The Thousand Names is easily one of the best books I've read this year, and a strong contender for debut of the year besides. So it's no surprise at all that I asked Django Wexler for an interview. We covered the usual questions about concept, influences,character, plotting and more. I was impressed by his candor and his sense of humor and quite enjoyed myself as I'm sure you will too. There are some links to other content by this talented author included, be sure to check them out. They're well worth your time. I even bookmarked one for reference later.
Well, that's enough from me. Enjoy.
Django Wexler: So, The Thousand Names basically came
from my reading two books – George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (and
sequels) and David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon. Needless to say,
I’m a big fan of Martin, and I really liked what he did with his setting – he
took the standard knights-and-castles fantasy and brought it down to earth, so
to speak, by introducing a big dose of historical realism and modeling it more
closely on a particular time period. I decided I wanted to do something
like that, a secondary world with a strong historical basis and magic with a
pretty light touch. But since the knights-and-castles era was pretty well
covered, I thought it would be more fun to base it on a very different time in
history.
When I read Chandler’s book, the Napoleonic era seemed
perfect. Big, sweeping battles, lots of interesting political changes,
and not something you see much of in fantasy. Influenced by the old S. M.
Stirling and David Drake series The General (military SF retelling the
campaigns of Belisarius) I originally planned to do a fictionalized version of
the actual life of Napoleon, with Janus as the Napoleon character. Once I
started developing the world a bit more, and working on the characters and
their backgrounds, it became clear that wasn’t going to work, and the current
version of the story only has faint similarities to the actual *course*
of history.
I think Winter’s story was the last part to fall into
place. I knew I wanted the second POV to be female, but for a while it
was Janus’ little sister, or Marcus’ girlfriend, or similar. Once I
realized she needed her own story, it worked much better, and the result is
that her plot ended up taking over the series to the point where she’s probably
the key character!
52 Reviews: While I also loved Martin's A Song of Ice and
Fire, I was really impressed that none of your viewpoint characters were from
the ranks of the privileged few. Did you intentionally choose to focus on the
common men and women, or was it more a function of the historical period that
provided the basis for the novel?
Django Wexler: It’s a function of a couple of things, but
mostly the setting. I wanted the viewpoints to be two characters at
opposite ends of the military hierarchy – one to give the rankers point of
view, and then one at the top to talk strategy and help explain what’s going on
at a higher level. The ranker was obviously going to be a commoner, and
that ended up being Winter’s role. For the officer, I wanted someone who
basically knew what he was doing, and the way the Vordanai army is put together
that mostly means commoners as well. (In the Vordanai army, a captain has
to rise from the ranks or be trained at the War College to achieve his rank, a
colonel just buys his.) Janus is the exception, of course, but I knew I
didn’t want him to be a point of view – that kind of “genius” character works
best when viewed from the outside, the Holmes and Watson or Thrawn and
Paelleon.
In The Shadow Throne, the next book, the third point of view
is Raesinia, the heir to the Vordanai crown. Fortunately, she is a very
long way from the pampered princess archetype, and using her helps us peek into
the inner workings of court politics.
52 Reviews: Janus is definitely a fascinating character and
I applaud your choice to keep his motives and tactical decisions largely
obscured. One of the other things I've noticed is that while the Colonel
appears to have a great deal of genius regarding military matters he seems
particularly obtuse to more common concerns. Was it necessary to provide this
blind spot to allow Marcus a more important role to play? Or was this to keep
Janus from becoming too larger than life and this unrealistic as a
character?
Django Wexler: Hmm, it’s a little bit of both.
As the POV character, Marcus needs a story of his own, he can’t just be
standing around saying “Brilliant, sir!” all the time. But also I think
it helps Janus be a more identifiable character. We all probably know
somebody who is a master of one particular field of expertise, but who isn’t
too good at day-to-day stuff. It feels realistic, somehow. It also
fits with Janus’ backstory – mostly unrevealed as of yet, but it’s safe to say
that it involved a lot of reading and study at the expense of real-life
experience.
52 Reviews: Moving on
to Winter, I found myself drawn more to her story than any other in the novel.
I love how you placed her so firmly in a man's world and yet she never comes
across as mannish. What led you to the decision to have your principle female
character live as a man, and what challenges did you face as a result?
Django Wexler: It’s funny, because I originally made the
decision for boring, practical reasons – I wanted Winter to be in the army,
rather than a camp follower or something, and having a fully gender-integrated
army wouldn’t have fit with the society I’d designed. But once I made
that choice, and worked through the implications for her character, it really
helped turn her into a full-fledged person. I had to figure out why she
was the kind of person who would do that, take this big risk, and it made her
very interesting.
One thing I *didn’t* want is for the story to be
about the mechanics of her hiding her gender. That can be a good story,
especially combined with a coming-of-age plot, but it’s not what I was going
for. So when the book starts, she’s been doing it for two years or so,
and I just sort of assume she knows what she’s doing. Hopefully I didn’t
damage anyone’s suspension of disbelief too badly by not going into the details
of supportive undergarments and furtive bathroom breaks.
52 Reviews: With the bulk of the novel taken up with the
various stages of a military campaign, how much research and planning went into
getting the feel if not the specific details just right? What advice would you
give to aspiring writers on research and how to avoid using pre-writing to keep
them from having to write the actual prose?
Django Wexler: Fortunately for me, a lot of the
“research” is just the stuff I read for fun. I wouldn’t have gone for
this kind of story if I didn’t enjoy the historical stuff enough to go through
it. So it’s hard to say exactly how much was actually involved – once I
started working on it as a book, I did make an effort to seek out some
lower-level, first-hand accounts of what battles and marches were like, so I
could get that right along with the strategy and tactics.
Research can definitely cross the line into
procrastination. While it’s important to get things right (I think) you
can’t let fear of getting things wrong paralyze you. In particular,
relatively minor details are easy to change in a later draft, so it’s not worth
giving up your writing momentum in order to figure out some tiny piece of
combat drill or military etiquette. Just mark it somehow (I use Word
comments) and move on, take a look on the next pass.
Also, I think a lot of writers fall prey to the idea that,
“Oh, it’s epic fantasy, I’ve got to have a big battle in it!”, which is
completely not true. And even if you DO have a big battle, you don’t have
to (and probably shouldn’t) give us the blow-by-blow. I wrote a guest
post on this subject for A Dribble of Ink that contains a lot more of my
thinking.
52 Reviews: I noticed that much like Martin's A Song of Ice
and Fire, you use magic fairly sparingly and often with a lot of mystery. The
magic that is used seems devastatingly powerful and possibly game changing and
yet sees very little actual page time. What led you to those choices, and will
we see a continuation of that theme, or will future volumes see a dramatic
increase in the open use of magic?
Django Wexler: The lack of magic is definitely a
“by design” feature of the world, for a couple of reasons. First, not
having ubiquitous magic means it’s easier to use historical precedents for
cultures, technologies, and the like. (I’ve never really liked the worlds
where the wizards only blow things up, and never help with farming or
diseases.) Second, I was interested in the military, tactical stuff, and
I wanted that to actually matter, which meant not having real battlefield magic
in the style of, say, Steven Erikson. (Not that I don’t love Erikson’s
books! But having armies always seemed sort of pointless when it usually
comes down to which all-powerful demigod beats the other.) So even the
strongest magic we see in The Thousand Names wouldn’t make the user a match for
a hundred soldiers in the open.
Magic in the world of The Shadow Campaigns is finicky and
poorly understood, so while it can be a
powerful force it’s hard to rely
on. The Shadow Throne definitely continues the trend of magic being
relatively subtle; there’s probably a bit more, page for page, but it’s not so
much flash-and-bang fighting magic. As the series goes along, I think the
role of magic will increase a little, though, if only because Winter and the
others will find out a little bit more about it.
52 Reviews: One of my favorite aspects of the novel was that
everyone seems to have secrets. Not only are they present in the story arcs of
the characters, but there also are many hidden agendas and secrets that are
kept from the general populace as well. Even the title of the series seems to
hint at this theme. What led you to this overarching aspect of the story, and
how do you manage to not telegraph the numerous reveals in the novel?
Django Wexler: Hmm. I actually find this a hard
question to answer, because I think that’s a basic part of how I write – a
story is always more interesting when the characters have secrets, even if only
little ones. In this book in particular, for the reasons we talked about
regarding the magic system, I knew I wanted the reality of magic itself to be a
secret at the beginning of the story – as far as the characters are concerned, it’s
a myth. Then Janus has secrets, both because of his goals and because
that’s the kind of guy he is, and once Winter’s story fell it became kind of a
theme.
The tricky part is giving appropriate hints without giving
the game away. It’s very hard to do, but the perfect reveal is one that
completely blindsides the reader when they first see it, but then is totally
obvious in retrospect. That’s a pretty narrow range to calibrate too,
though, and it’s different for each reader, so I just did the best I
could. A couple of the biggest secrets, the READER is privy to all along,
but not the characters – Winter’s gender is revealed in the first chapter, and
the fact that magic is real in the prologue. Then the trick is making
maximum use of the dramatic tension provided by the reader knowing something
the characters don’t.
The title of the series definitely plays into the “secrets”
theme. I sort of imagine it as the kind of thing that won’t make it into
the official version of history, so that the Shadow Campaigns are the hidden,
true story.
52 Reviews: Switching gears a bit, I'd like to talk a little
bit about your experience as a debut author. With your first novel under
your belt what was the most challenging aspect of the process, and what advice
would give to aspiring writers attempting their first novel?
Django Wexler: I always feel like a little bit of a
cheat being called a debut author. My book Memories of Empire was
released by Medallion Press in 2005, and another book, Shinigami, in
2006. Medallion is a small press, so I qualify for various debut-author
things because the pay wasn’t pro-rate, but it was still honest-to-goodness
advance-paying publication.
The main advice I would give to aspiring authors is a) keep
writing and *finish projects*, and b) don’t assume that your first completed
novel will be your first publication. Very few people end up selling the
first thing they’ve written. It’s certainly worth trying, but you send it
off and then start something else. I finished at least four novels before
writing Memories of Empire (it depends how you count), and The Thousand Names
was #8 or #9 total.
The hardest part, for me, was actually finishing the
stories. Starting new projects is always more fun than banging the last
few nails into old ones, and without a clear goal it’s easy to drift in a sea
of half-completed manuscripts. Actually getting a piece into final,
submittable form and sending it out is a big milestone, and worth working
toward.
52 Reviews: Continuing along this vein, what's been the most
rewarding aspect of your experience as a writer considering the critical
success of The Thousand Names?
Django Wexler: I’m not sure if we’ve got “critical
success”, but I guess the response has been reasonably positive. For me,
talking to people who enjoyed the book is always wonderful. It’s a bit of
an ego-trip, obviously, but it’s also great to see how you made people
happy. For the same reason I like responding to mail, signing copies, and
so on; it’s little things that take me a couple of minutes, but it can make
someone’s day. That’s a really rewarding feeling.
I’ve also been privileged to meet quite a few other writers,
either on Twitter or at cons, and they’ve been pretty uniformly awesome.
Getting to be a part of that community is a lot of fun.
52 Reviews: I like to end my interviews by giving the
authors a chance to talk about whatever strikes their fancy. Feel free to pimp
upcoming projects, recommend other authors, or just share something you think
might interest the readers. Or you could talk about your secret pact with
Napoleon's ghost made on a crossroads on the island of Elba. The choice and the
floor is yours.
Django Wexler: The next big event for me is the release of
my middle-grade fantasy, The Forbidden Library, in April of next year.
I’m really excited about that one, it’s a new area for me and I hope people
like the book. The Shadow Throne, sequel to The Thousand Names, releases
in July. I’ll probably also have a novella and some short stories out in
there somewhere, either in e-bookstores or on the web.
And completely off-topic, for anyone interested, I’m now
writing a regular anime column for SF Signal.
Thanks for having me on!
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