an Interview with Greg van Eekhout, author of Norse Code
Filed Under: Novel, Recommended Media
Greg van Eekhout is one of the funniest con attendees I have had the pleasure of being around. On top of that, he’s a damned good writer with stories like “The Osteomancer’s Son” and “Will You Be An Astronaut?” (appearing at EscapePod soon, read by Christiana Ellis). Greg’s first novel was recently released. I’ve watched the progress of Greg writing this book on his blog, and so I’ve really been looking forward to reading it.
A Quick Review of Norse Code
Norse Code is Greg’s debut novel, and it’s a fun one. The book focuses on two characters primarily. The first is Mist, a recently recruited Valkyrie who is working for the Norse Code project. The goal of the Norse Code project is to find and recruit the descendants of Odin to prepare for the coming Ragnarok. The second is the itenerant Norse god Hermod, the only living entity to ever travel to Helheim and return.
It’ll come as no surprise to you that the paths of these two protagonists cross in the inevitable run-up to Ragnarok. Along the way, we meet a cast of characters both drawn from Norse mythology and not, but all are imbued with a peculiar van Eekhout sense of humor. This is not a comedic story exactly, but aspects of it are very funny.
Norse Code does feel at times like a first novel in that you sense the author feels a bit uncertain about the plot in places, but van Eekhout’s willingness to take what you know about Norse mythology and twist it for his needs makes this a hell of a lot of fun to read. Mist and Hermod are heroes in an older sense, not terribly flawed, but simply decent people with rocky pasts determined to do the right thing despite that.
It’s a short read, one I managed to burn through in an afternoon, so you really have no excuse for not picking it up and giving it a try. While the novel didn’t pack the same punch for me as some of Greg’s short stories, it’s a fine first outing and demonstrates that he’s an author to keep Odin’s eye on in the future.
The Interview
Can you share with me a little bit about the day-to-day nuts-and-bolts of your writing process? How did you make time to write the book? How long did it take you to write the book from first conceiving the idea to finishing the book and submitting it for publication?
I used to be able to talk about making time to write with at least some small degree of credibility, because I had a job that often took up way more than forty hours a week, and I still found time to write simply by making sure I started each day with an hour of writing. For me, that kind of consistency was the key. But I don’t have a day job right now and I have the luxury of more writing time, and I don’t blame people if they don’t want to listen to me talk about carving out time and dedication and all that. That being said, people who really want to write find the time, somehow. Maybe by giving up TV or games or whatever. Maybe by devoting one hour before work to writing, as I did. Maybe by writing on their lunch break or on the bus. Maybe by just getting ten minutes here, five minutes there. It adds up. Really, it does.
It took me years and years and years to write Norse Code if you count all the false starts, words that got tossed out (at one point, 30,000 of them in one fell swoop), time squandered thinking about writing the book instead of writing it, and time spent writing short stories and other things because I was stuck on the book. I’m going to say maybe ten years wanting to write Norse Code, and maybe two years actually working on it. Fortunately, the book I wrote after Norse Code went much more quickly and smoothly.
I noticed quite a few L.A. coffee shops mentioned. Are these all real places that you know from growing up in L.A.? We’ve seen the photos you take for each writing session of your empty cups. How many cups of coffee did you drink in the process of writing Norse Code?
I did grow up in L.A., but there really weren’t many coffee joints back then. Instead, we had “spooky houses,” where you were given a pot of a thick, pudding-like beverage, an open flame with which to soften it, and sort of a combination of spoon, fork, and hook, which we called a “spook.” Nonetheless, the coffee houses in Norse Code are real places. I think a conservative estimate for the number of cups of coffee consumed during the composition of Norse Code would be 1,000. It takes a million bad words, 10,000 hours of practice, or 1,000 cups of coffee before you can begin to say you’ve passed out of your apprenticeship. Really, the point of all those pictures of coffee cups next to my computer weren’t to show how much coffee I drink, but just a way of marking the fact that, on the day each photo was posted to my blog, I worked on the book. Just something different than posting a word count.
What kind of research did you do to write the book–it’s clear that you familiarized yourself with Norse mythology. Can you talk about your research process and how it led to the plot you came up with for the book?
The primary materials that give us most of Norse mythology are short and finite: The Elder, or poetic, Edda, and the Younger, or prose, Edda. We’re only talking a few hundred pages here, and they were my chief research materials. H.R. Ellis Davidson also has some good books on Norse mythology, and I used wikipedia and pantheon.org sometimes as well. My method was to read the Eddas and just sort of keep track of things that seemed particularly cool, like wolves eating the moon and stuff like that. Sometimes it just led me to think through the implications of the myth, which made the plot obvious to me. For instance, when you’ve got a story about the end of the world, and the myth tells you some gods are destined to survive it and preside over the world that comes afterwards, you apply a basic what-if to that situation. What if I were a god destined to survive the end of the world and take over rulership? Would I just wait for the end of the world to happen? Would I encourage it along? How would I do that? And so forth.
