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James Tallett Interview 12/8/2012 11:38:25 PM
Fantasy author James Tallett discusses his Four Part Land series and the writing life! LTS: If you love great fantasy that brings world building to a wonderfully imaginative level, I’d like to introduce you to author James Tallett. I’d like to begin by having you share a little information about yourself with our readers, James. What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing?
JT: I’ve always got a few things going on when I’m not writing, but this time of year, I turn into a bit of a skier. For about sixty days of the winter, I’ll pile into my car and head north to get as much skiing in as I can. If it’s too warm out for skiing, you’ll usually find me hiking a mountain, very often back in England. Otherwise, well, it’s the usual array of reading, video games, and the day job.
LTS: Having read an excerpt from one of your novels, I was immediately drawn into the story from the very first page. I could see how the world building, character development, even with the book covers all came together to show how much care you took in creating The Four Part Land series. Has writing stories always been a part of your life and becoming a published author a lifelong dream?
JT: It hasn’t, actually. I’d never even thought about being a writer growing up, although I had already collected a massive amount of fantasy and science fiction books, starting with the Lord of the Rings in 3rd grade. But then one summer morning while I was in college, I was sitting outside at my parent’s house, chatting to my Mum about books, and she made a comment that boiled down to “You’re a good writer, why don’t you give it a try? How hard can it be?”
As it turns out, quite hard. But that day she and I sat down and drew out a map, and with a few tweaks, it turned into The Four Part Land. The names of the cities, towns, and villages have never changed, and much of the world remains almost the same as it was first envisioned, all those years ago.
And despite some gaps, I’ve never fully stopped writing since that day. I just like to take my time on getting things out the door.
LTS: Your debut novel, Tarranau has been receiving great reviews. What was the inspiration behind this story and can you tell us a little bit about your protagonist, the young mage named Tarranau?
JT: I didn’t really have an inspiration. I sat down and started writing, and came up with this little two-page story about a mage student being exiled from his home. But it was far too short, really just a test of an idea, and I went back and started rewriting it, adding material and so on. When I was done, I had the first chapter of Tarranau. And I just kept writing from there, with no real plot in mind, until I hit chapter five (Tale of the Burning Sands).
The first draft of that chapter was dreadful. It’s the one that sets up the villains for the rest of the story arc, and it didn’t. At all. So I threw the whole chapter in the trash, pulled on my plotters hat, and rebuilt the rest of the story into the form that exists today.
As for Tarranau, well, he was my first serious main character, and I think when you’re new to the process of writing, you always go with what you know best. Which means he started out being fairly heavily based on me, or things I knew well. The beaches he visits exist, in Cornwall. The school he goes to is a mixture of my boarding school experience with the more old-fashioned ones such as Eton and Rugby.
Once you write a character for a while though, they become alive, an entirely separate personality living inside the writer’s head. Which is why he evolved from the fairly sheltered, bookish lad he is at the beginning of the story to where he is now, which I won’t spoil for you.
LTS: Without giving away too much, can you reveal what’s in store for the readers when they crack open Tarranau?
JT: A new world, seen through the eyes of a character exploring it for the first time, much as the reader is. Tarranau is an unwilling protagonist, being blamed for actions he didn’t take, things that other people are responsible for, until one of those becomes too serious for him to keep fleeing.
The setting borrows a lot in its political turmoil from the late 1930s, that period when the various forms of Fascism were on the rise, and countries were talking about reclaiming their ancient empires. So rather than dropping the reader right into the centre of the war, as so many stories do, he instead enters during the build, with even actions that he sees at a distance playing an important part in what’s to come.
LTS: Why did you decide to take the indie route and create Deepwood Publishing?
JT: Basically, because of the financial numbers, which is that as an indie author, you get a far greater amount of money per book sold. True, you have to put up with all the editing, formatting, cover art, etc. yourself, but in the long run, those are all fixed costs, while, especially in this era of the ebook and POD, you can sell a great deal of books over a long timeframe.
LTS: What is the best and worst part of being an indie author?
JT: The best is being your own master – there’s no deadlines, there’s no restrictions on what you can write, there’s freedom to experiment and try all kinds of new and different ideas, short stories to epic novels.
The downside is the flip of that coin – you need to do all your own marketing, organize the editing, formatting, artwork, and other aspects, or learn how to do it yourself. Which means that most of the time you spend on being a writer, you aren’t actually writing.
