From Dragon-ridden To Firebird Chronicles: The Wonderful Worlds Of TA White

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm an author but I also am the director of the Centre. And today I am, can't tell you how delighted I am to have T.A. White with us, who is an author of many absolutely wonderful fantasy series. I'm saying this as a genuine fan as well as somebody who admires her as another author. So thank you so much Toby for coming to be with us today. No problem. I'm happy to be here. So Toby, you sort of stand out to me as a writer because you have written in many genres within fantasy. So perhaps for those who aren't familiar with what you do, we should have a little gallop through your series, just give us a sense. So where did you start as a writer? What was the first series that you produced? So the first published series is different from the first series I started. The first book I wrote, I will probably never make it into anybody else's hands except my friends and family who were around when I wrote it. The first published book would have been a dragon ridden with the dragon ridden chronicles. It's a very difficult genre to describe because I didn't really obey genre norms but it's kind of like fantasy with sci-fi elements or sci-fi with fantasy elements depending on who you ask. So that was where I started and I just went off of a dream and it was a very sci-fi-esque dream. Like chapter one went to a different direction which was much more fantasy. So that's where I started and then because I can't make things easy on myself I kind of transitioned to like high fantasy with my pathfinders or the broken land series and then from there I went to urban fantasy to sci-fi, like straight sci-fi. So it's I kind of just write what I want. The urban fantasy series, is that the Eileen Travers series? Yes, Eileen Travers is the urban fantasy and then the firebird chronicles is more of my sci-fi with a couple of fantastical elements to it. Yeah, so I mean that's supposed an interesting question for anyone who's got their hands on an author to ask them is is there a sort of particular thing that started you off as a fantasy writer? I was noticing that you talked on your website about starting writing very young with a partner who then threw her biscuits at you. It's just great. What happened there? So I was like that would have been when we lived in North Carolina but I was like in second first grade and I couldn't I had a little I struggled to learn to read which meant I struggled to learn to write and so at that age like I really wanted to write a ghost story and I had to partner up with somebody who was a little bit older like a year or two older than me because I couldn't do it for myself and like we did it for a day and a half and then they were like I'm bored with this. I don't want to do it and I got really mad and I maybe threw a cookie at her head. I was pretty young. Okay, that way rap. And it was there a particular book once you did get into reading. Was there a particular book that inspired you to follow your path? Yeah, it's kind of funny because I started wanting to write before I could actually really like before I started liking to read and then Nancy drew in third grade the second time around was the book that got me into reading but the book that got me into fantasy was Tamera Puris the woman who walks like a man. It's the third in the series but I was living in in Okinawa because my dad was stationed there and they didn't have the first two books in the series at that library so I started with the third and it just kind of it was the first time I realized that fantasy could be like this really fun genre that's about real things but told in a different way and that you can have real life problems but with magic and other things mixed in with it to just make it a little bit more interesting. Is that the Lana series? The Lana Chronicles? Have you read the Kell ones? I have. Caladria. She's my favorite the protector of the small. I actually think I like her a little bit more than a Lana because the Lana had like magic to fall back on and she had the goddess to like she was like kind of a chosen one but you don't find that out till like the second book I think whereas Caladria or Cal she was she's just a normal person who went after their dream and had to work very very hard to make that happen and I really like stories where you have to like it's not just given to you and you're not just special you you have to actually work to be the person you want and to achieve your dream so that's that's like my favorite of her series. Yeah and I absolutely love that one of the books is all about how to manage a refugee camp for internally displaced people. Right. Yeah that was one of my favorites too. It's right up my street as a former development aid worker and also it's just such a breath of fresh air after all these big battles things. What happens to the civilians you know very very poignant and their great book. So another book recommendation for listeners is to go and explore the Timora Pierce back library. So what was your journey to being an actual published author after the biscuit throwing episode? Well it was kind of like a long circuitous journey like I in high school there was this we had where I went to high school you had a senior thesis project that you had to do to graduate and it had to have written an element so I decided to write a book and that's the book that nobody will ever see. So I wrote that book and then I went to college for journalism at the Ohio University