Some parts of the book seemed a bit truncated, like the Norse Code aspect itself. Did the Norse Code project play a larger part in the book in earlier drafts, and if so, what led to its role being reduced?
I think when you have a book titled Norse Code, people are right to expect a big part of the book to be devoted to Norse Code (which in the book is a genomics operation run by Valkyries). But I never intended that particular aspect of the book to play a huge role. What happened was, the book was called “Greg’s Damn Norse Novel” for most of the time I was writing it. When it came time to submit it, it needed a real title. Norse Code is all I could come up with. I sort of expected the publisher to give me a “real” title, but I guess they were happy with it, so it stuck.
What’s next from Greg in terms of books? It seems that Norse Code is a stand-alone book, which is surprising given all the trilogy deals genre writers seem to be getting lately.
I actually can’t talk about what’s next! I’m not contracted to write anything else for the publisher of Norse Code, though they get first look at the next book I write for adults. But the next thing out from me won’t be a book for adults, and when I’m free to talk about it, you can believe I’ll be Mr. Blabby McInterHype wherever I can.
Is Norse Code your written first novel in addition to being your first published one, or did you write others before selling Norse Code?
Norse Code is actually the second book I’ve finished. Somewhere in the middle of that stalled-out time I mentioned earlier, I wrote a whole other book. That one’s trunked for now, but you never know. Another whack or two at it, and it could possibly be decent enough to try to sell. If not, though, that’s okay. My goal with the currently trunked novel was just to finish a book, so I consider it a success even if it never leaves my hard drive. Writing it gave me the confidence to finish Norse Code, and finishing and selling Norse Code gave me the confidence to write other books, so that first, unsold novel will always be important to me.
Thanks for answering my questions, Greg! So have any of you read Norse Code? What did you think?
An Interview with Fantasy Author C. C. Finlay (with a side of review)
Filed Under: Novel, Recommended Media
Charles Coleman Finlay is an author you are familiar with if you’ve read more than a couple of issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His recent story, “The Political Prisoner” was a Nebula Award nominee and is currently a Hugo Nominee and a Sturgeon nominee. And of course, it’ll be in the next volume of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best.
I’ve known Charlie since I started writing through his involvement with the Online Writers Workshop. Charlie was the first professional author I really got to know, and he was immensely helpful in helping me learn the ropes. It’s been really educational to watch his career progress, as he’s always been willing to share the ins and outs of his experiences in publishing.
Let’s talk about the first book, and then head into the interview.
A Quick Review of The Patriot Witch
The first book of his Traitor to the Crown series, The Patriot Witch introduces us to the world of 1770s America on the verge of a war with the Empire. Our protagonist, Proctor Brown, would appear to be your average farmer of the period. He has his wife picked out, plans to expand his farm. He’s a minuteman, but hopes that the scuffle that’s brewing doesn’t turn into a war, but if it does, he’ll clearly side with the patriots. But there’s just one other thing- Proctor Brown is a witch. He’s inherited his ability from his mother, who is originally from Salem, and has kept her talent secret.
When Proctor witnesses the use of magic by a British soldier, he begins to realize that he may have to use his talent and fight magic with magic. And he’s off on a wild adventure that takes him through some of the early battles of the war.
Finlay’s writing is tight, lean prose, and he especially writes action well. I found myself holding my breath a bit during some of the tense battle scenes. One thing that really stood out is that war kills people much more indescriminately than I expected. The protagonist will be having a conversation with someone and then five pages later, their leg will be blown off by a musket. It really drove home the nature of war in this time period for me.
His take on magic is really interesting, and definitely draws from the lore of the time period regarding witches. Proctor is only just learning what magic is capable of, but by the end of the first book, he’s considerably more skilled than before.
The series is made up of 3 books: The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. The first two books are already released, and the third will be out shortly.
An Interview with C.C. Finlay
Can you share with me a little bit about the day-to-day nuts-and-bolts of your writing process? How did you make time to write the book, with your full family life and a full time job? How long did it take you to write the book from first conceiving the idea to finishing the book and submitting it for publication?
There are four of us at home, including two writers and two teenage boys, all piled up on top of one another. Our house isn’t big enough for us to have a room where Rae (my wife and sometimes co-author, Rae Carson Finlay) or I can get away for enough peace and quiet to write. So when I’m working on something, I either do it late at night after everyone else goes to bed, or I leave the house and find someplace else to work. You’ll see Luck Bros Coffee in Grandview Heights, Ohio, mentioned in the acknowledgements of my books. That’s because I set up office for months in one of their front booths, and they kept me quietly and efficiently supplied with fresh coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches while I wrote.
How did you make time to write the book, with your full family life and a full time job?