LTS: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned on the road to publication?
JT: No matter how good or bad you are as an author, marketing matters. Far more than the actual quality of the creation, really. Which is a lesson that Hollywood has been taking advantage of for years. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be the deluge of romantic comedies and horror movies that there are.
LTS: On the subject of writing styles, are you a plotter or pantser? The readers would like to know if you tend to plot out your story line in great detail or if your writing is more organic with the characters and events unfolding as you write.
JT: I sit right in the middle, actually. I’ll plot the story out, but my definition of a plot is a pretty thin thing. I’m currently working on Læccan Waters, which is the 3rd novel in the series and the successor to Tarranau, and the plot for it is about two pages of typed bullets. The actual novel is already well longer than Tarranau.
That being said, I always go into greater detail for the ending of the story, or one of the big moments, because I want to make sure that I know exactly how it’s going to play out when the villains steps onto the stage, or the final conflict and climax of the story happens. Those scenes and moments I will always plot out. But as for, say, a minor skirmish midway through the third chapter? It’s entirely pantsed. Its mere existence is usually me pantsing.
LTS: Some authors meditate, others need to fuel up on coffee or listen to music. Do you have any rituals, ones that can be shared with the readers, that you must do before you hunker down for a writing session?
JT: I’ve always got music of some kind or another going, usually of a certain type that just seems to click with the story. Broadly, it falls into two types, which is modern classical (E.S. Posthumus and Apocalyptica are the leaders here), or some form of electronic music. I’m currently in an electronic phase, and have been plugging away to Deadmau5, Daft Punk, Darude, Feed Me, and Glitch Mob. They got me through NaNo quite handily, which was nice.
The one thing that music absolutely can’t have is any vocals – vocals immediately pull me out of the story, just because I find them distracting. I get caught up in the song, especially if it’s one I like or know the lyrics to. Which is why my writing music tends to be fairly different from what I listen to for fun (Heavy Metal, for those curious).
LTS: At one time or another, most writers hit the wall and their work stalls because of the dreaded writer’s block. What do you do to get around or over this mental wall to resume writing?
JT: Switch stories. Writer’s Block is almost always confined to the story being worked on at the time. Although, I tend not to suffer from it too much. Rather, I get burnout, which is where I’ve been working on a story for a month or two and just get bored of writing the same environment for so long. So I often either end up taking breaks or writing a short story or two. This is where Bloodaxe and Breaking an Empire have come from, among many others.
However, all that being said, burnout tends to eat a lot of time that I should be writing. Since I mostly do the writing as a hobby, I find it hard to force myself to write when I don’t feel the urge.
LTS: Who is your favourite author and how has he/she inspired you to write or influenced your writing style or choice of genre?
JT: I don’t know if I have an outright favorite, but there are certain authors I hold in very high regard, and whose books I will buy sight unseen because I know they’ll be excellent. Terry Pratchett is probably right at the top of the list, and he’s the only author whose books I regularly reread. Brandon Sanderson is a recent addition to the list, starting with the Mistborn series, and then his work on the Wheel of Time.
But as for the one who’s had the most influence on me, it’s almost certainly the sadly departed Robert Jordan. I started reading the Wheel of Time when the first book came out, in 1990, and I will finish the series sometime in February 2013, shortly after the last book comes out. Something about that first book just caught at my attention, and has never let go, even when the author changed.
But as for the genre, well, I was never in any real doubt about what I’d write. It was always going to be fantasy and science fiction, because that’s what I love reading, and because I get to leverage other things that I enjoy, like history and the NewSpace wave.
LTS: What do you foresee in your future over the next five years and do you hope to branch out from fantasy into other genres?
JT: Well, in five year’s time I will finally be approaching the end of The Four Part Land, which means I will get to go play with all the other ideas I’ve been building up over the years. It’s the one downside of writing epic fantasy – it just takes an age to finish a series.
I’ve already got plots written for the first book in a new fantasy series called Arhosa, as well as some trial material there. It’s a rough world, much darker and bloodier than The Four Part Land, and lets me indulge my passion for things evil and magical.
There’s a few other projects kicking around, and I’m sure there will be one or two short stories a year that I can’t predict, but the one thing I’ll never do is stop playing around with new ideas, settings, and plots. It’s too much fun to stay away from for long.
LTS: Thank you so much for taking the time to share in your stories and your writing experience, James!
For more information about James and his stories, check out:
