Transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.
[0:11] My name is Julia Golding. I run the activities of our centre, but I'm also an author in the other part of my life. And one of my favourite things is to talk to fellow authors. And I've been joined today by Hannah Kingsley, who is producing, is it your debut title, Hannah? Yeah, it's my debut, which is called Soul Hate, which is coming out in February 2025. But for those of you who are watching this on YouTube.
[0:44] I'll describe for those who are listening, Hannah also has another extraordinary skill, which she is well do you call yourself a book maker book binder um i i kind of give book makeovers i suppose you could kind of makeover yeah and she produces the most wonderful artistic versions of books which hopefully we can talk about um a little bit later so the first question i have for you hannah uh is what i very often ask guests on this podcast is who was your favorite fantasy author growing up did you have like an entry author who made you think yeah i want to do that i want to read those kind of books um i mean i i fell in love with books so young um my mom just my mom's a bookworm as well so i fell in love with books so young so when i was Oh, when I was thinking about this, I think two names really like stood out to me from like childhood. And it was Angie Sage with the Septimus Heap series. Oh, yes. Yeah. I loved those books. I devoured them. In fact, I still have my very worn, tattered copy in my parents' house.
[2:05] And then the other book was probably like the Rangers Apprentice series by John Flanagan. Again so yeah um we had those books my son has still got them and they were beautifully bound weren't they if you i don't know did you get the hardbound versions or did you get the hardback versions or did you get the paperback um because i remember they were first published in hardbacks which weren't that expensive so you know we missed that we missed it was a stage in the early 2000s when hardbacks weren't that expensive um yeah so they're wonderful presentations uh no i uh we yeah as i say um we got them paperback and i think by that point like book five or book six was already published by the time i got my hands on them so uh i would have loved a hardback version though i have to go snooping on ebay or something for that later yeah, Well, they're in my attic. My son still wants them. Must get them out.
[3:05] So your story, Soul Hate, is really a sort of riposter, an answer to the fated lover's trope in fantasy.
[3:16] Well, it's also in romance, isn't it, of all sorts, the idea that you have a soulmate who is out there. I've actually produced a whole series of books, teen books, under my Joss Sterling name, which uses this idea of you have a sort of fated person. And I also, like you, I was interested in what happens if the person turns out to be awful. You know, that was later on in the series. Initially, I started with the idea of thinking, oh, in Finding Sky, this sounds like a wonderful idea and very romantic. And then by the time I got to about book three, I was thinking actually it all can be horribly wrong and evil and yeah so I would very much appreciated finding your spin on this of soul hate so do you want to just outline the sort of legend or the myth underlying the soulmate soul hate dichotomy that you have in your world yeah so in this world um there exists this bit is the fact this is the bit that doesn't matter what continent you are every single person has a soul hate and a soul mate so soul mate being your traditional love of your life belong together the other half of your soul perfect pairing um supposedly you know and it's very much that love at first sight.
[4:42] Uh soulmate idea um but then on the other side of the coin you know every every thing in nature has balances and checks and opposites um we've got the soul hate which is the enemies at first sight that instant instead of instant you know adoration and love and you've got instant repulsion and hatred and an urge to kill them and supposedly it's your your fated worst nemesis this is the person that is going to destroy you and everything that you love and that is determined by fate who is very much a godly figure and he has two daughters uh the sister sister of love sister of hate and between three of them they control these bonds and everybody has them and it's known but it's a matter of chance if you meet them um the statistic i think i threw out there once in the book is like you have a one in ten chance of meeting one of your fated um so it's it's not.
