Recently, the opportunity to interview Tad Williams came along. It is with gratitude that I extend an extra special thanks to Harry Markov of Temple Library Reviews for this opportunity. In February, Harry interviewed me (I know, why?), as the blogger behind Ubiquitous Absence. At that time, he asked me who I would most like to interview. The first part of my answer was easy, Tad Williams, my favorite living author. Author Deborah Beale picked up on it through Google alerts and responded to Harry's interview. As the manager and wife of Tad, I owe Deb no less a debt of gratitude for initiating the entire affair. Harry responded telling Deb that he would let me know. One afternoon, in checking my email, I discovered all of this and something else. A new email in the Inbox from none other than Tad Williams. I'm not so enamored of myself that I'm unwilling to admit the squee-fest was on.
After having read MS&T, Otherland and the first two installments of Shadowmarch, I had tons of questions. I keep The War of the Flowers at the top of my TBR pile, as a pending "palate cleanser." It will be read after the next work that leaves me with the sense of disgust or anger over having been duped into a lousy read.
There are memories from life that can be triggered by a single, or combination of, sensation(s). My early 20s were strongly marked by MS&T, combined with several albums from The Tragically Hip (Up To Here, Road Apples, Fully Completely and Day For Night). The two are so intertwined, in my mind, that I recall lines from a book or song and can't remember if it was the writing of Tad Williams or the singing of Gordon Downie. Truly, the best of combinations.
It is with all sincerity that I thank Harry Markov, Deborah Beale and Tad Williams for a life event that will always remain a cherished memory. So, without further ado...
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Speculative Book Review: George Martin has credited your Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series with being very influential. What are the works and authors that inspired you to begin writing?
Tad Williams: Let's put it this way: there were works that were positively influential, and others whose influence was negative. I read more than a few fantasies, esp. in the later 'seventies and early 'eighties, that made me think, "God help us all, I can do better than that." Much of that was the kneejerk imitation of Tolkien without understanding either his strengths or his limitations. ("Limitations" may be the wrong word -- "idiosyncracies" might be better.)
But on the positive side there was, of course, Tolkien himself -- in a way my entire writing career has been an explication of why THE LORD OF THE RINGS hit me so strongly -- and many others, most notably Bradbury, Sturgeon, Leiber, Moorcock, and Zelazny. Harlan Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula Le Guin and a few others would have to show up in there, too. And non-SF authors like Hunter Thompson, Pynchon, Salinger, poets like Yeats and Wallace Stevens, and many others, of course -- I've always read a lot. Oh, and historians, esp. Barbara Tuchman.
SBR: Leading up to the release of The Dragonbone Chair, what was your expectation of the outcome for the book and that series?
I hoped it would help me toward making a living, but more importantly, I thought I was beginning a dialogue within the SF/Fantasy field about Tolkien and his effect on the contemporary genre. In a lot of ways, the MS&T books are -commentary- on some of the best-loved (or at least most-copied) tropes in Tolkien, such as the ubiquitous idea of a past Golden Age. But what critics and readers saw was another Tolkien -hommage-, and depending on how they felt about such things, that's how they treated it. I was a little disappointed about the lack of discussion (or even recognition) of the underlying themes, but pleased that at least people read it.
SBR: At what point did you begin to realize that you had ‘arrived?’ Do you recall what you reflected upon at that time?
TW: As soon as I could leave my last regular-ish job (Apple Computer) and write full time, I realized that I had hit the place I'd always wanted to reach, namely artistic and economic self-sufficiency. That's still all I care about, although now I have a family, too, so I have to include them in the "things to take care of" list. But I really just want to make a living off of creating things and being my own boss, and if that continues to happen, I'm a happy man.
SBR: At the time, the incorporation of a MMORPG into the Otherland series’ storyline was marvelous; a staple of geekdom. The immersive online experience of that series, combined with the climate of shadowy corporate hegemony made for great page turning. If you would, please share what the genesis of the idea for that series was like.
TW: It actually had a two-part origin. I used to tell people (truthfully) that it started as a reflection on the use of rivers as metaphors in fiction -- "Huckleberry Finn", "Heart of Darkness", and many more. What, I wondered, would a -metaphorical river- be like -- that is, a river that only existed as metaphor. From there, it was a short jump to virtuality and the story began to spin itself out in my imagination. But years later, while answering this very question in front of a room full of people, I suddenly realized that the other huge influence on OTHERLAND was the Disneyland "Storybook Boat Ride" I went on when I was six or so, sailing past famous places out of fantasy like "Wind in the Willows" and Sleeping Beauty's castle, and whatnot. So, a combination of an intellectual impulse and a deeply felt (and somewhat buried) childhood memory.
