An Interview with Alex Marshall

By Kameron Hurley

Authors are often sent a number of books to read for possible review and advance praise. It can be easy for new books to get lost in the pile. But when I received an early copy of Alex Marshall’s epic fantasy novel A Crown for Cold Silver, it wasn’t long before I realized this was a clever, bloody romp with a wit and humor that set it apart from most fantasy epics. It deftly sets up and subverts expectations at every turn, and I was happy to tell everyone about it.

[A Crown for Cold Silver] deftly sets up and subverts expectations at every turn, and I was happy to tell everyone about it.

Like many folks in the industry, though, I was curious who the author really was, as a quick Google search told me Marshall was most likely a pseudonym. I wanted to know why they’d chosen a pen name when rumor had it they had already published a few books. It’s well-known that writers like Robin Hobb broke back into the fantasy genre after long careers under their own names, with great success. So I understood the compulsion generally, but not specifically. The truth is that debut authors — even under a pen name — can get a second shot at breaking in, one that we aren’t afforded as established pros. Once readers and industry professionals have you pegged down as writing a particular type of book, they are less likely to try something new from you if they decided they didn’t like the first one.

Pen names have always fascinated me, in part because I understand the professional and economic and even societal reasons to do so. So the subject of Alex Marshall and the decision to reboot under a new name fascinated me. I couldn’t pass up the chance to interview Marshall and find out not only who they were, but the reasons behind the reboot, and why it was they chose to build a fantasy epic with such gloriously fun subversions.

So let’s get started, Marshall, shall we?

Q: First things first: why all the secrecy in the first place, and who are you really?

A: I am Jesse Bullington, and under my own name I’ve published three novels and numerous short stories, articles, and reviews, and edited the horror anthology Letters to Lovecraft.

As for the creation of Alex Marshall, that was something an editor suggested early on for one of the reasons you mentioned above — putting the book out under a pen name would let readers approach it without any preconceptions. My previous novels are each doing their own thing but are all solidly set in our historical past and focus on very personal conflicts, whereas A Crown for Cold Silver has both its own world and perils big enough to threaten it. And I’d already warmed to the idea of a pen name in general, as I have some book ideas for younger audiences and assumed it might be best practice in such a case, given the strong reputation my other novels enjoy. Edward Gorey’s a personal hero of mine, and if there’s one thing he taught me it’s that you can’t have enough aliases.

Q: This reveal amused me; a part of me felt I should have figured it out. Your brand of humor paired with revulsion is distinct. Why reveal who you are now, after all the secrecy? A couple of us were working quite hard to figure out who Marshall was.

A: Any secret has a half-life, and of course the more people who know the shorter that span is. A few readers have correctly guessed my identity and contacted me to confirm it. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable denying it, so I asked them to keep it under their hats… but that was a sign that my days of writing on the QT were numbered. After that I began volunteering information about the project to fans who asked if and when I would have a new book out, provided they first swore a bloody oath to preserve the secret. Besides being enthusiastic about the news, many expressed sentiment to the effect of “I really wish I’d known about this sooner!” That was the death knell as far as my investment in keeping it quiet — I want all the fans who have supported me and enjoyed my writing over the years to know about this project without having to be initiated into my broke-ass mystery cult.

Q: Was there any aspect of writing under a pen name that surprised you? Did you find it really freeing, or was it tough to keep under wraps when the reviews came in?

A: To be honest, not really? I approached the project like all of my other work, and since I tend to not engage much with reviews anyway there wasn’t too much temptation involved there.

Q: What was it that drew you to writing an epic fantasy? It certainly appears to be a big departure from your previous work.

A: Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved epic fantasy in all its many mediums — the fabulous worlds and massive scope and high drama and clashing armies — so the attraction was always there. And shortly after I completed my third novel, which is basically weird medieval crime fiction, I had a very long and rich conversation with an old friend of mine who wanted to know why I had set all my fantasies in the past instead of another world. I listed all the reasons why I had yet to write an epic fantasy despite my enthusiasm for the genre, and there was a pause, and then he said, “Well, why don’t you write one now?” Good question. And that lit the fire, though it was years before it all came together.

Q: Did you go into writing this series with an eye toward subverting fantasy tropes? Your choices not only felt deliberate, but knowingly deliberate, as if you were winking at the reader as you went along.