[5:43] It's common enough that people know that it happens um but you also can't waste your life waiting for for it to occur because it could just never happen that's interesting so did you have a think about the size of your population when you were trying to work out your one in ten when you're undoing the world building underlying logic of your world yeah yeah no i i had to think i thought long and hard about how how the fated system really worked uh because what i didn't want is everybody has a soulmate and a soul hate and everybody meets them all the time because that's that leads to a very different world um or like a society um i and i think it downplays the role that the choices we make throughout our lives um has on the outcome of our lives as well um so when i came up with that one in ten figure i wanted it to be sort of like common enough that you know everyone's like yeah it happens it could absolutely happen but also not so common that you're going to be waiting around because your soulmate is very likely to be around the corner, I should say that this set-up, this mythic set-up, it doesn't stay in the realms of gods and fate and things. It's very much a story about people living in this system. Very much, yeah.
[7:13] The fates are something that people know about. It's their religious structure, as it were, but this is very much about stories of people dealing with the fallout of a soul-hate or a soul-mate.
[7:25] And the way I pitched this to my agent was well the pg version is what if fate was a jerk, and just lived for the drama and she liked that pitch so well yeah I mean absolutely it's it's cruel cruel but also the idea of him being just liking to see suffering is is has a very long-standing tradition doesn't it in the western canon um snipping the the threads yeah fate doesn't have a very good press no what stood out for me um in your book is actually having a heroine renza who is basically a serious she has a serious role in society um it's like i thought it was reminded me of being a young senator in ancient rome for example She's part of the governing structure, she's trying to reform society, she's trying to find funding, and she's interested in what budgets are available for things. These are all crunchy issues. It's not like the princess whose next thing is the ball, it's very much that she is a.
[8:37] Engaged in society in a way where she has influence over events. Do you have any thoughts? I was wondering if you arrived at her being that kind of person because you
[8:49] have been annoyed by other fantasy heroines or characters. I mean, what was the thinking about her? So my thinking for women in general in this book, in particular.
[9:01] Is that women can be strong in any number of ways there is not one way to be strong I think I have read a lot of books where a strong woman can kick a man's ass nine ways from Sundays she's just a ninja with a sword and I love it don't get me wrong that that's really engaging to read about I really enjoy it I have definitely you know written books in my drawer where that is a skill that the character has but it is not the only way that a woman can be strong um and I really wanted to write a a wide range of um women being strong and um you know have the skills that they have being the skills that are required to save the day as it were yeah um yeah I mean when I came to Renza um I I wrote her as someone you know she's a young person who's idealistic intelligent passionate actually wants to go out there and change the world as a lot of young people I think do want to do you know they've a lot of people have these ideas um but feel like they can't act on them so I I think by giving Renzo that position where she could go and act on them um probably a little bit therapeutic yeah.
[10:20] Yeah, it's more than just a sort of campaigner. She actually has the, she seems to enjoy the politics of horse trading and she understands the point of view of somebody else who may want the budget for, let's say, you know, the equivalent of the police force. But she wants to fund the science and technology artists. And so it feels like she gets a lot of pleasure from being part of that system. Like a young MP or a young senator might do. And I thought that struck me as being refreshing to read in a fantasy book, that you bothered to actually imagine somebody running the society.
[11:04] You know, how does it run? This is how it's run. This is our decisions, how we come up with things in this world. Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the things when I was world building was, again, i've i've read a lot of uh fantasies where the political structure is very much based off of medieval europe uh you know kings and lords and barons and all of that um but when i was writing uh about helice one i wanted a a world without sexism uh because i was writing helice as an escape um and i didn't want sexism in the world where helice was an escape uh so that's just not a thing um but i also thought okay well this is my my fantasy world what would i want the political structure to look like um okay there would be a democracy of some shape or form um and the people in that democracy should probably be passionate about what they're doing which would be quite nice um so yeah i mean giving giving renza i mean yeah i i don't know someone who is.
[12:13] I'm trying to think how best to say it. All of my friends in their various different jobs in real life do it because they love it, so they don't shy away from the details. And I didn't want to do the injustice of the same, if that makes sense. You also have two main heroes, as I read it in this book, Nooris and Idris, but yet you avoid a love triangle cliche. Tell us a little bit about... I'm going to let you do this job because I don't want to reveal too much. Oh, don't. I'm terrible for that. Anyway, tell us a little bit of what you were thinking as you came up with these two people who are in relationship with Renza. Yeah.
