Coffee Books & Art interview with Shannon McDermott
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Did any real-life political incidents or maneuvering make it into the book?
Not really, though I come close when I have one of the characters mention how Belenus had brutally crushed the rebellion of a city called Droheda. “The Dochraitay still told each other in whispers the tales of the sack of Droheda.” Droheda is named for Drogheda, an Irish city besieged and taken by the British under Oliver Cromwell. Not only did the British slaughter the soldiers and officers defending Drogheda, they also executed the friars and priests within the city. They even murdered in cold blood prisoners who had surrendered to them, and massacred many civilians as well. Cromwell went to Drogheda to “reduce it to obedience”, and he did so ruthlessly.
- What sacrifices have you had to make to be a writer?
Mainly, the sacrifice of not pursuing other things. It takes a lot of time, a lot of commitment, to produce a book. And sometimes I wonder: If I had set aside writing, what else might I have done, and where would I be now?
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Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?
Yes, I think so. Everybody knows the maxim “Don’t judge a book by its cover” - but everybody does it anyway. A good cover catches a reader’s eye and gives him a positive impression of the book. A bad cover either leads people to pass right over the book, or else to form a bad impression of it.
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What do you think of “trailers” for books?
Personally, I don’t pay a lot of attention to book trailers, but so what? Other people might. It’s hard for me to judge how effective book trailers are in creating interest in a book. It can’t hurt, at least, and maybe it will help.
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How did you come up with the title? Names?
The title comes from a Bible verse found in the Book of Joel: “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!” For the names, I established this pattern: of Gaelic origin, unusual enough that the names would not be common in our own world, but not too unusual. I avoided names like Ruairidh because it just looks too foreign. Who would care to guess how to pronounce it? So I ended with names like Torradan and Artek and Belenus – different, but easy enough.
I made exceptions to the pattern of Gaelic names. The names of the Northmen were Norse in origin, and Kobuld – the Trow blacksmith – was named after the Kobold, a race in German folklore who were said to live in mines and be expert metalworkers. Sometimes I tweaked the Gaelic names a bit. I had trouble naming Jarmith, the Alamiri held captive by the Captain in Belenus’ kingdom; “Jarmin” - a Gaelic name meaning a German, and therefore a foreigner – finally seemed most appropriate. I didn’t quite like it, though, so I decided to change it to either Jarmith or Jarmik – you know which one won out.
For the place-names, I sometimes used old Gaelic place-names, sometimes actual Gaelic words (for example, the Glahs Forest: glahs is simply the Gaelic word for “green”). Occasionally I mixed together English words into one. Hence the far-north country is called “the Coldlands”. Probably the place-name with the oddest origin is Ataroth, which was in real life an obscure Amorite city conquered by Moses and the Israelites.
Anyway, I had fun with the naming. Thanks for letting me go on about it.
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What was the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
When I began planning The Valley of Decision, I researched into folklore and fairy tales. And I realized how the old stories defied our neat, modern categories. The trolls were not necessarily ugly, the elves weren’t necessarily beautiful, and none of them were safe. “Everything about them,” Yeats once wrote of the faeries, “is capricious, including their size.” In the folk tales, faeries were magical tricksters, dangerous neighbors, unpredictable, mischievous, malicious. Humans were, rightfully, wary and even fearful of them. It was so different from Tolkien’s noble, beautiful Elves.
Flury:
