Ben Kane Interview

Ben Kane was born in Kenya and raised there and in Ireland. He studied veterinary medicine at University College Dublin but after that travelled the world extensively, indulging his passion for ancient history. He is the author of The Forgotten Legion and The Silver Eagle, and fans are awaiting the final book in the trilogy, The Road To Rome.

Q. For those who haven’t yet come across The Forgotten Legion Chronicles, can you give a brief overview – how would you entice someone to start reading them?

A. The Roman historical fiction genre has been enjoying increasing popularity over the last decade or more. Huge numbers of readers clearly look for books about the Roman time period – and mine are (hopefully) in the vein of Simon Scarrow and Conn Iggulden. Among other things, the trilogy relates a tale that has rarely been told – the incredible true story of how 10,000 legionaries, taken prisoner after a battle in modern day Iran, were marched nearly to Afghanistan to serve as border guards for their captors. It also details what life was like for slaves, those at the bottom of the social ladder, rather than the ‘normal’ method of using a senior army officer or nobleman.

Q. The Chronicles are a trilogy, did you write them in this way from the start, or did your initial ideas expand once you started writing?

A. I wrote The Forgotten Legion as a standalone book, with the idea for the rest of a trilogy in my head. Because my publishers were keen for a trilogy, they bought one, and I had a major writing job on my hands! While the Chronicles is a trilogy, it has the potential for more books down the line.

Q. The books weave together many characters and storylines – do you have a timeline or storyboard to help you, or are you good at keeping it in your head?

A. When I wrote the first book, I winged it quite a bit. Then during the writing of the second, I went off on a few wild goose chases as I enjoyed myself writing about the Roman army on campaign. This time, with The Road to Rome (the 3rd book), I have what happens in every single chapter written down on a document which I check every day. It’s excellent at keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Q. Is the Roman era a time that has always interested you? How much research did you need for your books?

A. Yes, it is, ever since I read Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliffe. I also repeatedly borrowed a book about the Roman army from my school library, and had completely forgotten about it until I recently purchased an excellent textbook called Greece and Rome at War by Peter Connolly. Imagine my delight when I found it to be the same book I’d read so many times as a boy!

Q. It’s a popular era for historical authors to write about, what do you think makes your books stand out?

A. That’s a tough question! Perhaps the fact that they’re not about the high-ranking officers or leaders of Rome – they’re about the ordinary foot soldier, slave and gladiator, and how hard life is for them. Unusually for this genre too, one of the main protagonists is a woman.

Q. You’ve done a lot of travelling – do you think that has increased your interest in history, and does it help with your writing?

A. It certainly has increased my interest in history – I’ve visited World War I and American civil war battlefields, Little Big Horn, countless Aztec, Maya and Inca sites in Central and South America and the grave of Tamerlane, Genghis Khan’s grandson. I’ve wandered around the tomb of Alexander the Great’s father, Philip, and seen the treasures found there, and travelled parts of the ancient Silk Road in Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and China. I think seeing so many places as well as reading about them helps immensely with writing historical fiction.

Q. Have you always been a keen reader yourself? What are your favourite genres and authors?

A. Sorry to be boring, but historical fiction comes top of the list as a genre. I do love contemporary fiction and some fantasy too though. Favourite authors include Simon Scarrow, Louis de Bernieres and Guy Gavriel Kay.

Q. Can you tell us a little about the road to publication – I understand there was a bidding war for the trilogy?

A. It was a long, long slog – about five years of writing, an Arvon Foundation course, and countless 90+ hour weeks (between full-time vetting and writing). Fortunately, I met my now wife when I had already started working like this, so she knew what to expect. Once the book went out on the market in August 2007, there was a bodding war for about a week between 6 of the biggest publishers around. It was so exciting! Preface, a new imprint of Random House won the war, and I’ve been very lucky to gain Rosie de Courcy as my editor there – she’s one of the best known editors around.

Q. The first two books in the series are now published – are you working on the 3rd book, and do you have any ideas when it will be published?

A. The Road to Rome comes out in summer 2010, although I’m hoping to have it finished very soon. The date is down to the publishers – sorry to any impatient readers!

