Latest / Mythmakers / Marve and the Firstborn of the Sun: Mining Your Culture for New Fantasy Ideas

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Marve and the Firstborn of the Sun: Mining Your Culture for New Fantasy Ideas · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm
• 0:17
  delighted that I have been joined today to talk with. Now I'm going to get this right.
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  She has the most marvellous name and I mean that literally marvellous Michael Anson who is
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  known to everybody as marvell. And she is about to produce this fantastic novel called The
• 0:36
  First Born of the Sun. We are going to talk more about that. It has a wonderful cover as
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  well. I just want to put that out there. Well done, the other designer. Let's get to
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  know Marvellous and find out what was the path to writing this novel. So I think a lot of us
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  who like writing fantasy are often inspired to do so by having read other fantasy writers. They're
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  like our gateway, gateway drugs to the genre. Who would you say was the major creative influences
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  on you deciding that fantasy was how you wanted to express yourself? I think it would be
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  a group of influences as opposed to one person. I remember reading lots of stories when I was
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  much younger and the themes that took you out of this world, which I think we call
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  a puzzle fantasy in today's kind of genre segmentation, was just so fascinating to me. I absolutely
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  wanted to find another world in my wardrobe. I wanted to go into a garden and find that there was
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  more to it. I would quite literally search for it. Of course not telling anyone in case it wasn't there,
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  but sometimes I would tell my siblings. In case I don't come back, it's because I went
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  wondering to this place so you know where I am. I just remember being pulled into the fantastical.
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  On the other half of that is that I come from a culture that very much values or storytelling.
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  The stories that we tell are always fantastical as well. So I would grow up hearing stories about,
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  you know, there was a man once and then he knew how to fly and I would never question that. It was
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  just that he knew how to and I don't know how to as opposed to it's not really steeped back he could.
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  And so there was always a blur between reality and fantasy for me growing up. And so by the time
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  that became a teenager I say reading things like, you know, CS Lewis is worried and a lot of the
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  rings and the more kind of foundational fantasy. I thought oh yeah this is where these are my people
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  like this is people who think about the fantastical in the same way I'm looking for magic in like
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  the real world. And I just kind of stuck with it since then. So you mentioned you have a particular
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  cultural inheritance which I'm guessing is the underpinning as well of thinking about your own
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  world, your own fantasy world. How would you describe that? What is how would you call that? So
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  people can understand where you're coming from? Oh yeah. So I'm Europe and Europe are people mostly
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  in modern DNA, Julia. That spreads across some parts of the Caribbean, some parts of West Africa.
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  But the Europe culture is one that is very heavily centered on oral storytelling like I've said
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  because that's how the history is preserved. The culture is preserved. There's always someone within
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  each family unit that is responsible for kind of passing across not just the family's history
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  but the culture's history. And so when I'm another Europe person regardless of where they are,
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  I expect them to know the basic histories of Europe are people and they usually do. It's
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  unlikely that they don't. And that's just because it's very much believed that we are living
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  vessels and so carrying these almost live stories. And it's really important that you not be the
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  link that it stops at. You don't want to have her myths and histories and all of this and be
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  the last person who knows about it. So it's about kind of keeping on that flow of information
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  because it's it's a privilege to hear about it now because you're about people have existed
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  since one DC. And so the story obviously has mutated over the years. And we just consider it
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  really, really referring to be a part of it to know it and then to pass it on.
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  But you yourself are London based. I am actually reading Narnia and the rings and stuff.
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  Right. So let's go to your novel which I think is absolutely fascinating to see a new kind of
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  mythos, a new set of oral stories being given a treatment. So just to sort of help
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  listen and think about this that it's famous that Tolkien for example reached into northern myths,
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  the sort of Icelandic and Nordic stories and used as a sort of mutated version of those to
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  underpin Middle-earth. And CS Lewis, well he was a sort of catch all writer but there was
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  Greek myths underpinning it and in some cases Arthurian myths. So he sort of mixed all of those
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  but you've reached deep inside your oba stories and produced your own version. So I guess
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  what I'm reading isn't something anyone else has ever read. It's not a retelling.
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  No, you're right there. It's not a retelling. It's more so we have mixing, we have four
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  clothes and four clothes are stories that real to people make up in order to help you remember
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  the myths. And so within four clothes you will have myths that have branches from Ithaca
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  Europe or religion or different people believe them in kind of varying degrees but the four clothes
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  are the stories that help you remember them because there's a lot of them. So what I'm trying to
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  do with this trilogy and with this story is almost weaving in a folklore around some of the myths
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  that we have. And so the gods that I mentioned, infest one of the sun, are gods from the Europe
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  or Pantheon. So all of those are within the mist. And I'm just crafting a story around how people
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  interact with them in a way that I'm hoping is new to readers. Yeah. So one of the big dividing
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  lines in society that, and I'm going to get this right, because we practiced Laurie.
