Latest / Mythmakers / Samantha Shannon: The Bone Season 10th Anniversary Edition

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Samantha Shannon: The Bone Season 10th Anniversary Edition · 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 an author
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but I also run the activities of our centre. And today I'm delighted to be joined by a name
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that's probably well known to many of you. Samantha Shannon has joined us because she has just
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published, thanks to Bloomsbury, the 10th anniversary edition of the Bone Season. It's a fantastic
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hardback. If you like hardbacks, this is the one to put on your wish list. I always liked reading
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a real book from time to time and this was very enjoyable. So welcome Samantha. Thank you,
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thanks so much for having me. So let's start right back at your beginnings as a reader really
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probably more than a writer. What were the fantasy authors that you were reading as your entry
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to the world of fantasy who were the authors that really lit the spark for you? You know, I always
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struggle with this question because I have quite a poor long-term memory so I'm sure that my entire
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childhood just lies in the midst of time somewhere. I do distinctly remember reading a lot of CS
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Lewis when I was a kid. I remember going to like a family holiday to Tunisia and I took like
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the entire set of the Chronicles of Narnia with me and I just pretty much stayed inside the hotel
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reading them the whole time, which probably drove my parents insane because they'd clearly paid
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for us to have a nice holiday. Inside would see us Lewis. I did read Tolkien at quite a young age,
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I read The Hobbit. I read The Lord of the Rings a little bit later but I loved The Hobbit when I was
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a kid. I read Inid Blighten, like The Magic Far Away Tree. When I was kind of more in my teens,
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I read Garth Nyx. He has this incredible series called The Abortion Trilogy and that was kind of
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what got me back into fantasy after I started thinking that there wasn't really a place for me in
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it. I felt like when I was young, I thought that it was quite a masculine genre and that I wasn't
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really seeing any women get to take the lead in many fantasy novels, just as the solo lead.
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Garth Nyx really changed that for me because when I first heard Sabria, she's the main character to
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the point that the whole story is her name. I just loved how Garth Nyx dealt with her being a woman
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in this world. People respect her for the skill that she has. She's not treated any differently
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for being a woman because I think it can be quite a hostile genre to women in some areas.
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When it comes to misogyny within the genre, Garth Nyx really changed that for me a lot. I
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credit him with bringing me into fantasy in a really big time when I was a teenager.
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It's just only got more of a fixation from there. I think fantasy is the genre that I feel
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like I really belong in. I'm just thinking glirial as well. In the series, it's got the most
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wonderful library in it, but again, another different, strong female protagonist.
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That's really interesting. I've tempted to go down the rabbit hole of asking you about the
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misogyny, but that would not get us to the bone season. Let's go straight there. It's the 10th
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anniversary. My maths allows me to work out that it came out in 2014.
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2013. Technically, the 10th anniversary was last year.
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OK. Right. More or less. You have a number of chunky fantasy novels under your belt as well
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as an extensive series in the bone season. I'll just also show another book. Many of our readers
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listeners will be familiar with, which is the prairie of the orange tree, which is a separate
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series just so people don't get confused. When you were coming back to the bone season for
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its 10th anniversary, were you having sort of visions of the younger you writing it? And what were
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you thinking about that book? Because you came to revise it and expand it for its anniversary edition?
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It was a really interesting cathartic process going back to it. So this came about because
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Blingsbury wanted to do a new cover for the 10th anniversary edition. And I read the bone season
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when I was very young. I really started it when I was 19. I published it when I was 21,
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just after I graduated from Oxford. And I think it was incredibly ambitious, huge idea. And I think
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my ambition outstripped my writing ability at the time. I was also trying to do a degree at the
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same time as writing it. And also there was a lot of media interest in me during my first year
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after I signed my book deal because of my age. And all of this meant that I felt like I couldn't
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really give the edit on the bone season the focus that it fully deserved. And if it had just been
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a standalone novel, I wouldn't have really thought anything of it. I think that each book we write
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is a kind of time capsule that represents the writing we were at that time. And I think that's
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normally fine. But the bone season is a series I'm still working on now. So very mind I started
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when I was 19 and I'm now 32. And my writing has changed a lot since then. My opinions on things
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have changed a lot. And I still love the bone season so much. I still have three more books in
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the series to publish. And it was an unusual situation where I'm still writing a book over a
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series over a decade after I wrote the first book. And so I suggested to my publisher,
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you know, how would you feel if I edited the first book? And it's unusual because generally when
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you publish a book, you are not allowed to ever edit it again. It's just it's just what it is.
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It's out there. But Bloomsbury were actually quite amenable to the idea. I think because they
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could see that I was so passionate about it and that I had been wanting to do it such a long time
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because I feel that the first book in the bone season series, I just felt like it had so much
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more potential than my younger self had quite known how to tap into. But there's a lot of really
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interesting character dynamics and situations. And whenever I was reading it back to myself, I kept
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thinking, oh, you know, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you dig into that relationship a
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bit more? But why didn't you, you know, make this joke that's quite clearly there and you just
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haven't done it? And yeah, so my surprise Bloomsbury let me do it. And then I just decided to
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apply that to the whole series because it was being rejacketed with these beautiful new covers by
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Ivan Bellacov. And yeah, it was fascinating. It was Bloomsbury did not know specifically what I
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wanted to do with it, which meant that I was my only editor. Obviously all of the books have
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already been professionally edited, so that I was going through it with the perspectives of
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specifically what I wanted to do. And it was like I was in conversation with my younger self.