[13:00] So I guess one inspiration for one of the figures, again, I'm not sure how much is a spoiler and how much isn't. But one was very much the classic star-crossed lover, Romeo and Juliet, Montague, Capula, forbidden relationship aspect. The one that society frowns upon, the one that you shouldn't have. And then the other being the boy next door, the friends to, are we going to be more than friends? The um yeah the one that everyone's rooting for as it were the the i think that both play into their own romantic tropes within fantasy genre or the romantic genre um yeah that's probably an inspiration behind them i definitely kind of deliberately didn't want a love triangle yeah um, Again, that's just not a trope that I felt. I do enjoy the romance love triangle trope on occasion, but it just didn't feel like that would sit with Renza and who she is as a person. She's a very decisive person. She's someone who very much stands on principle, and she wouldn't string two people along, I don't think. Not intentionally, anyway.
[14:29] She's sort of one of those people that's like I don't have time for this I'll just make a decision and move on, but yeah I guess that was the inspiration behind those two those two men I don't think it's a plot spoiler to say one of them is in this situation of being the fated one in a way soul hate so stopping there.
[14:51] But just unpacking this idea of soul hate Do you feel that there is an application to things you see in our real world? I'm not talking, it's not like, I'm not going as far as an allegory, but I found that I was applying it to situations like Tootsie and Hutu or various sort of unthinking prejudice you might have against somebody from another religion or race or even next, you know and the next town over or a different football team i found myself thinking of those parallels where we have a this urge in us just when somebody shows themselves to be different to attack that difference consciously that's not what i wrote but i am certainly not mad if that's how people have taken it because yeah like now you mentioned it it does apply i think i think consciously the way the way i wrote it was um i'll bring it down one second um, It was more about, for me, firstly, it was about overcoming bad first impressions and not letting first impressions linger.
[16:13] And then, for me, it was more about fighting for your principles in a world that wants to change you. The world says you've got to do X. That's not who I am. The world is giving me an excuse. It's saying it's okay. It's saying that this is the thing I've got to do. It's giving me the easy out, but I'm not going to do that. That's against who I am. That's not what I stand for. This is who I am. And another part of it may be when I worked a corporate job, I was very much the only woman in a very male-dominated space. I used to work with a lot of coding.
[16:54] And there were times, as any woman who's ever worked in a workspace space will experience um when you get frustrated there are people that you don't get on with um and you just you you're, you remind yourself that you're not going to act on how annoyed you are and keep smiling and keep doing your job and get your head down and get it done and everything is better off for it. So those were sort of lots.
[17:25] That's my conscious input into it. But I think what you said also does apply. So I'm glad for that. Yeah, good. I think, you know, Tolkien has a famous phrase where he says that he doesn't like allegory because that's the control of the author but he likes applicability because that's in the control of the reader so I love that I mean I deliberately leave some stuff open-ended for for the reader to decide what happens so um yeah I my authority stops on the page yeah yeah I'm not going to give too much away because the joys of reading it is finding out all the shocking twists and turns um which it definitely has as a novel but I was interested in your process are you uh someone who sits down and right I'm going to plot this out or are you one who writes to discover your plot as on your on the way I'm kind of a mixture um I.
[18:24] My mum has a nickname for me and it's chaos and that would definitely apply to my writing process a little bit um particularly at the beginning stages so i will just get random ideas but maybe it's a scene maybe it's a character maybe it's a concept maybe it's uh just just uh like what would you do to really make this trope entirely different or you know those sorts of things and then i start sort of combining different ideas i've got like sticky notes everywhere like if If you look to the other half of the office, it would just be a wall of sticky notes.