The only way to make enough time to write was to take it away from other things. I gave up weekends. I spent my weeks of vacation hunkered over the keyboard. I neglected washing dishes or vacuuming the house. I have three years’ worth of papers spilling out of boxes in need of sorting and filing. But I don’t miss work, and I don’t skip my kids’ soccer games or school plays unless I’m out of town at a convention.
How long did it take you to write the book from first conceiving the idea to finishing the book and submitting it for publication?
Back in 2006, my agent called me and asked if I had any ideas for historical fantasy series. He thought that would take advantage of my background as a historian and play to my strengths as a writer. I didn’t have any ideas at the moment, but I said if he gave me a weekend I’d see what I could come up with.
That was on a Thursday afternoon. By Monday morning, I had a detailed outline for the Traitor to the Crown series. Once I had the idea for a secret history about witches fighting the Revolution, everything sort of clicked into place. Over the next couple weeks, I wrote seventy pages of sample chapters. Then my agent took the series to Del Rey to see if they were interested. The negotiation process took about a year. I rewrote and added to the sample chapters (selling a short story version of it to Fantasy & Science Fiction), did research on the period and on witchcraft, and refined the outlines.
At the beginning of June, 2007, we had a deal. That’s when the writing took off like a rocket. I was supposed to write the three books over nine months. It was closer to eighteen. The second book was the hardest one to pull together. The third book deviated the farthest from the original outline, but all the pieces fell into place. I turned in the final book in January, 2009. So from first concept to all three books finished and published took three years. The actual writing was more like eighteen months.
I know that you’re the founder of the novelist workshop Blue Heaven, with past attendees including Tobias Buckell, Greg van Eekhout and Sarah Prineas, and you thank several of your fellow workshoppers in the acknowledgements. Can you give some specific examples about how the workshop experience improved The Patriot Witch and the subsequent books?
In 2007, I took 114 pages of The Patriot Witch and my outline to Blue Heaven, and I hashed out the strengths and problems of the novel in detail with Greg van Eekhout and Holly McDowell. In 2008, I only had about 250 pages of A Spell for the Revolution done, but Paul Melko and Daryl Gregory put it through the paces and made sure I got on track for the right ending. In both cases, being able to workshop the partial novel and talk about the direction it appeared to be going and the better directions that it could go was essential to my process. I didn’t have time to workshop the third book, but by that time everything felt like it was clicking. And I had Rae to help me as I wrote.
How did you conceive of writing the story of Proctor Brown as a three book series? Was it a decision made by the publisher? Also, can you tell me a little bit about why the books are being released so closely to one another, seperated by only a month?
The Revolution lends itself naturally to a three-part narrative division. The first stage of the war took place in New England, in and around Boston. The second stage of the war involved the overwhelming British victories and Washington’s ultimate recovery in and around New York and New Jersey. The third stage of the war involved the guerrilla conflict in the southern states and diplomacy overseas. There were many volunteers who followed the war from one stage to the next, so it was easy to imagine Proctor as one of those men.
On the publishing side, Del Rey was interested in three books. The number one reason readers buy a book is because they’ve read something else they like by that author. Bringing the books out in quick succession creates a shelf presence and a chance for readers who like the first book to immediately move on to the second. Del Rey had done something similar with the Naomi Novik books and wanted to try it again.
It sounds like, also from your acknoweldgements, that much of the research for the book came easily due to your job as a research assistant. One thing that always strikes me as terrifying about writing stories with a historical basis is getting some of the details wrong. Was your approach here to basically steep yourself so utterly in the time period via primary literature? Did you find any aspects difficult to get “right”?
You’ll always get something wrong. Four different people copy-edited or proofed the book and a couple errors still slipped through. It’s even worse when you’re doing the history because you don’t have someone there to check you on every single detail. Sherwood Smith, in her otherwise favorable review of the book, points out a mistake about young ladies’ headwear in the very first pages.
That said, what I did was spend as much time in primary sources as I could, and not just written sources, but images of the clothing, weapons, and architecture of the period. Whenever I assumed I knew something, I double-checked it, because you make the most mistakes on the things you think you know. I tried to make sure the details enhanced the story, making it vivid and immediate, so I was also ruthless about cutting out information that didn’t drive the narrative forward. In the end, the history must serve the story, not the other way around.
The Traitor to the Crown series marks your first series. Your first novel, The Prodigal Troll, was published by Pyr. What were the professional lessons you learned from your first book that you took and applied in the writing and marketing to publishers of your latest series?
The only lessons that I applied are in the writing of the books. The Prodigal Troll was structured more episodically, with different POV characters that made each section feel like it had come to a full conclusion. That was a natural outgrowth of the lessons I had learned by writing short stories. In the new series, I kept the POV simpler and the narrative whole so that these would be fast-paced books.
