Reader Question Day 12 – Caina’s romances, Linux books, and real-life inspirations
It’s Saturday, so it’s time for Reader Question Day.
Jacqueline writes:
When is SOUL OF SORCERY coming out?
Hopefully, fall 2012. So this year yet. If all goes well.
nboard9 writes:
When do you find time to write? Or is writing your full-time job?
Writing is not my full-time job. My real job is doing IT stuff. I do writing on the side.
As for finding time to write…well, I don’t have a TV. You can waste an astonishing amount of time with TV. And there’s not much that’s enjoyable on TV, either. So ignoring TV frees up a lot of time. I suppose that takes me out of the pop culture mainstream, but I can live with that. Of course, I have other obligations I can’t skimp on, so I don’t sleep a lot, either. At least during the week. On Saturdays I tend to crash and sleep.
Anyway, my point is that writing is work, and if you want to do it seriously, you need to carve out the time to do it. And if you have to give up TV to do it, well, there’s nothing good on TV anyway.
It’s strange that you write both fantasy and computer books. Why do you write computer books?
Because I can, and they sell well. 🙂
More concretely, I started writing about computers by accident. Back in 2008 I happened to write about a problem I was having with Ubuntu Linux on my blog, and the next day I was astonished to see that the post had gotten 60 hits off Google searches for the same problem. So I started to blog more seriously about technology problems, and with Google Adsense I managed to turn it into a profitable sideline. So when ebooks came along, it seemed only natural to write short computer ebooks.
Angelina writes:
I also thought that Halfdan and Ark were fab, but wanted Ark and Caina to get together. Does Caina ever find romance?
Not quite yet. In another few weeks, I’m planning to start work on GHOST IN THE STORM, and we’ll see what happens then.
Manwe writes:
Characters like Mazael, Caina, Lucan, did any of these characters have any real life inspirations behind them? For example, Tolkien character Aragorn was in part inspired by the real life poet/adventurer Roy Campbell. Do any of your characters have anything like that? Or even if they have no real life inspirations behind them, what about literary, film, etc inspirations?
Not really. At least not the main characters.
The idea for Mazael came from the doctrine of original sin. The idea for his name came from a high school music class, from Johnann Maelzl, who invented the metronome. I thought his name was so distinctive I wrote it down and eventually modified it for DEMONSOULED.
The idea for Caina came from sheer stubbornness on my part. Back in 2007 when SWORD & SORCERESS XXII opened for submissions, I carefully wrote a story and sent it in. It came back with a rejection letter saying that while the story was good, it didn’t have the right tone for the anthology. At that point there was still a week left in the submission period, so in three days I wrote and edited a story with exactly the opposite tone as the first, and sent it in. I wanted the story’s main character to have a name that sounded both feminine and hard, so I picked Caina’s name by thinking of Cain & Abel, and adding an “a” to the end of Cain’s name. Amusingly, I later learned that Dante had named one of his circles of hell “Caina.”
Lucan came about almost by accident. In the background for DEMONSOULED, I decided that Lord Richard Mandragon would have two sons – one warrior, and one wizard. Lucan had only a small part in DEMONSOULED, but he was much more prominent in SOUL OF TYRANTS. Then there was a six year gap between SOUL OF TYRANTS and SOUL OF SERPENTS, and I read a bunch of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, and found them entertaining yet morally repulsive – and I saw a lot of resemblance to Lucan. So Lucan in SOUL OF SERPENTS and SOUL OF DRAGONS has a strong Moorcockian influence on his character – or, at least, my interpretation of Moorcock’s Elric books.
Occasionally, I’ll base the physical description of a minor villain off someone I knew.
(MINOR SPOILER ALERT!)
Gaith Kalborn in SOUL OF DRAGONS, for instance, looks suspiciously like a manager I had as a teenager, a manager who got arrested for massive embezzlement. (Honestly, I can’t remember the man’s name, but I remember exactly what he looked like – sort of like an even angrier version of Tony Soprano, and how he constantly reeked of excessive cologne.) Agria Palaegus in GHOST IN THE BLOOD resembles a woman I knew who left her husband of twenty years due to “boredom” (she finished college and he did not), only to hook up with a college-educated man who cleaned out her bank account and disappeared. (I met both these people at my first job as a teenager, which in retrospect was a highly screwed-up place to work.)
