested in questions of physical space and my personal was actually called common ground which
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  is very on the nose and very literal but is how we need more common ground literally and physically
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  so space and the politics of space is something I've always been very curious about so I think that's
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  sort of where the kind of very like socially structured geography of the island came into the world
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  building but it is I was interested in this idea we see in so many of our societies of
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  of a society which is built on the labor and the efforts of those that it vilifies
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  and that is often sort of undocumented workers and people who the sort of I guess like majority
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  class have decided for whatever reason kind of don't belong so this idea of like space belonging
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  and the role but sort of different different kind of social groups play play within society and the
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  injustice of a lot of that was something I very much kind of wanted to write about not from a kind
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  of here's my polemic like I'm telling you what to think but just kind of like raising questions
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  about it and just exploring the dynamics of that kind of society I didn't want to look at it's not
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  a straight allegory for anywhere in the world particularly because it was it was a specific kind of
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  power dynamic that I wanted to examine rather to just sort of say like oh this is Gaza or this is
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  like the jungle in Calais or like you know like yeah a lot of these kind of marginalized spaces did
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  to kind of play into my head while I was writing it but it is fundamentally like it's a fun fancy
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  novel so I didn't want to get like two into making it literally a straight kind of like for like
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  of something that was like a very live political situation and I think that's not really I mean it
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  can be fiction's role but I'm more interested in looking at like the underlying dynamics and forces
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  and and the things that sort of societal and emotional consequences of those of those things really
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  yeah yeah I mean we often talk about C.S. Lewis and Tolkien on this podcast and one of the things
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  which I've always found really helpful that they talked about which is not an allegory but an
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  applicable applicable something that's applicable to the world so that you you as a reader and what
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  I think the quote is allegory lies in the power of the author whereas applicability lies in the
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  power of the reader yeah so as someone's reading it they may think oh this reminds me of
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  something happening in America where someone else is saying oh this reminds me of what's
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  happening in Australia um so you apply it to your own sort of context yeah I love that and so
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  much of fantasy is sort of giving to the reader like giving agency to the reader like you're making
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  magic systems and then you're sort of handing them over and saying like you make up your own
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  stories you imagine in this world like this world as yours now that's intrinsic to the genre so
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  I love that that it's it's finding some kind of universal or like kind of deeper truth about
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  human societies um that isn't just like that I'm not imposing on it it's just uh that's what I'm
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  aiming for anyway I'm not sure to maybe achieve that but yeah you're sort of aiming for this kind
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  of a different level of truth I guess that you can hand over to people and say like interpret this
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  in like see like see where this kind of fits your context and sort of read it as you like
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  um so was the journey to writing this at a smooth plain sailing all the way or did you have
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  many stops and starts was it actually quite a tough right um I don't feel that anything is ever
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  plain sailing and writing with that that's a trap that question yeah with uh listers who if you
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  if you write you'll know that it never is um but uh yeah so I published a couple of books in
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  the pandemic uh and it's just the experience of that was uh you know I mean there were many many
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  many many worse things that happened to people in the pandemic I'm definitely not complaining uh
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  but it was it was just very discombobulating and I think just sort of being exposed to the
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  industry for the first time was quite stressful so I wanted to carry on writing but I actually
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  sort of decided I wasn't going to be like a career writer um and trained as a secondary school
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  teacher and was working so a high school teacher so I was working with teenagers um for for a
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  couple years after my first book um and that was my agent was you know he kept he kept me on and he
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  was like you could try writing a different kind of book like what have you wrote about teaching
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  what have you wrote non-fiction and then he sort of said what have you wrote for for young people