I don’t know that I have any useful lessons about marketing to publishers. Lou Anders was just getting Pyr started and he came to me as an up-and-coming author for his debut season. He did everything he could to get The Prodigal Troll in front of readers, and I’m very grateful for the chance I had to work with him. With the new series, it’s a situation where my agent and I were talking with Chris Schluep at Del Rey from the start. Del Rey publishes Naomi Novik, Harry Turtledove, Greg Keyes–it just seemed like a good fit. Luckily, they agreed!
Thanks again to Mr. Finlay for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope that you all check out his books. I can’t recommend the first one enough, and the second title is sitting in front of me as I type this, taunting me.
Recommended: The City and The City by China Miéville
Filed Under: Novel, Recommended Media
When I stumbled upon a copy of The City and the City at Barnes and Noble on Saturday afternoon, I knew my weekend was doomed. Ever since Perdido Street Station, and despite the disappointment of The Iron Council, Miéville is still possibly the most exciting author working today for me.
This book is not a New Cobrazon book. It is not outright fantasy in any way, actually. But it’s still fantastic in a more simple sense of the word. The story is essentially a police procedural, but one set in the kind of city that is distinctly Miévillian.
If there is a common theme among Miéville’s work, I would say that it is “the city as character.” Because even here, the city takes the forefront. Bas Lag, also, in most of that series. China has a preternatural sense for cities, and for what makes them tick. As someone who has never lived in an urban center with more than 100,000 people, I find it utterly fascinating. It’s as exotic as the Far East to me.
The cities of Bezel and Ul Quoma are utterly unique, at least to my experience. I won’t even say another thing about them, because learning about them as I did, with little preconcieved notions, was a great way of experiencing the book. Trust that things are not all that they seem in the opening pages. This is no bog standard police procedural (and that it would been fine if it was). This is something more, distinctly from the author who gave us one of the best cities in fantastic literature.
Am I disappointed that this wasn’t another book set in his wilder, more fantastical universe? Before reading it, yes, I was. Now that I have read the book, no, not even a little bit. This new place will have much more mainstream appeal, and anything that sells more books for Miéville makes it that much more likely we’ll get more fantasy novels–at least I hope so. Miéville clearly has break-out potential with the mainstream, and if I have a fear, it’s that the money will be so much better, he would be a fool not to go down the less fantastic road and to its broader audiences. Everything I have read about China indicates that he would never abandon science fiction and fantasy entirely. So I have to go on faith that he won’t.
But even if he pulls a Lethem, I’ll follow him wherever he goes. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Read: Lamentation by Ken Scholes
Filed Under: Novel, Recommended Media, Speculative Fiction
Full disclaimer: Ken is a great guy, someone I consider a wonderful friend. One of my regrets about not living in Portland (despite having wanted to for about 8 years) is that I don’t get to hang out with him and his wife more often. Ken’s success is well-earned. We first met at a Norwescon a few years ago, and Ken was just getting started again seriously with his writing. He’d sold a few stories, not many. We hit it off and I asked him to send along something to the Fortean Bureau, which he did, and we bought it. And a couple of others. I loved Ken’s short stories. I suppose that is to temper my comments coming next.
I enjoyed Lamentation. However, for me at least, it suffers from overhype. It’s a good book, but so much energy was poured into calling it a great book that I had unrealistically high expectations. I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, and I’ve thought long and hard about whether I wanted to admit that I didn’t froth over the book, because I want nothing more than to see Ken succeed. So listen, I did like the book. I do recommend that you read it. You are liable to love it.
Anyway–It’s very interesting on several levels to me. Ken’s very good at what he does, so let me expound on how and why.
One aspect that I really like is that it’s a breezy kind of epic fiction. I read the book in 2 days. I rarely get to cut through a book that fast (although this is the first book that I’ve read since being laid off). The book rarely dragged which is rare for this kind of fantasy for me.
A lot has been said about the world building, which I started out disliking and slowly grew to find more interesting over time. It felt at first to me that not enough logic and forethought went into the combination of echos of our world’s culture. As the book develops, I see that more is going on, and I became more interesting. I really liked how the history of what had happened echoed through the events of the book. I think Ken handles this excellently. World building can easily bog down this kind of fantasy. Look at Tolkien, who I consider an interminable bore when it came to all his descriptions of landscapes and Elvish history and singing. Ken fleshes out his world, but does it deftly, much like everything else he does in the book.
I do think the book suffers a little from too many points of view. I found the concept of many of the characters interesting, but their insights rarely struck home with me. I spent much of the book waiting for a character who would sink his teeth into me like Tyrion from Martin’s books. However–Martin’s books are like 5 times longer and I don’t think this is a matter of skill so much as it is a matter of time. Ken’s got 4 more books to do this, and I’m definitely going to give him a chance to develop these characters even further.
Okay, I’m entering into spoilers territory next. Behind the cut.
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