Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview G.D. Penman, whose novel The Last Days of Hong Kong was our featured new release on October 5.
This is the third book in the Witch of Empire series. Where are we - and the protagonist - when the book begins?Sully is in a really bad place by the end of The Wounded Ones. The war for American Independence is over, but the personal cost to her was about as high as it could be. She’s lost control of her magic, she’s lost her memory, she’s lost her girlfriend, she’s just committed murder on a massive scale, making the hard decisions she never wanted to be hers and sacrificing innocent lives to save even more other people, and the whole world now looks on her as a living weapon to be exploited, not to mention that she’s back under the thumb of her manipulative mother. It was a bit of a downer.
Your main character, Agent "Sully" Sullivan is “one of the top cops in the Imperial Bureau of Investigation. A veteran witch of the British Empire who isn’t afraid to use her magical skills to crack a case.” Tell us something about Sully’s world and where she is in history - or outside it.
Sully’s world is our world, if magic had taken off instead of technology. Because of the uneven distribution of power, many of the Empires that declined long ago are still hanging on long past their sell-by-date. At the same time, because technology wasn’t a deciding factor, some of the worst excess of the Age of Empires has been averted, so you still have the empires of Africa as economic and political powerhouses, Native Americans still control a fair portion of the continental USA and magic essentially gave every world power a nuclear option from the get-go.
At the start of this book, Sully is defeated, but something sends her on a mission to Hong Kong. What is it?
By the start of this book, Sully is starting to pull herself together again, piecing together her memories and trying to recreate the person that she was from the fragments. That means that guilt over all the awful stuff she had to do is back with a vengeance, and that is more than enough to get her out of seclusion. (Although she might also have her own reason for visiting the Vampire capitol of the world.)
The blurb evokes Hong Kong in her world - but not as we know it: “werebear chefs, the blossoming criminal underworld, religious extremists, Mongol agents, vampire separatists, and every other freak, maniac or cosmic leftover with an iota of power”. Tell us more...
The British Empire has crumbled after the war, and all of its old colonies have begun falling to other powers or becoming independent. All of them except for the fortress town of Hong Kong. Which means that it is the wild west. A lawless place with no Empire ruling over it, and people with no desire to give up their autonomy now that they’ve got it. In turn, this has attracted a bad crowd of people that don’t really fit in anywhere else, with good reason.
They are all competing for one thing: “a little sailor doll named Eugene, and the last wish on earth”. Can you tell us about the sailor doll and the last wish?
Eugene was a character in The Year of the Knife, who understandably made himself scarce during all of the chaos of book 2. It is a demon trapped in the body of a doll (based on the story of our world’s possessed doll Robert.) By this stage in the books, all of the extraplanar entities that could grant wishes to humans have packed up their bags and left. Except for poor little Eugene, who is still trapped. And a hot commodity as a result.
What comes first for you - world-building, characters or story?
World building, then characters then story. Without knowing the world, how could I know what sort of people would live in it? Without knowing the characters, how would I know what plot would squeeze the maximum amount of misery out of them? (Okay, slight exaggeration on that last point.)
In your bio it says you are “a firm believer in the axiom that any story is made better with the addition of dragons.” Do you have any favourite dragons?
All dragons are good dragons. I’m a big fan of Errol, from the Discworld, King Ghidora from the Toho films, Mushu from Disney’s Mulan, and Tiamat from Dungeons and Dragons. Paarthurnax from Skyrim, and my sweet-boy Spyro needs a mention too!
You are a freelance game designer. Does that feed into your writing, or vice versa?
I actually write a couple of series in the LitRPG genre, where there are game-like elements in the fantasy settings. So my old folders full of roleplaying game systems that never saw the light of day are finally getting used.
Sully is a detective - how does she use witchcraft to solve crime?
Honestly, she mostly uses witchcraft to blow things up. Solving crimes seems to be an entirely different skill-set. Much like the hardboiled detectives she was modelled after, Sully mostly works things out by going places and talking to people. Magic comes into things on the forensic side of things, and her knowledge of magical theory helps her to work out how crimes are committed, but the rest is just old fashioned police work.
Robyn Bennis, author of The Guns Above, says of your first book in the series, The Year of the Knife, “His Agent Sully is what Dirty Harry would be if he was a lesbian witch fighting demons alongside the cast of Yes, Minister.” As a fan of Yes, Minister, this sounds tempting. Is it true?
The first book definitely saw Sully dealing with a lot more bureaucracy than the latter ones, and the backstabbing politicking that she encountered did lean towards the farcical.
You also work as a ghost writer. What are the different challenges of ghost writing versus writing as yourself?
Absorbing someone else’s style of writing and using it to sound like them is… tricky to say the least. I’m also usually pretty constrained when it comes to writing for other people. What I’m writing isn’t allowed to grow legs and run off in new and exciting directions. It has actually been a huge benefit to me as a writer, because it keeps my out of my comfort zone, and forces me to keep on developing my own voice as I incorporate the best parts of other styles.
Were there any key influences on you as a writer growing up?
Lovecraft’s vision of a hostile universe that actively hated us and wanted us gone definitely appealed to me as an angsty teenager. Once I was past my goth phase, I basically just read anything I could get my hands on. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana was definitely a formative book for me, as I saw fantasy being used to explore real issues in a way I’d never expected. I’d say that was when my fate was sealed and I was condemned to this awful existence as a writer.
What do you enjoy reading now?
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of translated Chinese fantasy. A lot of it is pretty similar to western progression fantasy, but there are enough new elements in each story I try that I feel like I’m getting something new each time. Currently giving “I Shall Seal The Heavens” a try.
Will there be a further book in the series?
If the stars align and these books start selling like hot-cakes, maybe I’ll get to revisit the world of Witch of Empire someday, but for now it is a trilogy, with a completed story.
If the series were made into a film, who would direct it?
I don’t suppose that John Huston is still available, so I guess I’d have to turn to Robert Rodriguez or David Fincher.
About G.D. Penman:
G.D. Penman is the author of more books than you can shake a reasonably-sized stick at, including series like Witch of Empire, Savage Dominion, Deepest Dungeon and The Last King. Before finally realizing that the career advisor lied to them about making a living as an author, G.D. Penman worked as an editor, tabletop game designer, and literally every awful demeaning job that you can think of in-between. Nowadays they can mostly be found writing fantasy novels and smoking a pipe in the sunshine. They live in Dundee, Scotland with their partner, children, dog and cats. Just . . . so many cats.
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