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  like what have you wrote with your students in mind like with a different audience and I was
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  like yeah okay um but then I actually thought like yeah what what if I what if I did sort of do
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  because it's not a children like it's not a YA it's been published as adult but it is it's with the
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  sort of and I was you know I was teaching like up to like 18 year olds so um but yeah it's sort of
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  with with with my students in mind was kind of how it sort of first came into being um and yeah
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  I think once I once I decided to write it it was actually quite not easy um but it came quite
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  quickly and um I just found myself like very excited by the whole process and I had a great time
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  writing it and it just sort of like everything kind of seemed to come together in the world uh sort
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  of made made sense um and I just had like a fan because we're fantasy you can you can source ideas
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  from all sorts of different places and people and it's it's just such a fun process um so it was
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  actually kind of wonderful once I'd started but I think that that sort of sense of what what what
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  am I going to write um took a while but I think that's sort of very common with writers because once
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  you sort of write a novel you've sort of said everything you have to say and you pour like years
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  of thinking into it and then you have to sort of spend some time sort of living and and gathering
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  more uh thoughts and observations about the world yeah so the world building um I'm correct me if
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  I'm wrong but I was seeing it as having a sort of Japanese basis for the culture and um but it's not
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  Japan it's not our own world I mean obviously once you realize there are three moons um you know
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  you're somewhere else which sort of frees you up from any sort of attempt to connect it um so what
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  kind of world builder are you are you the sort who has loads of notebooks where you're um you know
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  already creating a world and then you go ahead with the story or do you create the bit of the
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  world that fits that bit of the narrative um I think it's it's a it's a difficult one because I
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  love world building just for fun um I think it's just a wonderful like it's it's it's a great
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  activity um it stuck there can't you and it's something quite different from from writing a novel
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  I think and create a sort of perfect fun world and then you think oh it's not really in service to
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  the story and the characters and the themes I really want to explore because like writing a novel
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  is really about theme um so I think yeah for I mean for me like I did say that the the sort of
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  land and the the sort of politics of the land was very much that came from the themes but um yeah
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  there's a whole kind of solar magic system that's kind of roughly based on I guess sort of ideas
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  of like a numerous energy flows through the world or kind of Chi um and there are kind of creatures
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  called sun spirits um who like I've invented but are sort of based on um just ideas that like
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  slightly of sort of Japanese yokai um and like uh the animism in the shinto tradition of sort of
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  kami being these sort of spirits um these gods that are sort of a physically present in places um
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  yeah uh I think with the world building uh with with this book there was bits that were sort of
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  there um and they were the ones that were in service to the the theme and and the character
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  the characters um and then I sort of wrote the draft sort of getting the story uh and then I had
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  sort of three friends who ended up sort of helping a lot uh three kind of beta readers I guess um
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  one of them was just a sort of amazing literary novelist who read a draft and was sort of
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  questioning some of the politics of it sort of being like okay so how does this island's economy
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  really really function you've said that it kind of runs on these uh the labor of these like
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  undocumented migrants who are in this sort of like almost refugee camp but like how does that
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  actually work like what like and what is the role of this gang the lucky crows that you have like
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  what are the actual kind of mechanics of injustice here like let's draw that out a bit more um uh
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  yeah and and sort of look to sort of uh the the history of the island and and that kind of thing
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  with me um and that sort of solidified that um I have a friend who's a professional theoretical
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  physicist which is always handy yeah great to have one of those on speed dial so like I asked him
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  about the magic system and just being like so does this is this logical like does this make sense
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  in terms of like some kind of physics um and sometimes they also be yes and sometimes like no not