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So sometimes I was cringing a little bit just, you know, when I saw a sentence that was a bit
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clunky and clearly needed another go. And generally it was just very, it was kind of lovely and
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cathartic. Can I stop being actually very proud of my younger self? Because considering how
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young I was, you know, to have this huge world in my head even back then, I don't think I could come
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up with a world like the bone season now. I think I haven't been 30. It's just exhausted my brain too
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much. But yeah, it was just, it was really fun. I enjoyed it in the end. I'm just sitting here
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shocked that you think 30 is kind of like, so I'm quite a bit further on the issue. So I'm just
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I'm just a very high a 30 year old. That's still young to me. So does this mean some answer that
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you went straight from doing a degree? Was that a degree in English, Bunny? Or?
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Yes, England, literally. Yeah. Yeah. So did you go straight from that straight into being a
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full-time writer without passing go, without stopping? I did. Yeah, I did. I was very lucky that
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Bloomsbury, you know, they invested in my career at a very early point. And I got signed up originally
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for the first three books in the bone season series. But because the bone season had so much media
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interest, it became a New York Times bestseller, you know, straight off the bat, which meant that
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Bloomsbury break quickly bought the other four books in the series. So yeah, they were very supportive.
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So there wasn't, yeah, I had I had previously worked other sort of student type jobs. But yeah,
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I was very lucky that I was able to go straight into my dream job, which was lovely. Yeah. So
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did you find having that media spotlight on you? Because I was reading some remarks back from
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then when, you know, the classic thing in that decade, I don't think it happens so much now, was,
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oh, the next JK Rowling, you know, all this stuff, I would have found that quite hard in your
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situation, just trying to keep perspective on, because you're not like JK Rowling at all as a writer,
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it's, you know, there's no, if you're a Harry Potter fan, you're not immediately going to say,
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oh, yeah, I find everything I want in the bone suit. It's a different atmosphere entirely.
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How did you, did you, oh, I suppose I'm asking, were you able to navigate that without falling
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out of love with the whole business of writing, not the active writing, but the publishing world,
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because they do kind of love you for a bit and then leave you.
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Yes. And I, it's actually, I think, quite remarkable again, how aware I was of danger of that
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label, because I think it can be quite easy to get swept away with people telling you how brilliant
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you are and how you're this prodigy. And weirdly, I never believed it. I was always very nervous
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about it. And I would actively say to interviewers, you know, I'm not JK Rowling, I'm, this isn't
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Harry Potter. And, you know, JK Rowling was essentially a once in a generation phenomenon in
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some regard like his, you can't really say to a debut writer, you're going to sell as many copies
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as Harry Potter, because that's just, it's not a really realistic expectation of anyone.
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And I think that the comparison between me and JK Rowling was quite shallow on the surface.
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It was because we are both British women who were publishing with Bloomsbury and both had
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fantasy books that would comprise seven installments. And I really think that was it. I don't think
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there was, it wasn't really deeper than that, but it ended up getting slightly out of control.
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And I just had this label of the next JK Rowling for a well over a year. And the other thing I
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noticed that was quite dangerous was that I was constantly being praised for how young I was. And
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the thing about age is that it's, it's finite. It goes quite quickly. They don't be young for very
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long in publishing. I think it lasted until I was maybe 22 or 23 and then I stopped being called
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young. And I was very, very conscious about. I was thinking if they're pitching me, it's my
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unique selling point is that I'm young. I've got a maximum of maybe three years before that runs out.
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And I was keenly aware of that danger. And I did not, I don't even have that kind of love with
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the process of publishing. I mean, it was perhaps because I just hadn't done it before and I hadn't
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had time to be jaded by it. And you know, I wanted this so badly. It was the dream I've had since I
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was a little kid. It was to be a writer. I used to literally wish on stars. Please, please make
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me a writer. But I, my mental health suffered enormously just because of the amount of pressure.
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I mean, I was a very, very shy introverted, you know, stereotypical writer, you know,
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hiding in her room, writing in her book when she probably sort of been out flopping at uni.
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And I was just, I was really, really overwhelmed by the amount of intense interest in me. And it
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really was quite extraordinary. I actually spoke to someone the other day who did part of her
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dissertation on the phenomenon around me. But before I was even published, and that's strange as
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well because I knew that it wasn't about the book. This interest, it was about me specifically.