[19:03] Yeah, so it starts kind of with me just writing whatever the scene is, maybe fleshing out the character, maybe fleshing out a little bit of the world building, adding bits in. In this case, it was fleshing out Renza and that first opening chapter, so police and the high chamber and who she was and then what she cared about and then the idea all sort of coming together. So once I had fleshed out the main characters, what their goal was, or the things that were important to them, it was very easy for me to then work out, okay, well, how do we threaten that? And to then, once I had all of those groundwork sort of bricks in place, stop, plot, and go back. And then inevitably work out that the plot doesn't work and change it halfway through. Yeah.
[19:57] Revision, revision. Yes. Chaos is definitely the main way I work, but that's generally the very loose way I work. So the politics of your novel remind me very much of the city-states of Renaissance Italy in that what she's running or helping run is something that's on that kind of size. You know it's not a whole vast continent or anything it's yeah it's that kind of thing but and that also goes along with the suggestion in the names and um the level of technology they've reached um so it's a sort of mid you know i would say a renaissance kind of technology you could do tell me if i'm wrong but that's why no no that's yeah yeah that's absolutely right yeah um but also So you've taken the decision to have vocabulary that's consciously modern in the dialogue. Um, people say, you know, they snark, which is, you know, Americanism and they say, okay. And they say, kid, what was your decision behind that blend? And do you have a sort of idea of where your world is or is it just.
[21:14] And not define, it doesn't matter. You don't need to define it. It is what it is in the book. Yeah, so the main decision that I wrote it that way is readability. I think, well, first of all, Soul Hate started off as a YA. And readability is obviously very important, particularly for the younger end of YA, which is where it originally started. Obviously, it is no longer YA for anyone listening. It is definitely adult now, for the brilliant suggestion of my editor. Um and um yeah it's so it started that way for readability but also i think it's important for um maybe people who are new into the fantasy space so romanticy is drawing which is probably what this book would be defined as um it's drawing a lot of new readers into the fantasy space and And I think readability,
[22:13] unfortunately for fantasy books, can be a big turn off for people for fantasy. Like truly fantastic books like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings can be quite difficult to read, particularly if it's the first time that you're reading a fantasy book.
[22:31] Fantasy book and that could end up putting you off the genre which would be a crying shame um so i think by having having that modern vocabulary throughout um just sort of invites you in a little bit closer and um makes it easier to immerse yourself in in the world um so yeah that's that's where that came from yeah um you also clearly value artisans yes um in in in in your world was it called the market the garden the garden yeah yeah the garden and the market's the other one yeah i've conflated my head i'm sorry um so do you want to tell us a little bit about your own creativity um and also perhaps choose which way around you do this and the place of creatives in soul hate because it's very much a described ornate embellished decorated.
[23:27] Artistic worlds that you've created yes um so I guess I'll start with my own creativity um you know I I am very creative as this will probably show yeah just so those who are listening as I mentioned at the beginning behind Hannah is the most wonderful range of books which as i'm looking at it the pages you've decorated you've turned the way and you've decorated the pages as they face outwards is that correct yeah so my my business specializes in um digital sprayed edges um so i do lots of very intricate design work on sprayed edges limited editions uh but i also do cover foiling like like with that what book is that that is fourth wing by Rebecca Yaros so I do all sorts for special.
[24:26] Traditions um but um you know I didn't obviously start out doing this my mum is creative as well I grew up she was always painting with her watercolors and I was in art lessons from it from being a kid piano lessons too um and um you know so so my mum always fostered my creativity.
[24:48] Uh I'm I'm the the girl that always said that she wanted to be a writer from when she was a little girl always knew what I wanted to do I was the girl that was begging my mum to let me on the computer to write my story because um if my mum didn't you know limit my screen time I'd be writing my story all day every day until four o'clock in the morning um so yeah I mean I've got lots of different outlets for creativity um but one of the ones that I think they'll lead on through in a minute is that um i also you know in fact uh i have a chemistry degree where i had a focus on quantum chemistry um and that also required a degree of creativity and i think oftentimes the stem subjects like engineering physics chemistry um architecture all of those sort of like stem subjects scientific subjects there's a perception that they don't allow for creativity um which i think is a crying shame because problem solving is creativity you know um it's you're working within the rules of your science your subject matter as much as an artist works within the.