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  quite but what if you did this um and that's just that was really fun just to throw around ideas
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  and to get ideas for like future books of like just kind of things that could happen that may never
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  like we did a lot of just kind of co world building that may never actually end up in the books
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  but uh was really fun as an activity so that did make me think it's quite dangerous you can just
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  well build infinitely um and yeah I have a friend who has an MST in Japanese studies from Oxford
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  which despite me being half Japanese I'm definitely definitely definitely don't have that um so she
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  read through the book and just kind of gave me more advice on the cultural aspects um because it
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  does borrow quite a lot from uh Japanese sort of culture and tradition so um she was sort of my
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  cultural advisor so I think with fantasy it's great because you get to draw on the expertise of
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  the people around you and uh yeah my previous books felt very much like me on my own like this is
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  just me whereas this has felt like I've written it but it feels very much like a kind of team
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  effort of me going around and sourcing like interesting people and having interesting conversations
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  and there's definitely like more like research uh experiential research that has gone
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  has gone into building this world definitely yeah I've got a friend who is a primary care
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  doctor in the developing world you know so he goes into the the kind of places that you know
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  Yemen and Somalia and yeah places that you wouldn't go on holiday at the moment um but he's very
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  helpful because if I say um what happens if you get bitten by a cobra what happens if what happens
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  if you get hit by a sword you know what really happens as opposed to like fantasy you know film
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  violence yeah um what's what kind of infections might you have after you know sort of and unfortunately
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  he knows um because of the nature of where he works so he often gets a dedication and a thanks
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  but I wanted to point out or just raise with you that your your dragons are eastern ones
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  um so tell us a little bit about your dragons because anyone who loves dragons if he
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  hang on in the book because they come yeah you've got to have dragons I think that was one of the
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  things I was like if I'm writing a fancy novel like I have the has to be dragons yeah um yeah it's
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  like you know naturally um yeah it was very important to me they're eastern dragons um I yeah I
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  love western I mean I I was one of those people who did old English at university uh and just
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  loved all the you know like grew up reading Tolkien um like you know the dragon and bear wolf and
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  the all the idea of the kind of worms and uh like smug and like I very much kind of like grew up
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  in in that tradition but it was also very much aware that there was a kind of very different kind
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  of idea of what a dragon was uh that was was an eastern dragon and that they I didn't see growing
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  up anyway so many of them in fantasy fiction um because it was always these kind of big winged kind
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  of I don't know how to like creatures um and yeah I just wanted because it's a kind of eastern
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  archipelago um and that's sort of the the world I like the idea of dragons that sort of have have
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  control over the weather I love the story of the dragon pearl um the idea of dragons being a
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  sociative water um and because there's the magic systems all about kind of elemental flows of
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  energy like the kind of weather and and that kind of thing seem to work very well um within the
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  context of the story but I think some of it's just kind of like representation like when you work
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  with young people and it just sort of made me reflect on like there weren't that many kind of
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  eastern skewed fantasy worlds um like for me when I was growing up so I just kind of wanted to make one
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  and there's plenty now there's loads but um yeah no it's probably
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  probably will still feel fresh to a reader and and anyone who's perhaps you know
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  filled up they've been glutted on western soul dragons it'll be lovely refreshment to find
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  another series of legends and traditions informing your characters so um you have I noticed
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  if I think I've got this right you've got um five main points of view you've got Toshiko who
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  we start with who's the younger of three siblings her brother Yun Jun who um is a very good cook
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  and sort of caring for the family figure and you've got Mai
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  Mai Mai got Mai sorry um who's the eldest or the elder sister who's the sort of computer
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  whiz who prefers to stay at home she's that kind of person and then you've got Haru who is the
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  young son of the emperor only child and then you've got Theo who is an outsider who seems to