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  Who's the main female character, is a world where power is drawn from different elemental forces.
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  But she is secretly different from everybody else and is having to pretend. It's like she's having
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  to pretend to be imaginary in a Welsh village. You're having to pretend you're Welsh but you're
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  actually English. You know, it's that sort of, you're in a different number cover. Yeah, you're
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  under cover. But what's worse is that if she's outed, there's a death sentence and we should say
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  the book is meant for an older reader. It's not a non-ear. It's sort of young adult going into
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  adult, I would say. So tell me a little bit about the, because obviously it's a great story.
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  So tell me about the story of Laurie and her predicament and her love story in fact.
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  Yeah. So when I had the idea for the world, which I think came for us, I was trying to
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  assign people elemental powers and seeing if they can find a balance. So if I had people who
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  had this extreme heat energy and I had people who had this extreme cold energy,
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  would, would almost the fact that their, their powers on opposing sides influence the relationships
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  that they have with each other. And one of the things that I kind of saw and talked about often
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  is how you have snow-capped mountains in the Sahara. And so obviously it's a really hot place and
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  there's hot sands. But sometimes you would have like a snowstorm because it gets really cold at night
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  and you have snow just laying on top of the sand. And obviously the top layers of the sun need to
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  be cold enough to hold it, but it will be much warmer underneath. And I was just thinking, you know,
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  if elements that cannot change, you know, in physics, can I find a way to like balance
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  with each other? Can humans do the same? And so I thought to assign these elemental powers to
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  people and seeing how they would operate. And so I had this wall that had this heat energy
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  and I needed to put in this character that I did not have that and she was different and she
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  needed to hide this. But because it was, because everyone had it and it's something that was
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  feasible in that when they're using their powers, their hands would glow. So if someone did not
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  have it, it would be really obvious, but I needed her to have survived up until the age where the
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  story starts. And so I then introduced what I referred to in the book as old magic. And this is
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  where I then pulled in the mix we have around Eurobaggods and someone in them and each Eurobaggod has
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  their own kind of elemental part of living or that they're responsible for. So we would have
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  Shongo who is, if you think about Thor with fire and lightning, that's kind of what Shongo does
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  as well. And so we have quite a lot in that pantheon. And so I introduced old magic into this world
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  to give her a way to almost mimic an illusion of the powers that everyone else has. And that
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  worked brilliantly because it became also illegal within the story to use that power if you already
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  have the power that everyone else has, which is the magic of the sun. And so she's kind of
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  walking around every day at risk of either being found out for not having the powers of the sun
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  and being killed or found out that she's using old magic to pretend like she has a powers of the
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  sun and also being killed. And so that made her character interesting enough to hold as the central
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  theme for the book. And in terms of her love story. Oh, so it really moved on to the love story.
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  I think there's also the fact that her father is a problem. Yes, her father is a problem as well.
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  There's her family status. Yes, not a problem for her. So the poor girl.
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  It sounds like she's been a big powder. She, she did not have it easy. And I'm writing book
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  to now and she's not having it easy either. You have to make your main character suffer. I mean,
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  I'm remember being asked early on in my career, why did I put my children in my books? And I said,
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  no, because I then go and torture them one year. I've telling us about her love story because
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  that obviously I think is I imagine this is going to be a big thread going across your trilogy.
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  Yes, it will be. And obviously she gets to, because the world expands, she gets to meet other
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  people and kind of found family aspect of that also expands. So the point of the story is that
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  her world that was just so small and involved two people, the person she was in love with her best
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  friend and her father expands so much more by the end of the series that she becomes a completely
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  different person. Her love story is her lifeline in book one for many reasons because she is
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  falling in love with this prince and he's only like other princes and other kingdoms where as a
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  prince, he has no inheritance and he is not the heir to the throne. He is that the mercy of the
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  person who's ruling. He just happens to have a father that was a king and this is not unique to
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  him in his kingdom. So there is a role that the heirs of sovereigns are not allowed to take the throne.
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  And so he is kind of just a rich boy with a prince title and nothing else attached to it. And so he
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  also wasn't this place in his own world where he was struggling to find his identity and find
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  people who value him for him because he really didn't have much to offer anyone else in the kingdom.