Q. What comes next for you, are you going to continue to write?

A. Oh yes! I’m not going back to veterinary if I can help it. I’m in the fantastic position of having just sold a new trilogy to Preface – about the second Punic war between Rome and Carthage. This was the conflict with Hannibal, so there’s the most extraordinary amount of fantastic action to recall – from his crossing of the Alps with elephants to the battle of Cannae, when he inflicted the greatest defeat Rome was ever to suffer – 50,000 Roman legionaries were killed in one day, which must have been the most appalling sight to see.

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Interview with Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Paul and Chris are the people who have brought us The Edge Chronicles, and the final book, The Immortals is published today, Feb 5th. I feel honoured to have been able to review this book very recently, and I’m now working my way through the earlier books.

Over to Chris and Paul..

Q. Who came up with the initial idea for the series, and where did it come from? For those who are new to the series, how would you briefly describe it?

A. The Edge Chronicles themselves started in one of these sketch books. Back in 1994, Chris drew a map of the Edge, with its familiar jutting rock, floating city and endless forests. He gave it to Paul, saying ‘Here’s the world. Let’s find out what happens in it.’

The Edge Chronicles are a series of books based in the Edge lands where all sorts of adventures happen. There are battles, funny moments, characters you empathise with, sky pirate ships, strange creatures, lots of illustrations and a cracking good story.

The books are not traditional fantasies. They are influenced by the tales of the Brothers Grimm and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. In much traditional fantasy, a world of good versus evil is depicted. The Edge does not deal with black and white in this way, but rather in shades of grey, which is far more like our own world. There is also no magic. We thought it would be too convenient if a cloak of invisibility or magic spell was used to solve a problem. Instead, the world has its own physical properties, from floating rocks to solidified lightning.

The Immortals is the tenth and final instalment and it publishes this month. It’s set 500 years after the end of the previous book, in the Third Age of Flight. This third age has been made possible by the unlocking and harnessing of stormphrax’s immense power: the power of lightning.

Q. How did it progress from the initial idea.. does Chris add the illustrations after the stories are told, or do you gain inspiration from each other?

A. Our working method varies. Sometimes passages influence the drawings, sometimes the drawings influence the text as we are working. Most important, however, is talking. The Edge Chronicles are a collaboration. We plot and plan together, talking over every aspect of the storyline and the Edgeworld itself. Out of these long conversations, the books slowly emerge, first as text, and then final illustrations are added.

Q. What was your initial vision, did you intend to write just one book, one trilogy, or the whole series.

A. When we first started the series, we thought it might turn out to be a trilogy – if we were lucky. By the time we’d finished the three books about Twig, Beyond the Deepwoods, Stormchaser and Midnight over Sanctaphrax, we had so many ideas remaining that we decided to produce two more books – the first, Curse of the Gloamglozer, a prequel, to tell the tale of his father, Quint; the second, the Last of the Sky Pirates, a sequel, to reveal what had happened to Twig. This book introduced a third main character, Rook Barkwater, Twig’s grandson. His adventures also turned into a trilogy, with Vox and Freeglader.

So both Twig and Rook had three books each about them, but Quint only had one – though not for long. The Winter Knights and Clash of the Sky Galleons followed his boyhood through the Knights Academy of Sanctaphrax and off in the Galerider in search of his family’s murderer. The Lost Barkscrolls is four stories in one book, taken from episodes that occurred in the first and second Age of Flight.

Once we had got so far, the Immortals – the tenth and final book – had to be written to bring all the threads of the stories together and, as American therapists put it, to achieve closure.

Q. Do you have to keep lots of notes, to remind you who lives where, the developing time lines etc, or is it all stored in your mind?

A. Yes, it’s a complex world! The thing is we’re so absorbed in it, it’s as if the characters are our best friends, and you don’t forget your best friend’s birthday or what happened to their parents, or when they were injured in a battle! We have lots of notes, but mostly we talk, talk, talk – plus our editor at the publisher is very good at spotting when we make mistakes or there are inconsistencies.

Q. Do you feel that all the books in the Chronicles are aimed at the same age group, or has the writing changed as your initial audience grow up?

