Ask the Author: Max Gladstone
Answered Questions (13)
Max Gladstone
6FO has a few different threads, but it's dealing among other things with startup culture and venture capital, and colonialism. Future books: we'll see! I have a lot of areas I want to explore.
Max Gladstone
I write, and trust to later editing.
Max Gladstone
We get into this a little in LFS and 4RC, but largely in the background & it's easy to miss. The Courts of Craft function like an enormous technocratic legislature, imposing a common framework that enables and supports individual Craftswomen and Craftsmen. The Courts have many roles, one of which is to maintain internally consistent ideological machinery for the Craft. I want to get inside the Courts in the near future and show how they work (or don't).
Max Gladstone
Thank you! My characters often write their own stories—mostly by coloring the story I planned to tell. A moment I thought would be triumphant becomes tragic, or vice versa; characters who initially stepped onto the page as antagonists grow their own agendas.
That storm-out-for-ACTION!! scene ending often confuses me in films and fiction. (Just once I want to see someone forget their keys.) It's one thing for characters to reach the point where words are meaningless—but so many plots would be solved by "just talk to one another, you idiots!!" (Deadpool lampoons this beautifully. "No way this person who loves me will still love me now that I no longer look like Ryan Reynolds." *90 minutes later* "OH WAIT NEVER MIND THAT WAS DUMB.") Of course, meaningful conversation requires emotional openness, while action plots derive thrust from emotional isolation—in a way, traditional action plots use that suffering and violence to *excuse* the big emotional beat at the end. Hm.
That storm-out-for-ACTION!! scene ending often confuses me in films and fiction. (Just once I want to see someone forget their keys.) It's one thing for characters to reach the point where words are meaningless—but so many plots would be solved by "just talk to one another, you idiots!!" (Deadpool lampoons this beautifully. "No way this person who loves me will still love me now that I no longer look like Ryan Reynolds." *90 minutes later* "OH WAIT NEVER MIND THAT WAS DUMB.") Of course, meaningful conversation requires emotional openness, while action plots derive thrust from emotional isolation—in a way, traditional action plots use that suffering and violence to *excuse* the big emotional beat at the end. Hm.
Max Gladstone
Same deal. I'd love to hear those audiobooks myself!
Max Gladstone
I've taken more risks with dialogue and characterization, and I've become more comfortable with empty space. I love Three Parts Dead, and I think it's a great book, but my overall game was more limited back then. I've been pushing myself since.
Max Gladstone
A polite nudge on social media would probably be appropriate—emphasis on *polite*. Publishing's often a balancing act between what people would like to do and what's practical at the moment, but I don't think it would be out of line to express interest.
Max Gladstone
Thank you in return! I had so much fun revisiting Tara and the gang; it's a good book, and I hope people enjoy it as much as I did.
Max Gladstone
Somewhere in the 10-13 range, is my current thinking.
Max Gladstone
Thank you so much for voting for me! I really *should* create a Facebook page—honestly, my social network and website maintenance is a bit catch-as-catch-can, and never having been a devotee of Facebook, I was wondering what the utility of a separate page would be. Do you think people would enjoy having a place to congregate?
Max Gladstone
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the book. After Full Fathom Five, well—Last First Snow came out in July, and Four Roads cross, the fifth book in the Craft Sequence (I know, I know, it's my own fault really) comes out *next* July, returning to Tara and the gang from Alt Coulumb. After that, time marches forward, and geographically we move into the Old World. Should be fun!
Max Gladstone
I really want to! Tor has audio rights for FF5; audiobook performance is in their hands.
Max Gladstone
Here's the easy list:
Roger Zelazny, especially his mythological work—Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows. The Amber books are fun but were never as much a keystone for me as they are for others. But Zelazny is great. His writing's sharp and innovative; he builds worlds to keep human hearts there.
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are bangup awesome historical fiction, with—once you get used to her diction, which is velvet-lush and honey-thick—some of the best pacing and most topsy-turvy plots I've ever seen.
Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown is an entire epic fantasy with a kickass, well-drawn heroine packed into maybe two hundred fifty pages. Can't read it enough.
Frank Herbert's Dune. I haven't returned to it in years, where I have returned to these others—but Dune is just so damn cool.
Those are the substrate. Then there's Gaiman and Pratchett, who each ate my life in high school at one time or another; The Sandman and the Discworld are required reading for modern fantasy, I think.
And, well. Shakespeare. He's just so damn good. I'll absolutely cop to bardolatry—I think he more than deserves the hype.
Roger Zelazny, especially his mythological work—Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows. The Amber books are fun but were never as much a keystone for me as they are for others. But Zelazny is great. His writing's sharp and innovative; he builds worlds to keep human hearts there.
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are bangup awesome historical fiction, with—once you get used to her diction, which is velvet-lush and honey-thick—some of the best pacing and most topsy-turvy plots I've ever seen.
Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown is an entire epic fantasy with a kickass, well-drawn heroine packed into maybe two hundred fifty pages. Can't read it enough.
Frank Herbert's Dune. I haven't returned to it in years, where I have returned to these others—but Dune is just so damn cool.
Those are the substrate. Then there's Gaiman and Pratchett, who each ate my life in high school at one time or another; The Sandman and the Discworld are required reading for modern fantasy, I think.
And, well. Shakespeare. He's just so damn good. I'll absolutely cop to bardolatry—I think he more than deserves the hype.
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