As you know, I recently contacted a number of speculative fiction authors to inquire about the possibility of interviewing them. Mark Lawrence, whose Europe ) will be released in just a few short weeks, was the first to step up to the plate.I last interviewed him back in 2011, right around the timewas about to hit the shelves, and since then the man who came to be known as That Thorn Guy became one of my favorite SFF authors out there. So it was nice to have a chance to chat and catch up with him.Enjoy!-----------------The most recent blog review said:“The book feels like the spiritual sibling toand, but might surpass them both for me.”I’ve read and very much liked both of those books. I’ll put the “surpass” down to kindly hyperbole, but I’m pleased with the comparison.I am! The blog reviews have all come from people who have read my previous books and quite a few of them have called it my best work yet, as did both my editors. You can’t really complain when people say you’re continuing to improve.It’s always exciting and interesting. There’s some stress too, I guess. But I’ve always felt I was ahead in the game just by being published, and I have never had any expectations of great success, so I’m not wringing my hands or ready to be thrown into the pits of despair if someone doesn’t like the new book. The whole thing is an adventure.Always character first for me. And generally that’s the extent of my planning. Come up with a character that interests me and then throw stuff at them and see what happens. There was a little more planning with these books. I take my youngest daughter out for long walks quite often, and while I’m pushing her wheelchair through the neighbourhood my mind rambles through storylines. I tend not to write much of it down but the general ideas guide me later. The best ideas drop into an empty mind, I find.You should seeabout the same time in 2018 andin 2019.Since finishingI’ve written a very different sort of book that looks as if it will be published under a different name before this trilogy is all on the shelves. I’ve also started three other books. One follows a character from the Broken Empire stories across the Atlantis Ocean to the New World, another is a whole new fantasy driven by a cool idea for a type of magic, and the last one is a modern day thriller. I don’t have a contract on me or any deadlines so I thought I would experiment and have some fun.I don’t think it’s had any impact at all. So no.Not particularly. We’re talking about a very small number of individuals here, some who troll for sport and some whose hot topics distort all interactions.The polarising of politics makes a depressing number of people online desperate to identify everyone as ally or enemy. My small number of strident critics would likely be horrified to discover that I actually agree with many of their views, just less dogmatically.Equality, diversity, and feminism are, in my view, fine things. When I write a story I’m not preaching or fighting a political corner. Just as I refused to apologise to a tiny number of people complaining thathad too few women, I will refuse to apologise to anyone who complains thathas too few men.I’m going to say no. I’ve been nine. I knew a lot of nine year olds at the time, and I’ve had four children go through nine. I never sweat the voice of a character. I have a strong idea of who they are in my mind and I write down the things I think they would say and do. People vary widely. I just have to show the reader *a* person. They don’t have to be typical, or like someone they know … just interesting and consistent.I have no idea!In story telling the fundamental rule is “put your character/s under pressure”. Nobody wants to read about the twenty-five years that Jim went to the office every day and everything was fine. They want to read about the day it wasn’t fine because of aliens/terrorists/office romance/heart attack. A geographical equivalent of tightening the vise, and a driver for the action on a global scale.I thinkandare not dissimilar in style, we just view the story through the eyes of two very different characters. This leads to a difference in tone while the actual world is the same and the events overlapping.Technically they are both written in the first person and spend a lot of time in the protagonist’s head. Both use flashbacks and other techniques to generate additional viewpoints.Withthere’s a change to third person and while I still only use one point of view the third person is less claustrophobic. Things are described with less of the character’s interpretation and musing. And of course Nona is very different to Jalan or Jorg, which gives a different tone again. Nona is a lot less selfish and self-focused than Jalan or Jorg and this leads to more interesting friendships and more development of the characters around her.Most of the stories inhad appeared first in anthologies and were written because someone that had been supportive asked me to. Many anthologies get a small readership and vanish from view quite swiftly. I felt I wanted to give the stories that concerned Jorg and other characters fromtrilogy a more easily located home and a new lease of life. So I collected them together.I haven’t written many short stories recently. The only one I can think of is a story about Prince Jalan that’s due in(Grim Oak Press) sometime soon.Voyager are planning to put out an updated version oflater this year in hardback and ebook. That will be 50% longer than my version and have three new stories in it.All three of my main characters have been pretty impulsive, but Jorg was the most impulsive and the least predictable. I generally had no idea how he would get out of the situations the story landed him in.It’s pretty good! It’s a very nice way to cap off writing a set of books, to be able to hold the whole trilogy in a fat leather-bound edition full of great artwork and design.I was as involved as I wanted to be in the process. I canvassed readers to select the scenes from each book for Jason Chan to illustrate. I gave my thoughts on the graphic design and cover choices. I talked about font and page count.I’ve never felt myself to be a great judge of visual aesthetics so I made sure to let the