BBB: What is the strangest thing you ever did to research something for a story? KA: I actually tend not to do things for research. I read. And I read all kinds of things: history about Nazi Germany; American history, mostly disasters like the Salem Witch-Trials and the battle of the Little Big Horn (a complete disaster for Custer, and although it was a victory for the Native Americans, in the long run it did not give them any advantage at all, so it’s also kind of a disaster for them) and the Donner Party and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the shootout at the O.K. Corral. And I read historical true-crime by the bucketload: Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Ratcliffe Highway murders, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and a great many other murders and murderers that were causes celebres in their day and nobody now has ever heard of. I don’t always know how my reading is going to turn into stories, but the more material I give my brain, the better.
BBB: What character was the toughest for you to get onto the page, and why? How did you finally crack it?
KA: The hardest character to write was my protagonist’s abusive guardian, because he’s a horrible person but I didn’t want to make him just capital-E Evil. He has his own story and his own reasons for being an alcoholic bully, and I wanted to convey those while at the same time not condoning or excusing what he did. It was a very tricky line to walk.
BBB: Have you ever had second thoughts or regrets after killing off a main character?
KA: I’ve only killed off one main character, in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series that I wrote under my real name, Sarah Monette, and I regretted it deeply. I regretted it before I did it, and I regretted it after I did it, but it was a painfully inevitable and necessary death for the story. I looked as hard as I could for an escape hatch, and there just wasn’t one.
BBB: How do you keep track of your world building?
KA: I keep an extensive file of notes; I make and frequently consult a list of every character who appears or gets mentioned; I draw maps.
BBB: Please tell us more about The Goblin Emperor and the storyline that drives it.
KA: The Goblin Emperor is the story of Maia, the half-goblin youngest son of the Elvish emperor. His father hated his mother, so he’s spent his entire life exiled from the court. The book opens with a messenger arrriving to tell him there’s been an airship crash: his father and all three of his older brothers are dead. Which means he’s now the emperor. All of the book unspools from that one event.
BBB: What sets The Goblin Emperor apart from other books in the same genre?
KA: The Goblin Emperor is unusual in that it is epic fantasy–that is, fantasy that takes place in a world that has no direct relation to our own–and steampunk. In general, these two things have not been mixed, but I looked at them and saw chocolate and peanut butter.
BBB: What types of creatures/characters can readers expect in your world?
KA: Elves and goblins (though not the stereotypes of either). There are also apparently lion-people on the southern continent, but we don’t meet any of them.
BBB: Did you do any kind of research to determine the details of your characters lives / lifestyles?
KA: Nope. One of the great advantages of fantasy is that you can really just make stuff up. I borrowed from things I already knew–the Elvish court is pretty obviously based on Louis XIV and Versailles–but I didn’t research anything specifically.
BBB: Are you a plotser or a pantser? or a Planster (a combo of both)
KA: It varies from book to book. Mostly, though, I’m a pantser. Part of what I most enjoy about the actual writing process is that I discover things as I write.
BBB: What’s the best thing that anyone said to you when you were in a writing low spot?
KA: This isn’t inspirational in the traditional sense, but I was horribly horribly stuck on Chapter 26, and Steve Brust said at a panel at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention that when he’s reading about an imaginary piece of technology, he doesn’t want to know how it works, he wants to know how it runs. And that totally and 100% saved my bacon because it showed me how I could write that scene without actually knowing how a gigantic steam-powered drawbridge would work. Without that, I’d probably still be stuck.
BBB: Do you set a daily word count goal, time limit goal, or just go with the flow?
KA: I set goals, but it’s not word count or time–neither of those work well for me. But if I set a goal for what I have to accomplish in the scene I’m writing, that works really well. Qualitative rather than quantitative.
BBB: What’s coming up for you for the rest of 2014?
KA: I’m working on the third Iskryne book with Elizabeth Bear, the sequel to A Companion to Wolves and The Tempering of Men.
BBB: What was the BEST book you read in 2013?
KA: Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
10 Quick Things About Katherine
Favorite Food? sushi
Favorite Color? amber
Favorite Movie or TV Show of all Time? Ghostbusters
Favorite Drink? hot chocolate
Favorite Book? Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
Favorite Season? spring
Favorite Online Hangout? (think FB, Twitter, Goodreads) Twitter
Favorite Animal? cat
Favorite Band or Musician? Depeche Mode
Mode of Travel? (Trains, Planes or Automobiles) Trains
Favorite Vacation Destination? bookstore
Buy a print copy of The Goblin Emperor from Amazon by clicking here. Buy a Kindle copy of The Goblin Emperor from Amazon by clicking here.
About Katherine Addision
Author Bio:
Sarah Monette grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the three secret cities of the Manhattan Project, and now lives in a 108-year-old house in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, one grand piano, and one husband. Her Ph.D. diploma (English Literature, 2004) hangs in the kitchen. She has published more than fifty short stories and has two short story collections out: The Bone Key (Prime Books 2007–with a shiny second edition in 2011) and Somewhere Beneath Those Waves (Prime Books, 2011). She has co-written two novels with Elizabeth Bear, and they are working on a third. Her first four novels (Melusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis) were published by Ace. Her latest novel, The Goblin Emperor, published under the pen name Katherine Addison, came out from Tor in April 2014. Visit her online at www.sarahmonette.com or www.katherineaddison.comConnect with Katherine| Website | Blog | Twitter | Books by Katherine Addison|
CONTEST INFO: Open to readers in the USA Prize: 5 hardback copies of The Goblin Emperor
May 6, 2014
Author Katherine Addison Interview and Book Contest LIVE Here!
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