Stargazy Pies And Imperial Stories - Part 2

0:06 Yeah, I think the thing which I've taken away from it is a sense of love and fellowship between these palace servants who have given up a conventional life to serve the emperor and the emperor himself. Um, and it's, they've, they've been the person who dresses him, the person who guards him, that kind of thing, the person who writes his letters, um, and it's, they've, they've made this own little community and a hu huge amount of humor in it as well, because you can get the perspective, even though it's all from Cliff's point of view, you do understand their perspective on him because he's self aware enough to know when they're sort of manipulating him into a, yet more ridiculous outfit for some ceremony or something. Yeah, that's absolutely lovely. So, uh, you've answered the question as your, in this one, you were character led, but do you swap your, um, technique depending on what sort of genre you've decided to write in, in your extended world? Would you, in another one, for example, plotted out more entirely.

1:10 To a certain degree in general, I'm a character led writer. And, um, even with like the Starkeys E pie and the greening and dark books are more plot driven. Um, but even there, I tend to kind of focus on the character more. I tend to be a writer into, I write into the dark, um, which is to say, I, I I'm an exploratory writer. Um, as I said, I usually know kind of where I want the story to end, and I know how it fits into my overarching kind of, uh, world building, but I leave a lot of it up to, to just figuring it out as I go along. And I find that I find that very fun. I enjoy that process. Um, yes, I would say I'm normal character, character led.

1:54 So do you, I mean, the, arguably the sort of very special thing about fantasy and science fiction is that you do your own well world building though, of course, in historical fiction, you're also building a world in a sense, but anyway, it's clearly more of a well building task. Do you have any, um, tips for people who are wanting to write their own fantasy, um, how to organize or approach well building? Well, I wouldn't say I'm very organized about it. People are forever asking me if I have maps and things like that. And I'm kind of like, well, no, I have sort of sketches that I've done on the back of a piece of an envelope kind of thing. I'm not, I'm not very organized. Um, I don't have a binder of all the useful measurements and stuff like that, which, uh, I probably could do with, um, it's one of those things I keep thinking I should go back and like make an actual, make more notes for myself. I keep a lot of it in my head, but from that point of view, one thing I do find is, as I said, I try and draw from like less obvious sources.

2:54 And for me that's often, um, I read a lot of, of sort of micros histories, I guess you could say about specific things and try and build out from there. That's one element. So, you know, you read a history of oh, garden design or costumes, or, um, I dunno, just looking at my bookshelves here, even something like, um, top or, you know, the history of the teapots or something like that. And like, they sound very silly, but, and very, very, very precise. But at the same time, if you kind of think about, well, where did they come from? Who builds those? You know, give your characters slightly different things to do, cuz that's more fun too. Like, you know, like some, you know, where's the cloth coming from? Where is the food coming from?

3:37 Where's the water coming? How is it being cleaned or not cleaned? You know, what effects does that have? Where's the waste going? I once, um, <laugh> once went to the sewer museum in Paris and that is ever after made me question this, this thing about like, where is the water purification system? How is that working? You know, that could be working by magic. That's how it's working on Zuni than, um, in other places it's, it's not, you know, it's much more traditional, like, uh, you know, um, sort of refu and rubbish rubbish, but that matters. So that's one element I do. And the other part that I find is if I've made a mistake or something that seemed like, you know, if you're like, oh, in that book, I said this.

4:18 And then in this book I said the other thing, and they, those seem to directly contradict each other. And you know, if it's a work in progress, the logical thing is to fix the one that's a work in progress. But I often find that if you stop and say to yourself, no, wait a moment. How can those both be true? You know, what can I do to make those both work? Is that because person a misunderstood it or person B understands it better or there's something bigger that those are both kind of elements of, or, you know, like that kind of thing. I find that adds a real depth and nuance to the world because like, if I I'm one of those people that I find if I do too much, like, um, too much like front of brain, world building, it becomes a little too smooth and there's not like a lot of the nooks and crannies in it for me.

