I’m not the only excellent author at Grimbold Books, and today, fellow author Frances Kay visits, interviewed by the titular cats, Grim and Bold.  (As a person owned by two fluffy white dogs, I cannot endorse cat supremacy, but cats are sometimes as wonderful as dogs.  Sometimes.)  Here’s Frances’ intro:

It’s not a happy read, I know, but I believe there is a possibility of redemption at the end.
Thank you for being a reader!

Author Questions

So, this story you’ve written. What’s it about? Why should I interrupt my nap-time to read it?

After I’d finished ‘Dollywagglers’, I realised there was still a lot of story to tell. The events cascaded out of my brain and onto the page. The first book was pure dystopia, with the evil power-crazed rulers very much getting their own way. ‘Dancing on Bones’ has dystopian elements, but I’ve allowed a little utopia to creep in too. As a writer, I find I can’t just keep destroying bad ideas and people – we need light as well as shade. Though the odds are, of course, stacked impossibly high against our protagonist, who represents a force for potential good, even as she denies it vigorously.

Where do you get inspiration? Where did the ideas for your latest novel come from?

Ever since I read ‘1984’ and ‘A Brave New World’ I’ve been fascinated by dystopias, and the idea of writing my own has long haunted me. I needed to know what it was I wanted to say, though, which is why it’s taken me so long… nearly seventy years!

Who’s your favourite imaginary friend? Is there anyone you don’t like?

I have a couple of real friends who died far too soon and I still feel they are out there somewhere – does that count as imaginary? Nicci was passionate about children and literature and made brilliant television dramas – one was about a girls’ football team. I see her looking at what I write and prodding me sternly with questions like ‘Is this the best it can be?’ ‘Have you done all the research you need for this?’ and finally –  ‘Never stop, never say your work is finished.’

My other friend, Jude, who died last month, was my best friend at school and in a very formative time for me she showed me funny writers like Stella Gibbons ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ and I realised that pastiche is a perfectly respectable and very flexible tool – metaphors are what we need to lift our work into another dimension.

What are your plans to conquer the world?

Simple – I trust in our youth to make the changes we all need. I’ve spent my life and my writing career giving a voice to those who are never heard, and working for a fairer society where everything is shared and power is not given to those who abuse it – the very reverse of our current political reality. The fact that we are all now living in a dystopia has made me shift away from that view of the world – any future books I write will get away from the increasing sense I have that the world is out of control.

What research rabbit-holes have you been down while writing? What was the most interesting, or the most tedious?

Very hard for me – the geography of the novel, where it takes place. I had to research the Elan Valley dams, the history of Machynlleth town, some engineering stuff about siphoning petrol out of cars. I have to fight the feeling that this is school homework and needs to be done if the book is to have any cred at all. And I can’t compare my work on this one with Dollywagglers, where I didn’t have to do any research at all, it just romped along.

How often do you provide a cat sleeping spot- I mean, write? Do you have a comfy chair and a routine, or do you freelance cat-nap style?

First off, I have to make sure Jasper is comfy. He loves being stretched out on my lap, which means I have to have the pc squeezed into one side. He will occasionally swat a cup of tea out my hand, so I have to be on the alert. I write lying on a day bed – it was not always thus, I used to have a cramped little space in our other house, but I loved it. I wrote all my scripts for ‘The Morbegs’ up in that room, and plays for Team Theatre and Theatre Lovett. When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, it suddenly became ok to lounge and laze as I write. Handy for naps too, Jasper’s and mine. Today I’m on the upstairs daybed, where he is not allowed. My writing routine would not make the grade. I’m not methodical, I write when inspired, otherwise put it off. When I feel I have been too lazy for too long, I deprive myself of news [no papers, no radio, TV or internet new]  for a week and this invariably gets me writing. This is one of those weeks.

When you’re not writing, what do you spend your time doing? Besides looking at cat pictures on the internet, obviously.

Politics. I belong to Welsh Labour, which is recent, since Jeremy Corbyn was elected. I also belong to an Irish campaign group, formed to stop the Irish government from selling off all the kelp around the Irish coast to the highest bidder. The most recent atrocity was a licence to one man to mechanically cut 1800 acres of kelp in Bantry Bay, with no environmental impact study and no preliminary scientific surveys. The government was so desperate to make a profit that they cut all kinds of corners and made it impossible for local residents to know about these plans until too late. Happily, the campaign has just been granted a judicial review, which means a judge considers we have a case the government must answer. So, fighting dystopia continues in my non-writing life too. I also spend happy days playing with my two granddaughters, Nancy and Bess. They remind me what fun life can be, and how easy it is to embrace life and all its wonders when you come from a secure and happy home. Other activities in season – making elderflower champagne, planting stuff in the polytunnel, swimming in the sea [not until the end of May, I’d say, this year] and having bonfires.

Is there anything you’ve read/seen recently that would be worthy of my attention? [aka. what book or film recommendations would you make?]

I have recently seen Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri and celebrate that fantastic woman Frances McDormand. She won the Oscar and accepted it wearing a long-sleeved dress and no makeup – just what I would do if it ever happened to me. I’m currently reading anything by Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell. Thrillers are a better option for me as a reader these days because, unlike dystopias, thrillers assume a framework where justice can be applied to put a bad thing right.

Kitty Questions

If you kindly brought your human a present, and they scream and tell you that they don’t like dead mice – that’s just rude, isn’t it?

It’s all about training. If your human catches on, they will respond by playing with the dead mouse, obv, and then Jasper would, I know, begin a graduated series of lessons at the end of which I would be able to stalk and catch my very own mice [and rats]. Alas, I always fall at the very first hurdle by sweeping mouse up with the rubbish. He doesn’t have a high opinion of my intelligence.