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And that was strange. And I have looked back on that year or two of my life. And especially
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from the perspective of being a young woman, I found it interesting because I would look back
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on the way I was photographed, for example, by publications. And I would just think, would a man
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be photographed like that? I don't think so. Would a man be able to talk about their arts and not
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about all the sort of their personal life? I don't know, I found it. I did find it quite a
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gender experience in some ways. But yeah, it was the troubling I had. I pretty much had a
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slight mental breakdown towards the end of my final year at university. I had to leave for a
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couple of weeks before one of my exams. I'm glad that I've come through that. And I feel much better
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now that I have a readership who stuck with me throughout that. And I feel way better now that I've
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actually got books that people can read and people are talking about the books rather than me.
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Yeah, and when I first, my first books were published in 2006, I had a year or two of something,
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not as big as that, but similar, where I was picked out on a list of, what was it? 25 authors
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of the future it was. And I was the children's right, what was right from the kids at the time.
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And I was there with Robert McFarlane and all sorts of other people with great big profiles
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for some newspaper splash. But I was also a bit older. I was in my early 30s plus I was married,
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plus I had young kids. And I'd had a previous career. So all of these things I think helped
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steady me because I had come to it after, you know, been in other careers with other colleagues
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and had other identities. I think you've done brilliantly well to survive that fresh out of
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uni because I think it's like being an actor that time when you're the, you're the name everyone
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wants to employ, it can kill people, can kill off their sort of desire for doing the thing that
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they're doing. But I'm very proud to go, she hated it really well. So let's go back to the book
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rather than the phenomenon around the book. I was listening to the, there's a great scholar
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of CS Lewis called Michael Ward, a lecture just the other day. And he was talking about how
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CS Lewis had the idea that he wrote about, which is that stories have like two main elements,
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like very basic elements. One is obviously the words which are like the plot and that kind of thing.
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But also something he called the Kappa, which is like the secret atmosphere in the book. It's like a mood.
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And it's not even as developed as a theme. It's sort of the world, the end, as you go through
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an ania into the frosty world, that's your atmosphere. When you were thinking about the bone
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season, were you aware of having some mood or theme that you were wanting to explore when you were
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that, you know, 19 or did you find it when you went back to look at it 10 years later and think,
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oh yeah, that's what I was thinking, even though I didn't know it at the time.
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Oh, that's such an interesting question. I'm not really sure in terms of atmosphere. I mean,
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it was, the bone season was two very different ideas coming together and one of them was magical
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and one of them was dark. And I suppose I wanted to capture both of those things. It was really two
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of my favourite genres coming together. So one of them is the dystopia, which is where the dark
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and the gritty atmosphere comes in. And one of them was epic fantasy. And I've always loved
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the scope of epic fantasy. And what I've really fascinating about the two genres is they always
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do opposite things in some way. So dystopia, usually when you read a dystopia novel, it is quite
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restrictive. So it's contained to one small community. And often that's very much the point.
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If you think of something like divergent, for example, yeah, it's all set within Chicago.
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I mean, not the last book, but it's this very contained, controlled environment.
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And I was really interested in what happens when you bring the two genres together. So
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what if you had an epic dystopia when you see both inside and outside the dystopian world?
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And I think one of the inspirations behind that was Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
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And there's a really curious bit in that where tourists come into this horrendous misogynistic
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world that she's constructed. And they're looking into Offred's world, as tourists from the outside.
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And I found that really interesting, because I hadn't really seen that in dystopia before.
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So I did want to capture this kind of dark stomach-churning feeling that dystopias kind of
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kind of provoked in me. But also I love the magic of fantasy as well. And I wanted to inject that
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into the genre. So yeah, in a way, it's two very different atmospheres calling against each other.
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And I think Oxford was a great place for that, because there is a lot of magic in it.
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You know, it has this reputation as being this incredible, you know, beautiful place. But then
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for me, in my mental state, it was a much darker place. So yeah, there's two atmospheres kind of
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vibrating against each other throughout the text. Yeah, so I mean, I was thinking about
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the use of Oxford in it as I moved out of Oxford about two years ago, but I lived there for a
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very long time in, as an Oxfordian or a normal person in Oxford after I finished my doctorate,
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I was then just there with a normal folk. And one of the interesting things I think about Oxford
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when it appears in novels is the story about Oxford that people choose to tell, because very often
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it's about this university. And obviously, because of your experience of Oxford at the stage was
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that I was wondering if you felt that the Oxford University side of it was the CWR idea or the
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soil in which it grew. That was the way I was thinking about it. Yeah, so like I said, it really
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was two separate ideas coming together, but I suppose I could have chosen to set the bulk of it
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in London rather than Oxford. And London is where we go in the first sequel, the My Order.
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So essentially, it was the fantasy aspect of it came from London and the more dystopian
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element came from Oxford. And partly that is because my mental health was not great the entire
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time I was at Oxford even before I had my book deal. I did feel very much like an odd fit there.
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I felt like a bit of an outsider and I come from a state school, not a grammar school or anything,
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just like a normal state school. And I did feel very out of my depth. You know, I knew people,
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for example, who had been able to learn latitude at school, you know, I didn't have that opportunity.
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So I felt this slight fear and anxiety pretty much the whole time I was there, because I was just
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so sure that I wasn't really good enough. I was suffering from terrible imposter syndrome.
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Oh, completely, yeah. And it's a very familiar story you're telling here.
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Yeah, and it didn't really help when I didn't do especially well in my first year exams,
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my pre-elims. And then you get sorted into either the scholars or the commoners that I went into
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the commoners, which I still think is kind of terrible when you think about it for too long.
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But yeah, so some of the dystopian elements did come from the Oxford exam system. So the tunics
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that the characters wear, for example, when they pass their tests, their white pink and red,
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which is after the carnations that students wear for exams. And yeah, just generally I was walking
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around the city, looking at these beautiful old colleges and just imagining them as residences
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for these kind of powerful creatures that had control over the lives of these young people that
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have been shepherded in there. And yeah, so I suppose Oxford just was the natural setting for the
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first book in the series where Paige discovers this darkness behind her world. And this, the place,
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it's kind of a place, when I talked about Oxford in the essay I wrote for the Waterstone Special Edition,
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I mentioned that Oxford is a place that is associated with power and privilege that is not
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shared equally. And I suppose that is kind of one of the themes of this story is about power
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and who holds it and how Paige kind of slowly laws power back throughout the narrative. So yeah,
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I think it was the natural seed in which to plant the story as despite the fact that the influence
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also came from London. So the next question I was going to ask you about the sort of the light
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to the darkness probably does actually fit also in that description you're making of it being a book
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that came from two ideas of the epic fantasy and the dystopian. But were you consciously looking
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for times to provide the solace I guess it's what I'm looking at the solace and the humour and the
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because it's not an unrelentingly bleak read you know I don't want people to go and say I can't
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read that it's too depressing it's not that read it's got lots of wonderful details and
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inventive moments but were you where do you where do you find the like the likeness in that world
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let's ask the question that way around. So the main one is to me just the character of Paige when
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she came into my head I really wanted her to be someone that the reader wanted to have them
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leading them through this dark world and Paige can be serious now she can you know she she has
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a lot of moments in the book where she's very heroic and steps up to the plate but she is also
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quite a naturally funny character and she can see the humour in her situation and one thing I did
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in the anniversary edition is I added a moment where she and her friend Julian who've just been
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taken to our box for an imprisonment they have this moment where they kind of acknowledge their
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situation and then just burst out laughing because it's it's kind of horrific but it's also
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ridiculous and absurd and I just wanted them to have that moment where they just laugh but the
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ridiculousness of the situation. So I think Paige is someone who has in a bit of a sense of humour
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she does see the kind of dark comedy in most situations and for me I knew that Paige was going to
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be the perspective that we saw the entire seven book series with and therefore she couldn't
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be someone who was too serious because otherwise the reader would just find it too
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they're overwhelming. So yeah so Paige for me is sort of the the person who keeps the reader a float
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in that sense but I also do like I say want to tap into some of the magic fantasy as well and Paige
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has this gift she's a dreamwalker which means that she can leave her own body and jump into other
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people and possess them but there is a kind of wonder in that gift that she has and she also
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loves her home in the criminal underworld where there are these kind of very slamboyant
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kind of exuberant characters with the kind of the crime lords of London that she remembers.
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So I did want to to show the reader why she loves being clairvoyant and the sense of community
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that she gets from being part of that world and so there's a scene for example when it comes to
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the magic of her gift where she enters the dreamscape which is kind of like the mind of a butterfly
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and just sees how extraordinarily beautiful it is because butterfly is seen like very vivid color
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and she just has this amazing moment where she knows what it's like to be a butterfly so it's just
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there's little moments of wonder that I try to inject into the story and I think help
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carrying you through the darker parts hopefully but that's not a precious moment no because she
