As a child I loved anything to do with myths and legends, like the twelve labours of Hercules, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Ivanhoe etc. Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence was a firm favourite, with its combination of myth and modern (modern for the time it was written, anyway!) and its roots deep in the fertile soil of legendary Albion.
Would you say your childhood and teenage reading has had a distinct influence on how you write fiction now, and why?
I don't know that it has influenced the "how" so much as the "what": my reading taste is eclectic and varied, but there has always been a thread of otherworldly adventure through it, right from the earliest books I remember reading unaided, so no wonder I ended up a fantasy writer. Or was I always going to be a fantasy writer, and my choice of reading material reflected this? Hmm. Chicken, meet egg.
What did you do before you became a published novelist, and how did you come to write your first novel and get it published?
I'd been writing off and on since I was a teenager, but never really thought to myself "I know, I'm going to write a book!" Scenes and characters just evolved as I played around with them. In 1997 some personal problems left me wrestling with a huge amount of emotion that I couldn't express without doing something horribly destructive (we're talking waaay beyond just smashing the crockery, here). Sitting up one night unable to sleep, I started writing about a person in the dark, struggling with a force inside that they couldn't control, and lo, Songs of the Earth was born.
Working around my job in IT, I finished the manuscript over the next decade. Life got in the way quite a bit - as life is wont to do - but by 2007 it was done. I edited it hard, and in 2009 sent submissions to 8 literary agents I'd researched. The second one said yes. A month later, I was a Gollancz author.
How would you describe your style of fiction or your approach to writing fiction?
It's difficult to put a label on my style when I've only got two books written to date (I'm not one of those writers with loads of "trunk novels" under the bed), but I suppose you could say it's pacy, character-driven fantasy adventure.
My approach to writing is very organic: right-brain, seat-of-the-pants, instinctive - the sort of approach that gives a fit of the vapours to more method-driven writers, the kind with chapter plans, a pin-board full of 3x5 index cards and twelve different-coloured pens.
Is your first published novel standalone or part of a series, and what advantages or disadvantages does this present for you?
It's the first of a series, The Wild Hunt Trilogy. The advantages of writing a series are many: I get to spend longer with characters I love, I have room to let them and their world grow and develop in a natural fashion, and I can explore more layers in their story than I would have had room for in a standalone. Oh, and it gave me a three-book contract ;o)
The flipside is that I have to put new ideas on the back burner until the series is finished, and there is a nagging fear that if it dies on its feet at the end of book 2, I can't exactly change horses, I have to see it through to the end whatever happens. I've always known I would write all the installments of this story, but that was when I had only myself and my characters to answer to. Now there's a major publisher involved, and an audience for my work, so there are certain unavoidable commercial aspects to consider.
Have you found writing your second novel easier or more challenging than writing your first novel and why?
It's been challenging, for a variety of reasons. Now that the first one's out there, I can't go back and fiddle with it to add in foreshadowing, or set up a new plot twist or whatever. Characters' conflicts and personalities have to grow organically from what has gone before. I also don't have the liberty of 13 years to polish the damn thing!
In some ways it's been easier too: as a storyteller, I have a better idea what I'm doing now, though I'd be happier if it had made me a bit faster. That pesky internal editor keeps butting in . . .
Who is another novelist whose fiction writing you admire and why?
I'm a big fan of Joe Abercrombie - he does grim black humour and morally ambiguous characters so well, and even the bad guys are interesting and intelligently drawn. Inquisitor Glotka - need I say any more?
How would you summarise your debut novel in one paragraph?
Gair can hear the songs of the earth and in the eyes of the Church, that makes him a witch. Sentenced to die at the stake, he escapes the Holy City and goes on the run, looking for the Guardians of the Veil, who are the only people who can teach him how to control the power of the Song inside him before he accidentally kills himself with it. When he finds them, he discovers that the world does not work quite the way the Church would have him believe: heaven is not above, hell is not below, and the Veil between there and here is about to fall.
How would you describe the appeal of this novel to readers?
It'll keep you turning the pages - and possibly keep you up past your bedtime, too.
How would you summarise a chapter from your debut novel in one paragraph?
Gair is alone in the dark in an iron-walled cell, praying as he wrestles with the magic inside him that is threatening to get out of control. He's frightened and not entirely in his right mind when the guards arrive to drag him off to judgement. Meanwhile, the mysterious Alderan is spying on the proceedings at which Gair is due to be sentenced. He is shocked and angry at what has been done to the prisoner, and mourns how far the Church Knights have fallen from their ideals. In the final scene, the head of the Knights hands down the verdict.
How would you describe the contribution this chapter makes to the novel?
This is the opening chapter, so the reader meets the hero in medias res, up to his ears in trouble and facing an awful fate. It establishes the bones of his character and the initial conflict which will lead him through the rest of the book. It also introduces two other characters who will become significant later, and hints that all is not what it seems to be.
Author website: http://www.elspethcooper.com/
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