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  have come from what we would normally think of as a western background in he's got a fair hair
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  and blue eyes and you know so he's the outsider in this this world so um who walked into your
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  imagination first I think the sisters Toshiko and Mai um I imagine because I was teaching a girl's
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  grammar school um I think this idea of I mean these that my characters aren't quite teenage as
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  Toshiko's 17 and Mai's 21 um but it was sort of the idea of these two sisters essentially who
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  um have the kind of bicker and the very different Toshiko is very like she goes out and like
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  has that she knows martial arts and she'll you know fight the bad guys and go on the heists and
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  have the adventures and Mai is very much an introvert um and yeah she has a different school
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  set completely and she's very sarcastic um and say that home with a very grumpy cat mochi um
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  so yeah I think it was I I just kind of loved the idea of their kind of sister bond and um
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  like what they kind of learned from each other and how they complete each other I guess um and I
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  just loved the idea of these two sisters in this kind of almost like a cyberpunk world um
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  that I just I just had the aesthetic of it I was like yeah it's a sister story uh and then it
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  actually kind of built out from there I think I liked the idea of writing a trio um I'm not
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  quite sure why but it just sort of made made sense um having the three three siblings uh and often
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  I I didn't really do this consciously but it must have been an unconscious thing I think often in
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  anime you do get uh it's almost like a trope having five main characters um uh like like a gang of
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  five um so I think maybe that was sort of how it went just like it felt naturally right to me um
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  Mai isn't such a point of view character she only has one section from her point of view so it
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  every does her thinking oh god that's something it's gonna jump around a lot and the um sort of
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  difficult to read um it to shiko is a main our main point of view so it's often like the the
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  perspective of alternate to another character and then go back to the shiko and then another
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  character and go so you are kind of grounded in this one sort of central POV character that
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  carries you through um but I liked the idea of yeah um also like it's very much a story about the
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  importance of like a collectivist view um it sort of kicks against individualism I suppose um
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  and I think there are so many like amazing fantasy stories about like the chosen one and the individual
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  like succeeding and going off and self-actualizing and that's that's one thing and I love a lot of
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  these stories but I I think one of the main things I like to look at in my writing is the importance
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  of society and the kind of things we owe to each other um and a more collectivist kind of sense
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  of how we kind of move forward as people um so I think having this kind of ensemble rather than
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  just a kind of one main character was important to me for that reason as well did you find yourself
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  having a favorite um well to shiko is like your main she's sort of the anchor so I really
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  enjoyed writing her as well because she's a very like active character um she is very impulsive
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  she doesn't always make the most sensible decisions so she dives headfirst into things that
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  often quite reactively just being like oh like I'm angry I need to go out and do something
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  and then it will create some kind of disaster but then she has to sort of deal with it so that was
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  quite exciting as a writer to have someone who is sort of always wanting to take action and go out
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  and do things um rather than necessarily like do the sensible thing that like we might actually
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  doing real life um and I think because she's young like it felt true to the kids I was working with
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  as well who often would just kind of do things first and then consider the white of it later um so I
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  loved her but I also I liked writing Haru a lot um the young prince he's a very sweet character
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  and I think a lot of it is the most pure and hard isn't he yeah and actually a lot of the emotional
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  heart of the book comes from him and he had sort of found family relationship with um this woman
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  who's sort of effectively like his nanny good-k and I think writing writing his like his emotional
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  story was something that I think felt like it added a kind of slightly deeper layer to the book
• 25:37
  yeah so I would say that I found May the hardest to like but I suspect that's on purpose
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  because you need to have you know the fact that you do sort of like her but she is the hardest to
• 25:51
  love because she is prickly that's that's the way she works um so were you thinking about that