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uh in their sense of being too tweey because she gets catapulted out of being a butterfly and
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a lot more like it's always like little moments in the bone season you get a little bit of happiness
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for about five minutes and then I take it away again um I think it's quite funny um that big person
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trying to be a butterfly I mean it's just the yeah she's horrible it's yeah she realized that she
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doesn't even know how to breathe as a butterfly so I don't think yeah I remember when I was writing
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the Facebook in the series which I've just finished pretty much um there is a moment where I take
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page um and one of her some of the other characters out of the horror for a few chapters and just
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give them this time to spend together and I knew that it was a little bit odd in terms of the pace
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of the story that I just take page out and I thought my editor was going to say something about it
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and she just said you know what I think page just deserves to break you know you kind of agree
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so yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like a little holiday so I I'm glad that we came to that agreement
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together I think for me the the the other area I found the likeness other than in page was in
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the friendships and the courage so Julian and Liss and Nick these other characters who are in her
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world um you feel that she's loved and very often in dystopian novels that people are it's so cruel
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that people aren't really able to love each other which I suppose is the you know 1984 it gets
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to that point doesn't it it was mostly pressing part of it um yeah and I think you've kept
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alive the the like I thought so the rewards of of human um bravery love and loyalty so I'm glad
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yeah it's very much about found family in that respect because pages own family has really been
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taken away from her um by sion and by the circumstances that she survived um so it was important to me
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that she does have this kind of um just yeah there's kind of motley crew around her who actors her
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family um and that a sense of family that goes beyond being related to each other by blood and
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yeah I did really love writing characters like Liss who is just a fundamentally very kind person
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despite the fact that she has been so downtrodden and so just you know she has lost a lot of hope but
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she has kept that fundamental sense of kindness about her and yeah I mean if the characters aren't
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fighting for something you know some kind of light or love it would be difficult for me to write
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so yeah she's definitely fighting to protect the people that she loves and who love her bag
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so here's a kind of more of a craft question um because one thing that sets apart a fancy writer
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from say a historical novelist is that you're reading a lot of well-building rather than research into
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a particular you know historical moment so looking back at your however you do your work the new
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addition has a very helpful um glossary and explanation of your world at the back it looks very
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organized so you've got very neat notebooks with all this in is that true or is it all just an
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emergent world which you've then made an index for neither actually so it's not emergent I do
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definitely plan the story but in terms of well-building and it always horrifies people when I tell
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them this it's okay it's pretty much all in my head um I have an extraordinarily detailed memory
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when it comes to my own worlds the sacrifice I make is that I can't remember basic stuff about
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everyday life um I will not remember to you know get the boiler service but I will remember
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random little details about my own world so yeah I just seem to have a very good memory for that
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kind of detail um in terms of plot I do definitely plan that out um I would I very much admire
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my colleagues who can write stories just on the fly and I think there is there can be
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upsides to that you know I think that it means that you are reacting to you're not trying to force
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the character to do something that doesn't fit with their personality or yeah I think you can
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kind of cause them to react to things in the moment and you can develop your their character
27:18
based on that for me writing a seven book series like other bone season I don't think I could
27:23
not plan it I mean certainly my plans have changed over time like originally book five was
27:28
supposed to have this whole sort of pregnancy storyline that it does not have anymore um so I have
27:34
really drastically changed some parts about it but I have always broadly known where it was going
27:40
for me I compare it to if you just wondering around with a map but you don't have a destination
27:46
then you're not really gonna get anywhere you can explore but to me I I like to have a destination
27:51
in mind and then that little bit of flexibility to choose how you get to your destination you know
27:57
you could potentially take a few different routes but I would like to know who the character needs
28:02
to be by the end of this normal so that I can get them there and I am a very um chronological writer
28:08
as well I can't skip ahead to write scenes because I need to live everything with Paige so I know
28:14
how she's reacting and who she's becoming but yeah definitely land in terms of the main events
28:20