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  And so by the time he met Laura and they became quick friends in her own world, she also didn't have
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  anyone, you know, her father status had put her as an outcast within the community and people
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  wouldn't really talk to her. And so they formed a really strong board where he felt like he had
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  something to offer her which was like protection and she felt like someone else was coming into her
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  very little world which was just her and her father. And so it would be of trauma bonding there
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  that turned into a friend's lover's theme where they kind of started to then hold on really
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  strongly to each other regardless of anything else. And that was what that is what prompts our
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  insight and incidents when the gods call him and she decides, now I have two people, you can't
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  take one of them. Yeah. So Alejuan is his name. I think he might be my favorite character.
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  Please don't kill him off. Right anyway. So just before we move on to talking more about sort of
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  romance in fantasy, but I thought before we leave behind the Europe of theme, as you've been writing
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  this, living inside the folk stories and the myths, have you found your an understanding of your
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  cultural inheritance has gone in interesting directions because you probably never spent quite
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  so long with it. Absolutely. So I grew up with my grandma. She lived with us and so a lot of
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  the stories that I know about my culture and our histories I learned from her. But also as I
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  kind of grew up and became a teenager, I was like, I rather talk to boys. So the time I spent with her
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  reduced the order I got. And so now coming back to writing a story that is so deeply
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  resetting Europe culture. I have to do so much research. She's still alive. Thank God. So like I
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  would call her send her voice notes and we're like, Oh, I found this. And we've almost reconnected
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  in that because I made her knowledge as well as the things that I found on the internet. And
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  I'm not a fluent speaker, I wish I was, but I'm not. And so this has forced me to learn and
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  because I'm having to really and study it. And I have a friend who's a translator that helps me
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  because there's a lot of Europe in the book. All the names are Europe. There's lots of
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  proverbs and things that just make a Europe like person reading. I feel like this is home. This
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  is a true representation of our culture. So yeah, it's been like going back to school because I
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  had to study just so much about things that are either forgotten or didn't get to learn. And
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  luckily, we get to record things and reaching for more and more of these days. And so
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  that has really helped. Well, if you get sent on a book tour, you should take Granny with you.
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  She is coming over for Brooklyn in October. So that will be like. That's wonderful. I think
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  it's one of the parts of writing that authors don't often share, but very often it's a communal
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  experience in your family culture. I mean, certainly how I started. So it's lovely to hear.
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  I'm not that I involved my granny. I did involve my great aunt. But yeah, so equally a sort of
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  superior generation person. So that's great. And if anyone out there is interested in the use of
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  a sort of different kind of world mythology than perhaps you've ever considered. This is a great
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  book for you to look at because it's so original from that point of view. And of course, if you're
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  listening and you've got your own background, you're going to be out there ordering it right now.
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  Okay, so thinking about romance, you can't move without people saying romanticy.
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  Are you being forced down that path to just your book as romanticy? Because it doesn't seem
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  to me as though it needs it as a hook. No, I'm very lucky that my editor is obsessed with this book and
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  she's one of, I don't want to say one of the few people, but one of perhaps the first people who
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  really understood what the story was going for. And I remember speaking to her and thinking,
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  I can't believe she gets it. And so we have this understanding that it's an epic fantasy story
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  that has a really strong romantic line. And that's because our main character is very much in love.
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  If she was not, if something else had been her focus, that would have been kind of the secondary
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  line towards it. It just happens to be that she's just head over heels in love with this boy.
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  But again, because the story she's forced to expand within the story, her world views forced to
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  expand. So many things come into play and shift her priority from just
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  am in love with this boy to, oh, you know, there's more to me than I realized. And you know,
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  this, the journey she goes on in book one is finding out a lot about her true identity,
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  why she doesn't have, you know, the powers of the sun, why she has powers that are different,
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  why she can even someone the old gods to start with. And so all of that's that's to take
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  not replace but take a bit more space in her mind than I'm in love with this boy and I must do
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  anything to see them. Yeah. And well, I'm pleased to hear that because there is that pressure
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  out there at the moment for everything to be described by whatever is the new hot, you know,
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  ticket item. And it felt to me as though that would be misdiscribing your story.
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  So Mark, I'm interested talking to you coming from a sort of Nigerian cultural inheritance.