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  of actually having a bit of a grist in the middle otherwise if you have lots of characters
• 26:07
  all kind of sweet you know you need you need the one who is the awkward squad one don't you
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  really oh definitely and like you don't want characters who are all just kind of
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  uncomplicatedly blandly lovely more than a bit of like realness to them um actually a lot is
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  interesting you say like a lot of people have told me may as their favourite actually one that
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  gets mentioned the most often as being a favourite amongst like people who read it so that is I think
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  people write to her differently maybe she's just the strongest flavour um it should be an age thing
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  because I like I maybe it's kind of like maternally I I liked Haru because he was sweet
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  whereas I imagine if May was my daughter I'd be having putting my hair out I mean Haru is he
• 26:52
  he's quite uh I don't know he's he's quite like missing quite a lot that would worry me I mean
• 26:59
  again his decision making isn't because he at the beginning he's so sheltered everything sort of
• 27:03
  again so he isn't sort of the wisest um he can be a bit of a least can at least he's not just sweet
• 27:08
  but um actually june is really sweet what do you mean yeah I mean you know as a grownup you could
• 27:14
  see that Haru could be like him growing up so um yeah june is just lovely he just cooks pancakes for
• 27:22
  everyone in his just he cares he's the caring role um yeah May came about though because I I was
• 27:28
  teaching these grammar school girls and um they were like really cool like they were really like I
• 27:34
  just thought they were like like really awesome uh but they were also like massive like nerds in
• 27:38
  the sense of like what when like when I was at school people would be like oh you do robotics like
• 27:42
  you do computer programming like oh such a nerd um but they were also they were just like really
• 27:47
  kind of like effortlessly cool um and I felt like we don't see and a lot of them you know they might
• 27:53
  not have been into computers but they'd be into reading or like they were just very like academic
• 27:57
  uh and quite quite introverted but still like that that wasn't seen as like an uncool thing
• 28:02
  and I just sort of wanted some a character that was who was cool like a teenager or like um
• 28:07
  a slightly like a young person but who also was um who like solved problems with her interlegs and
• 28:14
  was like it preferred to stay at home with her thoughts and um her computers and uh yeah that was
• 28:21
  that was sort of where that where that came from but also she's quite a traumatized character um
• 28:24
  yeah no I think that's more like what I was picking up on is that she yeah she keeps people at a
• 28:29
  distance she even has these long acrylic nails that almost like cat sits around her shoulders that
• 28:35
  will kind of like claw anyone who gets too close so I think that's where her prickliness is sort of
• 28:41
  uh meant like she she has to sort of protect herself like she's quite spiky um and she's actually
• 28:46
  quite fearful of the outside world as well so I'm really able to the the plot of the piece
• 28:51
  without giving away you know any of the twists or turns uh I would say um it's the first of a
• 28:57
  trilogy but don't worry guys don't hang back from reading it because you do actually land it
• 29:03
  in a place which has a sense of a very satisfying completion of this part of the adventure with
• 29:10
  the the threads going on for what would then develop in the rest of the world so you don't leave it
• 29:15
  on that cliff edge which is so frustrating where yeah you don't know what's going to happen um
• 29:21
  so you mentioned ready that it deals with some real world uh issues of undocumented workers but
• 29:29
  also there's an element of about the AI sort of robot artificial intelligence um approach
• 29:37
  that is coming at us so when you're writing your plot are you finding your plots in the real world
• 29:46
  um like reading the newspaper and thinking oh yes I think this is best looked at in the laboratory
• 29:50
  of a fantasy world or is it something i mean how does your plot plotting happen
• 29:58
  if you can it's hard to analyse this sometimes because you might just do it but um i'm sometimes
• 30:03
  aware when i'm writing stories that i've got some kind of an overarching theme which i've seen in
• 30:07
  the real world like i wrote a book at the time of the banking crisis in 2008 where i thought what
• 30:14
  would happen if the banking system collapsed in a fantasy world um that's where i started i thought
• 30:19
  it was really interesting yeah in this context because i hadn't read a book about the collapse of
• 30:24
  the banking system in a fantasy world because it's not very sexy subject but the outworkings of it are
• 30:32
  so how do you go about finding your plots uh amazing premise um yeah i must have been quite fun
• 30:38
  to research as well um it's quite organic i'm very much someone who uh if i know what's going to
• 30:45
  happen i get bored and the the all the life kind of goes out of the project and i kind of
• 30:51
  even if i force myself to sit down and write a thousand words a day whatever it just doesn't
• 30:55
  doesn't seem like it doesn't work i just end up having to throw the whole thing away
• 31:00
  so i yeah i it's very discovery based i think uh it's more like i could kind of go out into the
• 31:06
  world and experience lots of things that i find interesting that i assemble kind of quite
• 31:11
  instinctually like i knew i was interested in young people and educational inequality and
• 31:17
  like the relationship between education and society um and yeah various things sort of happened
• 31:25
  in in my life as as well that it's just sort of personal things that kind of feed into it and then
• 31:29
  you sort of sit down you're like i need to write about all of these thoughts in my head um and then
• 31:34
  i just kind of honestly just sort of started doing that um so it comes yeah comes from sort of
• 31:39
  theme and area again uh but then the plot really comes out in the rewriting for me i'm someone who
• 31:44
  rewrites and rewrites and rewrites and rewrites like yeah i know some people will just kind of like
• 31:49
  they will they'll be pay pay a huge amount of attention to each sentence and then once the
• 31:53
  sentence is kind of locked in it more or less stays where it is like no like i think i don't know
• 31:59
  i think we were on uh i can't even remember draft 10 was the one i submitted to the publisher
• 32:08
  but then i rewrote it about 12 times subsequently and then we went through multiple drafts uh