of the story what I know I'm going to reveal in each book that sort of thing yeah I can't
28:25
imagine how you'd keep hold of a seven-part series otherwise it would be I mean there have been
28:31
examples like the Wheel of Time which took a while to get through to the conclusion and of course
28:37
Game of Thrones which is sort of and also um the name of the wind um they don't seem to and I imagine
28:46
those writers certainly in the case of George R. Martin and Patrick Rofus maybe are more
28:54
emergent in their thinking I don't know I know I know Martin has described himself as being a guard
29:00
and no rather than an architect where he called Walkie and an architect which I found interesting
29:06
and I guess I can't remember exactly how he described the guard but I think it was kind of
29:11
pruning things as they come up I suppose um but yeah I'd I think it is good to have some degree of
29:17
planning um I would be interested to know how like Martin and Rofus approached planning particularly
29:24
and Tolkien was an architect as it came to his larger Legendarium you know the stuff that's
29:30
in the Silmarillion but when he was writing the Lord of the Rings he was totally emergent
29:35
oh really I didn't know what it was going no is some let he's there's a new edition of his letters
29:39
just come out which are fantastic and during it coincided with the Second World War where he was
29:45
both a full-time professor doing night duty for far watch and the rest of it and writing Lord of the Rings
29:53
and it's several times where he's just saying oh you know I'm going to put this aside
29:58
not going to do this and you're saying no don't you know history is fortunately he had his son Christopher
30:05
and C.S. Lewis didn't allow him to stop but he didn't know he didn't have a plan so um another sort of
30:12
crafty question is the choice of approach so um the bone season you've mentioned it's from
30:19
pages point of view and it's very much for this first person from her point of view um whereas the
30:25
prairie of the orange tree which is um definitely on the epic fantasy scale that has a series of
30:32
interconnected points of view in third person but geographically spread with a sort of interweaving
30:38
of stories and coming together was that because you wanted to shake it up you know give yourself a
30:46
different sort of scope and chance to write a different sort of story how did you come to
30:51
I think it's entirely natural that you want to change but let me let me let you answer that how
30:56
you came to you know do a shift in your own approach there so um well when I was younger I
31:02
always wrote in limited birth person perspectives um I don't recall ever not writing in that way
31:08
and and so I was quite surprised when I came up with the basic premise of the bone season and I
31:14
just suddenly heard this voice in my head just saying I like to imagine there are more of us in the
31:19
beginning which is the first line in the bone season so I being the first word and that was very
31:25
interesting because I had never never written in first person and her voice came to me so strongly
31:31
just almost out of nowhere um and so it felt right it it does come with its challenges both of them
31:37
come with their challenges so with first person just from pages perspective the main challenge is
31:43
that you don't know what the other characters are thinking what they're doing all the time so all
31:49
of these characters have to be built through page um which means that those characters have to come
31:54
into contact with page quite a lot and it's interesting with the villain for example because page
31:59
can't really be near the antagonist too much because the antagonist really wants to kill her so I
32:04
have to try to build this character from a distance that page can't often be that close to um but
32:11
at the same time I like the challenge of writing from pages perspective um I I don't know I just
32:16
I enjoy just I enjoy the challenge of trying to build the other characters through her obviously
32:22
it's up to the reader to determine how successful I am at doing that but I yeah I it's something that
32:28
I've really enjoyed working on the series and like I say I think it's it makes it feel a bit more
32:32
grounded it allows me to build a large world perhaps without overwhelming the reader because it has
32:39
to all be filtered through page who is not it's not like a self insert of the reader in a way that I
32:45
think some protagonist are where they're kept kind of deliberately kind of they're not given too
32:50
much character so the reader can put themselves in their place that's kind of character pages intended
32:55
to be but I think because she is just one the so low first person protagonist she does hopefully
33:00
assist the reader in walking through the world because studio is essentially a kind of avatar
33:05
that they can have see through um with prior to the orange tree again it brings advantages and
33:11
challenges um having four or five perspective characters allows me to explore a lot more of the
33:16
world to build a much bigger world um I can you know have multiple countries being shown at the same
33:22
time show the same event and what effect it's having in multiple places um yeah again it's it's
33:29
I suppose it's challenging just because you have to distinguish all the voices from each other
33:33
I really want the reader to open the page and know straight away who's head there in yeah that is
33:38
easier in the third person I'm I really admire writers who write multiple first person perspectives
33:44
because they're deeply deeply difficult um to distinguish the eye voice multiple times and I'm
33:50
not sure it's something that I'm brave enough to attempt at this point in my career um but yeah
33:55
and I think I think the bone season with only having page does work as well because it is just
34:01
set in our world it is an alternate version of our world but you're in countries that you recognize
34:07
you know you're hearing about page being in France or uh kind of England you there's landmarks
34:13
that exist in our world so I think it's a bit easier to filter that just through one person whereas
34:18
the prior to the orange tree is a big although it is inspired by our world the countries are their own
34:24
places with their own history so in a way I need multiple voices to introduce the reader to that
34:29
much of a big new secondary world yeah that makes absolute sense and but it's but the problem about
34:36
that of course is finding where twine in twining them together thinking back to the Tolkien example the
34:43
Amazon series Rings of Power has that problem it's not so many disparate storylines that finding
34:49
how they connect yeah it's I'd be interested to see how they deal with that season actually um yeah
34:55
so in fact in a day of fall and night which is the pre-quarter priori there was a scene where I
35:00
really wanted all four of the main respective characters to come together and I just could not
35:05
get one of them there it just would not make sense for her to be on a place like miles away from
35:11
where she's supposed to be um so I I kind of imagined her being there in spirit like she's has
35:16
like a mental connection to one of the characters who are there but I managed to find you know three
35:21
of the storylines at that point priori the orange tree I do actually managed to get all four of them
35:26
