Book of Secrets
Page 27
Chris Roberson's books include the novels Here, There & Everywhere, The Voyage of Night Shining White, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, Set the Seas on Fire, End of the Century, Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, The Dragon's Nine Sons and Three Unbroken, and the comicbook mini-series Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as Asimov's Science Fiction, PostScripts, and Subterranean. Along with his business partner and spouse Allison Baker, he is the publisher of MonkeyBrain Books, an independent publishing house specializing in genre fiction and non-fiction genre studies.
He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award four times – twice for publishing, and once each for writing and editing – twice a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and three times for the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Short Form (winning in 2004 with his story "O One").
More recently Chris has been writing the acclaimed comic book, I Zombie. He lives, with wife and daughter, in Austin, Texas. Read more of his work or just find out what he thinks at chrisroberson.net.
Extras...
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Readers of my previous novels may recall that I am the type of person who feels cheated when "The End" are the last words in a book, and who never buys a DVD if the "Special Features" are nothing more than theatrical trailers. While I feel that stories should explain themselves, I nevertheless like a little extra material to explore when I finish the story itself, a bit of behind-the-scenes business that I can dig into after the credits roll.
With that in mind, I offer the following notes.
On the Text
A somewhat different version of this novel was originally published under the title Voices of Thunder in a print-on-demand edition by Clockwork Storybook, a short-lived writers' collective in Texas. The present volume represents the author's preferred text.
On the Origins of BOOK OF SECRETS
Like my novel End of the Century, with which it shares more than a few points of connection, this story is one that lived in my head for years. The earliest notes on the characters and ideas can be found in notebooks dating back more than twenty years, to when I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. I tinkered with the various pieces for years, and by the spring of 1993 I had figured out the basic plot, worked up the back-stories of the various characters, and sketched in the rough outline of the secret history of the world that Spencer's searches would gradually reveal. I did research for the next year or two, filling notebook after notebook with entries on secret societies, mythologies, and other historical minutiae.
By the time I turned twenty-five in 1995, I had the whole story mapped out. But while I had the plot figured out, I didn't yet have the structure. But more importantly, I knew I wasn't yet a good enough writer to tell the story I wanted to tell. I started writing the novel at least a half-dozen times, but each time was defeated by it.
By the decade's end I was almost ready. As part of the Clockwork Storybook writers' group, I had the constant encouragement (and more importantly, criticism) of the other members – Mark Finn, Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham – to help me improve my craft. And inspired by Michael Moorcock's Fabulous Harbours, I'd finally worked out the structure that the story demanded.
The version of the story that was published as Voices of Thunder was not a first draft – or even a fifteenth – but still in many ways I consider it an unfinished work, bread that wasn't yet fully baked. After a brief life as a print-on-demand edition (that sold only a handful of copies), I continued to tinker with the manuscript, revising it again and again over the years since. The end result is the present volume, now rechristened Book of Secrets – perhaps ironically, the title I'd originally given the story back in 1993, which is only fitting, as this is the story that I set out to tell, all those years ago.
On the Black Hand
The notion of a family of heroes is one that has obsessed me since childhood. Not an extended family of adventurers and explorers like the BonaventureCarmody family featured in much of my other work (the inspiration for which was found in the works of the late Philip José Farmer), but a lineage of masked avengers, a mantle passed down from one generation to the next.
It's an idea I encountered again and again growing up – the masked avenger who carries on the work of their forebears. On the radio and in the pulps, Fran Striker's Green Hornet was the nephew of his Lone Ranger, carrying on in the then modern era the fight begun by his uncle in the Old West.
And in the comic strips, Lee Falk's Phantom was merely the most recent in a long line of Ghosts that Walk, waging a never-ending war against piracy. In the comics, Gray Morrow's re-envisioning of the Black Hood was the modern-day scion of a similar heroic tradition, while Tim Truman's Prowler was a retired hero who spent his twilight years training his successor. Matt Wagner's Grendel was a dark inversion of the model, a masked avenger like the others but far from a hero, and not merely a mantle passed from generation to generation but a demonic spirit of aggression that possesses one host after another.
The work of these talented writers and artists was originally responsible for planting the seed in my fevered young brain that eventually became the Taylor family and the mantle of the Black Hand, and so it is with humble thanks that the present volume is dedicated to them.
Chris Roberson
Austin, TX, USA
CHRIS ROBERSON IN CONVERSATION
Writing is said to be something that people are afflicted with rather than gifted and that it's something you have to do rather than want. What is your opinion of this statement and how true is it to you?
I've always said that anyone who can stop writing should – if you're really a writer, you don't have a choice in the matter. I'm certainly one of those who has written compulsively since childhood, and I couldn't stop if I wanted to. Luckily, I love writing, so it's not any kind of burden. But definitely, even if no one was paying me to write, I'd still be doing it.
When did you realise that you wanted to be a writer?
Very early on. I wrote my first "novel" when I was nine years old. It ran to 426 words on three and a half handwritten pages, and it was entitled Space Crash. And it in no way resembled Star Wars, which had been released two years before. I kept writing through high school, short stories and poems mostly, all of them horrible. In college I started writing novels, and just didn't stop.
It has been said that if you can write a short story you can write anything. How true do you think this is?
It's certainly true that the skills and discipline involved in crafting a successful short story are the basis for all good writing, and I think anyone who can write a good short story has it within them to write a good novel. Novels just take longer!
