So is that the aspect of writing you find most challenging—plotting?
Yep. I often know practically nothing about where the story is going to end up when I start—or else I may know the ending but have no idea about how to get there. Actually, when I started writing the climactic scenes of
House of Shadows
, I wrote about forty pages, then completely changed my mind about what was happening, threw them away, and came up with something that worked much better.About the only book where I had the basic outline of the full plot in my head from the start was
Law of the Broken Earth
—because I had to know something about the third book of the trilogy so that I could write the second.
The keiso of Lonne are clearly based on the geisha of Japan. What inspired you to create the keiso?
Actually, I’d just read
Memoirs of a Geisha
, by Arthur Golden, and then the nonfiction
Geisha
, by Liza Dalby, so the keiso had a very direct inspiration. I was intrigued by the roles that geisha have played in Japanese society and, when I created the keiso, decided to emphasize their roles as artists and high-status women and completely separate them from common prostitutes.
Do you often draw ideas for a new book this way—from books you’ve just read yourself?
Absolutely—all the time. Nonfiction. For example, reading
Self-Made Man
, by Nora Vincent, made me want to write a girl character who disguised herself as a boy (in
The Floating Islands
). And it would never have occurred to me to write a character like Tehre (
Land of the Burning Sands
) except that I’d read a book on materials science by J. E. Gordon called
Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
.I draw on fiction, too. Mienthe was based on a very minor character in a historical novel—the character appealed to me and I gave Mienthe a similar background, which is the part you see in the prologue of
Law of the Broken Earth
.
You’ve written both adult and young adult fantasy—do you read both, and do you have a preference? Who are a handful of your favorite authors on both sides of the line?
I definitely read both, and I have no preference. I do think there are a lot of very good writers in YA right now, but that’s been true for ages. I’ve loved Diana Wynne Jones’s books all my life; she and Patricia Wrede might be two of my favorite YA authors. And Robin McKinley. And Sharon Shinn. I recently read the Tomorrow series by John Marsden and it is incredible.
On the adult side, there are too many to name, but definitely Patricia McKillip and Guy Gavriel Kay. And, more recently, N. K. Jemisin—her books are some of the best I’ve read this year.
Do you find it difficult to switch back and forth from adult to young adult?
Yes, it can be. If I’ve recently been working on a YA book, then it can be hard to switch to adult, and vice versa. I think it’s harder for me because I tend to write on the edge, where a book might go either way, so it can be hard for me to write a book that is decisively on one side of the line or the other.
I had this exact trouble with
Land of the Burning Sands
, because I’d just finished
The Floating Islands
, which is YA. I kept thinking of characters and plots that would be fine for YA but not really okay for adult fantasy. Finally I declared that the main character would be forty-two years old, and that got me away from YA at last.
What are your writing plans for the future? Any new titles we should look for?
No specific titles, but I am currently revising an urban fantasy/paranormal story to drop it more firmly into the YA camp. Other than that, we’ll see. I’ve been reading all these books about the Ottoman Empire, so that may turn into a wonderfully exotic setting for a book in the near future.
If you enjoyed HOUSE OF SHADOWS, look out for
by Rachel Neumeier
Kes woke as the first stars came out above the desert, harder and higher and brighter than they had ever seemed at home. She lifted her head and blinked up at them, still half gone in dreams and finding it hard to distinguish, in that first moment, the blank darkness of those dreams from the darkness of the swift dusk. She was not, at first, quite sure why the brightness of the stars seemed so like a forewarning of danger.
She did not at once remember where she was, or with whom. Heat surrounded her, a heavy pressure against her skin. She thought the heat should have been oppressive, but in fact it was not unpleasant. It was a little like coming in from a frosted winter morning into a kitchen, its iron stove pouring heat out into the room: The heat was overwhelming and yet comfortable.
Then, behind her, Opailikiita shifted, tilted her great head, and bumped Kes gently with the side of her fierce eagle’s beak.
Kes caught her breath, remembering everything in a rush: Kairaithin and the desert and the griffins, drops of blood that turned to garnets and rubies as they struck the sand, sparks of fire that scattered from beating wings and turned to gold in the air… She jerked convulsively to her feet, gasping.
Long shadows stretched out from the red cliffs, sharp-edged black against the burning sand. The moon, high and hard as the stars, was not silver but tinted a luminescent red, like bloody glass.
Kereskiita
, Opailikiita said. Her voice was not exactly gentle, but it curled comfortably around the borders of Kes’s mind.
Kes jerked away from the young griffin, whirled, backed up a step and another. She was not exactly frightened—she was not frightened of Opailikiita. Of the desert, perhaps. Of, at least, finding herself still in the desert; she was frightened of that. She caught her breath and said, “I need to go home!”
Her desire for the farm and for Tesme’s familiar voice astonished her. Kes had always been glad to get away by herself, to walk in the hills, to listen to the silence the breeze carried as it brushed through the tall grasses of the meadows. She had seldom
minded
coming home, but she had never
longed
to climb the rail fence into the lowest pasture, or to see her sister watching out the window for Kes to come home. But she longed for those things now. And Tesme would be missing her, would think—Kes could hardly imagine what her sister might think. She said again, “I need to go home!”
Kereskiita
, the slim brown griffin said again.
Wait for Kairaithin. It would be better so.
Kes stared at her. “Where is he?”