Cats. Fabulous, or completely fabulous?

Wonderful creatures. No house is complete without them.

What’s your second-favourite food? Because obviously you are a human of taste and discretion, and therefore your favourite is tuna.

Pork figures largely in my dream menus – with crunchy crackling. Or bacon, crispy and hot. I am also somewhat obsessed with apples, notable English varieties like Discovery, Worcester Pearmain, Beauty of Bath, Granny Smith, Cox’s Orange and its Kerry cousin, the Kerry Pippin, and Egremont Russets. In our orchard in Ireland we have planted all these, which means we have fresh exquisite apples from early August through till October.

Bold’s bow tie: excellently stylish, or rather dashing?

Bow tie a rather daring choice, might lead to confusion of identity with, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg or Robin Day of recent memory? In cat terms, this could be a good thing, for all I know.

On a scale of ‘excellent’ to ‘needs more practise’, how good are you at giving ear scritches?

I’d say I am rather good, as I can imagine it being done to me. The high level of purring and [rolling over so I can stroke the fluffy tummy] trust thereby engendered is a good sign, I think.

By the way, I left you a present behind the chair. I hope you like hairballs.

So very kind. Hairballs are my favourite. And I am impressed by your dexterity with the keyboard.

Author links:

Blogs sporadically at https://franceskaywriter.wordpress.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dollywagglers-Frances-Kay-ebook/dp/B00JYGG58W/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dancing-Bones-Frances-Kay/dp/1911497960/

(blurbs on the Amazon links)

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And I’m visiting Paul James Caiden to discuss how I came up with the idea for Scylla and Charybdis, and why an SF novel has such a mythological name, anyway … check it out!

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Today, I welcome Daniel Ausema to my blog to talk about his book, The Silk Betrayal!  He’s a fantastic writer with a great knack for unusual, vivid settings, and an experimental bent that enhances whatever project he’s tackling.  Here’s Daniel …

Thank you, Lindsey, for hosting me here today. I’m looking forward to you coming to visit my blog soon, as well. And thanks to Lindsey’s blog readers and anyone else who stops by for reading.

When Lindsey and I were discussing topics for blog posts, she told me she’s always interested in hearing the origin stories for other writers’ novels. It’s not something I’ve explained in much detail with The Silk Betrayal, though I actually began the first draft for the novel some ten years ago. So here it is at last, the origin of The Silk Betrayal.

I forget now where I first heard the advice, but someone once told me that discrete ideas for stories are easy, but on their own those ideas often fizzle out. It’s only when we juxtapose two seemingly different ideas that a story really takes off. The world of Eghsal definitely began with that kind of juxtaposition.

On the one hand, I liked the idea of a land that was cut off from the rest of the world by snow and ice, a far northern land where the people only managed to survive because of volcanic forces warming the valley. I had a character to fit this land (someone who was later cut from the novel), but little more.

At the same time, I found myself drawn to the idea of a strict caste-based society. In an essay on SF, Ursula LeGuin writes that SF writers don’t write about the future, except by accident. All they can do is tell you about the present, their lives as they’re living them. I’ve always felt the same idea applies to fantasy and historical time periods they might seem to fit, and that for whatever reason, for whatever things that were going on in my life at the time, I wanted to explore the idea of castes more, of being stuck in a prescribed role. Of resisting.

Those two basic ideas gave me the start for the world itself, for the isolated northern valley of Eghsal, though it still wasn’t a story.

Before I could tackle that, I immersed myself in learning about real-world castes and the societies around them. It would have been easy to simply take my own assumptions about such things, received stereotypes and ideas, but I wanted to better understand how they really play out, not just how an outsider might think they do. So I read about and spoke with people from India, approaching the caste system–as it’s existed at different times in history–with what I hoped was openness and humility.

Then I sat down to write a short story. I often do that when I create a new setting, hoping to get my mind into the world before I’ve committed to the novel’s story. “Untouched by Fire,” which would eventually be published in Guardbridge Books’ Myriad Lands anthology, centers on a high-caste girl who has been cast out, made untouchable, because of an accident involving fire.

After that story was done, I began to see the character that the novel would center on. He would be an enigmatic man who could blend in to any caste, someone with an uncanny ability to fit in wherever he went and be overlooked. In fact, I saw, that ability would be a form of magic, not just a magic to blend in but rather a magic that could play on peoples’ assumptions and ideas, on the archetypes of how they saw the world. A performance magic that’s new and exciting for its practitioners. I pictured him meeting the famous but aging discoverer of this magic, being introduced to the world of performing, pictured it as a sort of young Bob Dylan meeting Woody Guthrie moment. And with that I knew Pavresh and his place in this northern, volcano-warmed world of Eghsal.

But a funny thing happened. Usually the stories I write to get me into a new world are one-off things, the characters there to serve that specific story but nothing more. But I kept coming back to Jaritta, the high-born outcast of “Untouched by Fire.” She was clearly important, too. And so was the world she’d left behind, the brother who was still a part of the city’s high-caste rulers.

Once I had those three characters figured out, then the whole story began to fall into place. A story of court intrigue, new magic, revolution…and betrayal.

***

Today, Sunday April 1, is the release day for The Silk Betrayal in ebook format. It has also been available since December in paperback and hardcover formats.

Daniel Ausema is a writer and stay-at-home dad from Colorado. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and many other places. The Silk Betrayal is the first book of the Arcist Chronicles, published by Guardbridge Books. Daniel is also the creator of the Spire City series of books and stories. He can be found online at his blog Twigs and Brambles.

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