By the way, an MMORPG of OTHERLAND is due to be released sometime in the next 2 years -- a big and serious project. (It's been in production for several years already and has its own studio dedicated to it.) I'm really excited about that, and those who want to know more can find updates on my webpage at tadwilliams.com and on our Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.
SBR: When first reading the Shadowmarch series, the return to your trademark storytelling was magical. It is the inner reflections and introspection of your characters that sets your stories apart. What is the composition of a character’s inner monologue like for you (e.g. natural, difficult, and laborious)?
TW: I'm a person with a very active inner conversation, so it's not hard to imagine others being the same way. The main challenge is to try to understand the character well enough to make sure it's -their- inner monologue I'm presenting and not just a thinly-veiled version of my own. That comes (when it comes) from really immersing oneself in the character at that moment, in what the world looks like to them and how they react. I almost feel like I'm in danger of parodying myself sometimes, because my characters are all so damn inner-talkative, but ultimately that's how I write so that's how I write. I'm glad people like it.
SBR: Two particularly interesting characters are Utuk’ku and Yasammez. Would you give the inside look at their creation, and the source of inspiration for them?
TW: I think sinister women can be very interesting and very scary -- it's just a different kind of energy than equivalent male characters. And I think the fury of a vengeful mother-figure, as both of these are in a way, is also particularly awesome. Plus, of course, they're both near-immortals, which adds another very interesting strand to their characters. Uttuk'ku is probably more closely derived from something like the Norns of Scandinavian mythology, and thus more of a deity-figure (and probably also more frightening because of that) while Yasammez is an attempt to write an actual living, breathing immortal who still functions as a reader-viewpoint character.
SBR: With Shadowrise recently released, and Shadowheart coming out later this year, what would you most want to say to readers, and potential readers, regarding the conclusion of the series?
TW: That it's really found its direction and the ending should be pretty wild and spectacular. It was a little difficult transitioning from the (deliberately) smaller canvas of the online version and rewriting it as the first volume, but once that was done it began to -become- a book in the truest sense, and now I think it's really what it was meant to be -- big, but retaining the switchback surprises of the original serial idea. Really, all my long works have one thing in common -- I set up the biggest chaos orchestra I can manage, then start letting the bits of character and plot interact, pruning and directing where it seems necessary, gradually making choices of what should cause what, until the realistic confusion begins to disgorge emergent order. This is the plan, anyway.
SBR: Your website reports on your upcoming project as an urban/supernatural thriller series. Care to toss out a teasing hook and bag some early interest?
TW: Those books are, at the moment, called The Angel Doloriel Books, for lack of a better series title (I also call them "My So-Called Afterlife".) The idea is that Doloriel (aka "Bobby Dollar" on earth) is a low-level angelic functionary in the ongoing cold war between Heaven and Hell who gets dragged into a mystery that proves to be much, much bigger than he guessed, to the point where both sides turn on him and he is left out in the cold (in a mortal body, on contemporary Earth) with only a few turncoat angels and one very hot female demon named Caz on his side -- although even there, trust is a problem. She's an important minion of Hell, you see, and thus by nature not very trustworthy. But Bobby D. doesn't have much choice.
Anyway, the series should be three short (by my standards) books, tentatively titled "Sleeping Late on Judgement Day", "Happy Hour in Hell", and "Angels Rush In." I'm really pleased with the ideas so far, and I hope that my regular readers will love them too, but that I also find some new readers who are ordinarily frightened off by traditional fantasy or science fiction.
SBR: Given this opportunity, it would be a shame not to let you get the chance to drive the course of the conversation a bit. If you would, please wax extemporaneously upon any issue close to your heart, or perhaps burning a hole in your gut.
TW: I'm always nonplussed by the chance to express myself free-form because I'm such a talker, even in electronic print, that if I don't have a specific something to react to, I'm liable to go off on some tangent for hours. Readers might like this (or hate it) but I can never select just one thing to talk about. (Although the nesting habits of polar bears is on my mind at the moment because of a conversation I recently had.)
I don't really have anything interesting to say that I can keep to shorter length except that I'm still writing -- doing the Ordinary Farm all-ages fantasy books with my wife Deborah Beale and thinking about further projects up the road beyond Bobby Dollar, maybe even a space opera of sorts. (See my short story "And Ministers of Grace" in the WARRIORS anthology for an idea of what that might be about.) And I'm still EXCITED about writing. Which is just as well: I can't stop the ideas so I might as well write them down.
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As previously described, an immortal moment for me. Now, I'm off to the truck to kick over the Day For Night album (its better outside, at night, with the moon as the sole source of light, in a rural setting, listening to voices of night creatures, with a good 'ole fashioned steel tailgate under your backside) and listen to the Nautical Disaster track. Gord Downie, as I recall, was a pretty good storyteller, too.
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