If someone were to enter a bookshop, how would you persuade them to try your novel over someone else's and how would you define it?
Book of Secrets is a murder mystery combined with a secret history of mankind, wrapped up in a story about a man coming to terms with his heritage. Oh, and there are gangsters, masked avengers, highwaymen, mythological beings, cat burglars, and more! I quite like the tagline cooked up by someone in the Angry Robot offices: "It's almost like Angels & Demons but with real angels and demons." It's not quite accurate, but it captures the flavor nicely.
Who is a must-have on your bookshelf and whose latest release will find you on the bookshop's doorstep waiting for it to open?
Anything by Alan Moore I will sit down and read the minute it appears, and deadlines be damned. Also high on my list are people like Kim Newman, Michael Moorcock, Kage Baker, Terry Pratchett, Michael Chabon, Grant Morrison, and many others.
When you sit down to write, do you know how the story will end or do you just let the pen take you? Do you develop character profiles and outlines for your novels before writing them or do you let your ideas develop as you write?
I outline compulsively, and write incredibly in-depth character profiles and such before ever typing word one
. I keep a wiki database for all of my research and worldbuilding, a personal encyclopaedia that gets bigger and bigger as time goes on.
My outlines are closer in some cases to extremely rough drafts, describing the content of each bit of narration and dialogue, but written quickly and without any concern over how they will read. Then, when it comes time to write, I just rewrite that outline into prose form bit by bit, and when I've rewritten the last of the outline I've got a complete story.
What do you do to relax and what have you read recently?
To relax I watch cartoons with my daughter, read comic books, and noodle around with writing projects other than whatever I'm supposed to be working on at the time. At the moment I'm a judge for the World Fantasy Awards, so I'm having to read everything published in 2008 that might conceivably be called fantasy.
The most recent book I finished and enjoyed was Jeffrey Ford's The Shadow Year, which is just a tour-de-force of a writer working at the height of his powers.
What is your guiltiest pleasure that few know about?
I have no guilty pleasures, or rather I don't keep any of my pleasures private. I'm proud to admit to all of my strange obsessions, from kids' cartoons to puppetry to superhero comics, and so on.
Lots of writers tend to have pets. What do you have and what are their key traits – and do they appear in your novel in certain character attributes?
We have a cat, or rather a cat has us. But he has not yet appeared in any of my stories, at least not so far as I'm aware…
Which character within your latest book was the most fun to write and why?
Most likely the most fun to write was Tan Perrin, the Fagin of cat-burglars.
How similar to your principal protagonist are you?
Spencer Finch is very much an overly idealized self-portrait of myself at a younger age. I was never much like Finch, but I think I very much wanted to be. He is, however, much cooler than I am.
What hobbies do you have and how do they influence your work?
My hobby is my work. That's the real advantage of getting to do the thing you love for a living.
Where do you get your ideas from?
Everywhere!
Do you ever encounter writer's block and if so how do you overcome it?
If I get bogged down in one project, I just switch to another for a while.
Certain authors are renowned for writing at what many would call uncivilised times. When do you write and how do the others in your household feel about it?
I'm very boring in this regard. I write during banker's hours, you could probably say, in the time that my daughter is away at preschool. Usually it's from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon these days.
Sometimes pieces of music seem to influence certain scenes within novels. Do you have a soundtrack for your tale or is it a case of writing in silence with perhaps the odd musical break in-between scenes?
I know some writers listen to music when they write to get them into the mood, but I can't manage it. I have to have silence, as complete as possible.
What misconceptions, if any, did you have about the writing and publishing field when you were first getting started?
I had the impression, as many writers do when starting out and meeting rejection, that the publishing industry was this giant monolithic thing that was designed to keep new writers out, a closed and hermetic system that only those with connections could enter. And I was completely wrong. It wasn't that the editors couldn't recognize my genius, it was that my stories were mostly crap. Continue to write, improve, and keep submitting, and sooner or later you'll get published.
What can you tell us about the next novel?
Um, it depends on whether you meant the next one out, or the next one I'm writing. Well, if you mean the next thing of mine to come out after Book of Secrets, it's actually a comic book mini-series I'm doing with Shawn McManus for Vertigo Comics, a spin off of Bill Willingham's Fables, entitled Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love. It features the reimagined fairy-tale character, who is now "Cinderella, Super Spy," and is Sex in the City meets On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
What are the last five internet sites that you've visited?
Google Mail, Google Reader, Facebook, Blogger, and of course I should mention my own blog at www.chrisroberson.net.
Did you ever take any writing classes or specific instructions to learn the craft?
I took a few creative writing classes, but I don't really recommend them. The best of them I took basically involved the professor assigning us novels to read, some of which were genius and some of which were crap, and asking us to figure out what worked in didn't in each of them. I think the best training in writing comes in reading.
How did you get past the initial barriers of criticism and rejection?
Dogged determination, you could say, if you were being kind. An obsessive compulsion, though, would probably be a better term for it.
In your opinion, what are the best and worst aspects of writing for a living?
The worst aspects are probably the interminable wait between finishing a book or story and readers actually getting a chance to read it.
The best part is that you get to write for a living…
Interview reprinted courtesy of The Falcata Times (http://falcatatimes.blogspot.com)
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Originally self-published in the US by Chris Roberson 2001
This substantially revised edition first published in the UK by Angry Robot 2009
Copyright © 2001, 2009 by Monkeybrain Inc. Cover by Argh! Nottingham
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All rights reserved.
Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-85766-011-4