The Borderkind and Dawn

TL: Hi Chris! Blimey, you're always here before me nowadays ... is that your third pint already? Well stay there while I get one in, and mull this over: THE BORDERKIND is the second in a trilogy, did that make it more difficult to write?

CG: Only the second pint, I'm afraid. I figured I'd have to carry you home later, so I didn't want to overdo it. As to your question, in a lot of ways THE BORDERKIND was far easier to write than THE MYTH HUNTERS. The set up was all done in the first book, the characters introduced, the ground rules put in place for the mythology involved. In THE BORDERKIND I was able to really begin spreading my wings, exploring the world further, incorporating even more legends and folk tales. Some of the character arcs that were only touched upon in the first book begin to bloom in THE BORDERKIND, and mysteries begin to unfold. I had a plan from the beginning, but what I like best about the book may be that some of these mysteries are things that are in the first book but that many readers won't even have considered, like why certain things are happening. Characters who made brief appearances in book one begin to take on new importance, and a host of new characters and situations are introduced. No one can be trusted. Everyone has their own agenda. And by the time the second book ends, the whole damn story gets turned on its head. The truly difficult one to write was book three, THE LOST ONES, but that's a conversation for another night at the pub.

CG: Whoa, Tim. Thirsty tonight, eh? Slow down with that pint or you'll be slurring by the third question. We don't want a repeat of that night in Baltimore. In any case, let's talk about DAWN. You envisioned DUSK and DAWN as a duology. What is it, structurally, that appealed to you about that choice?

TL: (Hic!) Well, I could be glib and say that there were so many fantasy trilogies around that I decided to do something different. But in truth the story just suits itself to two books (in fact it's one very distinct story split into two books, with what I think is a pretty good cliffhanger at the end of book one). I was actually quite worried when writing the proposal in case a publisher went for it and insisted on three books (back to that fantasy trilogy thing), and for a while I was trying to see how I could fit in MIDNIGHT. But really, it wouldn't have worked. Then if the story had expanded the way other fantasy writer's did - from three volumes, to ten - I'd have to write TEATIME, MIDDAY and BRUNCH. That would have got a bit silly.

CG: I don't know. I'd be curious to read the LAST ORDERS installment of the Noreela centennial. (You could do a hundred books! A first!) Of course, it wouldn't be uplifting work, would it? DUSK is pretty damn grim. From the title, one would expect DAWN to be a story of hope and renewal. Yet after reading DUSK--and knowing you--I find that incredibly difficult to believe.

TL: Erm ..... I don't want to give away too much about DAWN. There's grimness and there's hope, there's a dreaming librarian and a witch who's slowly going mad. Yes, much of the book is overlaid with a feeling of deepest dread, but I like to think even my grimmest book has a ray of hope somewhere.

TL: So, some writers enjoy existing in the same world for years on end and become comfortable with that world. Has writing this trilogy taken a lot out of you, or do you see yourself writing more series of linked books in the future?

CG: I'm of two minds about it, to be honest. Writing THE VEIL exhausted me, but in a wonderful way, like conducting a symphony for weeks on end. I reveled in the writing in spite of the acrobatics needed to keep so many characters and plot threads in motion at one time, and the focus required to weave them all together correctly at the end. And yet there's endless material just in this world alone. I don't want to give anything away, but I could write dozens of books within the mythology of THE VEIL. Certainly, at some point, I'd love to write another trilogy set after the events of this one. But if I did that, I'd need a long rest first. Also, I greatly missed writing about ordinary people in ordinary settings and the impact of darkness and wonder on their lives. So if I ever do anything on this scale again, it will be a little while. I've done epic before, but not like this.

CG: I know that you, however, are planning future novels set in the world of Noreela. How do they relate to or connect to DUSK and DAWN. Are we going to see some of the same characters? Are they set in the same time? Or are they only sharing the world?

TL: The novel I'm working on now is called FALLEN, and it takes place thousands of years before DUSK and DAWN. Readers will recognise much of the landscape and some of the place names, but very little else. It's a much smaller-scale book - though still set against a big backdrop - about two competing explorers in Noreela's infancy. There's lots to discover out there, and these two people - Nomi and Ramus - though friends of a sort, are also struggling to become the most successful Voyager there is. And after FALLEN will come a novel tentatively titled THE ISLAND. That's set much closer in time to DUSK and DAWN, but it's unlikely any characters will cross over … but I’ll never say never.

TL: THE MYTH HUNTERS struck me as something that required loads of research ... did that continue through into THE BORDERKIND? Do you enjoy researching, and is so do you use the internet or book (a question that really interests me as I find more and more I'm turning from the internet back to books for my research).