Script School Journalism because I figured I could work on my craft while having a full-time job and then I graduated and nobody was hiring. So my mom told me to join the military which I did and to do public affairs for them which I did. So the first time after that was I was in Afghanistan and it's kind of a situation where you're in a very small area and you can't go anywhere except for our missions which I did but you're stuck in a one place and you don't have the distractions of being in like the United States to take away from your creativity and there is a point where you don't want to read anymore books and you don't want to watch anymore TV shows and it had always been my dream to be a writer so I figured hey I'm here for a year why not write a book and that's what I did and that's where Dragon Chronicles came and Pathfinder a little bit. I had the idea for Pathfinder while I was there and actually that probably sparked a lot of the ideas in Pathfinder so that was kind of when I started and it took me like a year and a half, two years to get that book like done and edited and to a point where I felt comfortable releasing it to the public. That is absolutely fascinating. That was a brilliant story in itself and it also explains the island traverse backstory. Those three years were very instrumental in forming me as a person so a lot of my books draws from that as like the creative incentive because you went you go through a lot in a very short period of time and you kind of find out who you are and then when you have to write these other things that draw on the military it's just a little bit easier. So yeah, Aileen is like a product of me coming home and some of the anger and upset that I had and how disconnected I felt to being home. Like some of the conversations she has with her mom are things that I've talked with about other people coming home as a soldier and how people think you have PTSD and everybody's the same. So yeah, that was a big part of that character and why I wrote her because it was kind of cathartic. Yeah, and her experience in the military is brilliantly specific being the sort of the camera person who goes along with the guys on patrol. And I did think, oh, this is really well researched and now I know why, you know. Yeah, I didn't do her job. I was more, but I knew the guys who did her job. Like I was public affairs. I did go on the mission, but it wasn't just to take photos like I took photos, but it was also to get the story. And so the combat cameras, I had a couple of friends who work combat camera. That was really fun to talk to them and figure out how that job differed from mine. Yeah, I think what's really interesting about that experience is, but most I would say that all of your heroines have a problem with authority. And there's a particular thing with, is it, you call her alien, I mean, alien, but I think it's supposed to be okay. Well, it's not a plot spoiler that she's a baby vampire, a young vampire. So she has had this past where she already probably was in an authority structure which she had thought she'd left finding herself plunged into this one where you have to be 100 years before you're given a chance to go out on your own at all. So it makes sense now, totally makes sense. It's funny. You say that because a lot of people who find out I was in the military are like, I can't see you in the military. And the first couple times that happened, I was like, laughed it off. And then finally, I was like, why do people keep saying this to me? Is it because I'm a girl? And they're like, no, because you have massive issues with authority. And anytime anybody tells you what to do, you push back. And they're like, we can't see you being in a situation where you follow orders. And it's like, okay, well, there's different sides to me. So and I kind of put that into the books too. Yeah, what I like about the way you do that. So it says, sort of diving across all the heroines now is that you also point out cleverly how difficult it is to be with that person who is the rebel aliens case. It's the the you know, she's a difficult person to be a friend with, even though she's desperately loyal. Yeah. So it goes to the extreme, but her friend Caroline, you know, she's quite blunt with her is so you don't make it into the romantic rebel or the sort of Jane steam thing. It's very much her. Here's a square peg in around whole, you know, bruising a few people as she goes through life. It's really I think that's why, I like your book so much, actually, because often the fantasy aspect is a sort of wonderful package around really interesting set of characters or express through them. So that she definitely ticks that box. So do you is writing what you do all the time or are you also exploring other forms of creativity or because I think a lot of people who are aspiring writers want to know how do they make it work? Do you you obviously been in the military, but did you go straight from the military into writing or was there a transition phase? No, yeah, there was a transition phase. Like I do writing full time now. I'm very lucky in that I can support myself and my family with my writing and just my writing, but that was like five years in the making. Like I published dragon ridden I think in like 2013, 2014 and I didn't go full time until several, several years later and I worked in marketing for a company, a credit bureau type company. And so I did that and then like on the in the evenings, like I write for an hour and a half, two hours, like I try to get a thousand