Latest / Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama / Episode 73b Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi

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Episode 73b Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi · Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama

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  Speaker 1: Tale of the Manticor bonus material an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: What follows over the next thirty minutes or so is
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  Speaker 1: not an episode of Tale of the Manticor, and it
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  Speaker 1: will not take the place of a usual episode. It's
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  Speaker 1: just some bonus content. Recently, I was contacted by a
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  Speaker 1: publicist from Penguin Random House who asked if I'd be
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: interested in having an advanced copy of novela by Paolo
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: ba Chigalupi. I was delighted to receive the email, partly
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: because it meant Tale of the Manticor had achieved it
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  Speaker 1: no visibility that a major publishing company had found it.
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  Speaker 1: My first inclination was to reply with a thanks, but
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  Speaker 1: I don't really do book reviews. But then I reconsidered it.
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  Speaker 1: Why pass up an opportunity to talk about writing within
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  Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller I bet this author would have
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  Speaker 1: buckets of wisdom to share, and I could really learn something.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Tale of the Manticore may not be structured in a
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  Speaker 1: traditional way, but it still shares many of the same
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  Speaker 1: elements with the novel format. So I said yes, received
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  Speaker 1: the book and started reading it. Paolo Batchigalupi's talent was
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  Speaker 1: obvious right away. There was rich world building going on
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  Speaker 1: in Navla. He also had a flare with characterization and
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  Speaker 1: dialogue that I really admired. So I requested an interview,
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  Speaker 1: and a few weeks later I found myself in conversation
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  Speaker 1: with the author himself. Paolo was a real pleasure to
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  Speaker 1: speak with. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much
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  Speaker 1: as I did.
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  Speaker 2: Hello, welcome, and I've got with me a very special guest.
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  Speaker 2: It is Paolo Bacigalupi and he is the author of
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  Speaker 2: several books. He's an award winner, He's what a hugo
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  Speaker 2: a Nebula, and his novel The Wind Up Girl was
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  Speaker 2: named as Time magazine one of the top ten books
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  Speaker 2: of two thousand and nine. Wow, a New York Times bestseller.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on the show. You
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  Speaker 2: are the first real novelist I've had on the show,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm excited to get into it and talk about.
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  Speaker 3: I'm excited too, No, this is fun, So thanks for
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  Speaker 3: having me.
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  Speaker 2: So let's maybe begin with You had mentioned before that
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  Speaker 2: you have played role playing games in the past.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so why don't we talk.
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  Speaker 2: A little bit about that and a little bit how
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  Speaker 2: you got into writing. Just to kind of introduce my
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  Speaker 2: listeners to you and what you're all about.
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  Speaker 4: Tell me about your gaming experience.
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  Speaker 3: So I grew up with it.
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  Speaker 5: I think I had the you know, sort of the
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  Speaker 5: Dungeons and Dragons basic set, the little box that keep
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  Speaker 5: on the border lands in it, and and that was
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  Speaker 5: like around fourth or fifth grade.
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  Speaker 4: Was when I was well, you were in the right place.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, oh it was, and it was it was sort
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  Speaker 5: of this eye opening thing. And I remember all my
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  Speaker 5: friends and I always played Hobbits when we were that age,
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  Speaker 5: so you know, played a lot of D and D
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  Speaker 5: that way, and then kind of spread off and went
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  Speaker 5: into Girps. Played a lot in Grops and sort of
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  Speaker 5: that was sort of interesting to me because it was
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  Speaker 5: such you you had that opportunity to sort of mash
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  Speaker 5: up rules and concepts and stuff, so you run a
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  Speaker 5: cyberpunk plus horror and vampires campaign or whatever, and it
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  Speaker 5: was like amazing. You know, that was just a whole
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  Speaker 5: other kind of twist on it. And originally I started
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  Speaker 5: out as a player, and then later on I started GMing.
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  Speaker 5: You know, it's interesting, like when I was growing up
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  Speaker 5: I did not think of myself as being a novelist.