CG: If anything, THE BORDERKIND required even more research than THE MYTH HUNTERS. Certainly the whole trilogy required more research than anything I've ever written. What's nice about it, though, is that it really sprang from a blossoming interest of mine in folklore and mythology in general, an interest I'd begun exploring a number of years ago. Of course I'd always loved mythology, but folklore is something different. Folklore is quieter and more subtle and less grand. Though often mystical, folklore is somehow far more human than myth or legend. THE VEIL TRILOGY deals mostly with mythology, but there are elements of folklore in it as well. I've written a number of recent short stories that deal with folklore, and the book I've got coming up with Mike Mingola, BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE, has folklore at its heart. It's a story about stories, more than anything else. As to methods of research, I certainly use books--all kinds of things I've picked up over the years, either as gifts, or from the bargain shelves at the major book chains, or when I have a specific subject I needed to go out and buy a book for. But the Internet is just as valuable, if not more so, and much faster. I rely on the internet particularly when I want to create a sense of place for a real world setting I've never been.

CG: Tim, maybe it's just the beer, but you're a pretty amiable guy. Yet I find in DUSK and DAWN a very dark prognostication about humanity. Yes, it's a fantasy world, but this is a post-apocalyptic landscape. The old machines represent a level of civilization and industry that is as foreign to the denizens of Noreela as the Egyptians' ability to build the pyramids of Giza is to modern day society. More so, even. They machines and the past are a mystery to them. Is there, beneath the story of a world where magic died and is now returning, also a commentary on your fears for the future of our society? Are we destined to return to the Dark Ages?

TL: Great comparison to the pyramids there, and I think that’s very accurate indeed. Something I had a bit of trouble with when I started this new novel FALLEN – which as I’ve said is set thousands of years before DUSK and DAWN – was how to relate the world back then to that portrayed in the first two novels. But I quickly overcame that problem by looking at our own world. I thought of Egypt, and how advanced the Egyptians were in many ways, as well as the Romans, Greeks and other great civilisations that rose and fell thousands of years ago. And it came to me that my world of Noreela has a society that is cyclical, rising and falling before and after various dramatic, sometimes catastrophic events in its history.

One of the analogies I was very aware of was the environmental effect we’re having on our planet right now, and how if things go wrong it could very easily fling us back a long way. The old saying goes, ‘Take away three square meals from civilisation and you have anarchy’. And sometimes – in my darkest moments between pints of fine British ale, and I can see you’re getting into it as well – I do believe that we’re heading for a fall. Maybe not The End, but with the way we’re treating the planet right now, something’s got to give. There’s this terrible complacency, starting at the top – ‘No, we won’t sign that agreement to limit pollution because we make too much money burning oil’ – to the individual – ‘What’s the point me recycling, doing stuff on my own won’t change the world’. My heroes and heroines in DUSK and DAWN do stuff on their own, and it does change the world. Blimey. Maybe I’ve just found a positive streak through my fiction after all …

TL: Anyway, I’m getting a bit serious there, so while you get your next round in, muse on this. As you said earlier, a lot of your work has been based on world mythologies and folklore, and the three books of THE VEIL seems like your ultimate exploration of this land. Was that always meant to be? Do you see yourself delving into myth again in the future, and to this scale?

CG: I've always loved myth and folklore but oddly, I don't think I was ever aware of how much it influenced me. My first novel, OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS, was about analyzing traditional vampire myths and exposing their poor logic, using that flaw to reinvent them. That book also is about the way religion builds its own myths. STRANGEWOOD revolved around the way children's storytelling is all about myth-building, and the way the worlds in children's literature are one step away from nightmare. STRAIGHT ON 'TIL MORNING touches on Peter Pan and ancient Celtic myth, PROWLERS turns werewolf legends inside out, THE FERRYMAN is about Greek death legends. You'd think, honestly, that I'd have gotten the point. But it was really only with THE VEIL and working with Mignola on BALTIMORE that I really understood that this was what I'd been doing all along. I'm certain it won't be the last time I go there. In fact, in our collaborative MIND THE GAP, we're touching on similar themes again, this time with urban legends and city folklore. But if I ever do anything on the scale of THE VEIL again, it won't be for a very long time.

CG: We've never discussed this, but writers always take from their own experiences and are shaped by their backgrounds. Are there elements of DUSK and DAWN that come uniquely from your upbringing in the U.K. and, more specifically, in Wales?

TL: I love the UK. Here in such a small area we have extremes of landscape, weather and society, and it always aggrieves me when people complain. Especially about the weather. Brits always complain about the weather! There’s a quote that goes ‘There’s no such thing as good weather or bad weather, just weather.’ Perfect. Give me snow and rain over skin-baking sunshine any day. So yes, I think a lot of the landscapes I know from living here find their way into the novels. Rugged coasts, hills and mountains, rivers and lakes, and although some of the geography of Noreela is a little more fanciful – there are no steam plains close to me – it’s very firmly rooted in reality.

TL: Now here’s a real ‘late night in the pub’ question: do you believe in any of the stuff you write about? Ghosts, other dimensions ...?

CG: I wish I could say that I did. What I can say is that I *want* to believe, very much. I do believe in some power that is greater than the human mind, but only because logic dictates it would be foolhardy to think otherwise. With the vastness of the universe--with our greatest minds unable to fathom what exists beyond the furthest boundaries of the universe (we cannot conceive of "infinite space")--I feel there must be something else. What that is--some omniscient deity or not--I don't know. So I choose to believe in God, but my conception of God doesn't match any religion that I'm aware of. As for ghosts and demons and all of that, again, I want to believe. I think that's one of the great services that supernatural fiction provides. If a writer can make you believe just for a moment that demons and ghosts exist, then in that same moment, angels and souls must exist as well.

