ROBUST discussion

Here's a sample from my blog, Cookie's Book Club. I felt it only fitting to provide an interview with one of our other members, the talented and very funny Christopher Bunn.

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The Hawk and His Boy: Book Review and Interview with Christopher Bunn

I recently read The Hawk And His Boy (The Tormay Trilogy), by Christopher Bunn. The story was beautifully crafted. It grabbed my attention right away and held it to the end.

From the author’s website: “The first book of the Tormay Trilogy, The Hawk And His Boy begins the story of Jute, a young thief who is hired to steal an old wooden box from a rich man’s house. On pain of death, he is instructed by his masters to not open the box. Being a curious boy, he opens the box and finds a knife inside. He accidentally cuts his finger on the blade and thus begins a series of events that soon has him on the run from his former masters in the Thieves Guild, the rich man (a particularly vindictive wizard), and the Guild’s original and anonymous client who hired them to steal the box in the first place. The client, who happens to be the Lord of Darkness himself, will do anything to catch Jute, even if it means plunging the entire land of Tormay into war.”

I wanted to reread this book the moment I finished it. The author’s writing is efficient at the same time that it is poetic and beautiful. Christopher has a way of saying just what needs to be said to convey a message and nothing that is obvious. The landscape that he created is dreamy, gauzy. I felt swept away with the characters in this book. There were a large number of questions left unanswered at the end of the story, but presumably they are dealt with in the upcoming books two and three of The Tormay Trilogy.

Please enjoy my interview with Christopher Bunn below, and consider picking up The Hawk And His Boy. It’s just $2.99 at the Amazon Kindle store!

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Interview with Christopher Bunn

Cookie’s Mom: Christopher, thank-you for allowing me to interview you today. Would you please tell your readers a little about yourself? Do you typically write fantasies?

Christopher Bunn: Thank you for having me stop by. Great blog! Well, let's see. I'm a California farmboy, born and bred. I grew up working in the fields, which meant I escaped California as quick as I could after high school. I spent some years overseas, working in missions, as well as relief and development, and construction. After I finished grad school, I went into the television world for a couple years. I worked for a production company in Scotland, but we did projects around England, as well as Greece, Fiji, and Australia. After that, I went to work for an animation company in Chicago. They went bankrupt (not due to me, hopefully), so I moved home to California. Here I am now, back working on the farm. It's funny how life can bring you full circle.

As far as writing, I love to write in general, not just fantasy. Even if it's just a letter to the editor. However, fantasy is one of my main loves. In addition, I enjoy writing humor and science fiction (which is pretty darn similar to fantasy).

Cookie’s Mom: The Hawk and His Boy is such a rich and complex story. Did you always know that it would be a trilogy? Have all three books been written, or at least mostly written, in your mind since the story began? Is the process of writing a trilogy different from writing a stand-alone novel?

Christopher Bunn: I actually didn't set out to write a trilogy with The Hawk. I just wanted to write a single, stand-alone novel. However, when I finished, the thing was 450,000 words long. That's about 100,000 words longer than Eliot's Middlemarch. I did a lot of painful pruning after several rounds of beta-reading and got it down to 400,000 words. That was when I started thinking it had be carved into a trilogy. Not many people want to buy a book that’s big enough to double as an anchor. Happily, that meant all three books were finished even before I published The Hawk. That said, I'm not sure if I can properly answer your question about trilogy-writing versus stand-alone-writing, as I really didn't write a trilogy. I just wrote one enormous book. It, er, took me ten years. That's way too long to spend on one book or trilogy.

Cookie’s Mom: What inspired you to write this story, and to name it The Hawk and His Boy?

Christopher Bunn: There are a lot of small things that inspired this book, but the main thing was that I simply wanted to read a story like this. I wrote it primarily for myself. I don't know if that's a selfish thing, but it certainly meant I enjoyed the process. Even after ten years and countless revisions, I still enjoy thumbing through and reading about Jute and Levoreth and all the other characters who politely forced themselves into my mind and into the story.

I was going to name the first book Jute instead of The Hawk and His Boy, but one of my beta-readers, a very wise major in the US Army who was stationed in Baghdad at the time, wrote me and objected. His reasoning was that the story is more of an ensemble story, rather than a single storyline highlighting a main character. He's right. There are multiple storylines that weave in and out, all important and vital to the overall story. Despite that, the trilogy begins and ends with the character of Jute. That's why I settled on The Hawk and His Boy, which is a bit of a compromise between the superior firepower of the military and my own stubbornness.

Cookie’s Mom: You have created such a beautiful world in the land of Tormay. Was there an inspiration for this world and the creatures in it?

Christopher Bunn: I come from what I suppose most people would term an artistic family (though, that can also mean "weird family"). My brothers and I grew up in an environment of weaving, stained glass, painting, iron sculpting. Everyone played multiple instruments, except for my dad. We encouraged him to sing very softly in church: pianissimo. That said, I was taught to place a high value on beauty from a young age. Truth and beauty. They go hand-in-hand, I think. I wanted to weave that into Tormay.

However, ugliness and truth often go hand-in-hand as well. Life can be grim and difficult and dark, as we all know. I tried to find a certain accommodation for that in my story. Therefore, I was extremely deliberate in how I wove light and darkness in these books. Ultimately, though, I'm an optimist. One of my aims in creating the land of Tormay and everything that happened there was to give people a story that would have them sigh and smile at the end of it. And then walk away encouraged. Somehow. Hopefully.

Cookie’s Mom: Words have special significance and power in this world you have created. Sometimes a word’s power comes from its close relationship to what you call the first language. Was the ancient language of this book, gelicnes, based on an existing language? How did you come up with such beautiful names for the characters, places and spells we see throughout the story?

Christopher Bunn: You found me out. When I first began writing the story, back in Chicago, I got about one hundred pages into it and I had to stop. I stopped for several reasons. One of them was that I discovered I simply could not create names that rang true on their own and, more importantly, with each other. Of all genres, fantasy has that problem. You usually can't name your characters Fred and George in an otherworld fantasy and get away with sounding legitimate. You have to make them up. I found the task beyond me. That's when I went and bought myself a dictionary of Old English. About ninety percent of the names and non-English terms in the books are Old English. I used words that actually have a relation to who the person is in the story. For example, one of the agents of the Darkness in the story is called a sceadu, which is Old English for darkness, shadow, and destructive influence.

That's one of the beauties of Tolkien's writing. He knew what he was doing with names. How many dead languages did he know? What's more, I think he created entire languages to buttress the legitimacy of his writing. He was truly an amazing man. Me, I had to go buy a dictionary.

Cookie’s Mom: “The four words [first] spoken became the four beings who ruled and held sway over all the feorh—all of the essences of what is.” These four beings are the anbeorun; represented by the sea, the earth, the wind, and the fire. Each anbeorun has a companion, “a shadow of their being, an echo of their voice.” What is the significance of these companions?

Christopher Bunn: When I first started writing the story, I didn't have a clue that the anbeorun had companions. That detail slowly asserted itself as I wrote. I'm not sure how I can talk about their significance without revealing a lot of spoilers. Sorry! They all appear in the story, though, in varying degrees of prominence. One of the pairings in particular appeared out of the blue and practically stormed into the story before I knew what was happening. You'll meet them later.

Cookie’s Mom: Many readers like to know what their favorite authors are reading. Christopher, would you please share with us some of your favourite books? Are there certain authors that have inspired your work?

Christopher Bunn: I love reading. I could go on forever and probably bore you to tears about my favorite books. I'll try to behave myself and be succinct. Growing up, we had no television in our home. Instead, we had books. I grew up on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton. Those are all authors I still reread from time to time. They all wrote fantasy, in addition to other genres. In fantasy, I also greatly admire Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, as well as Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. I love Dorothy Sayers' Peter Wimsey mysteries. Richard Powell, an American humorist, is one of the funniest writers I've ever read. If you get a chance try his Don Quixote, U. S. A., as well as Pioneer, Go Home!. Similarly in humor, I'm a big PG Wodehouse fan. I own a great many of his books. And, even though I was forced to read Dickens in high school, I honestly enjoy him now. He's a master at plotting, and he creates marvelous characters. I could go on and on, but I'll stop my list there. Oh, wait! Robert Taylor's A Journey to Matecumbe is one of the most amazing books ever written. Please, however, avoid the Disney movie.

It's difficult to say whether certain authors inspired my own writing. Doubtlessly, I wrote the Tormay Trilogy partly because I grew up reading so much wonderful fantasy. But many other authors inspired me as well. There's even a character that shows up in the second book that is largely derived from reading too much PG Wodehouse.

Cookie’s Mom: Lastly, Christopher, The Hawk and His Boy fans want to know, when can we expect the second book in The Tormay Trilogy?

Christopher Bunn: The second book, The Shadow at the Gate, is already loaded in the Amazon system. I'm just waiting on my cover designer to finish up his art. He sent me some preliminary sketches today. Hopefully, that means it can go live sometime in the next two weeks. I'm very excited! The third book, The Wicked Day, should be out before summer.

Cookie’s Mom: Thank-you so much for speaking with me today. I look forward to continuing the journey in books two and three of The Tormay Trilogy.

Christopher Bunn: Thank you so much for having me!

What a fascinating interview. I'm going to go buy that guy's books. Oh, wait...

I had the opportunity to interview Christopher about book two in The Tormay Trilogy, The Shadow at the Gate. This was a guest post for Kindle Obsessed (http://www.kindleobsessed.com/uncateg...). You can visit that site for the full text of the review and interview. You can also link to it from my blog (http://cookiesbookclub.blogspot.com/2...).

Here's the interview:

Cookie’s Mom: Hello again, Christopher. Thanks for speaking with me today.

Christopher: Hi, Sue. Thanks very much for having me by again.

Cookie’s Mom: Please tell us about The Shadow at the Gate.

Christopher: The Shadow at the Gate is the second book in my epic fantasy series, The Tormay Trilogy. It continues the story of the young thief Jute as he tries to stay alive and figure out why so many people suddenly want to kill him. The book also includes a couple other substantial subplots that weave in and out of Jute's story.

Cookie’s Mom: Where did the book’s name, The Shadow at the Gate, come from?

The book's name is key in terms of plot and theme. The second book introduces what I would term the secondary layer, or depth, of evil that then goes on to figure prominently in the rest of the story (though, I might add, it is not the last layer). The shadow referenced in the title is a serious personification of evil, a character who has been waiting unseen offstage in the first book, unseen but orchestrating many of the events that happened in The Hawk and His Boy. In The Shadow at the Gate, that character makes his entrance.

However, the character of the shadow is not evil itself, but only one of many manifestations of evil. I attempted to make that distinction in the trilogy, as there are some interesting (and troubling) implications in the thought that evil might exist as something external to creatures (human or otherwise).

Cookie’s Mom: What factors were the most important to you when writing this story?

Writing this story was definitely a balancing act in many ways. I wanted to write a good story, of course, but I also wanted to write a story that a young school-aged version of me and an older version of me would both want to read. I also wanted to see how the main themes of good & evil, family, regret, death and sacrifice would play out. I didn't write the story, of course, as a showcase for those themes, as there's nothing so tedious as stories written specifically to communicate a message. That sort of thing is propaganda or marketing. It's usually a waste of time, unless you're hell-bent on revolution in Russia or selling toothpaste.

Beauty was also another important consideration in this story. Even though I painted with a lot of darkness in The Shadow at the Gate, I wanted to include glimpses of beauty. We need beauty in our lives. We crave it, like water, even if we are not conscious of our thirst. Mind you, I'm not using the aesthetic definition of beauty. Rather, I would define it as the summation of the key elements of goodness: faith, hope, and love.

Cookie’s Mom: The characters in The Shadow at the Gate are very believable. You have spoken about moral compass in the past (see Christopher’s guest post on “Moral Compass and Character”). How did this guide your writing of The Shadow at the Gate?

I'm glad you found the characters believable. That's always an anxiety of mine. These days, I have very little objective perspective on my characters, due to the fact that they've been living in my head for so long. There were two main things that helped me create the characters. First, all of the main characters that had at least a decent amount of dialogue and personality were based on real people or amalgamations of real people. I borrowed heavily from my past in that regard. I really hope I don't get sued because of this.

Second, I freely let my moral compass (essentially, my worldview, philosophy, etc) influence and instruct how my characters behaved. I suppose every writer does this to varying degrees. With some, like Dickens or Chesterton or Dumas, it's extremely easy to see that in action. With others, it's more difficult. At any rate, the things that I believe in, things such as evil & goodness, humility, the value of courage and sacrifice, etc., create, I think, a logically and internally consistent view of the world that, when applied to the creation of characters both good and evil, generates equally logical and internally consistent personalities.

Cookie’s Mom: You maintain such suspense in this book. It never lets up. How do you manage this?

You know that old writing tip about how, when you write a story, you take your character and have lots of bad things happen to them? I might have gone a little overboard with that.

Cookie’s Mom: You wrote this as one story and later broke it down into the three books of the Tormay Trilogy: The Hawk and His Boy, The Shadow at the Gate, and The Wicked Day. Did you know the path this story would take from the beginning or did it unfold for you?

Very early on, I knew where the story would begin and where it would end. I also had quite a few scenes tucked away in my mind, but I wasn't exactly sure how the story would get to them. A lot of unfolding happened. And then a lot of rewriting happened.

Cookie’s Mom: The book is so well organized and so well paced. Despite the complex web of characters, lands and plot lines, I never felt confused or lost.

Thank you for that compliment. Organization and pacing become much more difficult with longer books like this one. At one point in the process, I had to stop writing and create a flow chart for the subplots, as well as a companion flow chart for the characters, in order to see if they surfaced in a regular, evenly spaced fashion.

Cookie’s Mom: In addition to creating a flowchart, did you create an outline for this story? What did that look like?

When I first began writing, I was foolish enough to think I could pull it off without an outline. However, after a couple hundred pages, I wised up. I stopped and made an outline. It had a lot of question marks and empty spots to begin with, but I began filling in the storylines of the various plots as the months (and years) progressed. I had to tweak it quite a bit, though, due to unanticipated characters appearing in my mind and declaring their inclusion in the story.

In addition to an outline, I wrote huge amounts of backstory. History. I think I wrote about 100 pages or more of history. Character studies. Stories that I needed to know in order to truly understand what I was trying to write. If I ever combine all three books of the trilogy into one single book, I might include all that backstory in an appendices.

Cookie’s Mom: What sort of research did you do before writing or as you went along?

I didn't do any specific research for the trilogy. However, that said, I think I've been researching my entire life. While the story is a fantasy, set in a make-believe world of magic and strange creatures and the like, it's heavily autobiographical in terms of themes and characters and motivations. I think I started researching this one back in third grade…

Cookie’s Mom: How much of this book was written in your head before you began writing it on paper?

Only a few scenes were in my head before I started writing, more than ten years ago now. However, I tend to write in my head when I'm doing other things (so don't get too close to me if you see me driving on the freeway, as I'm probably not concentrating on the road). That's always been a habit of mine.

Cookie’s Mom: This book speaks largely of the opposition between the light and the dark. How did your representation of the dark and the light forces develop? Was it pure imagining, was it based on a personal faith, or was it perhaps influenced by some other works that you have read? The use of language to convey light and dark is brilliant.

Christopher: The relationship between light and dark is one the main themes in the trilogy. Light and dark, or good and evil, are central in how I personally see the world. I'm a Christian and, due to my faith, I'm fascinated by the permutations of how good and evil can play out in human lives. Not just fascinated, I'm also painfully aware of how important the problem of evil is, as well as its corresponding answer. Despite being a Christian, when I set out to write the Tormay Trilogy, I was not interested in proselytizing for my faith. I think that sort of writing, like the propagandizing we were discussing before, usually makes for very dull reading. I merely intended to write a diverting story. However, we can never escape ourselves (should we ever?), so a certain amount of my views on evil and the nature of good were, of course, going to color the story. If that's allowed naturally, more as a product of the subconscious, I think one ends up with much better art. I think C. S. Lewis wrote an essay on that topic, but I'm sure he was much more logical and persuasive about it.

Cookie’s Mom: You weave much wisdom into this book that, while it applies to the land of Tormay and its people, may also be applied in our own lives. How did you manage to include such pearls of wisdom in the text:

“But obligation,” he said, “must be chosen afresh every day, particularly for those who rule, for the power of the ruler brings with it a temptation to order one’s world so that it no longer contains opposition and all the painful weights of duty.”

“Water is mine, and you are mine as well, for my blood runs in your veins now. I’ll not compel you to do this. If compulsion is not married with choice there is a hatefulness in it that can’t help but lead to destruction in the end. I ask you to do it of your own choice, for such a choice will be strong and there’s more to you, Ronan of Aum, than a sword.”

Christopher Bunn: Er, pearls of wisdom? I'm flattered you think so. I'm really not certain how such things appeared in the story. I prefer listening rather than speaking in my day-to-day life, so I must be listening to someone wise (my wife probably). I'm really not wise myself. I think I slept through most of school, or, at least, skulked in the back row with a paperback novel secreted inside my math textbook.