to two thousand words, like a couple of times a week and then I on the weekends would like write double whatever the week thing was. So I had to essentially it's like working two jobs, but it was what I've always wanted to do. I do since I was very small. So I was happy to make the sacrifice and I kind of needed a purpose in my life and I felt like this was what I was put on the planet to do was to tell stories and entertain people and give them a break from all the bad things that might be going on in their life. So yeah, here, here, absolutely, keep on writing, please. So now on to the fantasy stuff, which is kind of our race on detour really. So you just recapping again, you've written in many different fantasy and sci-fi subgenres, starting with dragon ridden, the kind of sci-fi fantasy mashup, urban fantasy and so on. I understand that urge to cross genres because that's what I do as a writer as well, but do you are you so conscious of different rules in the different genres or does you just you just know what you're doing when you're in there? Are you a sort of visitor who understands the culture of the place you're in or do you actually set yourself specific rules when you start writing in a different genre? So like I'm a fan of all the genres I work in like I read massively in those or I did in those genres. So like with alien travelers, that's urban fantasy. Like I've read all the urban fantasy genre like authors that are really big in this like Patricia Briggs, Alona, Drew's, and many many others. So like I know the genre tropes that come with that, but the fun thing is like when you can reach those fans while bringing something new to the to the table and I think that's why people like what I do is because like I'm following the genres, but I'm doing it in a way that doesn't necessarily always isn't as widespread as maybe other writers. Because I know with my freeze a lot, I get the comment that it's basically urban fantasy in space and it makes sense because like I read a lot of urban fantasy authors. So that aspect kind of has crept into my writing. So I kind of just concentrate on like one, whatever the genre is, but when I feel the need to break the rules, I write what I want to read massively. And so I try to follow the rules and then like every once in a while, I'm like I don't feel like following these rules anymore. I guess that's my even against authority coming out. So are you a planner or somebody who feels their way through the plot? So when you sit down to write your next, let's say it's your next dragon ridden book, do you already know what you're going to do in it or is it very much, okay, I'm going to spend six months with tape now or if I go. It's a little bit of both. Like I always start with a plan. I don't always sit to the plan and that then come up with a new plan which during the course of which you're kind of feeling your way in through the book. Like I know some things and then I have to figure out the rest. Like I'm working on the fourth fire book for the series right now. So I know several scenes and I know how it's going to end, but I don't always know how those scenes connect. And that's like kind of the thing you figure out. And sometimes like you know what you want to happen, but you don't know the arc of what happens. And then you have to like you write and write and write and then you get to like a certain point where you hit critical mass and then you're like oh that's how that's supposed to go. And then you have to go and redo everything. But I don't feel like I could get to that critical mass moment where it's like this epiphany unless I did a lot of like feeling my way through. So like my guys that I start with a plan and then things go bad and I have to figure out a new plan. Yeah, I've had the experience in writing where I had a plan and then my characters misbehave and do something else when I'm writing the scene mid-scene. They're running off in a completely different direction. Is that an experience that's familiar? Oh yes, that's like pretty much every book at this point. Like it used to be a lot easier when I first started. I was much better at following the plan. And then like I think around rules of redemption is when my writing kind of changed and I wrote the book I wanted to write rather than what the book wanted to write. So you just have to be used to throwing things away and being okay when your characters are like oh yeah that was a good idea but we're going to go do this now and this is much more interesting because like I feel that it takes a little bit of effort to get to the really good stuff and sometimes you have to put all the junk and then you kind of have to uncover the gems under the junk. So that's that's kind of how I do. Like it's a little bit exploratory with a goal in mind. I'd say that one thing that your books have in common across the all the genres and all the series is and tell me if I'm wrong but usually led by the heroine who is usually all usually loveable but difficult and there's often a very slow-burn romance. It's not not a romance it's over in the first book it builds and builds. Do you tell us about your heroines? Do you have some tips for writing characters that aren't like cookie cutouts that actually feel individuals? So I don't know like because I kind of I give them a flaw like I find the thing that most people would find like super annoying and then I try to make that thing what it's great about them but it's also like a drawback like with Shea she's the heroine in the broken land series