• 32:14
  after sort of including the copy edit i think we went through seven of those so there were
• 32:17
  probably about like 35 drafts maybe i think i think discovery writers often do that don't they
• 32:26
  i mean i i'm i'm very my technique depending what i've been asked to do by the publisher because
• 32:32
  occasionally you'll say you'll get someone saying can you please submit a synopsis um yeah i hate
• 32:38
  that yeah but i will do it if i think there's a a contract at the end of it um so that puts a
• 32:46
  bit of discipline on me in advance but actually what i enjoy most when i'm writing is just to see
• 32:54
  what happens yeah and but it does mean that you have to make sense of it at the end and thank
• 33:01
  goodness for world processors i know i do think about this like when people have had to handwrite
• 33:06
  like what did they do like obviously they managed it but just the number of notebooks and they're
• 33:11
  like i have to have scissors and glue and and also it's uh what you do is um it because uh
• 33:18
  talking funnily enough was a discovery writer is that you end up with masses of
• 33:23
  posthumously published versions of your book by your son yeah and tons and tons of kind of
• 33:30
  world versions where it's like trotter rather than strider and all sorts of other things going on
• 33:36
  and um yeah no fascinating and i think it took a very long time i i think her is isn't
• 33:42
  lord of the rings was meant to be a sort of sequel to the hobbit they just got like death yeah
• 33:46
  well it you can tell can't you it starts as a kid's book and then by the time they it's more
• 33:51
  less when they first meet the black rider suddenly hang on a minute we're in much darker territory
• 33:56
  here off we go yeah yeah amazing i was i've been um my my daughters um future husband is marrying
• 34:06
  into a family who all loved lord of the rings so he's valiantly reading his way through it
• 34:11
  at the first time and um i spoke to him in the weekend i said have you got he's just finished but
• 34:18
  you know fellowship and i said it changes doesn't it he said oh yeah i'm much i'm enjoying it much
• 34:22
  more now because he'd never got past that sort of joeville you know party thing at the beginning
• 34:30
  which was like the hobbit so i don't think we're allowed to do that anymore because we got word
• 34:34
  processes and we can true like the sort of people are a bit strict so with their expectations
• 34:40
  because yeah you do that a bit like well why don't you just go back through the word document
• 34:44
  yeah yeah yeah so you're thinking about sort of plot and structuring and you've mentioned
• 34:51
  that you do think of it as a sort of a anime type film you studio giblies one i sort of think of
• 34:59
  when i think of japan um are you aware of using more like screenwriting structuring rules as
• 35:07
  you're writing as a result you know the classic sort of three-act structure your book is in um
• 35:14
  how many sections is it five you think it's five yeah it's i'm writing in the next one at the
• 35:20
  moment yeah it's five which is it's usually for three or five acts isn't it for screenplay um
• 35:26
  all is lost you know that stuff are you aware of that or is it just something which because you
• 35:30
  watch so much Disney and anime films that you fall into as a story telling instinct
• 35:36
  was the book is actually the dedication i mean it's it's all about teaching so it's for
• 35:40
  for all my old teachers and for the students i taught but it's written really in memory of my drama
• 35:45
  teacher away a few years ago and yeah he only taught me for two years but he had a sort of
• 35:51
  disproportionate influence as you know those as some kind of exceptional talented brilliant people
• 35:56
  do especially teachers when you're kind of learning everything for the first time um they
• 36:01
  hit a disproportionate influence on my kind of creative and intellectual development um so i
• 36:06
  still kind of use everything that he taught me kind of every day really um and we did a lot of
• 36:10
  Shakespeare like a lot of Shakespeare five acts sorry five is five acts a hundred percent so i think
• 36:18
  i think i think i think of everything in five acts structure still um because i sort of embodied
• 36:22
  you know you do a level third studies and i think i was in ten plays in my level year um all with
• 36:27
  this sort of kind of guy that just new Shakespeare inside out and lived and breathed it so it does
• 36:32
  the five acts structure comes from comes from that and i think uh like probably some of the
• 36:38
  scene setting and cuts and stuff probably do slightly organically come probably still from
• 36:44
  from those plays and also from the way we were using them we had a quite um just a really weird
• 36:49
  unconventional hamlet that was really brilliant called hamlet house of horror that he devised but
• 36:53
  we we all kind of worked on together there was a kind of a German expressionist version of hamlet
• 36:58
  where we were kind of all on stage all the time and it was it it was a musical there was tomweights
• 37:02
  music in it um and that had quite filmic cuts uh and the way that the story moved um we kind of
• 37:09
  edited it to be like that so i think that had a sort of because you have sort of inside the creative
• 37:12
  process if you're devising in like a theater context and i think that's that's partly where that
• 37:17
  that kind of came from um i was also yeah just aware of writing for an audience i think because i
• 37:23
  had these books before my like previous novels quite sort of social realist uh kind of longer form
• 37:29
  just more traditional kind of chapters and um i just remember like seeing like my yearnines
• 37:34
  and stuff like trying to read it and like not always i like just finding it a bit of a sort of
• 37:39
  harder harder thing to connect to and i was just like i want to give them something that they'll
• 37:43
  have a great time with and it's not an effort um you know that they like write something like
• 37:47
  that's like a gift to them i'm saying that this is like it's a teenage book it's sort of
• 37:52
  it's not really it's for all ages but um no i think perhaps what you're talking about is a
• 37:57
  a readership which actually thinks primarily in visual yeah visual medium first before they think
• 38:02
  about literary medium because that's one if someone said to me what's known his style i'll say
• 38:07
  well it's um the cut to so particularly at the end or not at four should we say thinking at four
• 38:16
  when the pace of the action is building up and you've got sort of a number of conflicts or battle scenes
• 38:22
  or major decisions being made you do the um he reaches for the coffee pot come to what's happening
• 38:32
  over there and then and then you come back to Theo with the coffee pot so it's the and that
• 38:38
  immediately is a it's not so much a book thing it's more of a film thing and those books do do that too
• 38:44
