Posted 29 April 2005 - 01:58 AM
My favourite character is Corfe - obvious enough from my moniker in this forum I suppose. Twas not always thus. Hawkwood was meant to carry the main load of the narrative, and in fact as originally conceived the series was meant to take place mainly at sea. When I got about halfway through the first book however, all that was jettisoned - events on land were just too interesting.
The reason I like Corfe so much I think is because he’s damaged - I like characters who have been through the mill, and I like putting through the mill also. And the difficulties he faced in saving Torunna from the Merduks and from itself - well there was just so much material there. When you are in a position to take a character and exert extreme emotional (not physical) stress on him - and you know that the reader is also in on the deal, and has seen the buildup - then that is the essence of satisfying writing. Hence the four book wait before Corfe and Heria were finally face to face again. I’d been planning that for a long time.
I was also very fond of both Golophin and Abeleyn - I liked their relationship, as I did Golophin’s with Isolla. In fact Golophin was a father-figure to just about everyone, now I come to think about it.
And then there’s Murad of course - he was never less than great fun to write.
The books were clearly inspired by history - the fall of Constantinople, the Voyages of Discovery, the ‘Two Popes’, the Inquisition and so on. But while history provided the bare bones of the milieu, once they were in place, I directed affairs as I saw fit, as I needed them to happen - there was never any form of historical agenda. Religious-wise, it was a different matter. The conduct of the Merduks in Berrona was written about the same time as atrocity after atrocity was occurring unpunished in the former Yugoslavia. I based Berrona on the reports coming out of Bosnia. I wanted to show extreme religious and racial hatred, and what happens when it runs unchecked.
Of course, if you want to get down and dirty on the specifics of Normannia, you could say that the Fimbrians were inspired by the Swiss (also feared pikemen), the Hebrians by the Spanish and the Torunnans by the Hungarians/Polish. Certainly the Cathedrallers owe something to the Polish Winged Hussars. I plundered history for ideas, it’s true, but I did not then feel bound to let events unfold in a similar fashion. What puzzles me is when some readers think that by using history in this way I am somehow ‘cheating.’ (After all, Guy Gavriel Kay does it far more blatantly!)
I don’t read as much fantasy and sci-fi as I used to - in my youth I wolfed it down. Nowadays I read a lot of history and historical fiction. Tolkien, Donaldson, le Guin, Silverberg, Leiber, Julian May, Jack Vance, Robert Holdstock - these are the authors whom I rate as ‘classic’ and whose influence will always be with me. But there are others - Patrick O Brian, without whom I could never have written anything believably nautical. Mary Renault, whose Alexander Trilogy still gives me the shivers. Rosemary Sutcliff - in Sword at Sunset she recreated Arthur as he might really have been - a beleaguered war leader at the head of a gallant band of heavy cavalry…
More and more I come to realise that the books we read as children or adolescents are the ones which stay with us - they get into the bones. I could name more - Alan Garner, Susan Cooper. They can convey a sense of weirdness and wonder in just a few sentences. Eric Van Lustbader’s Sunset Warrior sequence - visceral and epic at the same time. Jack Vance’s Lyonesse books - dry, witty, but never pulling a punch. Now that I sit down and think about it I could bore people for hours.
Sea Beggars Two, which currently lacks a title or has too many, is due to be handed in to Bantam in August, and published in Spring 2006. The series will, ultimately, be a trilogy, and all three books will stand alone, though they will obviously be connected also. At the minute, the book is fighting desperately to balloon into something unexpected, and I’m trying to cram it back in it’s box and keep the focus on a very small group of characters - no more epics for me! Well, that’s the plan at any rate. We’ll see.
Corfe’s tactics are indeed somewhat modern - by the end of the series they’re based more on nineteenth century black powder warfare, which I’m very familiar with, having been an American Civil War re-enactor in the States. But some tactics are timeless - the integrity of the line, the protection of the flanks, the provision of an adequate reserve - the existence of a baggage train (which most fantasy seems to overlook). Not to toot my own horn, I like to think that the tactics and strategies in the Monarchies are not modern so much as realistic.
Corfe was not really inspired by anyone specific, historically. As I’ve said, the character grew with the story. I can say categorically however that he has nothing whatsoever to do with that little French runt Napoleon! He might have a little in common with Alexander, or the real King Arthur, whoever he was. He fights for revenge, not for glory, and he believes that he is ultimately doomed. Plus, by the end of the books he is aware that there is evil within him, or at least, the capacity for unredeemed slaughter.
I’m glad you liked Abeleyn’s end. I wanted it to be shocking, and I thought the best way to shock would be to treat it as a thing of little account. I had Abeleyn set up, in a way - I knew that I wanted the West to collapse, so he had to go, and I wanted to save the more dramatic moments for other characters. Hawkwood, also, I sent out in a low-beat way. Death does not have to be dramatic. Sometimes people just slip away, with no famous last words, no neat sense of closure. I’ve been pilloried by several reviewers for the manner of Abeleyn and Hawkwood’s deaths, but I don’t regret them. The only thing I do regret is not making Ships from the West about 100 pages longer.
Which brings me to a question for the members on this thread - does the sheer size of a fantasy novel influence your decision to read/buy it?