Posted 01 May 2005 - 06:17 AM
I have read Steve Erikson, but to my shame only Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. When I’m writing (which is most of the time) I don’t like to read anything that will waylay or distract me, and Erikson’s books are just too good at doing that. I would never write anything as densely plotted as he does, nor are the worlds of my own imagination as baroque as his - I mean that as a supreme compliment by the way. Steve’s books are pretty much the best that’s out there in my opinion. Some day I’ll unplug the computer and read all ten back to back.
How did I end up here? I check out the sites of other authors now and again, and happened to hear my name mentioned, so I hung around - just pure chance. I must say, I envy Steve his fan base.
No more epics I said - and I may well have meant it. I know that MoG is fairly short by standard fantasy epic standards, but I’m not one for the sprawling narrative. It’s damned hard work, to be blunt, and though it’s impossible to get bored (you can always flit to another strand of the tale, another character, another viewpoint), after Ships I felt that it had been a long time since I wrote a simple one-narrative, one-viewpoint story where B follows A. My old editor told me once that he saw me forsaking fantasy entirely and writing contemporary fiction at some point, and he may have been right. One would think that with fantasy there would be fewer constraints about what you could write about, but the opposite in true in some ways - that is if you’re writing fairly straightforward Tolkienesque type stuff. That’s why with Mark of Ran, I took every fantasy cliché I could think of - callow youth of uncertain parentage, magic sword, mysterious female, evil patron - and threw them all in there, just to see if I could make something a little different out of them.
When the Sea Beggars series is finished, I intend to either stop writing fantasy altogether, or else I’m going to write one last door-stopping biblical-size epic, and get the last of it out of my system.
My first three novels, The Way to Babylon, A Different Kingdom, and Riding the Unicorn have nothing at all in common with MoG. They are all stand-alone, though there are a few subtle connections in the mileu they all inhabit. Babylon is about a fantasy author who kills his wife through his own carelessness, and finds himself hiking into the world of his own novels, meeting his own characters in the flesh - but one of those characters is based on his dead wife. And his despair is killing the world he created.
Kingdom is certainly the best book I’ve ever written - set in 1950’s Ireland, it’s about a young boy who finds that the woods near his home are like the Tardis, bigger inside than out, and that they’re inhabited by creatures from nightmares and dreams. He journeys into these wildwoods in search of a lost soul.
Unicorn is about a middle-aged alcoholic wife-beating prison officer who is diagnosed as schizophrenic when he begins hearing voices in his head. The voices may or may not be real, but they transport him to another world, where he is groomed for the assassination of a king.
The only common thread running through all these books, and indeed all my novels, is the mysterious dark-haired woman who seems to pop up everywhere.
Michael Wincott - well spotted that man! Yes, you’ve got me bang to rights. Murad was heavily inspired by Wincott in 1492, and in fact that film was the genesis in many ways of the entire series. Speaking of Ridley Scott films, I got a real shiver down the spine the first time I saw Gladiator - the opening sequence, where Maximus smiles at the robin - that’s Corfe, right there, in that moment.
When I said in the books that Corfe had Dweomer in him, I meant a kind of anti-Dweomer. In my own mind it meant that such was the puissance of Corfe’s determination, such was the strength of his will, that magic would never be able to deflect it, and in fact he was in many ways immune to it. (Though it was used to heal his wounds on at least two occasions.)
Historical fiction? Maybe. The one thing that would put me off it is that all historical events have already occurred, and can’t be changed, so to some extent I would know the plot beforehand. Although I do plot out my novels, I’m happy to change everything at the last minute, as I’m actually writing. That way I keep interested. At the end of Ships I toyed with the ideas of Corfe becoming a bloodthirsty monster who would have to be despatched by Golophin and Bardolin, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Good questions lads. Keep ‘em coming!
RodeoRanch 
). But I see your point about death's not always being glæamorous and epic scenes (I still wish he had more of a hero's end though... 
).
... sorry it was actually Malarion... tired from a long weekend working on improving my brain cells (see good news for Rodeo
But Abeleyn seems to have disappeared
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