  but it triggers a visual version of that and i would say that was the style that came out
• 38:53
  of this book for me um it was interesting that you're saying it's very different from your
• 38:57
  earlier books um do you find would you say that you're quite a you have like a ventriloquist
• 39:06
  style in that you can become the writer for that kind of story and then change it if if someone
• 39:13
  said please write me a i know um a who done it thriller with an unreliable narrator and you
• 39:22
  would go yes i'll do that and i'll go over there and do that are you quite happy to shift
• 39:28
  that's an interesting question i find it i really struggle to write under contract which is a
• 39:32
  bad if you're trying to form like a career as a writer that is sustainable because as you say like
• 39:38
  a contract is important um but yeah i find it very difficult to write anything to order to be
• 39:42
  honest um and it's something i do really really struggle with um not sort of just like it's not
• 39:48
  on principle it's just when i sit down and i know that there's a contract and i have to do it
• 39:52
  everything comes out sort of awful um which is is tough um but um i think the voice does yeah i do
• 40:00
  sort of think of the voice for the project i think my earlier work was um because i wrote it all
• 40:04
  in my 20s it was much more just kind of like how it came out like i was finding my voice i guess
• 40:12
  um we're still looking credibly young to me so are you are you now in your 30s and
• 40:16
  is that cool yeah um still still young useful yeah kind of um yeah so i think yeah but i did i
• 40:26
  it's very much sort of i was see like what kind of tradition is this project within so like my novel
• 40:31
  i was reading like it was more socially realist again themes about sort of injustice and landownership
• 40:37
  and finding common ground um between different social groups and how like solidarity and
• 40:41
  and connection between sort of marginalized communities is actually a way to sort of safe society
• 40:46
  um and sort of moving from it's a similar theme it's like moving from an individualistic
• 40:50
  kind of framework of seeing things to something that's maybe more collectivist so it's the same
• 40:55
  kind of agenda but it was very much like i was reading a lot of um i see like i read like a lot
• 41:01
  James Kelman uh and like i did i was really like urban Welsh so this idea of like it's not in the
• 41:07
  vernacular but i wanted to write like how well i guess it is but it's like south of England vernacular
• 41:11
  which is sort of he is that even but like but like yeah i was sort of like i wanted to write something
• 41:15
  that was how people spoke um and it was very much kind of that felt real in that sense uh yeah so
• 41:22
  that it was i was sort of trying to write a book that in that kind of looking at how to do those
• 41:28
  things whereas with this um yeah i think the voice again it came from my students i think um yeah
• 41:38
  yeah that was what you've just said makes me want to ask you about whether or not you've
• 41:42
  experienced any prejudice going from a more literary frame of you know novel to working within a
• 41:50
  genre of fantasy i mean notice people treat you differently uh reviewed by different different
• 41:56
  different kinds of people or do you think we've got over ourselves well it's all very fresh um so
• 42:01
  the book isn't out yet it's out on the 26th in the UK the US and other places in the japan uh
• 42:07
  the 26th of may may yeah just to face with people listening to this it's probably out already
• 42:14
  if you're listening to this folks yeah so i don't know how people are going to receive it i don't
• 42:18
  know how they're responding um but i i used to work for an independent bookseller and we didn't
• 42:23
  um shell things in genres it was the the whole idea was just kind of fiction general so obviously
• 42:28
  there'd be like the history would have its own genre or we'd have its own genre but like within
• 42:33
  fiction there wasn't like crime science fiction fantasy whatever like it was just everything was
• 42:36
  fiction and i think that had a very like formative um impact on how i how i saw things so i've
• 42:44
  been and i've always read that way as well like i grew up reading a lot yeah i wish that we didn't
• 42:49
  hung up about it because i started writing for kids and for many years i get people saying to me
• 42:56
  oh so you're writing for kids do you think you're ever right for adults or when you're going to start
• 43:00
  writing for adults as though i needed to kind of um row up you know you're thinking hang on
• 43:04
  it's not like proper enough or something yeah and i've written for adults since but i mean
• 43:09
  you didn't know me because it was all parts of the market are doing their own thing and then
• 43:15
  add their own you know respect um when that was just valuable i just think that all that all
• 43:22
  stories it's all literature like um the incredible she's connected with Oxford actually
• 43:26
  Catherine Rundle i don't know if you know her i know her yeah yeah she's wonderful so
• 43:30
  rooftop as the explorer the impossible creatures series um but yeah there was books i think yeah
• 43:35
  like i've i used to teach adults for a bit i gave sections of rooftop as to adults and they
• 43:40
  connected with it like they were just like what is this fantastic book um and i i just think it's
• 43:45
  it's all kind of marketing and well she also wrote the critically acclaimed biography of John
• 43:50
  Dunn done yeah you know she's she's an extraordinary person and she's all souls which is a fantasy
• 43:57
  location if ever there was one yeah those books are setting written in an essay which i haven't
• 44:01
  actually read yet because i do read children's books so very arrogant it was like i don't
• 44:04
  need to read this but it is i think it's called a why you should read children's books even though
• 44:08
  you are so old and wise and i do you pretty much agree with the sentiment um yeah and i i think
• 44:14
  you can see between her John Dunn biography and her children's books there's a you can really see
• 44:19
  the correspondence i think that's almost like a study in why like children's books are like because
• 44:25
  she talks about done done like how how joyous it is that like you can start reading a sentence or
• 44:30
  a line and it's the words and the meaning kind of just like twist out of your hands into something
• 44:35
  completely unexpected and new and startling and that is exactly what she does in all of her children's
• 44:40
  writing like every sentence like starts one way and like ends up for something kind of delightfully
• 44:45
  unexpected and that is that that's something children love because it's it's fun you laugh there's
• 44:51
  a sense of wonder and sort of surprise um but that's also what this Renaissance poet did and
• 44:56
  sort of how she writes about him so i think there's you know like everything's much more connected
• 45:01
  with writing than um yeah then there's certain people would have us believe