The second quotation you used is from some dialogue spoken by Liss Galnes. It's interesting that you would pick a selection from her. The Liss character was one of a handful that showed up in my mind, completely uninvited. She wrote herself from her very first scene. It's almost as if she dictated her dialogue to me. That said, those pearls all belong to Liss (and they do, which will only make literal sense to anyone who has read the trilogy).

Cookie’s Mom: We’ve talked before about the authors and books that have influenced your writing. Have you read any good books lately?

Christopher Bunn: Well, I just started reading David Mamet's new book, The Secret Knowledge. Regardless of one's view on politics, he can certainly write. He wields a heavy pen. I also just read Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links. I know she isn't typically regarded as one of the great lights of literature, but, hey, I think she's fantastic. She knows how to tell a story, and Hercule Poirot is right up there with Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. Other than that, I just read a book on Famines and Plagues to my five-year-old. He picks a book to read before bedtime each night. Last night, he picked that one. The first paragraph was a remarkably bloodthirsty opener, something along the lines of "Famines happen when people no longer have access to food. This causes a condition caused malnutrition. The stomach distends and the limbs become stick-like. Starvation and death then occur." The section on Plagues was pretty unsettling. He loves books like that. Odd little boy. He must take after his dad.

(...and here's the rest of the interview - I guess Christopher and I are too long-winded for this forum.)

Cookie’s Mom: Christopher, when can we expect to have the third book in the trilogy, The Wicked Day, in our hands? Please say it will be soon!

Christopher Bunn: The Wicked Day is done, sitting on my hard drive, and patiently (no, impatiently) waiting for the artist to finish the cover.

[Christopher is expecting to publish The Wicked Day sometime in August. I’ll post an update on Cookie’s Book Club when it is available.]

Cookie’s Mom: Finally, Christopher, Just for fun, will you answer the desert island question? If you were somehow stranded on a desert island with a water-proof backpack (perhaps you floated on it from the shipwreck), what three things found in your backpack would you be grateful for having had the foresight to bring on your journey in the unlikely event of an emergency?

Christopher Bunn: I guess if I were stranded, my backpack would contain one of those Acme Inflatable Hydrofoils (you know, the ones that are about the size of a nickel - you sprinkle some water on them and they inflate into a thirty-foot cabin cruiser equipped with long-range fuel tanks, fully stocked refrigerator, satellite radio, small tube of sunscreen, etc.), my Kindle, and…hmm…oh, my wife. She actually knows how to pilot boats and do ocean navigation, so I'd let her drive while I would read on the bow.

Cookie’s Mom: Thank-you for speaking with me today, Christopher, and thanks so much for writing The Hawk and His Boy and The Shadow at the Gate. I have loved these stories!

Christopher Bunn: It's been my pleasure to chat, Sue. I'm glad you enjoyed the books (it kind of feels like you're complimenting my two sons). Best wishes to you.

Sjm wrote: "I had the opportunity to interview Christopher about book two in The Tormay Trilogy, The Shadow at the Gate. This was a guest post for Kindle Obsessed (http://www.kindleobsessed.com/uncateg......"

What a superb interview. Congratulations, Sue. I don't know how you do it every time. I was especially interested in those remarks about outlines -- I wouldn't have thought to ask a fellow as apparently organized of mind as Christopher about outlines at all.

And congratulations on another good book, Christopher.

Thanks, Andre. Yeah, Sue is a real pleasure with her interviews. She goes after things a bit deeper than the typical interviewer. Sue, if you want a new quote for your site, howabout: "Sue knows the onion has more than one layer..."

Thanks Andre!

Thanks Christopher - I added that to your quote. I appreciate how much effort you put into your answers. It was an excellent interview because of your honest and entertaining responses!

Sjm and Christoper:
I throughly enjoyed the interview. The questions and answers are just what readers want to know; it enriches the reading experience. The books are going on my to-read list. Boy, I am going to need two summers to get through everything but what fun.

Thanks Margie! I have quite the TBR collection myself!

Sjm,

I am always impressed by your interviewing skills--- applicable, from what I see, to a large range of genres.

Congrats, and congrats Christopher as well, for interesting answers.

Thanks Gabriela. I'm definitely a quality over quantity interviewer. :)

Thanks, Gabriela. Sjm does one of the better author interviews around!