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  And you will have no doubt been much more aware than I am of the pressure
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  for publishers to diversify and actually get new voices out in fantasy. And also the fact that
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  possibly, I don't know, but possibly when you're growing up, then you were reading old white guys,
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  you know, I also read, you know, have you got any sort of tell us, you know, report back to where
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  publishing has reached in terms of its attitude to writers of color, writers coming from different
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  backgrounds. Is it a good story? Is it only superficial? How have you found it? I think there's more
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  awareness as to why it's needed. I think the follow through could be a lot better. So in terms of
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  the awareness, you know, in the past, say, five years, especially post 2020, and when we had
• 19:41
  almost this real week, you know, the fact that things needed to change in so many industries and
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  publishing was one of them. And there was a huge online discourse about you need, you need voices
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  that are different from yours, you need stories that are, you know, you've been running these stories
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  for thousands of years. It's time to kind of create space for others. And that started a little bit,
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  but it almost felt like it was trendy and the moment it stopped being trendy, the real impact and
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  seeing how many, for example, black voices you would see in publishing started to reduce. So
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  someone did some research earlier this year and posted the results last month. And it was
• 20:28
  saying that 2025 has the lowest rates of diverse voices published since 2020. And there was an
• 20:35
  optic in 2020 because everyone was saying, oh, we really need more diverse voices. And then as
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  kind of times of change, and it has fallen out of trend, only very few people have stuck to that.
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  And so it definitely is the front of mind that it needs to happen. I think we come down to
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  pushing against capitalism for lack of a better way. I know because it's this belief for this idea
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  that diverse voices are like a charity case and they will not make money. And which is false when
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  you look at the data. And so it's just getting publishers to kind of put their money where their
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  mouth is really. Yeah, and I think it's also the, well, you mentioned politics and that's in
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  inescapable, I think. But another part of it is what you've trained the audience to expect.
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  And sometimes it's hard to get people to shift. So if they are people who only read a certain kind of
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  book, you know, led by some grizzled white detective with the drink problem and a funny habit,
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  you know, which sort of is like half of fire. And you actually say, here's a very different
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  take on that. You know, take a, well, I guess what you've got is people buying that tend to
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  be like that, you know, sort of white affluent people. And other people are opting out because
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  they can't find stories they want. So it's a pun. You've got to believe that there is a new
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  audience out there who might say, I'm going to join this market because you're now finally noticing
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  I'm here. And a good story is a good story. And what you see about the characters that readers
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  expect, you know, even if I was writing, you know, a book following all the usual tropes,
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  you know, even if it was a romance book, which tends to have its own kind of set lines where,
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  you know, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, but you still want to read it for the
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  experience of it. If I was writing a Euroback character, the way they would interact with each other
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  within the family, the way they would interact with their friends has to be culturally relevant.
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  And so in the early days with first one, I would have people say, I don't really connect to
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  characters. I don't know why she would do that. I'm like, because I don't know why a white character
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  would do that in that scenario, in either, but I really, and I think, you know what, this is what
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  she's doing, but it's almost like anytime something is different. It's almost, it puts up this
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  barrier where it's like, oh, I don't connect with it. And if the whole world did not want her to
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  read only what they connected with, no one would be reading whatever the, you know, the West kind of
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  puts out. And that's because it's when you, you know, the global majority in numbers alone is
• 23:33
  larger than kind of the Western community. And so growing up, like you said, I read all white men.
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  I didn't necessarily connect with Tolkien. I didn't see him, I think, oh, I think that's me.
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  But I read his fantasy books and I thought that is so creative. Like, I would love to visit that.
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  I would love to see an elf. And that's because there is just this open-mindedness to new stories
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  and trying to connect and making the effort to reach across the page to understand what the author
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  is trying to say. And I do think some of that is on publishers to say, we believe in this book
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  because we think it's a good story. If you keep pushing, you will see what we see too.
• 24:13
  Yeah, absolutely. And I do think there is something happening culturally. So even though there is,
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  as you say, a bit of backtracking particles of world politics, but things I've noticed that have
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  been unexpected or things like the growth of anime suddenly becoming massive, which obviously is
• 24:33
  from a, you know, Asian sort of sensibility, Japan predominantly, but career and places like that.
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  And it's become mainstream and the classic gatekeepers of
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  Western culture. So the Hollywood on the streamers are waking up and changing.
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  I guess the danger is they try and then do it in their way.
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  They are, actually, yeah. But that will see if that what happens there. But I think it is
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  interesting that something big can happen. And because it is capitalism, they'll think, oh,
• 25:11
  I could there's some money there. Yeah, we're consuming that. So let's go there.
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  What I love about anime is that they don't change their story structure. They don't change.