The Lord of the Changing Wind is… attempting to change the course of the winds
, answered Opailikiita.
There was a strange kind of humor to the griffin’s voice, but it was not a familiar or comfortable humor and Kes did not understand it. She looked around, trying to find the lie of country she knew in the sweep of the shadowed desert. But she could not recognize anything. If she simply walked downhill, she supposed she would eventually find the edge of the desert… if it still had an edge, which now seemed somehow a little unlikely, as though Kes had watched the whole world change to desert in her dreams. Maybe she had; she could not remember her dreams. Only darkness shot through with fire…
Kereskiita—
said the young brown griffin.
“My name is Kes!” Kes said, with unusual urgency, somehow doubting, in the back of her mind, that this was still true.
Yes
, said Opailikiita.
But that is too little to call you. You should have more to your name. Kairaithin called you
kereskiita
. Shall I?
“Well, but…
kereskiita
? What is that?”
It would be… “fire kitten,” perhaps
, Opailikiita said after a moment. And, with unexpected delicacy,
Do you mind?
Kes supposed she didn’t actually
mind
. She asked, “Opailikiita? That’s
kiita
, too.”
Glittering flashes of amusement flickered all around the borders of Kes’s mind.
Yes
.
Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike
, said the young griffin.
Opailikiita is my familiar name. It is… “little spark”? Something close to that. Kairaithin calls me by that name. I am his
kiinukaile
. It would be… “student,” I think. If you wish,
you
may call me Opailikiita. As you are also Kairaithin’s student.
“I’m not!” Kes protested, shocked.
You assuredly will be
, said another voice, hard and yet somehow amused, a voice that slid with frightening authority around the edges of Kes’s mind. Kairaithin was there suddenly,
not striding up as a man nor settling from the air on eagle’s wings, but simply
there
. He was in his true form: a great eagle-headed griffin with a deadly curve to his beak, powerful feathered forequarters blending smoothly to a broad, muscled lion’s rear. His pelt was red as smoldering coals, his wings black with only narrow flecks of red showing, like a banked fire flickering through a heavy iron grate. He sat like a cat, upright, his lion’s tail curling around taloned eagle’s forefeet. The tip of his tail flicked restlessly across the sand, the only movement he made.
You have made yourself acquainted with my
kiinukaile
?
the griffin mage said to Kes.
It is well you should become acquainted with one another.
“I am
not
your student!” Kes declared furiously, but then hesitated, a little shocked by the vehemence of her own declaration.
She is fierce
, Opailikiita said to Kairaithin.
Someday this kitten will challenge even you.
She sounded like she approved.
Perhaps
, Kairaithin said to the young griffin,
but not today
. There was neither approval nor disapproval in his powerful voice. He added, to Kes,
What will you do, a young fire mage fledging among creatures of earth? I will teach you to ride the fiery wind. Who else will? Who else could?
Kes wanted to shout, I’m not a mage! Only she remembered holding the golden heat of the sunlight in her cupped hands, of tasting the names of griffins like ashes on her tongue. She could still recall every name now. She said stubbornly, “I want to go home. You never said you would keep me here! I healed your friends for you. Take me home!”
Kairaithin tilted his head in a gesture reminiscent of an eagle regarding a small animal below its perch; not threatening, exactly, but dangerous, even when he did not mean to threaten.
He melted suddenly from his great griffin form to the
smaller, slighter shape of a man. But to Kes, he seemed no less a griffin in that form. The fire of his griffin’s shadow glowed faintly in the dark. He said to Kes like a man quoting, “Fire will run like poetry through your blood.”
“I don’t care if it does!” Kes cried, taking a step toward him. “I healed all your people! I learned to use fire and I healed them for you! What else do you
want
?”
Kairaithin regarded her with a powerful, hard humor that was nothing like warm human amusement. He answered, “I hardly know. Events will determine that.”
“Well, I know what
I
want! I want to go
home
!”
“Not yet,” said Kairaithin, unmoved. “This is a night for patience. Do not rush forward toward the next dawn and the next again, human woman. Days of fire and blood will likely follow this night. Be patient and wait.”
“Blood?” Kes thought of the griffins’ terrible injuries, of Kairaithin saying
Arrows of ice and ill-intent
. She said, horrified, “Those cold mages won’t come
here
!”
Harsh amusement touched Kairaithin’s face. “One would not wish to predict the movements of men. But, no. As you say, I do not expect the cold mages of Casmantium to come here. Or not yet. We must wait to see what events determine.”
Kes stared at him. “Events. What events?”
The amusement deepened. “If I could answer that, little
kereskiita
, I would be more than a mage. I may guess what the future will bring. But so may you. And neither of us will
know
until it unrolls at last before us.”
Kes felt very uneasy about these
events
, whatever Kairaithin guessed they might entail. She said, trying for a commitment, suspecting she wouldn’t get one, “But you’ll let me go home later. You’ll take me home. At dawn?”
The griffin mage regarded her with dispassionate intensity.
“At dawn, I am to bring you before the regard of the Lord of Fire and Air.”
The king of the griffins. Kes thought of the great bronze-and-gold king, not lying injured before her but staring down at her in implacable pride and strength. He had struck at her in offended pride, if it had not been simple hostility. Now
he
would make some judgment about her, come to some decision? She was terrified even to think of it.