As for other dimensions, I have no problem believing in that. Stephen Hawking has established a scientific foundation for such belief, and who am I to argue with him? Now, parallel worlds, time travel, and that sort of thing...no clue. But I'd be very happy to have such things proven. Why we are not a space-faring world, I have no idea. We keep asking if there's life on Mars, if we could build a colony there, all of that. There's only one way to find out, and that's to go and do it.

CG: We both come to fantasy fiction as writers steeped in the great tradition of horror and supernatural fiction. How much do you think that colors the fantasy you write? How does it differ from the traditional or even contemporary urban fantasy, and to what effect?

TL: DUSK and DAWN are marketed as fantasy, but I’ve always told people that they’re very, very … very … very … very very very dark fantasy. Very. I basically set up a complete fantasy world and then take it to the edge of destruction. And I think your point is a very valid one, because I wanted to avoid the tropes of fantasy fiction. I didn’t see the point creating this whole new place and then having it filled with dragons, elves and other recognisable fantasy creatures, so I went and created my own. I think a lot of this came from being a horror writer, and in a way DUSK and DAWN were my first real, fully-fledged monster novels! Earlier books I’ve written have been peopled by very human monsters, or by monsters created by humanity, but now I had this blank canvas upon which to create a whole bunch of nasty creature so my own design. It was a lot of fun … So I have tumblers, weird creatures resembling sentient tumbleweed (and anyone intrigued by these things in DUSK, rest assured you’ll find out a lot more about them in DAWN). I have hawks, massive airborne things that float above the crowds but can be harnessed and ridden. There are skull ravens, the Nax living underground (and yes, you’ll find out more about these creatures/entities in DAWN as well). And lots, lots more. My imagination went wild with these books, and I had tremendous fun applying what I guess is a horror writer’s mentality to a fantasy world.

TL: You’ve had a fine selection of ales tonight, Mr Golden, and I’m almost impressed. You’re still standing. But now it’s my round, and I see they’re serving Old Bastard Ale … so your time will come! While I’m up, here’s a question I think all writers should ask of themselves now and then: You’ve written a lot of fiction in a lot of genres, but is there any one thing you haven’t yet tried, but which you’d like to?

CG: I have great admiration for the pulp writers, who wrote a little of everything. The answer, of course, is yes. There are several things I'd like to try my hand at. My greatest passion is for the novel that I've been dying to write for five years, a historical mystery/thriller set in 1901, in the U.S. I don't want to say more about it. When the opportunity arises that I can afford to take the time to write it, I will. It's an enormous canvas of intrigue, murder, and romance with tons of historical characters, and the mystery springs out of the true history of these characters and that era.

CG: You've gotten a lot of interest from film producers in your work lately. What's happening with the potential film version of WHITE, and what else is brewing?

TL: WHITE is going very well. Stephen Susco, who Rogue Pictures have hired to write and direct, is working on the screenplay right now. I have complete confidence in his vision for the movie, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. UNTIL SHE SLEEPS is still under option and a screenplay is being written. There’s also other stuff ticking over, interest in a couple of other books, but you know how these things go … not much to announce until there’s firm news.

TL: So what’s next in Goldenland? I hear rumours of some a very exciting collaboration with a top comic artist and writer …?

CG: Yep. That's BALTIMORE, the collaboration I did with Mike Mignola, that I mentioned earlier. It's coming out at the end of August. I just finished a teen supernatural thriller called POISON INK for Delacourt. I've signed a new deal with Bantam for two new, unrelated novels, but it's a bit early yet to discuss them. On the movie front, Universal renewed their option on OUTCAST, the children's fantasy series I wrote with Tom Sniegoski, and they're developing that along with TALENT, a comic book I also did with Tom. We've got a third film project very close to actually going forward, based on a yet-to-be published comic book of ours, but since the company hasn't announced it, I don't want to divulge anything else. But I actually see that one moving ahead much sooner than the other two.

CG: You've mentioned FALLEN and THE ISLAND. What other writing projects are coming up for you?

TL: I’ve written the novelisation of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT for Pocket Books, that’s due out later this year. That was a lot of fun. My new novel THE EVERLASTING – ghosts, immortals and other oddities – is out soon from Necessary Evil Press in hardback, then in mass market from Leisure in May. There’s a massive collection of short fiction due soon, although I can’t mention the publisher yet. Another volume in the Assassin Series from Necessary Evil Press, and a few other things I can’t really mention just yet. Buy me another pint and I’ll tell you. Go on. Go on. And we’re both drunk enough now to be shameless, so let’s mention MIND THE GAP: BOOK ONE OF THE HIDDEN CITIES, the first of our own collaborations! Nice of Bantam Spectra to buy it – as well as book 2 – as well as publishing our solo work! Actually I’m very excited about these Hidden Cities novels, and I see them turning into a lovely long series …

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