Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Marshall Ryan Maresca, whose latest book, The Assassins of Consequence, is our featured new release on March 29.
Your latest book, The Assassins of Consequence, debuts on March 29. It’s the next instalment in the adventures of Veranix Calbert, a university student who leads a double life. What can you tell us about Veranix and his alter ego, The Thorn?
Veranix Calbert is a magic student at the University of Maradaine, who grew up in a travelling circus with an acrobat mother and a trick-shot archer father. Shortly after starting at the university, he discovered that his father had been on the run from a Maradaine crime boss, who then killed his father and tortured his mother into a vegetative state. So he resolved to use his magical talents and the skill learned from his parents to wage his own personal war against the crime boss, Willem Fenmere.
To backtrack a little, Veranix and his adventures are just one thread in a collection of series set in the city of Maradaine. How would you introduce Maradaine to those unfamiliar with it?
The Maradaine Saga consists of four intertwined series set amid the bustling streets and crime-ridden districts of the exotic city called Maradaine. Maradaine-- The spellbinding port city filled with tales of murder and magic, secrets and lies, policemen and vigilantes, misfits and criminals, scholars and sidekicks, conspiracies and deadly danger. Each series can be read independently, and for avid readers, characters and plot events cross over further into each storyline.
What was the kernel of this idea and how did it grow into the complex world that exists now?
I had started the worldbuilding process of the whole world decades ago, but had long struggled to find the stories within the world. I first tried to write a series that was a full travelogue, showing ALL the world. When I realized that wasn’t working, I tightened my focus to just one city, and then asked myself what sorts of stories could that city hold? And while my brain wanted to keep it an epic tale, I was struck with the idea of deconstructing that epic into the distinct stories in the city, and then slowly weaving them together.
You co-host a Hugo-nominated, Stabby-winning podcast called Worldbuilding for Masochists. What can you tell us about the podcast (and its title)?
The idea behind Worldbuilding for Masochists is talking about next-level worldbuilding, the kind where you’re doing far more work, digging deep into the details and the research, than you would ever necessarily need to write the book, with the idea that knowing more and more about your world enriches your writing, even if you don’t put it all on the page. This was a thing I had long been thinking about, and it turned out Rowenna Miller and Cass Morris were on the same wavelength, and now we have a podcast.
Four series and twelve novels comprise Phase One of the Maradaine Saga. Where does The Assassins of Consequence fit into the whole?
The Assassins of Consequence is the fourth book in the Thorn of Maradaine series, focusing on Veranix. So it’s explicitly following the plot threads from The Thorn of Dentonhill, The Alchemy of Chaos and The Imposters of Aventil. But it’s also the beginning of Phase Two of the Maradaine Saga. What does Phase Two mean, explicitly? We ended Phase One with many of our main characters first coming together in People of the City. Now that characters are intermingling, even though we still have distinct series, there’s a lot of interchange of characters, as the events in Maradaine pull them closer together.
The Thorn faces his nemesis, drug kingpin Willem Fenmere. Who is Fenmere and why is Veranix/The Thorn trying to thwart him? Who are Veranix’s allies in the war against Fenmere and what dangers do they encounter?
At the beginning of Assassins, Veranix has three main allies: first is Kaiana Nell, who is a groundskeeper at the University, and was the first person to help him in his mission. Second is his roommate, Delmin Sarren, who is also a magic student with Veranix, and while he’s not as talented a mage as Veranix, he is very gifted at tracking magical energy. He’s also far more academically minded than Veranix, and is who he leans on for research help. Then there’s Mila Kendish, who had previously been a major character in the Streets of Maradaine series. She and Veranix met in The Fenmere Job, and now that she’s a student at the University, she’s using her skills of heist planning and con artistry to aid him further. Finally, there’s Veranix’s cousin, Colin Tyson, who was a captain in the Rose Street Princes, one of the Aventil street gangs, but his alliance with the Thorn had forced him to sever ties, and he’s now the leader of his own new gang, The Sons of Tyson.
How do you keep track of the timeline, the threads and characters in this world?
I am a big fan of spreadsheets. I have character spreadsheets, I have timeline spreadsheets, I have locations spreadsheets. Plus I use a lot of the metatext tools on Scrivener, which can then be exported to spreadsheets, and… it’s a lot of spreadsheets, is what I’m saying.
Before becoming a novelist, you were a playwright, an actor and a theatrical producer. Were there any challenges in moving from writing and producing plays to writing novels?
To an extent, the challenge of the move and the reason for the move are the same thing: the shift from a project that requires the integration of a team, bringing several artists of different disciplines and skill all onto the same page to create a coherent artistic vision, to one that is purely singular and personal. Now you can do it by yourself, but also, you have to do it by yourself.
