Many thanks for giving us some time here. Welcome to SFFWorld. We’re writing these questions as Clockwork Lives, the follow up to Clockwork Angels is soon to be released.
In many ways Clockwork Lives bring us on a journey which tells a greater story through other people’s stories. How did you come up with this idea?
CLOCKWORK LIVES is like a steampunk Canterbury Tales, exploring the universe and some of the characters we created in CLOCKWORK ANGELS, but it’s not a sequel in any way—it’s a book all its own, and in many ways even broader and richer than ANGELS (which I still think is one of my best books in my career). Neil and I were intrigued by some of the characters and situations, wanted to explore them more, but not as a sequel. We thought maybe we could do a story about the bookseller Mrs Courier who travels to parallel universes to obtain books not available in this one…and we thought about the story of Guerrero the edgy, faithless, but somehow likeable pickpocket, or Golson the strongman in the steampunk carnival, or the ancient clockwork gypsy fortune-teller… I avoided just a story collection, though. I wanted some REASON for all these stories to be collected, and that was where the frame story (which is really half the novel) came about, with Marinda Peake—a woman who just wants a quiet, perfect life—who is forced to cross the world to fill up her book so that she can get her own life back.
Can you tell us a bit about your main protagonist Marinda Peake and why you think she is the perfect character to tie the whole story together?
In CLOCKWORK ANGELS, my protagonist Owen Hardy was a young man, a dreamer, from a dull small town with a dull life, who dreams of having adventures. CLOCKWORK LIVES turns that around: Marinda is a hard young woman who has given up the things she wanted in her life in order to care for her sick father, and all she wants is a stable, quiet, contented life…and all that is taken away from her when her father’s will is read and she is denied her home and her inheritance *until* she goes around the world and collects the stories of people who actually experienced life in ways that she never did. She has such tremendous character growth over the course of her adventures, that I am very proud of her (even though I wrote her!)
Both Clockwork Lives and Clockwork Angels are a collaboration with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. How did that come about and how has it been collaborating with someone who comes from such a different background as music is?
Neil and I have been friends since my first book, RESURRECTION, INC. was published (it was inspired by the Rush album “Grace Under Pressure”) … 27 years ago now. We’ve written a story together, and he did the introduction to one of my collections. He approached me to write the novel of their steampunk fantasy concept album, CLOCKWORK ANGELS, which was the real start of this collaboration. His lyrics had inspired so many of my own stories and novels, and this was a great collaboration to do together. We were both quite pleased at how well our vision meshed with the story and the world, and we were very eager to jump back into that world for CLOCKWORK LIVES.
Clockwork Angels was a gem for Rush fans with many hidden references to the band. What can Rush fans expect from Clockwork Lives?
CLOCKWORK ANGELS had the direct story from the album, and Rush fans were eager to see the real background of how the songs fit together (although, to be clear, you can enjoy the novel greatly even if you’ve never heard the album). I sprinkled countless Rush Easter eggs throughout the prose. CLOCKWORK LIVES is more standalone, without an accompanying album, but I still wove a great many Rush lyric references throughout, and fans will see nods to the Necromancer, the Rocinante, Cygnus. But you don’t have to know anything about the music beforehand; these are just great stories, wonderful adventures, some amazing, some tragic, some uplifting.
With Marinda’s alchemical book we always get a person’s real story so this is a bit of a philosophical question. You say in the book, “Some lives can be summed up in a sentence or two – Other lives are epics”. Do you think at least to some extent we all hide behind if not better but different stories than we really are?
Actually, that line highlights something very close and important to both me and Neil. It seems that some people make the most of their lives, they do things, accomplish much, see countless sights…they finish their bucket lists with many years to spare, and then they write longer lists. Other people, though, just sit around and never bother to do much of anything. When someone writes the story of everything you’ve done in your life, do you want it to take only a line or two…or do you want it to be an epic?
I think it’s safe to say that the universe you and Neil Peart have created simply begs for more. Will there be more and if so do you already have some ideas of where the next journey will take us?
CLOCKWORK LIVES sort of took us by surprise. We always thought we’d visit the world of the Watchmaker again, but hadn’t made any real plans. He had major tours, I had major book deadlines, and I was thinking about it in the back of my mind. Then, during a long hike in Northern Colorado, I had an idea, then a cascade of ideas, and it all came together in a rush (no pun intended).
Just as CLOCKWORK ANGELS is a complete story, start to finish, without any obvious need to continue the adventure of Owen Hardy, CLOCKWORK LIVES tells the complete and satisfying story of Marinda Peake. And yet, Neil made a very interesting comment during revisions to the Percussor’s Tale, which sparked an idea. Maybe someday. Maybe.
We also have to talk a bit about Star Wars. How did you get involved in the first place and how would you say your take on the Star Wars universe is different from what other authors have done?
I was one of the first writers in the Extended Universe, and I was invited to write the Jedi Academy trilogy after my editor at Bantam submitted samples to Lucasfilm. It was a great time in my career, and I did over 50 projects for Lucasfilm. I immersed myself in Star Wars; I was already a big fan, and I tried to express my love for Star Wars in the books I wrote. A lot of fans seem to agree.
Star Wars is only one example of where you have worked in already existing universes where I assume there is freedom within a strict set of rules. How do you handle everything that working in such shared universes demands?
By being a big fan in the first place, which means I really enjoy the original material, let myself live in that world and tell stories that (I hope) will make the readers feel the same experience that *I* get from the material. CLOCKWORK ANGELS is me fleshing out a story in a steampunk universe created by Rush; Brian Herbert and I have written many books in the Dune universe, which his father created, and so on. I just finished the first draft of a novella bridging the TV series HEROES (one of my favorites) with the forthcoming HEROES REBORN. As a writer, I take source material that I enjoy and tell my own stories.
How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurned you on?
I’ve wanted to write since I was five…since before I could write. I remember watching the movie The War of the Worlds and being enthralled. I told that story over and over, drawing pictures, telling it aloud. I made up my mind then that I wanted to tell stories like that.
How do you structure a story? Do you heavily outline, loosely outline, pure discovery? What works best for you?
Oh, my novels are usually giant epics. My Hugo-nominated novel THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS has 139 chapters and 34 viewpoint characters, storylines that cross the galaxy and entangle across many planets and other storylines. There’s no way I could just make that up from scratch; I outline very heavily. It’s like drawing a blueprint before you build a giant skyscraper. (Also, I really hate to throw chapters away and start from scratch, so I prefer to think about it ahead of time.)
What has been most surprising to you in your writing and publishing career so far?
How much it’s changed. This is an industry that’s thrived for a very long time, and I worked very hard and played by the rules to become very successful…but just when I thought I had smooth sailing ahead and I could just keep writing, then the whole industry went through a series of convolutions that would have made Escher dizzy…and it’s still happening. I’m now spending half my time just keeping up and trying to stay ahead of the radical changes, indie publishing, eBooks, social media, major promotion, hand-selling, giant comic cons. It’s exhausting and exciting.
Would you care to pass on any advice to writers starting out? What was the best advice you were ever given when starting out?
Keep writing and keep getting better. Understand the business as well as the art. And never assume it’s going to be easy.
What other projects are you working on at the moment?
I just finished writing ETERNITY’S MIND, the third big 800-page novel in my Saga of Shadows SF epic and I will start editing that as soon as I finish polishing the fourth draft of NAVIGATORS OF DUNE, which I’ll send to Brian Herbert. I wrote the first draft of my HEROES REBORN novella and my coauthor Peter J. Wacks will do the next round of revisions. I wrote a new Dan Shamble Zombie PI Christmas story, which will come out in an anthology this holiday season…and I’m going to about 3 conventions a month, exhibiting and selling books, and I have my own publishing company, WordFire Press, which has published over 250 titles from 50 authors. So, a lot of irons in the fire!
Twitter: @TheKJA
Facebook: Official Kevin J. Anderson Page.
Once again, thank you very much for your time, Kevin.
My pleasure!
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2015
Good Job. That really was a great interview.