in one place which I was very proud of but it does take quite a lot of work and fiddling and there
35:32
was another scene in a day of fall night where there's a character called wolf and I really really
35:36
needed him to be on a battlefield at a particular time but he was so far away from this battlefield
35:43
and I could not work out how to get in there so originally there was this slightly unhinged scene where
35:48
he has to ride a dragon to get there but people do not ride the fire breathing dragons in the
35:53
world of priori so I had to kind of debate with my editor and then I had to change the timelines
35:58
so that he could get there he had more time to get there and it was just a I managed it in the
36:03
end but it was a bit of a balancing act but fun that sounds like fun very much so so um going back
36:11
to talking he talked about um him him seeing his work as applicable to our world but not allegorical
36:21
because people at that time back in the fifties were trying to make the ring to be a nuclear weapon
36:26
you know that kind of cycle yeah and that annoyed him like no end but he was very happy with
36:31
the idea that you as a reader could apply it to what happens when some very large powerful weapon
36:38
is invented I wondered about the bone season um because when you come back to work 10 years later
36:45
you are coming back really as a reader you primarily aren't you did you see things that you felt
36:50
were applicable in it to our present moment yeah for sure I mean I I think I I broadly agree
36:59
with Tolkien's view on allegory like I actually went through his letters again quite recently to
37:04
look at examples of where he spoke about allegory and pretty much everything he was saying I
37:08
agreed with so there's a moment where he talks about the darkness of the present days has had
37:14
some effect on it though it is not an allegory I have already had one letter from America asking for
37:20
an authoritative exposition on the allegory of the Hobbit and I think that the idea of like an
37:26
authoritative exhibition I think this it's a reductive idea that there is one single true meaning
37:32
behind the text that all readers should be scrambling to uncover what the meaning is and I I agree
37:38
with Tolkien I don't think that's particularly helpful or a great way to look at fiction or indeed
37:44
a great way to write fiction I think that if you're trying to if you have a very obvious allegory
37:50
I think it can feel very directives and it feels like there's no room for the reader to bring
37:55
their own interpretation or the applicability like you might say and the thing I love about writing
38:01
fiction is that everything will reader will view it through the lens of their own experiences
38:06
and I can't possibly know what those experiences are when I write the text and it has been fascinating
38:12
speaking to readers of the bone season I haven't heard many comments about the allegory and I did
38:17
have someone ask me once if it was supposed to represent the queer experience I think they
38:22
it the idea was because all the voyants have different aura colors so they kind of form a rainbow
38:27
altogether you know was it supposed to be an allegory for the persecution of queer people
38:32
throughout history and I would not I would you know I wouldn't want to say did I write it with
38:38
that intention no but that doesn't mean that your view on it is incorrect that is your interpretation
38:44
of it and I don't want my interpretation of it to be so obvious that it forces out that other
38:50
interpretations so yeah I very much agree that applicability is important as another thing I wrote
38:56
down at Tolkien said he said there is a moral I suppose in any tale worth telling but that is
39:03
not the same thing and he's referring to allegory that and I agree that often I mean you almost
39:09
can't write fiction without your own morals and opinions being used into it in some way so yes
39:15
the bone season has a lot of ideas I agree with like you know you should not mistreat people based
39:21
on something that they can't control that's a very fundamental belief I have but you know I wouldn't
39:27
want to specify it to a particular historical event or a particular situation in the real world
39:33
because ultimately it is supposed to be a story and it's something that is enjoyable and it's
39:40
it's not supposed to be an exact mirroring of our world but certainly if you have a story that
39:45
can be applied to the real world sure that's great I don't have any issue with that I think that
39:49
is often the mark of a strong character you know if it allows a lot of people to connect with it
39:55
and see their own lives and experiences reflected in it then that's great so what's next you've
40:01
mentioned that you have just finished the fifth book which presumably they're going to go into the
40:06
edit process or is it already in the edit process it's in the edit process so I've got a couple more
40:13
proofreins on it I think but it's it's taken shape as the final book and are you finding
40:20
different themes and challenges for page involving during I don't want to ask you too much so
40:27
you give away what's going on but just as she's obviously getting older and her position in the
40:33
power structure is getting more which is rising in a certain way as well as being knocked back you
40:40
know there's a sort of are you thinking that you are touching on other themes which aren't apparent
40:47
from the bone season um yeah I always remember I read a review of the bone season when it first came
40:53
out and somebody said something along the lines if I don't see where she can take the story from
40:58
here it feels fake for me I was like no no no very much this is so much bigger than than people
41:04
realized and I think that you know the first book doesn't necessarily let on how much bigger it's
41:09
going to get um but in this one pages actually taken very much out of her comfort zone because
41:14
this is the first time that we leave the Republic of Sion which is something I always wanted to do
41:20
was to show different parts within Sion but also take page outside it so she's now in the free world
41:27
for the first time since she was eight years old and that was really interesting because she has
41:32
learned to survive in Sion but really doesn't know how to survive outside at this point and she
41:36
has this curious sensation where she thinks of her comfort level in relation to how much closer she's
41:43
getting to Sion which is this dystopian you know tyrannical state um but she feels completely out of
41:50
her depth outside it so that's been without any spoilers it's been a really interesting situation
41:55
for me to explore with Paige um and yeah a lot a lot of fun given that she has been steadily
42:00
creeping up the ladder and now she's essentially doesn't really know what to do with herself um but
42:05
yeah she's it's kind of the book where for me the fourth and the fifth book are where Paige is at
42:10
her low point and then she starts going back up again because you're our considerably younger that
42:16
that idea of um the oddness of being outside a structure like that reminds me of what I was when
42:24
I was growing up it was all about the Iron Curtain and if you met people who'd come from Eastern
42:29
Europe that their idea of what was normal and what was uh level and comfort was entirely different