5:06 Whereas I find if you do kind of the back end world building, as you go and try and let it grow out logically out of kind of something unusual that it becomes much richer. So for me, that's something I enjoy and I try really hard to visualize, um, places. I'm not always great at that. I'm better with, um, gardens. That's a kind of a hobby of mine gardening. And so I really think about the, the like ecology of a place and what that might feel like and look up that kind of stuff. So I guess for world building, if you make a mistake, it can be an opportunity, um, to make it much richer. Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting. I haven't heard anyone say it like that actually. Um, so how was your journey to publishing? What, what route have you taken?

5:54 Well, I decided, um, decided I was going to do kind of the indie publishing side largely because I wanted to write these interconnected stories and I wanted to be in control of what I was writing and when, and when I kind of really became serious about writing was when that it was just after the kind of first flush of that in the kind of, you know, 2012 was really when it kind of started to really pick up. And I had a friend who was much more, um, aware of how self-publishing and indie publishing was going. And we'd spend a lot of time talking about it at that point. And I thought to myself, because I wasn't writing conventional stories, cuz I like these ones that are like around the corners of the epic quest and things like that, that I thought, you know, that's really something I want to do.

6:39 I don't want somebody to tell me that that's not like a going to sell because it's not a conventional story, you know? And, um, which is a real concern cuz of course they're trying to, there are businesses and they're trying to make money back as well. Whereas if I was willing to do it myself, I could, you know, if I have something that nobody likes because it's a very strange book, then that's okay, that's mine. So for me it was that. And then I've just spent, you know, I probably spent the last six or seven years working on building up my, um, my works. And um, for me, what I did was I, I kind of decided to take the approach that my stories are interconnected and my style is fairly consistent. Um, my, or I guess my, my voice, my authorial voice is fairly consistent across, across my books, even when they're in somewhat different genres. And I thought to myself, you know, if, if somebody likes one of my books, they're largely gonna like most of them or all of them, they're gonna go and read the other ones.

7:33 And so my general plan was basically to just keep writing them until I got to some sort of hopefully, um, level where there were enough that and enough readers coming in that, um, people would be, you know, enjoying finding the others and that's worked, I am going, full-time writing this week. So I'm pretty pleased with that. Thank you. So I basically. So how do you, um, manage with the editing and all that kind of stuff? Have you got a, a team of beta readers behind, you know. I'm a one, one reader kind of person? Um, I like standing, I do have, I do have a couple people that other author friends, particularly, um, and we kind of trade reading and talking about plots and, and kind of craft level things. And then I, um, have somebody to do kind of copy editing of some form once we get to that point. Yeah.

8:31 I do layout in the cover design myself <laugh> so I've been working on that and um, that's something I may well outsource in future, but I enjoy it and I enjoy the, the kind of, that process of it too. So yeah. So for me, um, yeah, so that's how I do it basically. So what next for you? Are you, um, remaining in your extensive world? Are you, where are you going? I am remaining in my. Somewhere else. Um, well actually I'm writing a, I've been working on a sequel to the hands of the emperor for the last couple of years. And this is, I'm kind of moving to focusing on that, um, over the summer.

9:12 So I'm hoping that will be out in probably late October, early November is, is the goal with that one. It's gonna be another big honking book. So I'm not giving an exact date until it's a little closer to completion. It's, it's more than halfway done right now, but, um, you never know the, the kind of the final throws every once in a while you write something and you realize the story's gone way off to a different direction, that's much better and you have to throw out a whole bunch of it in order to make that work. So that could still happen. And, um, so I'm working on that. The re the book I just had coming out, come out last week is called, uh, the red outable Prama pool, which is, um, kind of the second in a, in a new series, um, about the red company.