Of course, the physical descriptions are vague enough that I don’t get sued – stocky and blue-eyed could apply to a lot of people. But sometimes I’ll have specific people in mind when I describe minor villains.
And that’s Reader Question Day for this week! Write in with your questions, and I’ll answer them next week.
-JM
“The idea for Mazael came from the doctrine of original sin.”
Cool! And I should also add ‘unique’! Do you intentionally write any theological/philosophical themes or ideas into your work? Or is it just happenstance?
“The idea for his name came from a high school music class, from Johnann Maelzl”
Well that is a unique last name, I can see why you wrote it down. I do like the name Mazael, to me it has a kind of hebraic sound to it (unless I’m pronouncing it wrong). And the name always reminds me of a video game character that I liked, Raziel of the Legacy of Kain series.
As for Caina, I did notice the name used in Dante’s inferno, I thought there may be a connection there. And though you did not intend it, there actually is a connection! That circle of Hell was named after Cain, that same Cain you named Caina after!
“and I read a bunch of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, and found them entertaining yet morally repulsive ”
Entertaining, somewhat….but morally repulsive indeed! I said that on one of John C. Wright’s blog posts, but one of the other commenters there would have none of it. It’s funny, but up until then I never saw anyone defend Elric, the guy is a clear anti-hero at the very least. Then again, one need only look to Elric’s creator, Moorcock. That guy’s whole RL philosophy is bunk stuffed in a sack of crap.
As for Lucan himself, he does make a good villian! Interesting that you gave him a moorcockian feel in the later books.
“I met both these people at my first job as a teenager, which in retrospect was a highly screwed-up place to work”
Sounds like it 😀
I just thought of a good question for you, and rather then wait and forget it, I’ll just ask now, and you can do what you will with it:
Are there any mythologies out there that have a strong influence on any of your works?
And do you have any particular myths you are fond of? (For example Tolkien was very partial to norse myth, where as Lewis seemed more attracted to the greco-roman variety)
caina hell why yes it is! gonna say that then again that circle took it’s name from cain
lol! pay no heed to the last line there
“caina hell why yes it is! gonna say that then again that circle took it’s name from cain”
That was left over from my notes, I guess I forgot to delete it! Sometimes when I’m reading something and I find things I want to comment on, I’ll write little reminders. I usually delete them, but this time I forgot, lol.
“Do you intentionally write any theological/philosophical themes or ideas into your work? Or is it just happenstance?”
Sometimes. The villain in GHOST IN THE FLAMES was based on this particular militant atheist blogger I came across. And I’d just read a book where yet another Sinister Priest was the villain, and it was so dreadfully trite and predictable that I thought “screw it, let’s do the exact opposite.”
Other times it happens by accident.
“That guy’s whole RL philosophy is bunk stuffed in a sack of crap.”
Yes. His fans are quite polite, though. When I first wrote about the Elric stories here a few years ago, it got linked on a message board, and I was expecting a flame war. But everyone was quite nice.
“As for Lucan himself, he does make a good villian!”
Well, Lucan doesn’t think of himself as a villain…
“Are there any mythologies out there that have a strong influence on any of your works?”
Not really. I usually get more influence from history than from mythology per se. I do think Egyptian mythology is fascinating in a dystopian sort of way, and someday I’d like to write a novel about someone who escapes from the Egyptian afterlife. (Along the lines of Glen Cook’s “Instrumentalities of the Night” series and Norse mythology.)
That said, I do tend to loot our modern 21st century mythologies. The magi in THE GHOSTS series tend to be hardcore rationalists – they never speak of themselves as “practicing sorcery”, but as “studying the arcane sciences”, and they want to see the Empire ruled by an educated elite – namely, themselves. This means they tend to do bad things, like the villain in GHOST IN THE FLAMES, or that they’re easy prey for stronger personalities like Maglarion or the Moroaica who can see through their BS.