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  Speaker 5: I didn't particularly have that as a goal. I didn't
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  Speaker 5: have that as as a direction. But I definitely remember
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  Speaker 5: crafting campaigns and thinking in terms of like what the
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  Speaker 5: emotional arc I was going to carry my players through,
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  Speaker 5: and you know, oh, and then there's going to be
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  Speaker 5: this moment where there's going to be a big reveal
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  Speaker 5: or oh this is going to happen and that's going
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  Speaker 5: to really shock them, and so you know you could
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  Speaker 5: kind of see like looking back, I can kind of
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  Speaker 5: see there as like, oh, I was building these storytelling muscles.
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  Speaker 5: I was building this sort of like idea of you know,
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  Speaker 5: this sort of created world that other people would live in.
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  Speaker 5: And I remember also playing what was it Warhammer Fantasy
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  Speaker 5: Role Wow, and I like that one because there was
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  Speaker 5: always this great critical hit damage table and that just know,
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  Speaker 5: somebody lose a limb or whatever, and that was sort
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  Speaker 5: of like this moment where like the storytelling aspects. And
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  Speaker 5: I was listening to your podcast and it is interesting
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  Speaker 5: how you know there are these moments where something would
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  Speaker 5: click into place and you're like, oh, right, like just
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  Speaker 5: the dice rolls tells you things. But then there's this
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  Speaker 5: other set of implications. There's storytelling implications, and there's emotional
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  Speaker 5: implications that you can wrap around that dice roll. And
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  Speaker 5: seeing those sort of critical damage tables in Warhammer was
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  Speaker 5: kind of another one of those kinds of like my
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  Speaker 5: head sort of expanded a little bit. I remember really
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  Speaker 5: distinctly this moment when my players they had raided this
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  Speaker 5: sort of beast men's layer and they were just being
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  Speaker 5: really stupid about it and they were making a lot
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  Speaker 5: of noise and the beast men all woke up, and
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  Speaker 5: I was like, they're getting punished, Like, they're getting punished
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  Speaker 5: and they're stupid here, and so they ended up barricaded
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  Speaker 5: in the kitchens and down in this you know, down
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  Speaker 5: in this subterranean space, and they were like so like
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  Speaker 5: you know, and all the beast men are just pounding
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  Speaker 5: at the doors and just breaking through and they're going
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  Speaker 5: to die.
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  Speaker 3: And I was like, this is going to be, you.
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  Speaker 5: Know, a good moment for them to realize that you
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  Speaker 5: don't to storm the castle all the time.
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  Speaker 3: And they were like, wait, wait is there aren't aren't there?
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  Speaker 5: You said there were fireplaces here, right, and you're like yeah,
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  Speaker 5: And they're like.
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  Speaker 3: How big is the chimney.
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  Speaker 5: And suddenly they're like examining the chimney and I'm like, fuck,
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  Speaker 5: I know exactly what size this fireplay roasting?
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  Speaker 3: You know, large animals at this place. Of course, this
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  Speaker 3: chimney is large. Like fuck, they're gonna get away.
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  Speaker 5: Sure enough, they make their climbing roles and they crawl
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  Speaker 5: out like singed, but like you know, taught a lesson,
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  Speaker 5: but also like you know, you had this moment where
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  Speaker 5: it was that organic quality of like, oh, yeah, we're
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  Speaker 5: collaboratively doing this game, and there was that delight in
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  Speaker 5: both sort of like creating this setup and having their
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  Speaker 5: story play out and then having them find pass through
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  Speaker 5: that were bigger than the ones that you'd imagine.
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  Speaker 3: For them or whatever. And that was that was the delight.
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  Speaker 5: That was like actually the beginning of my storytelling career
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  Speaker 5: and the beginning of all of that stuff.
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  Speaker 2: And then I was just gonna ask you said, you
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  Speaker 2: weren't originally going to be a writer, No.
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  Speaker 4: So how did that? How did that happen?
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  Speaker 2: Uh?
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  Speaker 5: So, my parents were hippies and they lived a very
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  Speaker 5: sort of non traditional lifestyle, and so one of the
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  Speaker 5: things like you when you're a kid and you're rebelling
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  Speaker 5: against your parents. That you know, especially when you live
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  Speaker 5: with hippies, is that you think, I really want.
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  Speaker 3: A stable life.
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  Speaker 5: And so I sort of had this mindset, like when
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  Speaker 5: I was going to college and everything, that I was
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  Speaker 5: going to get a job, I was going to make money.
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  Speaker 3: I was going to find a house in the suburbs.