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  Even when you look at movies, for example, or Chinese stories, or Koreans, okay, drama,
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  it's not a three-act structure. Even in the romance novels, it doesn't exactly follow what you would
• 25:34
  see in a regular Hollywood story. They expect you to meet them where they are. They expect you to
• 25:40
  enjoy the story they are telling. They don't kind of conform to anything else except the story
• 25:48
  they're trying to tell. And you find a lot of people who love cage dramas like, oh, they're not
• 25:53
  going to kiss until season three. I can't imagine that flying with a series or movie you have from
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  Hollywood because people think, oh, what's happening? Why am I still here? And it feels like it's not
• 26:05
  movie. But people who love cage drama will tell you just wait until season five and you're thinking
• 26:09
  how long ago. And they're like, die hard fans. And so I think it's definitely worth just
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  sticking to those stories. And eventually people will see what you're trying to do.
• 26:20
  Yeah, I think that's actually a good corrective for me because when I'm teaching writing, which I
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  do often because you're trying to convey what has worked as a successful formula, you often go
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  back to Aristotle's poetics, which is like the beginning of this three-act structure, which is
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  also pretty much the same as the five-act structure when you look at it. It's just broken up
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  slightly differently. But as you're saying, that is only inevitable because the Greeks decided it
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  was so. I'm not Greek. You're not good. So that's really interesting to actually look at it like
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  that. And when you look at something like the novel structure, it isn't three-act. So someone
• 27:02
  like Dickens, because he was writing in periodical episodic, he's much more like a sort of a soap.
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  Keeping on going. So we perhaps forget that we are not quite so linear as we thought.
• 27:22
  I agree. So I'm interested that your editor has been very instrumental in recognizing the
• 27:28
  difference in what you're doing. Is it a she or a he? Yeah, she, Rebecca, he was then.
• 27:35
  As Rebecca was giving you feedback, were there times when she was saying,
• 27:41
  Marv, you haven't done, I want to climax on page 300 because that fits the two-act structure.
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  Or did she just say, it's your baby? Now, or we were editor in months.
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  Or editor in months. I think a lot of it was trying to fix the pacing to make sure that it worked.
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  And I love the collaborative way that she works in that she gives me the room to kind of defend
• 28:08
  what I have done. And if we find that her argument is better, I'm like, you know what, fine,
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  you win this one. But the other times where I would be she would say, oh, is it necessary to
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  mention this little thing? I'm like, if you meet my mother, she's going to do exactly that.
• 28:24
  And you know, I'm describing, say, an old woman or an old woman. And she does something. And
• 28:29
  she's like, oh, I just want to move to the dialogue. I'm like, but that little thing that she does,
• 28:34
  a eurobook person will see it. I think my mom does that. So we need to keep it. And so there were
• 28:38
  different times within the editing process where I would write like two paragraphs of the history of
• 28:43
  this one gesture or this one myth or this one belief. And she'd be like, okay, fine, it's interesting
• 28:51
  enough to keep it in. And so what we tried to do was more fit in the pace to make sure that there
• 28:57
  was a balance between world building and storytelling. But with Ruth Rebecca, I never had a point
• 29:03
  where I felt like I had to compromise the cultural aspects of what I was trying to do,
• 29:08
  because she's really inquisitive as well. And I think that's the mindset you need to have.
• 29:13
  It's almost like, why have you done this as opposed to change this or remove this?
• 29:18
  Yeah, I absolutely loved working with her on it.
• 29:21
  That sounds a very happy relationship indeed. And so we haven't actually talked much about the
• 29:25
  writing you've done beforehand, but also reading your brief bio in the book. You're also a filmmaker.
• 29:32
  Do you bring a similar approach to telling stories in film as you do in the novel form,
• 29:38
  or are you aware of being a different kind of creative?
• 29:41
  Yeah, I was going to go for filmmaker when I was much younger. And right out of uni, I went for
• 29:49
  a training course and we had to make a couple of short films. And I feel like I would have
• 29:57
  gone on to do that. And maybe not even written novels for a really long time. But at some point,
• 30:02
  my path kind of shifted early to where I think I need to go to school.
• 30:10
  Because I was away from kind of that creativity of being behind the camera for a while,
• 30:16
  I saw it in some of the else we then happened to be kind of novel writing. And it just really helps
• 30:21
  to merge it. Merge it. So remind me, so come half of your question.
• 30:27
  I was asking if you find yourself as a different story teller, different story.
• 30:33
  No, not really. Not really. I think when I write my novels, in my mind, their movies,
• 30:39
  in my mind, their series, they're on a screen that I am almost transcribing. I don't always see
• 30:49
  like all the details with like what the character is wearing or what the
• 30:56
  color of the wall looks like, you know, I could go through the entire book which I did the first draft
• 31:01
  and you'd not know what anyone looks like. Because it just I can see in my mind and I just move on.