A: Like everyone else writing fantasy these days, I’m standing on the shoulders of frost giants — our genre has a long and rich tradition that we all draw from and engage with as we aspire to create something new and unique. And part of being a responsible steward of any tradition is to not only preserve it but to try and improve it, acknowledging the parts that haven’t aged well or never should have taken root in the first place.

Part of being a responsible steward of any tradition is to not only preserve it but to try and improve it, acknowledging the parts that haven’t aged well or never should have taken root in the first place.

In the case of fantasy, certain tropes are tried-and-true dramatic devices, yes, and some are merely harmless clichés, but then you also have a lot of tired old bullshit wrapped up in gender, sexuality, race, and class politics left over from 19th century medievalism: conventions people naively take for granted as “historically accurate.” So in writing my take on epic fantasy I had a lot of fun playing with expectations and tropes, yes, but always to a sincere purpose. Hell, at this point subverting genre tropes is almost its own trope, isn’t it?

Q: Having read A Crown for Cold Silver, I was impressed not only by the subversion, but also the wry humor, which reminded me a bit of Joe Abercrombie’s work. You seem to have a remarkable ability to play with the grotesque and the absurd all at once. What about this pairing fascinates you? You don’t go full-on grimdark, even though the actual events you’re writing about can be fairly grim.

A: I think life is inherently grotesque and absurd, and maintaining a sense of humor helps insulate us from the overwhelming horror that is existence. Um, it seems I may have gone full-on grimdark after all, so let me add that I also put a lot of stock in beauty and friendship, too, and these things fascinate me just as much as the grotesque and the absurd. Especially when they overlap.

Q: I admit I was tickled to discover that you were Jesse Bullington, as I was both delighted and repulsed by The Enterprise of Death. I was so impressed with how you handled it — making cannibalism feel both natural and repulsive — that I added ritual cannibalism to one of the societies in my novel The Mirror Empire. So my readers can thank you for that. Are you just always out there looking for social taboos you can subvert?

A: Oh, tasty! There’s a line from Ravenous, a criminally underrated film, that goes, “It’s lonely being a cannibal,” and I’m happy to hear you’re also doing your part to help change that (and thank you!). Touching back on the topic of tropes above, one of my favorite things about writing is all the cross-pollination that goes on amongst artists — the devils in A Crown for Cold Silver, for example, owe a lot to folklore and mysticism regarding demons and familiars in general, but also to Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and Pokemon (ok not really).

Ah, and the thing that makes social taboos so enticing is that they always masquerade as a period, a full-stop, do-not-go-there, when really they’re a giant blinking question mark begging to be explored. Forbidden fruit just tastes better.

The thing that makes social taboos so enticing is that they always masquerade as a period, a full-stop, do-not-go-there, when really they’re a giant blinking question mark begging to be explored.

Q: Now that the second book in the series, A Blade of Black Steel, is set to drop in May, what’s next on your plate? Have you found your groove here with epic fantasy, or are you interested in subverting expectations in even more genres? I probably should not ask that, as I wouldn’t want you to give away future pen names!

A: I’m still working on the grand finale to the trilogy, so the campaign isn’t over yet! I’m also co-editing (with Molly Tanzer) the anthology Swords v. Cthulhu, which will be out in July. There are a few other poky things in the fire, but until they’ve taken definite shape I’m superstitious about talking about them — suffice to say that at some point in the future I’d like to work not just in other genres but also other media.

Kameron Hurley is an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. Her most recent novels are The Mirror Empire (2014) and Empire Ascendant (2015), and The Stars Are Legion is forthcoming from Saga Press in October 2016. Her essay on the history of women in conflict, “We Have Always Fought” was the first article to ever win a Hugo Award. It was also nominated for Best Non-Fiction Work by the British Fantasy Society.

Jesse Bullington spent the bulk of his formative years in rural Pennsylvania, the Netherlands, and Tallahassee, Florida. He is a folklore and outdoor enthusiast who holds a bachelor’s degree in History and English Literature from Florida State University. His most recent novel, as Alex Marshall, is A Crown for Cold Silver. The sequel, A Blade of Black Steel, is forthcoming from Orbit in May 2016.