9:52 And I'll be working on that. And those should be another greening and dart later this year, beginning of next year as well. So keep on going with those ones. The greening and dart series is at six, and I think they'll probably be 12 by the end time that that one's done. So just sort of poke along with those. I'm one of the, I don't like writing the same character point of view back to back. I find it much better to switch to a new character. And so I tend to, to skip around a little bit like that. Well, put a link to your, uh, website in the show notes, so people can come and find all these books and, uh, decide which one they're going to start with. So, um, star GZ pie for people who don't know is actually a real dish that you would find a traditional dish from. I think Cornal, uh, in fact, and it's, um, a pie where it is the pastry is laid.

10:41 So the fish and head and tail poke out as though it's sort of breaking through from the crust. So in our podcast, we always end up with where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. And I thought I would ask you, um, for where in all the fantasy worlds that you've seen on television and films or read about in books, where do you think has the best sort of speciality dishes that, uh, you know, you'd like to sample. Well, surely we all want to eat the meal that Billbo produces for the, for the dwarves, right? I I've made CD cake as a result of that particular, um, encounter that one's always been the one that, those stories and, um, some of the ones in the Narnia books too, to be honest, I've always loved the food descriptions in, in both of those, those books.

11:30 Otherwise, I don't know, like, I feel like in some ways those are really high points in terms of food descriptions. Um, you know, it's, it's like that meal that Shasta gets given in the horse and his boy, um, is, you know, like that he is the first time he's ever had half of, you know, and like, you know, the description of the wine and all that kind of stuff, but yeah, and bill those thing, and then I've also Al you know, the, the picnic and the wind and the willows, those are the classic kind of British ones. And I, I don't know, I'm not sure that there's been a lot more that, that kind of peak over those. But, um, I, I was reflecting on this not long ago and thinking that I really needed to up my, um, food descriptions, something kind of work on that a little bit more, really have some sort of great feasts that are like, but not necessarily like spectacular banquets, but just really delightful dishes. Um.

12:20 Yeah. And they can be used for comic effect as well. I, for me, the one I was going to pick is comes in the film galaxy quest. Have you ever seen that? It's one of my favorite films that. Is very funny one, the bit where they're all giving, where they're giving them, what are theoretically all their, like FA their regional specialties for the characters they are. That is such a funny movie. I really enjoy that. So I like this. For those of you hadn't seen it. What happens there is, uh, an alien culture has taken a television sci-fi series as being historical. So when the characters are taken by this culture to try and help them solve a sort of bad problem, they've got, they've built everything for real.

13:01 And this is all very well for the human characters who are given, I know, burgers and French fries, whatever. Um, but poor old Alan Rickman, uh, his character, Dr. Lazarus is given this, this sort of soup tour of life bugs, which crawling out, and he's supposed to eat this because on the program that was supposed to be his, uh, his food. It's just a, and of course, nobody did. Sardon better than Alan Rickman, uh, much missed. Yeah. So that's my pick Victoria, thank you so much for, uh, joining us. And it's a delight to find somebody who has taken a lot of her inspirations from the inkling writers. And from, of course, we, uh, we also mentioned briefly Dorothy L Sayers, but you've said that she's another person who, that you've really enjoyed, um, reading on your route to your own writing.

13:56 So it's been wonderful to meet you and thank you very much for joining us. Well, thank you very much. I thank you for having me. I'm, I'm delighted you enjoy the hands of the emperor and I hope, uh, a few of your readers do as well. And, uh, yeah, the inklings have been a huge part of my, of my formation as a, as a writer. And, um, in many ways I kind of keep reflecting back on them. Probably the green wing and dart ones are a little books are a little more obvious, especially as you get later on into the series, you'll see some much clearer kind of echoes of, of some of the CS Lewis and elements in particular, but overall, the questions that they raise and the, and the joy they have in description and in food and in characters, world building is something that I've always really, really admired.

14:43 So thank you really enjoyed getting the chance to talk to you about this. Thank you very much. Welcome. Thanks for listening to mythmakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford center for fantasy visit Oxford center for fantasy.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.