Defiant is Karina Sumner-Smith’s second book in the Towers Trilogy. The journey with Xhea and Shai continues as they discover powers they never knew they had.
For those not familiar with Radiant, can you tell us a bit about the world you’ve created?
The world of the Towers Trilogy is one that defies easy categorization. On the one hand, it’s a fantasy world: everyone has magic, and everything in the city runs on that magic. Magic is used as currency, to create spells to do everyday tasks, to heal the sick and ensure long life.
Yet the books are also set in what’s clearly a far future version of our world. Though most people live happy, prosperous lives in a floating city, on the ground below them is the Lower City—the ruins of a modern metropolis, with crumbling skyscrapers and collapsing subway tunnels, all held together by weak spells and reclaimed building materials. There are flying cars and sentient buildings, ghosts and bounty hunters and once-human creatures that stalk the ruins when night falls.
Radiant is about a homeless girl, Xhea, who has no magic at all, and what happens when she tries to save the ghost of one of the most powerful magic users in the City above. Defiant and Towers Fall, the sequels, are about the very unexpected consequences of those events.
Are these stories fantasy or science fiction? Post-apocalyptic, utopian, dystopian—or just a strange ghost story? I say “yes” to all of the above!
You’ve just released Defiant, the second book in the Towers Trilogy. Where will the journey with Xhea and Shai take us this time?
Defiant is a book about consequences. By the end of Radiant, Xhea was just so focused on saving Shai from her fate that she didn’t think about what might happen after. Neither of them realized what both Shai’s power and Xhea’s own newfound abilities would mean not just for the two of them and their growing friendship, but for the whole of the Lower City—good and bad.
This book really stays focused on the Lower City, and has a much faster pace than Radiant. There is the threat of war between the skyscrapers, attacks and assassinations, deception and betrayals and plots-within-plots. But it’s also about these two very different young women who find themselves inextricably linked, and the big question for them is, “Now what?”
Can you give us some insight into your main characters? Friendship is a central element. How do you feel they have evolved since the first book?
I feel that, emotionally, Radiant is very much about Xhea growing from a defensive, angry young woman to someone who has learned to trust and believe in one other person: Shai. Xhea has lived on her own, feeling that she can rely on no one but herself, for a very long time; and it’s only being saddled with this strange, confused ghost that makes her begin to change.
Shai, in contrast, had a life that was (superficially, at least) one of extreme luxury and power.
But the very magic that gave her such wealth was actually killing her—and while she was valued for her magic, she never had the ability nor the freedom to make her own decisions.
What I really enjoy about writing these two characters is that they are so very different, they come from such totally divergent backgrounds—and yet each sees in the other something they need and value. I also really enjoyed writing from Shai’s point of view in Defiant, because her perspective on the same events is so different from Xhea’s. In some ways, Defiant is her book; she is so conflicted, with all this power and so little ability to wield it, so much influence while being entirely invisible.
How did you come up with the idea for this trilogy?
The Towers Trilogy actually started as a short story, “An End to All Things,” which I wrote for a themed anthology. I loved the world, the characters, and the hint of the connection developing between them—but so much of the story that I wanted to tell just wouldn’t fit into those 6,000 words. I decided to write the full story as a novel.
Of course, the nice, compact standalone novel that I envisioned kept expanding and changing as I wrote it. It was only as I was nearing the end of the first draft of Radiant that I had to admit: I couldn’t fit the whole story into just one book, either!
That’s when I had to take a step back and rethink what I was doing. While my hope was that Radiant could stand alone, I’m thrilled that I have had the opportunity to finally write the rest of the story—and explain the rest of the world—that I first envisioned with that short story, years and years ago.
Can you tell us a bit about the process that led to Radiant being published?
The longest part of the process was actually revising the book prior to searching for an agent. I wrote the first draft of Radiant in about a year—and then spent about three years reworking, restructuring, rewriting and polishing that draft into something that I felt I could send out. (Which, yes, might seem a bit excessive—but I also worked a job that required very long hours in a high-stress environment. It left me with little time or mental energy to focus on the book, much to my frustration.)
The query process to find an agent was a bit of a wild ride. I expected to spend a long time getting rejected—and ended up accepting an offer from the amazing Sara Megibow, now of KT Literary, within three weeks.
While the submission process to publishers was longer (and had more plot twists!), we ended up with multiple offers and I was happy to sign on with a house that wanted not only Radiant but the next two books. By the time Towers Fall comes out later this year, the full process from initial idea to publication of the final book will have taken almost a decade.
How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?
I’ve always enjoyed books and stories, but it was a moment when I was thirteen that made me want to be a writer. That was the first time I fell into “flow state” when writing.
We were given a writing assignment in class, and I (of course) dove into writing something very much in the style of the David Eddings novels I was reading at the time. I recall it was something about an ancient sorcerer who went into a tavern—in disguise, of course—where he proceeded to trick some unsavoury types (including a clever thief) out of their coin in a game of chance. What I wrote was awful—but the experience of writing it was transformative. When the bell went for our next class, I looked up and was shocked to find I was still in school, surrounded by classmates, holding a pen over my notebook.
Whatever that was, I decided—that experience of just falling into the words as they flowed out of me—I wanted more of it. I’ve been writing ever since.
How do you develop your plots and characters? Do you use any set formula? The blending of genres was that a conscious choice or just something that just happened?
I’ve said for a long time that my writing comes from character—I just didn’t realize that I don’t think about character or world building in quite the same way as some other writers.
For me, world and character are inextricably entwined: the character is always the conduit for me to understand the world. In the planning stages of any story, what I’m mostly doing is mentally getting to understand who that character is, how they think and act and react; and, through that understanding, uncovering what that tells me about the world and reality in which they live. Similarly, I’ll come to understand that character’s challenges, weak points, and the types of things that would turn their world upside-down—and those become the seeds of the plot.
I don’t outline. In many ways, and for so many reasons, I wish I could outline—but any time that I try, the story self-destructs in some rather spectacular ways. The story that I end up writing is never quite the one I thought it was when I started; and while I still hit the emotional points that I wanted, the actual plot always surprises me. Of course, that means I need to spend a lot of time revising to make sure that the plot makes logical as well as emotional sense, is fully supported, etc.
As for the blending of genres, I feel that most genre delineations are more useful as marketing tools than they are as creative structures. I wrote the story that excited me, which involved elements from many different genres; and it wasn’t until it came time to start finding a home for this story that I realized that a far-future, post-apocalyptic magical ghost story was, perhaps, not the easiest thing to put in a neat box.
What is the hardest thing about writing?
Some days, writing is as easy as breathing. Some days, stories seem to want to flow onto the page whole; the character are motivations clear and consistent, the dialog is sharp and interesting, the descriptions are tonally on-point, and the rhythms of the words themselves are placed just where I want them.
And then … there are all the other days.
It’s easy to love writing when it’s flowing. The challenge, I find, is moving through the days when everything falls flat, every word seems limp and uninspired, every description is wrong—everything just feels … off. Yet I have to sit there anyway and just keep typing. And sometimes I have multiple days like that in a row—sometimes weeks, sometimes more—and need to keep myself motivated to find the story anyway and drag it, writhing and flailing, onto the page.
It helps, I find, to realize that sometimes the experience of writing a thing has little bearing on the quality of the final product. Some scenes that were just awful to write read quick and clean once they’re on the page. Which is why I sometimes mutter to myself, “Yes, yes, everything is terrible and everyone will hate this, but just keep writing.”
For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional paper/hard back books?
Honestly, I just love books—the words are more important to me than the format. I probably still read more physical books than I do ebooks (though I love my Kobo!) because those books are right there, easy to see and begging me to read them. Plus I have to keep the pile under control. While my to-read pile has never actually toppled over and buried me, it’s come close a time or two.
What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?
I read primarily fantasy, science fiction, horror, and young adult fiction, as well as some popular nonfiction—though I’m open to nearly anything that catches my eye. (In the last year I also read mystery, romance, women’s fiction, mainstream fiction, and a memoir.) My local library has been so helpful in letting me check out the dozens of books that I’m interested in trying but am not sure I want to own.
In SFF, some of my favorites are Robin McKinley, Guy Gavriel Kay, Daryl Gregory, Michelle Sagara, Julie E. Czerneda, and Lois McMaster Bujold. In YA, I’ve fallen in love with books by Laini Taylor, Maggie Stiefvater, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Megan Whalen Turner. And in nonfiction, I’m trying to convince everyone to read the excellent The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, and Mary Roach’s humorous, entertaining books on all manner of scientific subjects.
What do you do when you’re not writing, any hobbies?
Too many hobbies, honestly! I feel that there’s never enough time for everything that I’d like to do or try.
My primary hobby is dance. Though these days most of my dancing is done in the kitchen, I’m still actually a member of a semi-professional dance troupe, specializing in American Tribal Style belly dance (known as ATS), which is a modern fusion dance style that integrates elements of Egyptian belly dance, Flamenco, Indian, and North African dance traditions. And ATS is a group improvisational dance style, so it’s very fun and spontaneous and teaches you to use body language to collaborate with other dancers.
I also just love making things. I make wire jewelry, and do bead embroidery; sometimes I paint or sketch; I used to knit and crochet before RSI issues made me set the needles aside. I would love to try making pottery or stained glass. I find that creativity breeds creativity; the more opportunities I find to include creative elements in my life, the more creative and inspired I feel overall.
And when I just need stress relief? I obsessively play and re-play Diablo III.
What’s next, what are you working on now?
I’m currently polishing up Towers Fall, the final book in the Towers Trilogy, which is due out this fall. After that, we’ll see! I have a surreal contemporary fantasy novel half-written already, and ideas for a few other novels just begging to be written. I think I’ll always have more ideas for stories that excite and intrigue me than I will have time to write them.
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Karina Sumner-Smith is the author of the Towers Trilogy from Talos Press: Radiant (Sept 2014), Defiant (May 2015), and Towers Fall (Oct 2015). In addition to novel-length work, Karina has published a range of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories that have been nominated for the Nebula Award, reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies, and translated into Spanish and Czech. She lives in Ontario near the shores of Lake Huron with her husband, a very small dog, and a very large cat. Visit her online at karinasumnersmith.com.
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2015