• 45:06
  so moving away from the more serious questions i had one silly question for you which is
• 45:12
  you might be able to explain to me what is it about snacks i i i noticed this in the
• 45:18
  that kpop demon hunter thing where there's a lot of scenes at the beginning with them scoffing
• 45:23
  away at various noodle types snacks and things um and you i noticed i was reading through this
• 45:32
  there's quite a snacks were really important whether or not people were at sister snacks
• 45:37
  is there something that's passed me by or is there something from a japanese perspective i mean
• 45:42
  kpop demon hunters is Korean isn't it but um what's going on you don't really i never really
• 45:48
  analyze that to be honest i just think snacks are very important i think i mean for me it's a certain
• 45:56
  i i think there's a nice i feel like there's i have an impulse to include sort of a sense of
• 46:02
  coziness and a sense of sort of comfort and um kind of joyousness in in in the book um in the story
• 46:12
  even if it does look at some sort of quite tough themes and there are that it's like
• 46:16
  tools and things like that i think it was it was important for me to sort of bring that sense of
• 46:20
  home and hope partly because i wanted to sort of show what they were fighting for and also just
• 46:24
  the wonder of these kids that had like built their this like functional cozy family home for themselves
• 46:31
  despite not really having like a parent figure um and that's like a trope that's sort of
• 46:35
  with all this time in in children's rights sold us the 19th century anyway um and yeah so i think
• 46:41
  for me the snacks sort of came from that because like even when things are really sort of tough
• 46:46
  and they're going off on some like big revenge plot to like face down this gang so that murdered
• 46:50
  they're adopted aren't like you got to have your bag of rice crackers like you got to have snacks
• 46:55
  well one of them takes a job in the kitchen they say you'll be okay you're near the snacks you know
• 46:59
  uh exactly and and i think that just that kind of like it brings a sense of lightness
• 47:04
  and sort of that there is there is kind of humanness and joy and that they are kind of human
• 47:09
  bodies in a space even if it is an adventure and it also aligns the characters with the readers
• 47:15
  or the watchers the viewers because often as you are reading or watching you are eating snacks so
• 47:20
  i feel like it's sort of like that it sort of creates a sense of companionship and sort of humanizing
• 47:27
  yeah and it sort of emphasizes still sort of kids uh yeah no that yeah that's definitely that's
• 47:32
  definitely true yeah okay so we've we've galloped around the world of the rain shadow opens
• 47:41
  do you have a title for the next book that you want to tell us uh no i do have a working title
• 47:46
  but it will i always do the title last i'm not very good at titles so yeah the working title
• 47:52
  something to aim for and then you change it to something that sounds good at the end
• 47:55
  this once out this month and are you planning to bring the next one out to what point a year's time
• 48:01
  at the moment we're talking twenty twenty seven yeah but um it's still being written so we will
• 48:06
  see how we go yeah yeah but if you're intending it to be within yeah fairly short time frame yeah
• 48:12
  but like we said like it does it's very important to me that trilogy is actually like each book
• 48:16
  stands alone each book finishes um because i think i sort of cop out if you don't finish the story
• 48:21
  because then then you're just cheating because it's hard to finish your story satisfyingly
• 48:25
  so yeah it very much is like it makes sense as a book on its own um and that was for
• 48:31
  like all my favorite trilogy do that so yeah no definitely so to end i want to ask you a question
• 48:37
  just to make your imagination fly away um and i always ask my guess where in all the fantasy
• 48:44
  worlds not their own one but all the others they've been delightfully exposed to over their lives
• 48:50
  the best place for for something that i've picked up in their work and one of my favorite moments
• 48:56
  in your book is when Haru gets a dragon ride and um so we're imagining that we're on an
• 49:06
  eastern style dragon where would you like to ride your dragon which fantasy world would you like
• 49:11
  to see from dragon back oh um it doesn't have to already have dragons you you're just
• 49:20
  you know you can go there just have a look at it on your dragon um i mean the first thing that
• 49:25
  comes to mind is maybe like earth sea earth to the calico oh good good good choice yeah magical
• 49:32
  archipelago there are dragons but not so much eastern dragons but yeah i think i think that would
• 49:37
  be a wonderful one um to explore but um i think yeah with with where the eastern dragons come from
• 49:44
  as well like there's a lot of kind of like chinese folklore and mythology and sort of i
• 49:51
  looks a lot of japanese kind of yokai stories as well so um sort of within within the the sort of
• 49:57
  those sort of stories as well i think could be just to be able to step inside um some of these
• 50:02
  sort of traditions and uh sort of interact with the dragons within them i think would be would be
• 50:08
  very um very cool also i'm obsessed with um avatar the last airbender i don't know
• 50:13
  right you'll watch uh no no that um amazing series um so i would you know any any excuse to
• 50:22
  to sort of saw over the avatar worlds um would be um extremely welcome yeah so i found myself
• 50:30
  thinking about all those fantasy maps that i've enjoyed looking at um uh so i mean the obvious
• 50:35
  thing is i would be great to see fly over the map of middle air which we also do know from the films
• 50:39
  and from the books and um naniya lessso but left there is a real way but still it's it's a map
• 50:46
  that we all can think of so i think for me if i was going to pick one it would be um the the
• 50:52
  the voyage of the dawn treader so the stuff that isn't on a map just to see that um see all the
• 50:59
  bit like you and the ocean of the green islands it's just to sort of get how it all fits together
• 51:03
  and seeing it from a dragon would be great fun yeah and there's sort of essentially uncharted
• 51:08
  lately undiscovered yeah pop it again uh yeah move that it actually might be more appealing than
• 51:14
  sort of covering a map that we already have um yeah yes go off the edge yeah exactly thank you so
• 51:24
  much for being with us and i wish you all the best for your book launch and look forward to reading
• 51:30
  whatever the next one is going to be thank you very much thank you so much for having me and thanks
• 51:34
  for listening thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center
• 51:49
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• 51:56
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• 52:04
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