• 31:05
  But what I'm trying, what I do try to capture is the feeling and the kind of aura around each
• 31:11
  character such that even if you didn't know what they looked like, you identified with their
• 31:16
  personalities and you can tell when they weren't the page and when they're not. And that's because
• 31:19
  I am quite usually directing them in my mind behind a camera and watching what they're doing.
• 31:28
  But I think I always see stories. Well, actually that reminds me of a question I wanted to ask
• 31:34
  you on the craft level about the novel, which is I'm really making a conscious effort in what I
• 31:42
  write to not write from a white bias. I mean, obviously I'm white. So there's some things I don't
• 31:47
  notice that I do. But when it comes to descriptions of people that I don't say, don't assume someone's
• 31:55
  white and then point out everybody else is Asian or black or whatever. Everybody is either not
• 32:02
  described by the ethnicity or everybody is depending on what context is. How did you handle that
• 32:11
  in your world? That's interesting because in first born, there are no white people.
• 32:19
  So everyone's the same. Everyone's like an offshoot of the Eurobat Empire. So everyone would be
• 32:27
  quite strictly African. Even though it's kind of like a secondary role. So when I talk about the
• 32:34
  motivation of where I've set it, so even the map looks like the top half of the African continent.
• 32:41
  And my reasoning for that is pulled out this secondary world where it's the Eurobat Empire would
• 32:49
  have continued to expand without the influence of colonization and just kind of gone that way.
• 32:57
  I tend to describe things through two ways. One, I use other characters to describe
• 33:04
  whoever I want to. So I would use alawani to describe Lora and I use Lora to describe alawani.
• 33:10
  And I try not to focus on their facial features too much, more their attitude or their marks.
• 33:16
  So one thing you'll remember people have a lot of tattoos and tribal marks and just things that
• 33:22
  identify, make it identifiable not just to your community but down to your family. So with the tribal
• 33:30
  marks that we have, if I saw someone from like my village or my hometown with certain kind of
• 33:37
  mark on their face, I would immediately know what they're from. And that's kind of the purpose of
• 33:41
  that. And so the scenes where Lora is looking at alawani and she's looking at the tattoos he got
• 33:47
  because of his position as a prince and the ones he got because of their bond together.
• 33:52
  She's talking about his skin but that's because the fire is against it. So I use actual action.
• 33:58
  And there's a reason why we're looking at them through this lens and why we're
• 34:03
  we're getting to know them, their features through someone else's eyes.
• 34:09
  How do you ever do the mirror thing where it's like I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I have
• 34:13
  like a white eyes. No, that's such a classic. Once you notice it as an author, you notice it that
• 34:22
  obviously when someone's getting ready to go out for an evening or something which is
• 34:26
  yeah, relevant, you know, how I look this evening as opposed to I look yesterday, you know,
• 34:31
  if I got sang in my teeth, that's fine. But it's the moment where the author's thinking, oh, I
• 34:36
  haven't told the reader what this person looks like. So they're going to go to a mirror.
• 34:41
  They're still, I'm sure they're still characters in in in press born that don't have descriptions of
• 34:47
  their faces. Faces are the last things that I think about. However, interesting. I'm writing
• 34:53
  another novel now that I haven't quite announced. But when I was writing that everyone, it's kind of
• 35:00
  in the future and everyone has, it's a bit dystopian invert. There's a small subset of humanity left.
• 35:08
  And so obviously everyone's kind of like intermarried and hard children and everyone's kind of like a
• 35:14
  mix of everything. And so there isn't one distinct, it's not as distinct as it is today.
• 35:21
  And as I was writing and trying to describe me, I realized that if I never mentioned skin color,
• 35:26
  it is really difficult to know what ethnicity I'm describing because even if I said,
• 35:35
  oh, you had large set eyes, that could be anyone. Like, oh, if you had the lips or if you had
• 35:41
  large lips, again, it really could be anyone. And so I found it's so interesting within that
• 35:46
  particular novel having to describe people where I wanted to hint at their ethnicity because
• 35:54
  the world has kind of crumbled and people are trying to trace back where they were from before
• 35:58
  pre-collapsed. And I just, it was a real moment for me where I thought, if I never mentioned skin color,
• 36:06
  you would never know, you will know what the person I'm describing it looks like. But it's
• 36:11
  unlikely for you to be able to actually pinpoint the ethnicity I'm trying to refer to.
• 36:17
  And yeah, that was a light bulb moment for me that I think I will use going forward
• 36:23
  in understanding how to describe people in a way that they feel real as opposed to just
• 36:30
  stereotypical dispersing is from this place. And so they must look this way.
