Read a Q&A with Raymond E. Feist!

Raymond E. Feist (full name Raymond Elias Feist), is a Southern Californian by birth and a San Diegan by choice. He was educated at the University of California, San Diego, where he received his B.A. in Communication Arts with Honours in 1977. A New York Times, and Times of London bestseller, he is the author of numerous fantasy novels and series, such as Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon, The Riftwar Saga, the Empire Trilogy (co-authored with Janny Wurts), Krondor’s Sons, and so on. Hobbies include collecting movies on DVD, fine wine, books on the history of Professional Football, and the works of American Illustrators.

Today, Raymond is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about his latest book, Queen of Storms – the next book in the Firemane Saga (out today!). Read on …

Raymond E. Feist

Tell us about your new book, Queen of Storms!

REF: For forty years I’ve been asked, “Tell us about your book,” and I still struggle to avoid spoilers while still making things sound interesting. As a sequel, it’s sort of the second act of a three act play. A drama instructor of mine years ago said, “Act One: chase your characters up a tree. Act Two: Throw rocks at them. Act Three: bring them down and deal with the rock throwers.” In that sense my main characters will be dodging a lot of rocks as they attempt to figure out why the world they know seems to be falling apart around them. I like stories that are a bit like peeling an onion: you pull off one layer and discover another below that. So, the plucky boys and girls readers met in King of Ashes are now a bit older, more experienced and dealing with a far more dire set of problems than they could have imagined before. The scale of conflict introduced in that book expands exponentially and conflicts arise that could have world threatening consequences.

Queen of Storms is the second book in the Firemane Saga. Do you find it difficult to write series sequels, or is it a challenge you relish?

REF: Neither, really. I did such a long “meta-narrative” with the thirty novels of the Riftwar Cycle that I tend to think of my books as chapters, really, in a very large narrative. I think of the process a lot as if I was building something structural. The entire Riftwar Cycle (once I realised I was going to have to write the whole thing) is about five wars in Midkemia. Within each war there were two, three, or four books, with a couple of “transitional” stories to sort of glue things together, while the Empire Trilogy was “the other side of the first Riftwar.” Each book had to have its own start and finish, and while a certain amount of cliffhanging was expected, as will be the case with Queen of Storms, you still want a place to halt where the reader isn’t throwing the book across the room with a scream of frustration, and most of us have read one or two of those in our lives.

What do you love the most about writing fantasy?

REF: As a kid I read Boys’ Adventure Fiction, which was Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle (The White Company and the Professor Challenger books, and some Sherlock), Howard Pyle (who was as good a yarn spinner as he was a painter). I also inhaled great historical novels, by people like Thomas Costain, Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliff, Harold Lamb, too many others to name. Some were also serious historians and biographers. The thing they all had in common was telling stories about different times and places, lands and people that fired my imagination. We no longer look at Africa as “the dark continent,” or think of Tarzan as remotely resembling reality, nor do we see any other part of our world as “exotic” as we did when I was a youngster. Too many great documentaries—all of which one can probably see at whim with modern technology. As the world around me grew smaller and more familiar, I drifted into science fiction and fantasy. I’ve said for years I write historical novels about a place that doesn’t exist. That’s how I view Midkemia, Kelewan, Garn, the Hall of Worlds, and any other place I dream up. I’m not a rigorous enough researcher to take a shot at a serious historical fiction, like a Ken Follett or Philippa Gregory, and science-fiction and fantasy has pretty much replaced “Boys’ Adventure” as a publishing category. So fantasy allows me to play at being a writer of historical fiction, just with some magic tossed in here and there.

Can you talk a little bit about your approach to fantasy worldbuilding?

REF: For a fantasy author, I think I have a weird sort of disbelief I’m not willing to suspend. I’m OK with magic, perhaps it’s my love of historical novels, but often I go, “Where did all those soldiers come from when the king issues his order to gather? Are they vassals? Does he have his own standing army? And who’s feeding everyone? Who’s cleaning up after the horses?” I wrote Rise of a Merchant Prince as I wanted to explore who finances these large wars, and Shards of a Broken Crown to explore who cleans up the mess when the fighting is over and both sides are going back to lick their wounds. Also, I have an aversion to muscle-flexing heroes and moustache twirling villains, so the people I write about struggle with problems the modern reader can relate to, at least that’s my aim. As much as I enjoyed Boys’ Adventure and the great pulp heroes of my youth, the modern reader won’t accept invulnerability and perfect choices. Our heroes are still to prevail, but they better show some bruises and cuts and maybe a limp afterwards. I don’t build cities that make no sense, I pay attention to the economic and social fluxes in any society, and try to remember one thing above all: what the characters do doesn’t have to make sense to the readers, but those choices have to make sense to the characters, even the stupid choices. So, in short, get as close to reality as a fantasy can get.

What is the best piece of writing advice you have ever received?

REF: The short answer is, “Finish the damn thing.” Often inexperienced writers can spend a week looking for that perfect opening line. I have an editor in my head; I tell him to go off and watch cartoons, or have a drink, or take a nap, and I’ll call him in when I need him. As they say, “Writing is rewriting.” Finish, then fix.

The other was something my father, a writer/director/producer once said that stuck with me, “If you’re not doing action, you’re doing talking heads. if it’s talking heads, they better be saying something important.” Too often writers can go off on a tangent that amuses them, less so the readers. Showing gratuitous action should only be done as character development, for example, one character telling another to stop wasting time fiddling with something when they need to be off doing something else. But stopping the narrative to go into a detailed history of the six religious icons on the walls of the church the character walked into is a really bad idea, no matter how much you enjoyed that segment in your Art History class in college. If those icons have nothing to do with the story, resist the impulse. Writers often try to show off, which is usually a really bad idea. You don’t need to be an expert, just be convincing to the reader.

What kind of effect, if any, do you think the current pandemic crisis will have on fantasy writing in the near future (in terms of plot, theme, character, etc)?

REF: I have no idea. Writers tend to be sponges for trivia and drink in events around us. Our “truth” is having our fiction resonate as being “real” in certain contexts. I’ve dealt with things in my own life that have deeply influenced my work. I put a scene in Talon of the Silver Hawk where the title character is simply walking down the street and something he sees reminds him of how much his life as changed, and it triggers an unexpected overwhelming emotional rush, and he turns to a wall and weeps. I had that experience years earlier and I think it worked because of that experience. That’s the sort of business which makes a character vibrant to the reader, I believe. It may be a lot of writers will have a better grasp on isolation, anxiety, even fear than they otherwise would have after getting over this current crisis. That will be reflected in the dramatic choices they make. I suspect, however, that editors will start seeing “world plague” stories, sort of as we’ve had waves of vampires and zombies in the past. I hope some of them are good.

And finally, what’s up next for you?

REF: I’m trying to finish off Master of Furies, the last volume in the Firemane Saga. After that my editors and I will chat about what’s next, and we’ve already touched on a couple of possibilities, but nothing is set in stone.

Thanks Raymond!

My pleasure.

—Queen of Storms by Raymond E. Feist (HarperCollins Australia) is out now.

Queen of Storms

The Firemane Saga: Book 2

by Raymond E. Feist

Dark and powerful forces threaten the world of Garn once more in this second novel in legendary New York Times bestselling author Raymond E. Feist's epic fantasy series, the Firemane Saga

Hatushaly and his young wife Hava are living a good life, working to reopen the burned-out Inn of the Three Stars in the prosperous trading town of Beran's Hill. But there is a great deal more to this bucolic scene than meets the eye...

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