Alma Alexander talks about writing and her new young adult fantasy novel, THE GIFT OF THE UNMAGE.
Q: Your books The Secrets of Jin-shei and The Embers of Heaven aren't young adult books - what ed you to decide to branch out into this field?
This be the story of creation, then. In the year of our Lord 2002 I went to the World Fantasy Convention in Minnesota, where I somehow ended up attending a panel on YA literature. Not that I had any particular inclination for it, particularly, as a specific genre, at the time - but the panel included Jane Yolen and Charles de Lint, and that was enough to get me interested, at least. Well, less than ten minutes into the panel, someone conjured up Harry Potter. Jane Yolen sighed and said, 'I was wondering how long it would be before that particular elephant wandered into the room.' She went on to say one more thing - that she had issues with the way that the Harry Potter series treated girls.
And that was the end of the panel, for me. I was off at a tangent, dreaming up a book that would be about... a girl. And she would NOT be a world-renowned mage, the Girl Who Lived. She would have her own problems. And one of them - and this popped into my head full blown, and was indeed the title of the first book in my head right until the publishers decided to change it - was the existence of a school where the duds of the magic world were sent. An anti-Hogwarts, if you like. A place that announced itself to me as being known as the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent.
And now, four years later, here I am, planting my flag in the YA corner.
Q: Was the experience of writing a YA novel what you had expected? Did you run into any surprises?
A: I was very much more aware of my audience. As a young reader myself, I particularly hated being constantly talked down to and patronised - and as a writer for that particular age group I didn't want to fall
into that trap. But my usual writing methods tend to produce VERY complex works, and I had to be wary that I didn't complicate things too much. Book 1, "Gift of the Unmage", managed to ride that wave. Things, however, get much more complex - inevitably! - in book 2, coming out at about this time next year. Hopefully book 1 will have laid the groundwork for this.
That second book was quite an experience - one of its founding premises is a what-if question - what if all the silly spam we receive in our inboxes was somehow imbued with magic which makes it, you know, actually DO things. For instance, the "lose weight" ones will actually MAKE you lose weight; open a few of those in quick succession, and you're a wraith at the end of the day. I had immense fun with both the spams I chose to concentrate on and the names of the spammers - something which might well appeal to the grown-ups in the audience, because every single one is a pun - but, again, I was immensely aware of my primary market, which would be teens, which meant that the spam could only be the "clean" spam. I mean, look at all the hoo-hah that the word "scrotum" stirred up, slipped into an award-winning YA book. Just think what would have happened if I had resorted to, um, some of the most COMMON kinds of spam that litters the Internet...? (On second thought, maybe I missed a chance, there...)
Q: One of the things you do in THE GIFT OF THE UNMAGE is draw on Native American tradition overtly, which is an interesting contrast to the leader in the field of YA fiction, Harry Potter, both in terms of nationality (England/American) and in drawing on a non-mainstream idea of magic. How did you come to make that decision?
A: Organically, as with all my writing. I don't sit down and plan these things, I use what comes to me - when I was starting out on "The Secrets of Jin Shei", for instance, I had no idea right at the beginning that it was going to wind up dragging me off to an alternative-China and how much research and reading it would require. Likewise for the Worldweavers series - I didn't set out to plan on the Native American angle - but there is so much there, and it's so rich and so vivid, and it's been used so RARELY, and it kind of linked up with my original idea and off we went - I liked the concept of playing with the double-edged sword of ancient and modern powers and how their coming together in a single individual would affect that person - how they would affect that CHILD, and the way in which she grew up, grew
older, grew wiser. The ancient traditions place much store in wisdom, and I wanted that for my heroine. And then there were the purely fun things, like the Trickster character.
But in essence, doing what I did has created the perfect American mirror to the Englishness of Harry Potter, which had to be "translated" for its across-the-pond readers (two countries separated by a common language, here). There are things that English kids find almost instinctively comprehensible and that American kids, well, don't - the whole boarding school thing, a common British literary trope in what would be called YA literature now even when it didn't carry that tag, and the idea of being "sorted" into "houses"; the olde-worlde house-elves type situation, as in Dobby and co.; the entire idea of the Dumbledore-type wizard, all long white beard and Gandalf-like bearing, and the witch with the black pointed hat who shapeshifts into a cat; all that. Sure, a lot of it has become generic fantasy trope - after Gandalf, most wizardy characters rejoice in that dang beard. But I wanted something different - something new - something that, for me, has just as much power as the accepted iterations of fantasy, perhaps more, for reasons of being less often used and therefore holding the freshness of the unknown for most readers who had cut their teeth on Dumbledore and company. And two of MY main wizard-like characters, at least in the first book, are an Anasazi shaman and the computer science teacher at a contemporary school. Ancient magic and modern magic.
And book three, in the process of being written, will have one of the most unexpected wizards of all. One who actually lived, and is a perfectly real human being. Watch this space...
Q: Sometimes an author has a particular passage or chapter that they love the best of all the book. Do you have a favorite part of THE GIFT OF THE UNMAGE, and if so, why's it your favorite?
A: I love my Trickster character, and the interactions he has with Thea - the way the Trickster is tricked, and the consequences of that (he shapeshifts into a raven in an emergency, without setting up safeguards, and in the aftermath he has this IMMENSE trouble with stray raven feathers popping up at inconvenient times and more than inconvenient places, necessitating the wearing of gloves and a large
hat just in case they turn up unannounced at the worst possible moment. I thoroughly enjoy my sidekick characters, Thea's friends, who are not so much a part of the background as an essential component of
who she herself turns out to be - and in particular Thea's roommate Magpie, the girl who is always in the throes of helping out wounded or abandoned creatures. One of my favourite scenes in the first book is when Thea, who has turned a blind eye to these clandestine activities in the past, draws the line when Magpie brings in... a hurt skunk.
Q: How far ahead have you planned out the Worldweavers series? Is it open-ended or do you have a definite conclusion in mind?
A: It will be drawn to a proper conclusion - for THIS STORY - but Thea will have been placed in a position where she is only just beginning to spread her wings. If there is a demand for more, there will be more. I have the stories for it.
Q: Who are the young adult authors that you really love and would recommend to people who enjoy THE GIFT OF THE UNMAGE?
Madeleine L'Engle. Ursula le Guin. Some of Neil Gaiman (but be pretty careful where you stray with that man - some of his stuff would scare the living daylights out of impressionable youngsters). Jane Yolen.
Charles de Lint. The early Guy Gavriel Kay. I'll leave Rowlings out of it, because she's past the stage of being "recommended" - it's more of a case of those people who liked HER books possibly liking mine than vice versa...
Q: Your cats Boboko and Laptop are featured on the Worldweavers website. Do you have any plans to reference them in the books?
A: Heh. There IS a moment when a certain cat - who is a bit of a combination of the two of them - turns up to greet Thea when she comes home from her Anasazi adventure. But my two were mentioned by name on the back flap of "Gift of the Unmage", and I thought I'd introduce them to the readers. They're sweeties, both of them. It's quite possible that there will be more of them, if I can weave a place for them in the stories.
Q: You were born in Yugoslavia, and educated in the UK and South Africa - how do you think your travels have shaped your writing, particularly the Worldweavers series?
A: There is something to being forced to pull up roots and move every few years - you learn to put down roots that are shallow but wide, rather than deep. This means that you're open to a huge range of influences and ideas. I spent my formative years in Africa, and although I haven't yet written anything directly connected with that continent, there is an enormous and as yet untapped pool of ideas and background just waiting for me there. I might even take Thea there for some future adventure. I don't know yet.
I have been fortunate to have the kind of life where horizons have always been broad. I would like to think that I bring that to my writing, that I might show a glimpse of those horizons to my readers. It's a big, wide, beautiful world, and it's FULL of magic.
Q: What comes after the Worldweavers?
A: Working on that. There will probably be more YA - I'm enjoying this too much to quit. But there will also be further adult novels, the planning for which is under way at the moment. Nothing firm as yet, there are several directions where I could jump immediately upon the conclusion of book 3 - but at this moment, I'm reluctant to commit to any of them just yet. Any announcement of imminent projects will be at my website (www.AlmaAlexander.com) so if you keep an eye on that you'll know as soon as I do.
All I know is this. There WILL be more. I'm a writer - I write - that's what I do. The rest of my life will be lived with words and dreams and stories. And I do plan on sharing.