• 36:36
  It is tricky because there is a minefield out there.
• 36:39
  My guess I suppose it's the all on nothing, you everybody.
• 36:43
  And it's also the answer is, what would your character go in a POV of a character?
• 36:49
  What do they notice? Yeah, exactly. It's their reflaming racist
• 36:54
  from whatever description that is. They notice and that will be like, whereas if they're
• 37:00
  not, they won't probably focus on something else. So in a way, it also kicks you into the character.
• 37:07
  But good luck. I'm always sort of trying to improve and consider this because I think it's
• 37:12
  important to get it right and respect your readers really. That's what it's about, isn't it?
• 37:22
  So one of the things I thought about before coming to talk to you was,
• 37:29
  you can't escape at the moment. The sort of idea that AI is going to sweep in and
• 37:35
  basically put us all out of a job. I'm going to take over. And one of the things I was thinking
• 37:40
  about that is because we are in a world where it's basically a kind of Western canon that's been
• 37:46
  fed into the AI machine. I was thinking that something like your book is not something that's
• 37:51
  going to be popping out of chat at GPT anytime soon. Hopefully not.
• 37:58
  What do you think about the future of for writers and writing and perhaps in the film industry,
• 38:04
  which you know a little bit about as well as a novelist yourself? Have you got any concerns
• 38:10
  or places where to use AI yourself, for example? No, not creatively. I think the thing with AI is
• 38:23
  and with writing specifically is that I don't believe that if you want to be a writer,
• 38:30
  you have to kind of go through the process of being a writer. Some of that involves staying up late
• 38:36
  at night, doing some research, maybe crying a little bit, you know, going through starting out
• 38:43
  your own thoughts because what you're trying to do is I want you to read this and I want you to
• 38:47
  understand what I see in my mind or what I understand in my mind. I'm trying to communicate to you
• 38:53
  on a human to hearing and of soul to soul level. There's formulas that you can use to do so many
• 38:58
  things but I don't know that and I think again for me because storytelling is coming from a tradition
• 39:07
  where it's oral and you're telling it. You're almost forming a connection, a real connection with
• 39:13
  the person who's hearing this story. I don't think that's something that can be replicated with AI
• 39:19
  because sometimes you read it just it doesn't quite understand nuance and context in the way that
• 39:25
  humans do and when something feels a bit too structured, we can tell like you would even be able to
• 39:34
  know why it just feels a bit stilted, it feels a bit off and that's because I think humans are just
• 39:40
  a bit too scatterbrained while AI just has to be numbers, you know, ones and zeros and like you
• 39:46
  say AI is hugely skewed towards the West and Western things and can be slightly racist and that's
• 39:56
  just because of you know the data that it's being fed. It's very much garbage in garbage out because
• 40:01
  I work in tech when I'm not writing and so AI is a huge part of the tech world and there is a
• 40:08
  very good understanding that from an ethical perspective, if anything to use AI for,
• 40:12
  it needs to be monitored, you can't allow AI to make final decisions without a human intervention
• 40:19
  at the very last end because someone's going to get in trouble, someone's going to get hurt
• 40:24
  and there's this argument online where people are like oh I have different, I have different
• 40:30
  things about myself where I can't focus, I can't commit the time to writing a book and I think
• 40:37
  then maybe you're not a writer and that's fine, it's the same way I'm not a gymnast
• 40:43
  because I do not like going to the gym and I can't go and I do not have it in me to invest
• 40:49
  that kind of time or discipline to to that even though I would love to win an Olympic medal,
• 40:55
  it's just not in the cards from me and I'm okay with that and I think more people need to be okay
• 40:59
  with the fact that writing outside of you know as a hobby but choosing it as a profession,
• 41:07
  you do need those 10,000 hours, if like playing the piano or joining the orchestra or being an actor,
• 41:15
  you do need to put into time and it is grueling, it's painful but doing that research,
• 41:22
  you know I talked about doing research for my own culture, I've read so many articles on people
• 41:28
  because I grew up in Nigeria and even though I live in the diaspora now, my mind I'm very much
• 41:33
  still in Nigeria and so I'm reading versions of stories of descendants of slaves that were taken
• 41:41
  from West African coast and Europe lands and seeing how they reference the gods that I grew up
• 41:48
  knowing, sometimes the name changes, sometimes the spelling changes, sometimes the attributes are
• 41:53
  the elements that they attribute to these gods slightly changes or tweaks and so I'm putting all
• 41:59
  of that research together and forming my own thoughts, again it's filtered through my personality,
• 42:07
  you know when you read my book you know the things that are important to me or the things I'm