artists and designers carry the load. And the end result is hugely pleasing!Well, when I wrote the first book I didn’t have any audience in mind or any expectation of it being widely read, so the reader reaction was never something that I spent time considering. Which means I didn’t have any strong expectations regarding reader reaction.I have been a fantasy reader for decades but I was never part of the online side of things until I got published, which meant I had no idea how politicised certain aspects were in some subdivisions of social media. So yes, I was surprised to find quite prominent elements of the blogosphere dissecting books in terms of the social message they were (wrongly) seen as championing.And no, I wouldn’t change any of Jorg’s characterisation.I’m definitely a gardener, and I prefer that approach as I like the story to surprise and entertain me as I write it. Having it all planned out and writing it as an exercise in padding out the framework would be very dull for me.I don’t tend to get a different reaction reading something I’ve written to the reaction I have when I am actually writing it. But certainly writing a powerful scene can have a powerful effect on me. I guess if it didn’t I would consider it not to be working.I have always felt that there is a lot of luck involved in getting published. Some authors maintain that hard work and skill will guarantee success if you keep at it. I am unconvinced. So I’ve always felt a little … guilty(?) about my success. The SPFBO is a mechanism to explore these issues and to give other authors a second roll of the dice that came up so well for me. You still have to be skilful, hardworking, and lucky though!We’re nearing the end of the 2nd year of the exercise and will have considered around six hundred books, selecting twenty finalists, and two winners.For me the exercise has been a great success since it has put before me a new author who has written two of my favourite books ever! With the further vindication that the author had struggled without finding an audience for years and was on the very brink of giving up. The last six months however have seen him sell thousands of books and restored his confidence.Very tough. I’m not good a choosing favorites in any context. I hope that one day I will write a book that is better than any of the ones I’ve written to date. I recognise that might not be true. It’s certainly my most recent books that occupy most space in my head.I see no reason why it can’t have lots of functions, thereby supporting what Le Guin, Bakker, and many others say. I reject the “should” part of what anyone has to say about what fantasy should do. Fantasy as a genre caters to intellectuals and to the masses. It’s different things to different people. Clearly to some it’s a political vehicle, to others entertainment. I don’t disagree with any of the views you paraphrase, except perhaps for the use of “mere” to describe escapism.Some writers are perfectionists, endlessly tinkering until the thing is literally torn from their hands. Or, in some cases, never finishing.I’m not like that. Also, because I’m a ‘gardener’ I don’t have a strong concept of the book I’m trying to write, and thus I’m not disappointed by any discrepancy between that concept and the book I produce.I could be disappointed if the book I write doesn’t please me, but I’m lucky that so far I have been pleased with the end result in all cases.The only thing I would like to change is inwhere the editor felt that the end twist came too out of the blue and convinced me to foreshadow it more. I now read many reviews where the readers says “I saw that coming a mile off.” Now, it’s entirely possible that the way I had it was too obscure and it did need some extra foreshadowing. But I clearly did it with rather too heavy a hand and so I would wish to undo (at least partially) the changes I made to the original text in that regard. I think rather than being “an” example this is “the” example. I can’t think of any others.I guess that the desire to buy and read book 2 is a variant on “enjoying the read”.But really the only things I want readers to take away from my books are variants on “enjoying the read”. There’s no message.Perhaps a good ale that should be drunk at a moderate pace. Consuming any book in too many small portions is likely to make it feel disjointed and to obscure the overarching elements of plot and character. And downing a book in one go is apt to blind you to any subtleties and to the strength of the prose.It may well be true, but I don’t feel it, no.I’ve written a million more words, and practice is generally held to make you get better at something. But when we say that we are mostly talking about activities where the ground truth is easily accessible. Put in another thousand hours of practice and your golf handicap will likely improve, you will get better at sinking the basketball etc. But with writing how to do tell if you’re getting better? There’s no objective measure. And success is a fickle thing guided by currents that are often beyond your control or influence.In the days when I went skiing I felt myself to be getting better each year. With writing I’ve always felt that I was getting my imagination successfully onto the page. I guess you have to be outside the process to form a judgement.I suspect that being active on social media has a rather minor impact on book sales. I know of several authors who have twitter followings or blog following that are significantly larger than mine but whose books don’t sell very well. I think the main driver for book sellers is one reader convincing another to read that book. And that happens because of the book. On the internet we see reflections of the currents out in the wider world (though often distorted by the demographic of a particular platform) but that if we think the internet is driving those sales we may well be mistaking the windsock for the wind.I spend time interacting with readers because I enjoy it. If I didn’t, I would stop.Just that it’s nice to be asked back for an interview after 6 years, thanks. Things come and go pretty quickly in the blogosphere and in publishing. The Hotlist appears to be one of the constants. Long may it endure!