42:35
from again I pretty well but you know in our political terms rather than in your literary terms
42:41
so I'd be very interested to read that and and see yeah because that was a lot of people I was
42:46
meeting in the early 90s that was their experience I was living in Poland as a British diplomat
42:50
and the changes the society was going under that time of actually fascinating things that I had
42:55
taken as obvious like you have charities um wasn't normal it there because everything
43:02
provided by the state I think it's like the Samaritans and all that kind of stuff
43:08
the helplines was a new concept um and you just have to stop and think okay I'm taking so much
43:15
for granted about my point of view um and this person has had an entirely different set of options
43:22
in that way fascinating so um Savannah that's been absolutely fascinating so just as we come out
43:28
this discussion it'd be great if you had a fantasy tip to our listeners something that you
43:35
think they might enjoy reading or watching or even a tip about writing that you value or
43:41
something that really helps you you know in terms of writing advice I'm actually so terrible at this
43:45
and I think I put my finger on why recently and I think it's because I'm totally self-taught so
43:51
I feel like I wasn't taught how to write and therefore how to express how to write to other people
43:57
which is something I'm trying to wrestle with recently um in terms of a general tip um might
44:02
actually relate to music so something that really inspires me is listening to instrumental music
44:08
particularly film scores and often film scores they've been obviously made to express a particular
44:14
emotion or a particular pace and I find that so helpful when I'm writing fiction so so many of my
44:20
playlets are just like the scores of action films or you know anything that it is a film that
44:27
reminds me of the book I'm trying to write or a scene that I'm trying to write putting the score
44:31
on in the background I find really helpful it's very different from music with lyrics because for
44:36
me music with lyrics I struggled to write to that because the lyrics give it a story so that
44:42
clashes with my story but instrumental music allows you to capture the atmosphere or the
44:47
the pace or anything else but apply your own story to it so that would be my main writing tip
44:53
brilliant thank you I totally agree with you there um I sometimes make um playlist for characters
45:00
with music with lyrics but I'm not listening to that while writing that character it's just more
45:04
like an aid memoir as to what kind of person they are absolutely same yeah so we're always finished
45:11
by asking where in all the fantasy world is the best place for something and in honor of the
45:16
bone season I thought we were talking about whereas the best place to have an extra sensory perception
45:21
gift um and just before we started recording you were saying I don't think there's anywhere good
45:28
to go with that so have you come out with somewhere where actually you'd be safe and happy
45:33
or interesting to have a a gift like that I still really wrecked my brains I feel like that must be
45:39
few books I've read where it's a good idea to have magic but I think often in fiction is either
45:45
that you know magic users are very revered but I feel like they're rarer than books where magic
45:51
is fit and where magic users are persecuted in some way um I I could think of a few where you
45:59
may be food find a place if you had an extra sensory gift so there's her majesty's royal
46:04
cousin by Gino Dawson which kind of has a government department of witches which is internally deeply
46:10
flawed in various ways but you I suppose could technically use you know if you get into the right
46:16
a minute yeah and I just finished a book which is coming out in 2025 called The Notepurias
46:22
Virtues by Owen Hamilton and that one's really interesting because it has one family of magic users
46:29
who have hoarded all of the magic and the wealth in this community so I suppose if you remember
46:35
that family it would be okay yeah like it's and other magic users do exist it's just that they's
46:41
kind of taken the lion share a bit um but the way that magic is used in that book is really interesting
46:46
I would definitely recommend it when it comes out and then similarly there's another book which is
46:51
coming out in October called Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan and again like there's some areas in
46:56
which magic users are persecuted but there's this city where people can use magic that corresponds
47:03
to different colors and there's something called the council of shapes which kind of they they
47:09
reveal magic as long as you're not a certain kind of magic user there so there always seems to be
47:14
kind of caveats when magic is accepted fantasy um but yeah I suppose those there aren't there's
47:20
probably very obvious example that I'm missing but those are the only three that I could think of
47:24
off the top of my head you don't want to have it in the boat in season basically yeah you know
47:28
it's problematic though being without it is also problematic isn't it you know very much so yeah
47:33
if you're going to find your little niche in the boat in season world and the criminal underworld
47:37
you can you can have a good time with it but you have to stay out of the way of the the forces of
47:42
power so my my pick for this is I actually wrote a whole series as under my pen name just sterling
47:49
the savants series which is a YA series starting in about when did I start that about 2009 I think
47:55
and the first one of that's called Finding Sky it's contemporary setting and a lot of people who
48:01
know me as a writer that's the series they love because the savants are like a secret society
48:10
working within our contemporary world and it has an element of fated love in it as well
48:16
so it's a good it's a good world to be having SP but if somebody else's world I think I would pick
48:25
well there's lots of good places to be a witch isn't there if we think witch it being a
48:28
witch having those kind of gifts is similar yeah I wouldn't mind being James Nichols who's one
48:38
of our tutors one of our courses he wrote a series called The Apprentice Witch
48:43
I'm kind of cozy fantasy for middle grade that's quite a nice place to have these gifts
48:49
yes I'm too dangerous you're not going to be you know come to a sticky end in the in the way of the
48:55
bone season yeah I imagine cozy fantasy it's not something I read a lot of but I imagine there is
49:01
a well so nice places to have magic within that genre I somehow I'm not surprised to hear that
49:07
thank you thank you so much Samantha and we look forward to the fifth installment in Duke
49:13
Horse but in the meantime do look up the wonderful 10th anniversary edition if you read the
49:20
bone season a while ago it's well worth going back to now because you'll get as we've just heard
49:26
so much more from it and a sort of finely polished version after the 10 years on edit job that was
49:33
done so thank you very much for joining us thank you for having me
49:42
thanks for listening to MythMakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy
49:48
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49:55
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