Veranix has an impressive list of enemies, including five killers who escape from jail hoping to bring him down: the mad alchemist Cuse Jensett, the imposters Erno Don and Enzin Hence, and the Deadly Birds Magpie and Jackdaw. What can you tell us about them?
Cuse Jensett was the primary antagonist from The Alchemy of Chaos. He’s a brilliant young man who devised methods of integrating science and magical energy to do things no one else had even conceived of—but he also was too dangerous, too careless, and got expelled. So, he’s driven by revenge, and since Veranix helped stop him, he’s added Veranix to his list of targets.
Magpie is also an antagonist from Alchemy, where she was one of three Deadly Birds hired to kill the Thorn. While the other two managed to escape, Magpie—an expert in thrown weapons—was caught and arrested, and thus she needs to do something to reclaim her honor with the Birds.
Jackdaw is in a similar situation—she was one of several other Deadly Birds who came after him in The Imposters of Aventil, and also ended up arrested and in prison. She’s Ch’omik, from the other side of the continent, and she fights with a weapon indigenous to her culture-- deadly oar-like axe -- that she’s eager to use on Veranix.
Now, why Jackdaw and other Birds were coming after Veranix in Imposters was because of Enzin Hence, an archer and drug smuggler who had his own score to settle against the Birds, but his outfit and methods for hunting them down resembled the Thorn’s, so the Thorn was accused of the murders he was committing. At the same time, Erno Don was a mercenary hired to pretend to be the Thorn and turn popular opinion against him. With the help of his friends, Veranix was able to stop both of them, and they were both arrested.
So at the beginning of The Assassins of Consequence, you have five very capable, deadly people, in the same prison together, and all with a grudge against the Thorn.
You have written two stand-alone novels: the dieselpunk fantasy The Velocity of Revolution, and Maradaine-universe novel An Unintended Voyage. How do they relate to the main arc?
The Velocity of Revolution is not connected to Maradaine at all. It’s a totally different world. An Unintended Voyage is set in the same world, and it is tied to events in A Parliament of Bodies, where one of the secondary characters from that book finds herself on the other side of the world, and having to navigate being in this strange foreign city with no sense of the language or culture. I’ve been referring to it, in terms of the main arc, as a Prelude to Phase Two, in that it’s not directly part of the next phase of the Maradaine Saga, but does still resonate with the larger story. In a real way, since comparisons to the MCU have been made, Unintended Voyage is kind of akin to Guardians of the Galaxy.
What writers do you enjoy and are there any favourite books that stand out in your mind?
I’m going to go with something contemporary, in that I’ve just been blown away by Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga. I think it’s a master class in balancing story, characters, and worldbuilding, and does so many interesting things in not only showing her world, but the progression of time. It’s exactly the sort of work that wants to make me raise my own game.
There has been a huge investment in fantasy drama since Game of Thrones aired on Netflix. Do you have any thoughts about this expansion, and where do you see it going?
I love that it’s been happening, and am excited to see how it will expand even more. As of right now, we’re still mostly seeing things that are best defined as “traditional” style fantasy: Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, The Witcher and so on. So I am hopeful to see it continue to expand to stranger and more uniquely-voiced adaptations and original-to-the-medium works.
When the movie Star Wars appeared in 1977, could anyone have foreseen its legacy or predicted that its story would still be live in 2022? What do you think about this phenomenon, which shows no sign of stopping? And what about other franchises such as Star Trek, the Marvel Universe and more.
I am really intrigued by it, in that we’re seeing how much franchises can remain vibrant and in audiences’ minds for decades, and hopefully evolve with their audiences. The challenge, of course, is making sure that there’s always room for new franchises to step in and take root as well. But I think it is critical to see how these stories are not just products of their moment. Lord of the Rings, for example, was well received upon its release, but really found its place as a phenomenon twenty years later, and then again forty years after that with the movies.
If you could choose any director, living or dead, to direct the movie or serial version of the Maradaine Saga, who would you choose and why?
Certainly, the last two questions were leading to this, which is more about, would I want some sort of cinematic adaptation of the Maradaine Saga, be it on the large or small screen. And of course I would. I hope to see it in my lifetime, and will keep working to make it happen. But, I think “director” is probably the wrong question to ask for this. Because I think the best form of adaptation would either involve a Cinematic Universe style of movies, OR interconnected television/streaming series. And with both of those, director tends to be a less important role. More critical would be that Executive Producer to shepherd the whole overarching process—like Kevin Feige does for the MCU. And so I don’t have a specific person, but the ideal would be someone who would approach that shepherding role with that same kind of attention to detail and love for the source material that Feige has.
Amazon | B&N | Google
About Marshall Ryan Maresca:
No comments:
Post a Comment