[26:02] And that's kind of, I guess, where I wanted, when I was building the garden, I wanted to have women in particular, but artisans of all kinds,
[26:15] STEM and art, you know, whether they're music, they're writers.
[26:20] They're jewelers, they're architects, they're engineers, whatever it is they're doing, they're still artisans, they're still creatives, they're still important. Um and how what they give when nurtured um just makes a place just more beautiful than it was before um so I guess that's kind of kind of what I did with the books I suppose I should ask you at this point in case someone is looking at this and thinking wow I'd really love to get a an edition of these so are you doing these for publishers or is it like single commissions by fans of the book who sends you a hardback how does it work the the business oh yeah sure so um i do work for publishers as well sometimes they'll want like a limited run of a book because i can work to a minimum of one so i can also do custom commissions straight for readers but i also do my own designs that i put up for sale um that that people can buy from my website so so yeah.
[27:18] There's there's sort of a mixture so if there's a particular book say that's just really meaningful to you and you want a completely unique special edition you can hire me to give it a complete makeover or you can look at the titles i've got available on my website and buy one of those or keep an eye out on your favorite publisher yeah i'll make sure i include that as a link in the show notes okay um i always think of fantasy as very good as framing difficult things in thought-provoking packages you know you can move into a fantasy world things that trouble you in our real world and have a look at them um so where are you going next on your writing journey have you got plans i'm sure you have told me you were the little girl who was always writing, As per my contract, book two and three.
[28:06] So I've got to write the rest of the trilogy first, which is fine because I'm 80% of the way through book two at the moment and raring to go for book three. After this, who knows? Definitely more writing. I have lots of, to say I have lots of ideas is probably an understatement. I think there's still a lot that could be explored in this world with this concept of soul hates and soul mates that just even three books is not enough to get through it um i think there's a lot there i'd love to explore uh feminine rage i'd love to explore that as a theme uh the bonds of sisterhood i'd love to explore that as well um and maybe play with some other some other tropes some other well-loved um ideas or concepts in the fantasy space yeah unpack the dark lord yeah exactly you know unpack the chosen one you know okay what if the chosen one is the wrong chosen one what if they got it wrong what if he fails what if i quite like the fact in the harry potter.
[29:19] Series that actually it could also have been neville exactly exactly i love that i love it's one of those ones okay and what if everyone thought it was harry all this time and then neville just comes out here surprising everybody it is kind of too because you know without him it would have failed so i like the fact that she actually undercut the chosen one this at the end yeah exactly i mean it's one of those all of those there are so many tropes out there and they've been done so well for so long for a really good reason because they're great tropes so let's see what else we can add to it let's see what what other spins we can do for it that give it something a bit a bit different because we know them and we love them and they're always going to be absolute classics so we can absolutely play with them a little bit yeah do you have a fantasy tip um for listeners something that they might want to read or watch or do as a creative uh it's kind of kind of boring but like read and watch widely not just within your genre definitely take steps outside of your genre if you are a strictly fantasy you know.
[30:28] For sake of argument medieval fantasy that's your thing you love it read some sci-fi read some horror read some um speculative uh because that will broaden your horizons it will introduce new maybe not necessarily new ideas because um i feel like fantasy can apply almost everything but it may put it in a different light uh but the other thing is um i like to play games with what i'm watching or reading um so it will be games like um okay what's the strangest thing that could happen right now and how would i rewrite what i've watched so far so that it makes absolute plausible sense or i would take a character from one tv show be like right he is now in this he understands the rules of the game um how does it change having this character here or how does it change to have this mcguffin suddenly here um and just play sort of that game in my head of okay well how would that change the story how would that change the narrative and sometimes it can be.
