Just a Tad More

If Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow & Thorn series is "the fantasy equivalent of War and Peace" (Locus magazine), then Tad must be Fantasy's Leo Tolstoy. The prolific Mr Williams is cornered for some vodka and a chat.

Could you give readers a nutshell intro to THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS ... ?

TW: A regular guy (thirty years old, failed musician, bit of a waster) finds himself dragged into a war between fairy dynasties - and into fairyland itself. The Old Realm is not quite what it used to be, either. In fact, it's fairly modern. There are trains, skyscrapers, discos, and hit men. (Well, hit-trolls.)

So ... the fairy realm is sort of industrialised? And some of the fairies are more than a little bad? What made you want to shake up the traditional myths so radically?

TW: I just wanted to play with stuff. (The writer's usual true reasons for anything.) The standard version of Faerie is old-fashioned and rural because it was conceived (by humans) a long time ago. It just seemed like things might have changed, and that change might be interesting.

In one respect THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS does follow in a popular fantasy tradition - that of a human crossing a boundary into another world. Were there particular themes you wanted to explore, comparisons that you wanted to make, by taking this approach that you wouldn't have been able to tackle if the book was set entirely in a fantasy landscape?

TW: I'm not sure there's anything I couldn't have explored - fantasy is very elastic. I have a friend who actually wrote a Conan novel that was a thinly-veiled exploration of nuclear proliferation, just for instance.

But I thought that by making Fairyland more like our "real" world, it would also point up the ways in which it was quite different. Which is the fun of taking a journey like this - although it definitely isn't all fun, at least not for Theo, the main character.

Several reviews have noted echoes of 9/11 at the climax of the tale. Were those scenes already in place prior to the terrible events of that day, or was this a means for you to try to make sense of what had happened?

TW: The material that seems to resonate with the 9/11 attacks actually predated 2001, and (as I mention in an Author's Note) I toned down parts of it so it wouldn't be as painful as it might have been. But the parts in question were an integral part of the story as originally conceived, so I decided to leave it in, with the explanation, and trust readers to know the difference between echoes and exploitation.

After writing two huge sagas - MEMORY, SORROW and THORN, and OTHERLAND - did fitting such an epic story into one volume present new and difficult challenges?

TW: Only that it made me want to do it all the time. It was so much EASIER ending things in one volume! Of course, there's a certain woven-tapestry glory to multivolume novels, so I'm not giving them up, but I definitely plan to do a few more single volume stories like this.

How do you begin to turn the germ of a novel into a sprawling, multi-layered story?

TW: That's mostly the process that the outside world might mistake for the author Wandering Around or Looking Stupid. When I get an idea, I let it simmer for a long time - months, years sometimes. The little bits of ideas begin to accrete other ideas - Updated Fairyland attracts Failed Musician, which begets Goblin Music, which begets Goblin Revolution, which in turn helps define Updated Fairyland, and before you know it you have a clump of something novel-ish.

What's an average day like for you when you are mid-book?

TW: Breakfast at my private club, then a jaunt in my Aston Martin to headquarters, thwarting would-be assassins along the way, where I am given the latest lethal gadgets and my new assignment...

Oh, wait, that's ANOTHER aging fantasy-figure.

TW: My day consists of writing, thinking, driving around (I live in California, so EVERYTHING involves driving around), occasionally playing basketball, and trying to convince my children that Daddy is not a punch-bag or a trampoline. (They are as yet not won over to my viewpoint.)

I try to order these components into something that ends each day with a little more story composed and told, and a minimum of injuries for Yours Truly. The mixture differs from day to day. I used to write mostly at night, but nowadays by the time Thing One and Thing Two (our progeny) are abed, I have little brain and less energy, so I try to get my writing done by the frightening light of day. Still not used to it, to be honest.

Do you have time to read other novels while you're writing? And if so, what books have impressed you most of late?

TW: What have I been reading lately? Hmmm. A lot of comics, because I'm going to be doing some projects (for DC, assuming nobody's lost the contracts.) Some China Mieville. Some PG Wodehouse. Scott Card's last Ender book. BIRDS OF AMERICA (short stories by Lorrie Moore.)

As usual, I'm reading more non-fiction, both for research and just general-interest. (A biography of L. Frank Baum, creator of Oz, some stuff on Aboriginal art, various books about things that have caught my interest, like Elizabethan history.)

Can you give us any hints as to what you're working on next?

TW: The next project is a multivolume fantasy called Shadowmarch. Some Orbit newsletter readers may know I wrote the first part of this as an online project. I've rewritten it, added a bunch of material, and now I'm working on the second of three volumes - the first should come out this autumn. It's very character-driven, and I think I'm going to ring some changes on the epic-fantasy format that the readers will appreciate.

Finally, is there anywhere online - other than the Orbit site - where fans can find out more about you and your work?

TW: Shadowmarch.com has become my own personal site, and there's a lot of cool goodies there for free - Shadowmarch artwork (some from me!) and stories of mine unavailable elsewhere - as well as a very lively bulletin board community. My American publishers (DAW Books, Inc.) run tadwilliams.com as part of their site, and you can find a lot of good stuff there, too.

Tad Williams, thank you very much.

Thanks to Orbit Books (and Ben Sharpe) for permission to post this interview. For more details of their SFF authors and books, visit Orbit at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

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