Author Interview with Jennifer WilliamsOnce every time I come across a book that catches my eye and immediately skips the TBR pile for a next read and this is what The Copper Promise was. I read the synopsis and I developed this urge that I just had to read it asap. I am a sucker for a good epic adventure story and this is all featured in The Copper Promise, and much more lets not forget Gods in forms of dragons, flashy and powerful elemental magic, and a world that is about to see its doom. Fighting against the emerging threat is a band of most unlikely heroes. The Copper Promise is Jennifer Williams' debut, and with what she shows, a grande and interesting world, spot on characterization and to top it all off.. once action packed story! She is definitely on the right track!
Author Bio:
Jennifer Williams is a fantasy writer and Xbox obsessive who spends much of her time frowning at notebooks in cafes and fiddling with maps of imaginary places. She is represented by Juliet Mushens of the Agency group, and is partial to mead, if you’re buying. Her debut Fantasy novel, The Copper Promise, will be published by Headline in Spring 2014.
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Hi Jen,
welcome over to The Book Plank and for taking your time to answer these few
questions for us.
BP: First
off, could you give us a short introduction as to who Jen Williams is? What are
you likes/dislikes and hobbies?
JW: I love
reading, obviously – we’ve just moved home and I’m starting to realize, trapped
within a fort made of boxes, just how many books we own – and I studied
illustration at college, so I’m a big fan of illustrated books. I’m also a
massive animation geek, I love Lego, and I am very partial to a glass of mead.
I also own a number of swords, as you might expect from a fantasy writer.
BP: The
Copper Promise is your big fantasy debut. When did you know that you wanted to
become an author?
JW: I think
I’ve always known, but there were periods of time where I wasn’t paying
attention. I remember asking for a typewriter for Christmas when I was very
small, and I spent a lot of time plonking out stories about pirates and
dragons, but then as I got older and began to talk about making writing a
career various adults turned up to advise me against it – writing books is
brilliant, they said, but the problem is everyone wants to do it. It’s
far too competitive. Do something else. Unfortunately when you’re young you
trust grown-ups to know what they’re talking about, and for a while at least I
convinced myself that writing books would be too difficult. Of course what I
didn’t realize at the time is that you don’t really have a choice about being a
writer – it’s like that bit in Jurassic Park – “books will find a way”… When I
finished my art degree and I started working full time at a bookshop, I began
to get the sense that something was missing from my life. One day, after a
particularly busy shift I came home and wrote a small scene about a girl being
kidnapped by a witch. That scene grew and eventually became the first book I
finished, and somewhere in that process I realized what had been missing all
along.
BP: What
gave you the inspiration/idea behind The Copper Promise?
JW: At the
time I had a number of short stories published in various places, and a few
people asked me if I had anything longer they could read. I had written a
handful of books by then but they were all in serious need of editing and
tidying up, so I decided it would be a fun project to write a novella and put
it out there for people to read. I had just funneled around 90 hours of my life
into the excellent video game Dragon Age: Origins, and I had rekindled my love
for that very traditional knights and dragons sort of fantasy. I started
fiddling around with ideas, and very quickly the main character, Wydrin
Threefellows, made herself known and suddenly the novella was a much bigger
project. I really wanted to write some old school pulp fantasy, but with modern
sensibilities, and the story really grew around that desire for adventure and
magic.
BP: The
Copper Promise will be published the 13th of February, if you would
have to sell your book with a single sentence, how would it go?
JW: A tavern
and cavern crawling romp, perhaps? If I were trying to be more factual, I’d
probably go with: A pair of jobbing sellswords get more than they bargained
for when they explore a forbidden citadel – adventure, magic and the very real
chance they won’t actually get paid.
BP: Writing
your first full length book can be quite a daunting task, what was the most
difficult part in writing The Copper Promise?
JW: Well as I
mentioned previously I’d actually written a few full length books by that point
– most debut novels probably won’t be the first book the author has written, as
often you need quite a bit of learning space before you start getting it right.
I dearly love the first couple of books I wrote, but the idea of trying to make
them readable now gives me a case of the screaming horrors. As for The Copper
Promise itself, the difficult part was stopping. It was the longest book I’d
written by quite a long way, and with three main POV characters each having
their own stories to tell it was hard to keep them in line sometimes. The final
book has about 20,000 words cut from it, including at least one scene with a
monster that I was quite sad to lose, but you can’t always keep the giant
spiders.
BP: Have
you gained valuable experience when you were writing The Copper Promise that you
will be able to use in your future works?
JW: Absolutely
– I think every book you write teaches you heaps about your own writing
process, and because The Copper Promise was edited by both my agent and my
editor at Headline (the marvelous Juliet Mushens and John Wordsworth) I learnt
even more than usual – about how books are structured, how pacing works,
creating likeable characters etc. With The Copper Promise in particular I did a
lot of work in the edit on conveying a character’s thoughts and feelings
through their body language and not relying too much on the interior monologue.
I suspect you only really start to know your book when you’ve been through
three or four rigorous edits.
BP: The
Copper Promise is divided into four parts that can be read as individual
novella’s, did you encounter any specific problems when you were writing any of
the four parts?
JW: The main
difficulty with structuring a book that way is maintaining a balancing act
between having each part tell its own satisfying story, whilst also making sure
that you’re escalating the drama of the central plot. So each novella had to
feel like its own distinct part and have a cliffhanger at the end that would
kick you in the pants. Doing that was difficult enough that I did occasionally
feel the need to press my face to the desk and emit quiet wails of misery –
“Why did I start this? Why?” – but in the end I feel that the unusual four part
structure adds a sense of pulpy fun to the book, and keeps everything moving at
a decent pace. Plus, it has been quite enjoyable to watch people read it as the
parts come out, and see their various reactions when they have to wait to find
out what happens.
BP: Besides
the hardest parts of the book, which did you enjoyed writing about the most?
JW: Easily the
most enjoyable part of writing the book was Wydrin, the mouthy female sellsword
with a pair of lethal daggers and a cheerfully dubious set of morals. She
turned up almost worryingly fully formed in my head at the start of the first
novella, and she quickly became a force of nature in the book. Her dialogue is
always fun to write, and as the book progressed it was interesting to start to
peek behind that bravado and see what really made her tick; Wydrin is the pulpy
fantasy heart of the book, and I love her. Having said that, I could never be
without the other two main characters; Sebastian for his deeply moral soul, who
made me cry more often than anyone else, and Frith for his glorious tendency to
do something unexpected and send the book hurtling in another direction. You
have to love a character who does that.
BP: If you
would be given to retract The Copper Promise and make one final adjustment to
the story would you do so? And if yes, which part and why?
JW: There is
one line in Chapter Five that I would change, but wild horses couldn’t drag
that information from me… In the end, I don’t think I would change any of it –
if nothing else because I happen to know from copyediting experience that if
you make one change, thanks to continuity you’ll probably have to make a number
of others too, and that path leads to panic and desk chewing.
BP: Do you
have any other plans that you wish to pursue now that The Copper Promise is
finished? What can we expect from you in the future?
JW: At the
moment I’m writing the follow-up to The Copper Promise, which is proving to be
both fun and terrifying in about equal measures, and then I’ll be getting to
work on the third book. After that I have some plans for other fantasy books
set in different worlds, and there’s an urban fantasy book I’ve written about
serial killers and witches in Elephant and Castle that needs a good edit – it’s
very different to The Copper Promise, obviously, but with a similar emphasis on
character driven story.
BP:
Everyone enjoys fantasy in their own way. What do you like most about reading
and writing it.
JW: I’ve
always loved the spectacle and adventure of fantasy, the sense that you could
turn a corner and anything could happen. People talk a lot about escapism when
it comes to fantasy (and what’s wrong with that?) but I think it’s deeper than
just escapism – there’s a mythic quality to the genre that echoes back to our
childhood, when we believed in witches and understood very well that often
fairy tales had bloody endings. Most of all it lets you believe in magic for a
while, as relentlessly cheesy as that sounds.
BP: And
just lastly if you would have to give your top 5 favourite books, which would
they be?
JW: Oh, tough
question! It tends to change from week to week, but here are five books that
are usually circling the top ten at any one time:
The Lord of
the Rings – an obvious choice perhaps, but it was the first book I truly fell
in love with and it opened the world of fantasy for me.
American Gods
by Neil Gaiman – still my favourite of Gaiman’s books, it’s a story brimming
with hundreds of smaller stories, and a murder mystery thrown in as well.
The Last
Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle – beautiful and funny and quite tremendously sad,
after loving the animated film as a child this book was a revelation to me.
We Have Always
Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – dark and hilarious, I identify with
Merricat Blackwood far too much.
The Scar by
China Mieville – I loved Perdido Street Station too, but this one still haunts
me.
BP: Thank
you for your time Jen, and good luck with your future writing!
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