[31:36] Hilarious sometimes it can be uh unexpected um and it's a great way to pass the time if you're waiting for the bus or if you're on a long journey or if you're in a like a long car journey with some other creatives and you're looking for a way to pass the time uh can yeah it's it's yeah those are the kind of things that i play i have long conversations with my eldest son about things like the marvel universe yeah you know how what characters you might because he's in deep into the lore of the comics uh yeah what would make interesting if if there's been a marvel film that failed in some way which of course there has been a few what would you do to make this work yeah that's that sort of thing like how would you change it you know okay so um going back to harry potter okay cool uh iron man is now part of this universe how does that change things um tony stark is joining harry potter in the fight against voldemort or joining voldemort.
[32:41] Unreformed days he might have been selling weapons to voldemort you know you can see that happening exactly exactly like it just just changes the rules makes it more interesting and i i think it it ends up affecting all of the writing all the creative stuff that comes out of you because suddenly you're breaking a lot of the rules in your thinking for what a traditional setting might be you know your traditional uh harping back to lord of the rings because it's well known your traditional setting in your and your your kingdoms your political structure suddenly if iron man turns up that changes all of the rules what is and isn't possible how would people react would people be happy would they be, cross would they call him a witch probably but um yeah yeah game playing great source of creativity and so we always finish with thinking where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something and i was struggling to come up with a one for you and i thought actually because at the heart of this is the idea of being fated and that the fates themselves exist in certain.
[33:46] Under different guises in many a pantheon or even in going back to the idea of the chosen one that has the idea of being fated to do something. So where would... And then I thought, well, I can't ask where's the best place because mostly meeting fate is rubbish.
[34:03] I was about to say, even outside of my book, most people don't enjoy meeting fate. So I've put in the Chinese thing of may you live in interesting times. I thought, where would you think... Playing this game where do you think would be most interesting to go and meet fate um to have that experience of seeing a fate working out in a fantasy world and perhaps disrupting it, i mean well in in my book um it's got to be situational um depending because depending on where you are um depends on what you're then forced to do next um if you're in the holy states where they very much believe in fate, you've got to do whatever fate tells you to do. If fate tells you to blow up a building, you've got to do it. Fate told you to do it. You've got to do it. And you'd be forced to do it. And that would be quite interesting. But if you were somewhere like Malaya, which is briefly mentioned in the book, they'd probably be like, maybe don't do that. Maybe take a shill pill.
[35:06] So I think it's very much situational. I think if you met the fates, straight up met them, I think whatever happens would be terrifying. Yeah, so if you're going to play your game and you're going to take your soul hate idea into another fantasy book, where would you like to plonk it down and see what happens? If we're sticking with the idea that fate is a jerk, an absolute jerk and just living for the drama, Um, I think maybe, I think Lord of the Rings, can you just shake up? That would be quite funny. Yeah. Um... I'm trying to think what else would be a good fantasy setting is to just suddenly throw in the most terrible soulmates and soulhates pairings that you could think of.
[36:01] Honestly, I know there's a concept of fate or force in Star Wars, but I think that could be quite funny.
[36:11] Yeah. Yes, because that's quite cerebral, that. It's not in the realms of person-to-person, is it? It's a force, two sorts of forces, and people inhabit those forces. Exactly. It's a personal animus that you're exploring. Yeah, exactly. I think it'd be quite fun to sort of throw it into something like, I don't know, Peace Pan or Wind in the Willows, suddenly kind of explode the world and say, right. Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking you could throw it into something like the Marvel movies and just see how that affects it. Because what I like about the idea of the soul hate is that soul hate isn't an evil person. It's just someone who is not you. Yeah, it can be anyone. How do we work together with somebody who is your chalk to your cheese? Every time you look at them, you are filled with the urge to physically murder them. Like, it's a physical violence reaction. And even if you're not a violent person, um you will be filled with this like this like absolute full body disgust and loathing um, hannah thank you so much for your time and i look forward to seeing not only this book in print but also your version of it when you get to give it its own makeover in your wonderful studio thank you very much for talking to us no problem it was thank you for having me.
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