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  Speaker 5: You know, there was going to be some structure and
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: there's going to be some organization, and yeah, very very
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  Speaker 5: My dream was actually to live in a cul de
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  Speaker 5: Sact with the rolled sidewalks, you know, where.
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  Speaker 3: I would because when I was a kid, Yeah, anyway, that.
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  Speaker 5: Always seemed like bliss, you know, like, oh, these beautiful sidewalks,
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  Speaker 5: you could ride a bike on it, instead of living
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  Speaker 5: out in the countryside where like it was really hard
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  Speaker 5: to ride a bike keeping over the dirt and the
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  Speaker 5: stones and everything else.
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  Speaker 3: So I studied Chinese language.
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  Speaker 5: Actually, when I was in college, I moved to China,
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  Speaker 5: lived there for several years, worked in business over there,
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  Speaker 5: and really I very much intended to go into business
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  Speaker 5: and for that to be my center. And then there
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  Speaker 5: was this point when I was working in Beijing and
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  Speaker 5: I was working for this Chinese company and we were
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  Speaker 5: helping foreign companies break into the China market, and I
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  Speaker 5: just realized that I just did not care about, you know,
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  Speaker 5: the outcomes, Like the living in China was amazing, and
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  Speaker 5: everything that was happening in that time, this was in
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  Speaker 5: the early nineties. Everything that was happening in China was fascinating.
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  Speaker 5: The economic changes, the prosperity that was growing, the political opening,
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  Speaker 5: everything like that was fascinating. But I really did not
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  Speaker 5: care whether Coke beat out Pepsi and Tanjin. Like that
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  Speaker 5: was not you know, that was not soul billing. So
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  Speaker 5: I came back to the United States and I became
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  Speaker 5: a programmer for a while, just in the early days
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  Speaker 5: of the Internet. And so I became a programmer and
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  Speaker 5: web developer and got into that for a while, and
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  Speaker 5: I was really fascinated again by like the technology, the
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  Speaker 5: promise of it was fascinating and extraordinary. But that also
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  Speaker 5: like there was this point where I was working for
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: a consultancy in Boston, and I just you know, and
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  Speaker 5: there was a sort of parade of marketing executives that
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  Speaker 5: would come in and they we'd be building their different
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: kinds of marketing websites, and I was again like deeply uninspired,
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  Speaker 5: so I yeah, so I started writing on the side,
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  Speaker 5: and it was like this really this very secret little
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  Speaker 5: project in the beginning where it was just something I
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  Speaker 5: would do on the weekend. And I don't even remember
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  Speaker 5: like exactly why exactly I started writing, like I remember
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  Speaker 5: this kind of poking at it and that this was
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  Speaker 5: like my little secret thing.
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  Speaker 3: And I remember I had a book.
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  Speaker 5: I can't remember how I ended up with this book,
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  Speaker 5: but it was a book on how to write a
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  Speaker 5: novel in fifty two weeks.
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  Speaker 3: It was like the Weekend Novelist.
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: That was the title it, okay, and it was like
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  Speaker 5: this thing where it was like and I think I'd
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: had times in the past I'd had some idea that
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: of trying to write or thinking because I was a
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: science fiction reader. I was a science fiction and fantasy reader,
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  Speaker 5: you know. That was the other component of my sort
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: of like storytelling life. Was like my father was a
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: science fiction reader, and I grew up reading science fiction
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  Speaker 5: and fantasy. And I had stopped gaming while I was
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: in college. It got harder and harder to sort of
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: to keep a game together, and we were all doing
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: different things and sort of like that was that was
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: sort of the moment that I kind of fell off
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: the map. So yeah, anyway, I started playing around with
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: stories and started figuring out, oh, this is how you
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: make characters, you know, put a character, you know, how
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  Speaker 5: to create a character, not just you know, in a
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: role playing setting, but like in this other sort of
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  Speaker 5: inhabited space where you're going to have one character and
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: then you're going to have another character written on the page,
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  Speaker 5: and then you're going to put them in a room
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  Speaker 5: and figure out how to create conflict between these two characters.
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  Speaker 5: You know, how this character want something that that character
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  Speaker 5: won't give them, you know, and then here's the beginning
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  Speaker 5: of your plot idea, and here's the beginning of conflict.
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  Speaker 5: And it was was a weird thing was I was
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  Speaker 5: such a heavy reader. I mean I was reading all
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: the time, and yet somehow I think I was experiencing
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  Speaker 5: stories as these still in the in the in the
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: textual form is a holistic thing. It was sort of
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: hard to pull apart the threads of like how did
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  Speaker 5: that thing get constructed?
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  Speaker 3: And so I had to learn.
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  Speaker 5: A lot about just, yeah, what that process was in
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  Speaker 5: text of creating story and making that a lived in
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  Speaker 5: space for a reader as opposed to just narrating something,
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  Speaker 5: which very naturally. We narrate stories to one another all
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  Speaker 5: the time. Let me tell you about that time I
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: launched the bottle rockets in the science library, you know whatever.
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  Speaker 5: We can tell those stories really easily, but somehow like
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  Speaker 5: writing those things down, you know, changing points of view,
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: things like that.
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  Speaker 2: I think a lot of a lot of listeners of
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: this show they're creatives as well, and many of them
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: have their own podcasts and shows, and I bet half
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: of them are writers. Yeah, and I'm curious to know,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and I bet they would be too. How did it
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  Speaker 2: go from you are doing this thing on the side
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  Speaker 2: on the weekends, even in secret, to now I'm published?
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  Speaker 4: How did that happen?
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  Speaker 5: Well, the first thing happens that I realized that it
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: was the most interesting thing that I was doing with
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: my life, and it was the only thing that I
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: really actually cared about. And then there was a point where,
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: because I was doing programming work, I was actually and
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: I was very frugal, and so I sort of had
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: stored up this war chest of cash and I was
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: I got really pissed off at my boss one day
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: and was like, you know what, I'm just going to
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: quit forget it.
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  Speaker 3: I'm out, and I'm going to go write a novel.
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: And this was sort of like something that had been
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: bubbling in the back of my head and then suddenly
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: it was just sort of right directly ahead of me,
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: and I was going to do this thing. I was
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: going to quit my job. I was going to write
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: this novel. I was going to spend the next year
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: writing it. It was going to it was going to happen,
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: and I committed completely to it. I did that. It
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: was this sort of science fiction novel set in a
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: set in China. I actually went back to China and
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: did some more research there.
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  Speaker 3: But I wrote the book.
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: I actually managed to find an agent and it went
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: out to publishers and it was rejected by everybody. And
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: that was the beginning of a very long process where
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: you know that you have all of the ego, and
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: you have all of the drive, and you have all
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: of the follow through and yet like the universe does
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: not give any fox and and so that was like
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: this beginning of like sort of trying to batter my
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: way in and trying to figure out, like how does
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: the publishing industry work?
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: You know, what did they want? You know?
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: The first the first rejections I got were really like
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: the rejections were along the lines of, like, this is
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: really well written, this is way too dark for us commercially, Like,
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: we just don't see the commercial value of this. We
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: see you know that it's artistically functional, but like you're
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: not commercially valuable to us. And so that was the
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: beginning of like, oh right, it's not just like do
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: you make something that's skillful or heartfelt. Like you're also
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: having this conversation with this giant manufacturing industry. You know,
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: they're thinking in terms of like can we sell ten
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: thousand units of this? Can we sell one hundred thousand
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: units of this? And it's like, okay, so what do
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: you need to do in order to like sort of
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: satisfy your creative storytelling desires and figure out a way
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: to like make them happy and feel like this is
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: a sellable object, and you know what's the win win
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: in there?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: A lot of people talk about like the sellout. You know,
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: oh they sold out, they did this.
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: It's like and I think that there are clever paths
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: through where you get everything you want and they get
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: everything they want. But you have to like think that
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: through and you have to recognize that there are real
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: desires and real needs on the other side of that
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: negotiation kind of.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: So was it more of a case of you chain
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: your art in certain ways or was it a kind
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of a persevere until you find the right publisher who
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: gets your thing as it is?
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: All of the above?
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: Huh.
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: I mean I wrote four more novels and all of
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: those were rejected. And so, like, you know, at each stage,
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: like you're writing a book, you're testing something out. You know,
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: each stage you're like, okay, this is why I got
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: rejected this time. Okay, So you know, the first you know,
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: feedback is like, my novels are way too dark.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: Let's try to put some light into this thing. I
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: think I'm okay with that. Actually, sure, I get that.
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: Okay, so I'm going to adjust some But I'm also
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: like maybe getting feedback about you know, maybe I was
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: originally thinking I wanted to be a science fiction writer,
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: and somebody says, you know, actually you can't really make
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: much money in science fiction.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, maybe I'll try historical fiction. So
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: I take attack.
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: At historical fiction, and then later on I tried a
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: literary fiction novel, and then after that, I did a
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: sort of a mystery slash western novel, and each one
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: of those things, you're sort of learning different things about
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: the craft of writing, you know, the literary fiction one,
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: you know, everything becomes incredibly lush, linguistically as you're working
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: on it, you know, And then you're writing this mystery
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: slash western one, and everything becomes very spare and tight
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: and quippi, you know, and you're experimenting with characters, with
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: you know, voice, with all these different things every step
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: of the way. And eventually, I think all of that
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: stuff ended up gelling. And by the time I came
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: back to science fiction and started really being settled with it,
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: I was really burned.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Out on writing novels. But I started writing short stories.
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: And that was the beginning of my actual career, was
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: that I started writing short stories and they started to
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: sell almost immediately when I did that.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: But it was almost like, I mean, I think I
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: was like.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: Eight or ten years in by that time, where I'd
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: been just you know, trying and trying and trying and
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: trying and learning and learning and learning and learning.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: That's amazing, amazing.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: This is a kind of a good segue into novela
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: because this is the first of.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: This kind of novel that you've done, Is that correct?
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: This is straight up fantasy, yeah, like you know, and
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: it was like Italian Renaissance like world like like all
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: those kinds of things. Yeah, this is this is utterly
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: different from everything that I've done before.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Why this why this kind of alternate reality medieval slash
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Renaissance Italy mixed in with.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: I'm feeling it's like a very low fantasy.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the magic is pretty like subsurface. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: for sure. When I started novel, it was actually this
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: sort of creative play project for me to just try
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: to do something that was very different from everything else
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: that I'd done and felt like again it was a
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: secret project.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: It was back to secret projects.
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: You know why secret I have a stronger voice and
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: a more fearless creativity when I'm not thinking I'm going
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: to give it to somebody, huh. And I remember, like
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: when I wrote wind Up Girl, so wind Up Girl
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: blew Up and it like got all these awards and everything,
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: And I remember the headspace that I was in when
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: I wrote that book, and it was like, anytime you
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: feel uncomfortable, go further. Anytime you feel like this is
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: too and saying push it harder. It was like do more,
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: go bigger, go harder, you know. And it was just
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: absolutely like everything I could put on myself on the page, everything,
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: Like if I had a moment of hesitation, it was
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: like go there, and it was it was fearless. And
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: part of that was that I didn't really expect it
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: to sell either, because I'd already had four other rejected novels,
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: so like, eh, you know, like hey, great, you know
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: you could just hammer away like it was just a
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: thing broke. Yeah, And you know, and after you've been
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: published and after you start getting reviews, and after the
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: good and the bad, the good the good responses like
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: make you sort of like desire to sort of make
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: people more happy by following up and doing similar things
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: that they liked. And then the bad responses you're like, oh,
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: I feel bad that they don't like this, or I
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: feel like hurt that they don't like this or whatever,
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: and so you have a sense of feeling of wanting
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: to shy away from the things that they didn't like,
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: and so that can really mess with your head. If
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: you're not deeply centered in your own creativity, that'll mess
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: with your head. Yeah, so for me like working in secret,
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: and at the time, I honestly I wasn't actually even
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: sure I was going to keep writing, and so this
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: was an experiment also just in the idea of whether
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: or not I wanted to be creating anymore.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: I think I get that now because you must have
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: been faced with massive expectations, and so I can totally
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: appreciate wanting to do something where it's very private and
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: just for you. I think that also sort of explains
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: why the lore in this novel is so rich. It
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: feels like you lived with it for a while. Is
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: that safe to say? I lived with it for years?
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, No, it was delightful to make it because you know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: every time, like I'd be going along and I'd suddenly
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: be thinking, like I'm making up the language, you know,
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: and suddenly I'm making up Okay, what kinds of words
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: are these people going to speak? And I'm going to
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: use this sort of like bastardized version of Italian and
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: I'm going to make up my own words, you know.
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: So there's michiada to mark the face, or there's Facio
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: Kiato and Fachio scuro, you know, people being visible on
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: their faces, like their intentions being visible on their faces
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: are hidden and all of that like was like all
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: that was creative play. And then the same thing like
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: suddenly you're like wandering off into like what are.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: The philosophers in this world?
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: And oh yeah, we're going to talk about sopros now
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: and what does soapros think about like the function of
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: man and nature? And you know, now we're going to
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: do a whole section philosophizing and now you know, oh wait,
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: actually there's the Smith of Aristhaea, And actually I kind
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: of want to write about the god Colliba right now
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: and how he talks with Scuro and talks with Amo
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: and like how they all get along and you know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: and you're just roaming about and because you're not thinking like, oh,
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: this has to fit some sort of a structure, this
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: has to fit this exact size of a novel, You're
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: just like this is interesting to me. I'm going there now.
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: And I would let myself go. If there was a
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: door that seemed intriguing, I would just let myself go
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: through it. And more and more and more and more
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: stuff kept getting created that way.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: It was so much fun.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: It's awesome.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: It's very rich, and it's a fun world for me
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to be sort of like along there with you as
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: I'm reading it. In world building, yeah, you tend to
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: go bottom up or small to big, or do you
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: do the opposite thing. Maybe another way to put it
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: is do you make a map and populate that map
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: and then play in that world, or do you make
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a town and then just sort of expand on that
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: as you need to breathe out.
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: I've done it both ways, and so when I start
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: from the micro, it almost always starts from the.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Character and their point of view.
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: And you know, it starts with a character something they need,
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: they're doing something interesting to them, you know, something they need,
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: something they want, something they're frustrated with, whatever, and starting
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: with them at that micro scale, and then slowly, slowly
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: you build out the world around them kind of and
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: that tells you things and you find things, and then
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: it kind of starts to like, let you populate the
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: rest of the space. So with NOVELA, the example of
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: that is that the very first line is my father
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: kept a dragon eye on his desk. I wanted to
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: write about dragons in some way, and I didn't want
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: to write about dragons in a traditional way, and so
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: I was like, Okay, I'm going to play with this
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: idea of a fossilized dragon eye. But then it like
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: because there's that moment where it's like, okay, so where
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: is this Who is this man who keeps a dragon
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: is on his desk?
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: How powerful do you have to be to keep a
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: dragon ee on his desk?
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: And it's like, Okay, he's going to be this really
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: powerful merchant banker and he makes all of his money
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: from the trading of things, but more in promises and
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: he never fails to collect on a promise. And okay,
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: so that's who this man is. That says this kid's father,
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: And then who's this kid? And you know, the kid
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: is soft, the kid is sweet, and the kid likes,
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: you know, to play with his hound lazy and so okay,
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: so now I'm starting to get a little bit of
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: the kid, and from that, you know, I start to
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: build out that oh, this kid likes nature, he likes
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: his animals, you know. Okay, so now I'm going to
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: go spend some time thinking about the nature of the
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: place around novel as well as thinking about what does
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: this merchant banking world look like? Oh, and that's where
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: you know, suddenly the novel as a people are obsessed
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: with Fachio Kiato and Fachio scuro and you know, who
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: can you know bargain best when they sit across the
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: plank from one another and each thing becomes a sort
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: of a stepping stone out and the world gets bigger
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: and bigger and bigger and big around you.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: That's how I did novel. It was like that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: It's fascinating to me.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And one of the questions that I'm burning to ask
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: is when you make any of your novels, including Nevla,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: do you know the ending when you start this?
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: Is?
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: This is something that has always fascinated me.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I think I read as a kid that Stephen King
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: just starts writing and that.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: Always like really boiled my blood. How is this possible?
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: That was this possible?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: How can you get to a satisfying conclusion? And all
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of the sort of advice books you know, like Blake Sheldon,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: is that the guy that did save the cat? Or
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: like a McKee, they would always I think, say, you know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: you do the backwards design thing, so what is it
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: for you?
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: Do you know that end scene or that redemption moment?
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: I don't what I'll do is I'll tend to write
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: my way into the story, like multiple times though, so
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: I make an attempt to write the story, I make
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: an attempt to get a hold of a character, like
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: I don't know what's meant to happen with Davico very
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: in the early stages of the scene.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Are you writing it like or is that? Is this
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: a skeleton of jot notes?
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: No, I'm living with it because for me, I have to.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: And I'm okay with throwing away words like I throw
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: away a lot of works. It feels so dangerous though,
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: so like I've actually become incredibly comfortable, and this is
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: not how other writers I know work. One of the
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: things I've realized is like, in order for me to
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: believe in a world, sometimes I'll have to write it
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: a couple of times just to kind of get the details,
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: you know. And so that first sentence in the second sense,
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: I don't even need to necessarily keep those I just
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: need to reassociate my way into this world enough that
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: it starts to make some sense to me. In one particular,
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: very sad case, I wrote an entire novel and then
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: threw it all away because it was like, oh, I
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: actually didn't understand what the heart of the novel was
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: until I'd finished it all and was like, there was
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: actually only one sentence in that novel that was any good,
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: and so I kept that sentence and sort of centered
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: on it, and then wrote another novel based on that,
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: and it was like, ah, now you've found it.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: But a lot of times I'll.
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: Do yeah, I mean it's about I mean, like I'm
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: not like, I.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: Know it's so admirable.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, you must be extremely disciplined in your methodology.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: You must like write every day.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Do you have a thing I am consistent overall?
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: I mean, obviously, in order to generate hundreds of thousands
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: of words, you have to eventually be showing up and
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: writing things. When I was working on NOVELA, I was
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: actually trying a completely different thing, which was that I
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: was just writing five hundred words a day. And it
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: wasn't necessarily even on NOVELA. It was on anything like
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: just sit down and write five hundred words. So as
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: long as you sat down and you made words, good words,
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: bad words, doesn't matter. But like just the showing up
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: oftentimes meant that like you would get going and then oh,
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: I accidentally fell into a thousand words who knew, like
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: I actually had a scene that I found or and again,
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: much like secret project stuff, I think that like setting
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: that bar really really low and the expectations really low
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: and the requirements really low, means that like you again
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: can play, and the more loose you are and the
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: more playful you are, the more likely you are that
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: something interesting is going to happen. So I tend to
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: find my endings. That was like a long answer to
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: a very short question.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: It's it is endlessly fascinating to me. How maybe it's
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: because in my own brain, I can't keep a story
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: a third of the size of yours in my brain
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: from beginning to end. I feel like it wouldn't be
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: possible for me to hold it all in there. So
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I'm just kind of in awe of people who can
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: do that or even just find that ending kind of organically.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think with writing novels
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: in some ways there's an advantage because until you present
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: it like you can endlessly sort of swirl it around
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: and things like that. I think, you know, with the
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: kind of work you're doing where you're doing an episodic,
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: structured thing where you've got to reveal certain episodes and
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: then move forward. I think that, like you know, I've
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: worked with some friends in television and working in television also,
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: like you know, we sit down and like plot break,
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: like this is going to be the episode, and this
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: is going to be the things that are going to
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: have to happen in that episode, which is going to
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: move the characters into this kind of a situation in
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: the next episode. And that's a much more deliberately structured
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: thing top to bottom. This is where the finale is
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: going to be, and we know that we're building that
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: on you know, multiple levels all the way through, and
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: it's absolutely a structured, you know, sort of architectural object
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: top to bottom, long before you're even starting to put
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: any text on the pages.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: And that's there's a promise I think with a novel
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: or a TV show or a movie, that it will
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: have a satisfying end that makes sense.
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: Right, and I'm allowed to just kind of keep circling
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: and circling and circling in the mud for like you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: in some cases with novel, I've been circling in it
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: for years and so eventually I've gotten to the point
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: where here's the object, right, Okay, I found it, you know,
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: and then you.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Go back and you sort of like remove all the
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Chekhov's guns that didn't fire.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: Is that is that kind of the idea?
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: Sort of Yeah, it's a little uncomfortable to me right
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: now because novel is coming out and I'm working on
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: the sequel, and I'm like, shit, if there's anything now
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: I haven't laid out, Like now I'm starting to feel
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: a little more hummed in.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, that's now canon. Now you're fucked.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: And the farther you go in, the more you have
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: to dig back, and the more you have to dig back.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Amazing.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: What is one work of fiction, book, a movie, even music,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: something like that that is kind of like it changed
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: you or it's stuck with you. You know, there's sort of
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: life before this film, this novel, this song, and then
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: life after if you have that.
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: So it's actually hard for me to pinpoint like a
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: specific thing. I mean, there are moments that I can
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: say this was a light bulb for me or whatever,
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: you know, So like if I go back and I
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: look at you know, Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy,
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: that was a light bulb moment for me where I
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: suddenly was reading a big book. It was like a
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: three hundred page book, and I was reading it cover
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: to cover and I couldn't stop reading it, and I
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: was deeply engaged with it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: I was probably in about third grade or fourth grade
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: or something like that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: Oh, and the sense of immersion and the engagement with
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: the character and things like that.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just a keystone book.
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: And it's not a coincidence that later on I ended
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: up writing an entire novel that was basically, you know,
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: a sort of a monetized version of that story because
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: I cared about it. I remember this moment when I
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: was reading an Ursula le Gwyn novel. I was reading
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: The Dispossessed, and there was a light bulb because I
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: was reading this book and.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, wait, it's not just fiction.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: It's about an idea also, And you know, duh, I mean,
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: Ursula Lea Gwinn writes big ideas.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: But it was it was a new tool set that
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: opened up to me. Suddenly. It's like, not a story
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: didn't necessarily just have to be a story.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: It could also have other you know, meaning layers that
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: are stacked on top of it and that suddenly was
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: another world. And so you know, I can sort of
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: go back and look at all of those things, but
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: you know, to pinpoint one is very, very difficult.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: It's like, oh, this one mattered for these reasons.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: But I mean I would just as much say that
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: John Norman's Gore series trashy as all get out, Like
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: there's nothing like, you know, like nobody would say, oh,
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: this is socially a morally redeep excitor like that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: But the guy wrote adventure fiction.
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: Tarl Cabot's going to go out with his sword and
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: he's going to win a woman, and like you know,
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: he's going to fly on giant tarns, these giant hawks,
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: and he's going to fly around and he's going to
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: battle other cities or whatever. And that's just as influential
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: like that those things are like and possibly more so
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: because they kept re engaging.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Me with the idea that reading was a joy. It's
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: not a chore, it's not a job. It's not it's
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: like it's actual joy.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for joining me. This has been
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: a real pleasure for me.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: And thank you for being the first like novelist to
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: come on the show and be interviewed.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: I have no skill for it, I know that, but thanks.
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: This is fun, No, this is really fun to do,
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: so I appreciate the time. And yeah, it's good to
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: chat about this stuff.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: So right, love on where and how and when can
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: we get novela.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: Novela is coming out on July ninth, and it's going
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: to be pretty much everywhere your books are sold. It'll
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: be online, it'll be an ebook, it'll be an audiobook,
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: it'll be at your local independent bookseller, and yeah, it
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: should be everywhere. It's going to be releasing simultaneously in
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: the United Kingdom. It's going to be translated eventually into German, French, Italian,
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: which I was really delighted about, and check Polish, you know, Ukrainian,
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: So yeah, everywhere.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: A huge thank you to Pelo for joining me for
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: this interview. His new book, Novela, will be available in
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: stores as of tomorrow. If you're the kind of reader
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: who enjoys low fantasy, political intrigue, and rich flore I
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: think you'll really like it. I certainly did. Thanks for listening,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and also you in the next episode of Tale of
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the manticor the story We're Chaos roles.
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: It's been seven years since the mast Court fell and
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: the Empire began dying its final death. Once a member
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: of the elite Imperial Special Service, now turned bounty hunter,
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: Sejean Luchale fights for survival in a universe full of
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: turmoil and confusion. She's use her wits, her Las pistol
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: in the power of the Void to face the growing
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: tension in the Casstin system. This is Steve Morrison of
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: the Errant Adventures podcast, and on this new season, I'm
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: using the tabletop RPG Traveler to bring to life my
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: own space opera setting full of bounty hunters, religious celts,
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: and people struggling to survive and find joy in the
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: dying lights of an intergalactic empire. Join me for this
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: new adventure and welcome to Book one Meridian. I'll see
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: you out in the deep.