A. We write the Edge Chronicles for ourselves, or rather the twelve-year old boys we once were. Both of us loved adventure books when we were that age, from Henry Treece to Willard Price. We’d have loved the Edge if it had existed then! Throughout the writing of the Edge series, both of us have had long, detailed conversations with our sons about the world, and their reactions have helped us steer a course through the books. Our readership is very varied, from enthusiastic boys and girls and their parents, to a post-graduate student in Los Angeles who was writing his thesis on the Edge. And Chris’s mum, a vicar’s wife in her seventies, also loves them.

Q. Do you have a favourite book or trilogy? How about the characters, do any stand out for you as your favourites?

A. Paul’s favourite character is Xanth Filatine. He is a complex figure, with divided loyalties, sometimes doing good things for bad reasons, sometimes doing bad things for good reasons.

Chris’s favourite character is Zelphyius Dax, a librarian knight of the Third Age of Flight, who voyages through the Deepwoods aboard his skycraft, the Varis Lodd. He remembers and reveres the past, and is an opponent of new phraxships and the ecological damage inflicted by progress.

Q. The Immortals wraps up old stories, and is said to be the final instalment in The Edge Chronicles – did you always plan to write that final book, rather then letting the series continue on indefinitely?

A. We had to stop somewhere! We’ve been in absorbed in this world for over 10 years, we live, eat and breath the Edge – it can be all–consuming.

We always intended the Edge Chronicles to be a self-contained series of books, and the Immortals completes the story arc. Various threads were left untied in the previous books. What happened to Cloud Wolf in the white storm? Was Twig alive or dead when the caterbird takes him to Riverrise? What happened to old Sanctaphrax when the anchor-chain was cut and it floated off at the end of Midnight over Sanctaphrax? Where did stone sickness come from? And what became of the gloamglozer? All these questions, and more, are answered in The Immortals.

Q. So now The Edge Chronicles has come to an end, where do you both go now? Will you continue to work together, or working on separate projects?

A. We don’t think we’ll ever stop working together! And yes, we have a very exciting idea we are working on at the moment but we’re not allowed to say any more about it. Ssssshhh!

Q. What else have you both written or illustrated?

A. Paul has a number of picture books and novels out like Dogbird and The Weather Witch, and Chris writes and illustrates the Ottoline books; Ottoline and the Yellow Cat and Ottoline Goes to School. Chris also does some picture books for Walker.

Q. Finally, what did you enjoy reading when you were younger?

A. Paul loved Rupert annuals, the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, the ‘Alice’ books, all the novels of Alan Garner, especially Elidor. He also read huge amounts of science fiction.

Chris, as a boy, loved Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown, old Dandy and Beano annuals, Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter, and the Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner.

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Jonathan Stroud Interview

Jonathan Stroud’s latest book, Heroes of the Valley, was published at the beginning of this year, and I was lucky enough to be able to review it just prior to it’s launch. Following on, Jonathan has been kind enough to answer a few questions…

Q. You’re probably best know for your Bartimaeus Trilogy, but you’ve had other books published prior to that – could you tell us a little about them?

A. My first book, published way back in 1994, was a book of word puzzles (see below); this was followed by several gamebooks – books that combined stories with puzzles of various kinds. Two of them: The Lost Treasure of Captain Blood and The Viking Saga of Harri Bristlebeard are still in print. They’re for 7-10 year olds. Meanwhile I was working on a novel about a nasty dragon – this became Buried Fire, which was followed by two other novels, The Leap and The Last Siege. These pre-Bart novels are all fairly different – BF is a straight fantasy, The Leap is a psychological fantasy and The Last Siege isn’t a fantasy at all, but a modern-day thriller.

Q. Did you enjoy writing when you were younger, and how old were you when your first book was published?

A. I always loved writing, and I’ve got various tattered stories and booklets I put together when I was 8 or so. For a long while, though, I didn’t write conventional stories – I made comics instead, or devised boardgames. But it’s all part of the same creative itch! My first book – Justin Credible’s Word Play World came out when I was 23, I think, though it’s hard to remember all that time ago!