• 42:12
  trying to pass across, AI has this amalgamation of the thoughts of everyone that has coded into it
• 42:19
  and so cannot have this distinct thought of stay you in any one direction without you being your
• 42:25
  own filter and so the over reliance on that is just yeah there is that risk and I know a lot of
• 42:33
  authors are very terrified of the pace of which people who are writing with AI would release books
• 42:38
  as well as well because I need at least six to eight months to write like a first draft, some people
• 42:44
  I've asked but we can't keep up with AI but I feel a bit less threatening just because I don't know
• 42:52
  that it's comparable. Yeah and also I think it's a bit like your gymnast example that there is
• 43:01
  an experiential thing of learning how to do your handspring or whatever it is, you know, I'm not a
• 43:10
  gymnast, but I feel things as I write, laugh, I cry, I I'm with the characters experiencing it
• 43:21
  and if you're thinking that you can be an author and not experience it but just go to the
• 43:27
  product at the end, I really don't see the point. Yeah, I'll have other than making money which I
• 43:32
  guess is is the point. Right, fascinating. Thank you Maal for restoring my favorite bit that maybe
• 43:40
  we're not going to be replaced by AI anytime soon. So I said to you that we would land with my final
• 43:48
  question, excuse me, which is always where in all the worlds is the best place or the fantasy world,
• 43:54
  best place for something. And I was thinking about this real major fracture in your society
• 44:03
  in your book, first born of the Sun, where she has a gift which sets her apart from everybody else.
• 44:12
  So she's got like a magic power, should we call it, super power, that makes her different.
• 44:18
  And I was maybe think about where is the best place in fantasy to turn up with a very different
• 44:26
  kind of power. So if everybody in that world is a wizard, you are a witch or whatever that particular
• 44:31
  difference would be and that I think would reveal about the fantasy world, its prejudices and it's
• 44:38
  whether it's tolerant or not. So I don't think we had a chance to think where would be a good place
• 44:45
  to be different. Is a good question. I feel like most fantasy worlds have something being
• 44:55
  different. I'm a huge fan of Merling, that's one of my favorite magical shows, and I did
• 45:02
  do the live that world. And I would like to be the one who can do everything that Merling can't,
• 45:11
  just to show him up. But in that world, it's very much soft magic in that you can do anything.
• 45:20
  I would like to be the one where people, I was watching another show recently where this
• 45:27
  woman who had powers, there was a real way, anyone who asked if anything she had to do it,
• 45:34
  I would like to be one of those people where I'm like, and then be creative about it like a genie.
• 45:42
  Genie, that's a great, that's a really good example of this, and I think it fit really well.
• 45:48
  I was thinking about the Marvel Universe because they've cheated in a way because someone
• 45:52
  like Dr. Strange is basically a wizard. Yeah, he's basically Merling in a suit.
• 45:58
  And you've got Thor and Odin, they've got like godlike powers, which is a different kind of
• 46:04
  magic. So they have really chucked everything into one world. So you could turn up and think
• 46:11
  it's like different and be and go just be absorbed into the Marvel Universe and just be yet another.
• 46:18
  But I think probably the easiest place to turn up with a different kind of power is somewhere
• 46:22
  which is chaotic, like Wonderland or Terry Pratchett's world. I would be terrified in Wonderland,
• 46:28
  that's for sure. I don't think I would survive. I would be using my mind.
• 46:34
  Keep away from the Queen of Hearts and you'll be okay. I know. No, that terrified me as a kid,
• 46:41
  and I loved it and I read it, but I would always like really under the covers because I was so sure
• 46:46
  that my mind would conjure up something and I would just become at least because sometimes I
• 46:52
  used to think if I thought about it really hard, I would become the characters or the world would not
• 46:57
  know that I'm not the character and they would try to get me. Obviously I'm a bit too creative.
• 47:04
  My mind wanders and I just I don't watch anything that's horror because afterwards my mind just
• 47:10
  continues the story and it just gets too scary. So yeah, I would definitely skip my wonderland.
• 47:17
  Right, so you're a genie in Merlin's world. I'm with a very different kind of magical power
• 47:25
  romping around in Wonderland, keeping the Queen of Hearts. Well thank you so much for joining us,
• 47:33
  Marble. We hope that you have a really good book launch of your granny and we look forward
• 47:39
  to reading further installments. Does the trilogy have a name? I'm calling it first
• 47:43
  born of the sun, but do you have a sim? That's what we're calling it too.
• 47:49
  Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much.
• 47:58
  Thanks for listening to MythMaker's podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy.
• 48:05
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