Pathfinder. She's really really good at her job and like we all know this throughout the book but she's also really really bad at communicating with people and you have to be able to communicate with people to get them to do what you want so you can save their lives and not have them go kill themselves on accident in this world I've created and that like was a big issue with her throughout the series and should overcome that because you have to give them something internal to overcome to really connect with the reader like in it I really enjoy people who are flawed but that flaw is also a strength like Shea as bad as she is with communicating she's also super stubborn and she will do the things that other people won't because of that both of those things so yeah she also has a deep desire to teach other people which kind of conflicts with the thing that a communicating is it's the kind of fingers burn situation isn't she she's tried and failed and so she's keeping back you know I think that's another role there is stars right I think that's another thing like I always give them a backstory that might be like they're inciting incident of why they have this flaw like with Shea it's she led a mission into the broke like the the outlands or the badlands that's what it is the badlands sorry um she led a mission into the badlands and a lot of people died during that mission so she's kind of scarred on the inside so you you have to give them like an emotional backstory for people to like relate and that backstory fuels the events of the book with Kira from the Firebird series we see that she was a commander in the military fighting against an alien invasion and almost her entire team dies and it makes her like kind of curl into like a little ball and shut everybody out for years on end until the events of the series and you see her start to come out of her shell um you have to have both those things to make the reader feel like they're actually talking to a person or like reading about a person versus something that's 2d and flat yeah what you do as well as you hold back those back stories you know not the book may start with you know the that as the the prologue um that you sometimes keep it back for a long long time i wanted in the case of Tate who is purposely kept sort of an easy act basically um when you started working her did you know what it was or were you also at the same state of not knowing as your character so i i knew parts like i knew she wasn't from the era i was writing in and i knew she'd been in the the cryos chamber for like centuries slash thousands of years so i knew that there was like a disconnect i did not know all of the things that came out later i didn't know the part she played or the fact and i knew that she had friends and she'd left behind that era and that's why like the ending you see one of those friends in the dream um but like i knew those but i didn't know all of it um so like i kind of made things up as i went along yeah and that's the great thing about writing is it's kind of be a discovery process to what your brain is suggesting subconsciously isn't it you know that's fun um you also i noticed that you use a sense of isolation and loneliness as a great starting point for your heroines because usually again correct me if i miss one there is a process where your isolated heroine is taken into a new form of family is this again something that felt with a conscious choice or was it something that jumped out right yeah um it's a little bit of both like i think the reason that's like a huge theme throughout is because it's something i've suffered from in the past like there have been instances where i felt isolated or cut off from the people around me and so i've been lucky enough to have people to bring me back into the the mix and not let me stay out and i cold them so i think i think that because that's something i really understand and i've just added it to the writing so like um and they all most of the heroines like have been part of a group at some point and then something has isolated them and then they come back and they learn that you can't really exist by yourself and you have to like put yourself out there and take those chances um i didn't i didn't suffer from anything like that but that's kind of like why they usually go in that path um yeah yeah and thinking about the sort of romance aspect which i said is uh you know it's definitely not the sort of um it's a book which you've waited a long time for the relationship to build first is is there any tips you can give people about writing a slow burn romance from your experience and how you get this so i don't know if i have a replace so it's really weird it's not romantic in the hearts and flowers way it's not it's not like a a notting hill kind of thing or anything like that but there is definitely a attraction so for me like a really good story always involves like relationships in some way and i i find i like to have them pair up by the under the series but the book is primarily about like whoever the main character has whether it's Shaya or Kira or Tay um though their journey is the focus of the story but i want those journeys to also incorporate having maybe a romantic partner um so like that's that i think that's like the biggest uh way i do it is like the story is for instance with um Kira it's about finding her friend that's been kidnapped by aliens um and then during the course of that journey she meets great on and then eventually they become like he's not gonna let her just go and be by herself and kill