Q. Returning to the Bartimaeus Trilogy, can you tell how some of the initial ideas came about?

A. The idea came very suddenly: walking along one day I was pondering the challenge of writing about magic and magicians in the post-Harry Potter age. And it struck me that most of these wizards in children’s books fall into the Dumbledore/Gandalf pattern – i.e. genial old coves with big beards fighting evil. I wondered if I could turn it around and make the human wizards the bad guys. For my hero I’d have a demon (again reversing the tradition). During the same walk I also decided it would be set in modern London and that the magicians would all be politicians. A few days later I sat down with this idea and wrote the first 2 chapters of Amulet: Bart just appeared fully formed and I knew that it would be good, though I hadn’t a clue what the actual story was yet!

Q. Was it always meant to be a trilogy, or did that idea develop as you started writing?

A. To begin with it was going to be a single novel, but pretty quickly I developed three strands of narrative  – following Bart in the present, together with Nat and Kitty’s back stories. Kitty was going to be a major figure in the first book then. Before long these three intertwining threads were getting too tangled and the book too complicated, so I stopped writing and worked out an overall 3-book structure, bringing Kitty in properly in Book 2 and working towards the eventual ending. Then I went back to Amulet, restructured what I’d done and kept on typing!

Q. I understand that there is to be a film based on The Amulet of Samarkand. Can you tell us how that is progressing?

A. Several years ago we had a screenplay and a director and producer and all was looking very good. Then it all went a bit quiet, but I’ve heard recently that the script Vis out to several new prospective directors, so it looks as if things are moving again – fingers crossed!

Q.  How do you feel about seeing your ideas on the big screen, and who would you like to see play the role of Nathaniel?

A. I’m delighted at the prospect of a movie version of Amulet. Inevitably it would be different from the book: it’s impossible to include all the subtleties of a 500 page book in a 2 hour film – but that’s no different from the way that traditional folk and fairy tales have been told and retold by countless different narrators over the years. It’ll be a distinct version, that’s all. As long as the key relationships between my characters are true to the book, I’ll be content. As for Nat, I don’t have an opinion – it would have to be a young actor that no one’s ever heard of, preferably fairly slender, dark and nervously charismatic.

Q. Your latest book is still fantasy, but it has a very different feel to it. Can you tell us a little more about Heroes of the Valley?

A. Heroes is inspired by Icelandic Sagas, which are remarkable medieval accounts of life on the island. They’re mainly about farmers bickering and inter-marrying, but every now and then there’ll be a sudden appearance of a ghost or giant: the supernatural lurks on the edges of ordinary life. I wanted to do a story that had the same sort of tone: the fantasy is on the margins, in stories told by the characters, constantly threatening to become real. The central character, Halli Sveinsson, wants to be like the great heroes of old, but is unfortunately rather short, stocky and a bit rubbish at fighting. He gets a chance to go on a quest, but things don’t go according to plan and he needs to team up with a clever, independent-minded girl called Aud, in order to survive. It’s got lots of jokes, action and other good things!

Q. Your books are marketed as children’s books, but they also appeal to adults. Do you set out to write for a specific age group, or do you hope that it will appeal to all?

A. Ever since Bartimaeus I’ve had the hope (and expectation) that my books would have a wide audience. Essentially I try to write something that I would like if I found it myself on a bookstore shelf. I know that I’d have liked Bart (and Halli) when I was a boy – and I’d like them now. So that makes me think that other people, old and young, would enjoy them.

Q. I’m sure your fans would like to know if you’re working on something new. Can you give us any sort of peek into what we can expect from you next?

A. Well, it’s too early to say, really! I’ve recently written a short story which is a sort of sci-fi fantasy about a detective hunting dragons in a big city: it’ll be published (I hope) in an anthology before long. Maybe that will turn into something longer one day… I don’t know!

Q. Finally, do you get much chance to read for your own pleasure.. and if so, who are some of your favourite authors and books?

A. I don’t read nearly enough when I’m writing, because I find it hard to vault into some one else’s created world when I’m struggling to build my own. But recently I’d enjoyed books by the great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, Neil Gaiman’s new fantasy The Graveyard Book, and some very peculiar but great 1950s books about a schoolboy called Nigel Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. This last series is well worth checking out: it’s very very funny, very anarchic, satirical and verbally deft. It’s also very English.

The Official ‘Heroes of the Valley’ Website