herself in this mission she's undertaken so they kind of but hadn't and they kind of come together and realize they're on the same side um so i think that's the biggest thing is like have to let them come to the realization slowly and uh some a very slow person when it comes to romance like my husband and i dated for like three years before we got married it was a year before we said we'd love each other uh so it's it's something that i like i'm not the person who will like fall in love i might be attracted but i'm gonna take my time getting to the realization and i wanted that to be something that my characters had because um love isn't supposed to be easy it's it's supposed to be a journey and i i think that's what i tried for in my books um i also don't do like uh trying love triangles because i really i don't like them i'm like i'm very black and white in my care you uh once you someone that's kind of like the only person in our my mind uh and my character's mind so that's why i don't like to do like over together we're not together over together we're not together type things yeah i think for me um love triangles were kind of spoiled or exhausted maybe as the word by the the twilight books when they were out kind of like oh no and there was a lot of other similar books at the time not another love triangle so yeah i'm with you there so um i actually spend probably more time listening to your books than i do uh reading them because i find them great for just listening to what i'm doing my dog books and you know stacking the dishwasher and all those sort of household things um so what do you think about the audiobooks and the role they're now playing in bringing you new audiences do you for example do you have a say in who reads them so yes um i tanters the one who publishes my audience and i get the final say like they will suggest narrators for me like do you like this narrator for this story and then i have a yes or vote and if i don't like them they'll go find more um but i i have a very confession to make i've never listened except for mistesh which i produced on my own i've never actually listened to a full book of mine because i find it extremely creating hearing my words right back to me so um i hope they're really good and people have said they are so that they are they are they are they are good yeah yeah no so i think you can be you can rest assured there then good ambassadors for your work and i do look for even though i've read the books i still will get the um the audio version just because they're i think for me listening to audiobooks i find it hard to listen to i know a literary novel or a classic um some kind of dekins or something on audio but uh a well told fantasy novel like yours are just perfect audio listens they keep you you know you can follow the plot and keep you interested so um also i on my read of your website you mentioned that you have a secret project i don't want you you'll see i'm not asking you to a divulge what that is but are we talking about a new series are you starting something entirely new is that what's going on there that's that's yeah i i have like four or five series that have been in my brain for like a couple years now and i'm getting to the point where it's hard to find things to read they want to read is the books in my head um and that's what happened when i wrote firebird is like i had three series going and i knew i shouldn't do another series and um i couldn't i couldn't resist anymore i i wrote that book like mostly on the weekend um after i finished whatever the main book was for the week and i'm getting to the point where i'm starting to wanting to take time from what i'm working on to to do this new stuff um so yeah there is stuff coming down the pipe and i'm really really excited for it um um i'm going back and forth on which one i'm gonna first but yeah i'm super super super excited well that's that's great you know i'll be amongst the customers buying it first so that's wonderful so one of the things that we do writing courses for people who are um sort of stretching their wings as fantasy writers and we spend one at least one of our sessions on world building so when you do well-bid building are you the kind of person who does the talking thing i was spending like ages building a whole world and a map and um i know that which is which is and all that stuff or uh well you tell us what you do um so i i don't i don't spend a lot of time um on the world building like i will so the place in the setting in the world i do take time like with pathfinders i knew i wanted like this certain theme of outside writers versus insiders and us versus them and and i thought how i can demonstrate to readers and i knew that there was this tribe called the triteri who are from this distant lands who were conquering things and i wanted a clear debit between the lowlands and the highlands and the badlands um but that was pretty much the extent like i didn't go through and say okay where are the major cities like i know that there's pathfinders have their own little castle somewhere in highlands but everything else is like okay i know i want these to be like very small villages that have been isolated from the world because of the situation which you learn about in the books um but i didn't go through and be like oh let's go name all of these these villages now before i even start writing it's kind of something where you you start writing and you're like okay well they have to go to this village to meet these people so what is village called what is it where is it located do they have a goods for the reason for being there like you have to have a reason for everything like you can't just have somebody go somewhere and be like very nice here's like all these really cool things you have to have a reason for being there and for them it was like trade um and then you kind of start going from there and then religion will come into it sometimes like based off like okay do you want religions in here okay what does that religion looks like what is the world what are their fears and then you go from there and you build it um as for the the language i kind of just like put syllables together and then that's like whatever the word is um and like i try to think about culturally like what is going to be important to this race i'm creating or the species um and i try to think about those kinds of things um but yeah thank you and i think i'd be a relief to some people who feel that who you know a lot of there are fantasy writers that do the other way around obviously and spend ages on this and they can be quite daunting if you turn up a writing class and someone says yes here's my novel series i've been working on since i was 14 and they speak six languages and you know you don't have to do that is what you're saying you can be very sensitive i think it reads for me it reads better if you discover the interesting things about your world a little bit organically like you should start from a base you should have an idea of like the topography like the types of people like what's important to those people people um like if there's a lot that in there you can you can kind of think about that beforehand but i'd prefer to let the the circumstances of the novel dictate what we're talking about like in um dry running chronicles you have this religion but it's based on ancestor when that's because of the people at the beginning of this world having to make sacrifices and everybody kind of worships those five three or four people um but they're people and it's not like and that's why that that religion has developed that way i i took the circumstances of the world and then developed something that made sense within the pyramid of that world and i think for me that's the best way to develop a world um other people will probably tell you something different i think it differs for every person but you have to find out what works um for me organically building the world and making it a little bit more complicated with each book that's what's really interesting about writing and reading um fantasy and sci-fi yeah and i'm using a character to whom everything is new is a way of using the natural way of showing because they're discovering it too um so you don't get the download of information unnecessarily you know the other the other port that you can get right well it's been wonderful talking to you Toby and before we let you go back to your writing hopefully um we always end the podcast with wearing all the fantasy worlds is it best place for something now i came to your writing first through the pathfinder series in fact my daughter who's in her 20s said to me oh mom you know we often share booktips she said oh i really like this series i think you'll like it um which is true um so we and uh shea as you mentioned is very good at her job of finding a path and she has some maps some annotated maps and there's quite a theme about bad maps and her own good maps uh in the books so i thought i'd ask you to pick not your own necessarily though feel free to do so where you think in all the fantasy worlds is a best map uh so a would have trouble like there's so many places you could pick uh i'll stick to my own stuff because i don't want to actually say somebody's name wrong um but i think from my my stuff like pat the pathfinder world would have the best the most interesting maps at least like when you talk about a single planet like firebird that's like a whole but there's star maps um i haven't really investigated the typography and all that stuff for that series but i think about the broken lands in the pathfinder just have the best type of maps so just coming back on my side i was thinking about this and um i think there's i'll have to mention of course a sort of honorable mention to um the marauder's map of which is obviously a map of one building in harry potter but that you know that's a magic map that moves uh that would be really cool and then there's of course the iconic maps and i think if we go iconic it's got to be the one in the hobbit um with the dragon flying and and the moon letters that were hidden yeah that we like i was to pick somebody else is always going to be like hobbit and talking that world because like he he puts so much thought into it um i don't really know too many other like there are other others who have put that much thought but like i feel like he's went above whatever you want yeah thank you so much for spending some time with us and uh we'll be putting a link to your website in the show notes so people can go and if they haven't yet had the delight of reading your series go and find your books and there's a brief description of each series on your website so people will find which one they want urban fantasy or whatever anyway so thank you very much and thank you for having me it's a pleasure thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the oxford center for fantasy visit oxford center for fantasy dot org to join in the fun find out about our online courses in person stays in oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide