Interview with Caitlin Sweet

KatG: In Silences, many of the different races from Telling – the shonyn, the Alilan, the Sea Raiders -- come together during a period of great upheaval and strife. Can you talk about some of these characters and the conflicts they have with one another?

CS: In Telling, Jaele (and therefore the reader) ends up with pretty incomplete knowledge of the peoples she meets, because of the episodic nature of her quest, and her own limited perspective. One of the things I enjoyed most about writing Silences was fleshing out some of these peoples. I finally got to see the Alilan, shonyn and selkesh (Sea Raider) societies from within, via point-of-view characters. Like Nellyn, a shonyn man who falls in love with Lanara, a Queenswoman sent to his riverside village to instruct young shonyn. And Alea and Aldron, Alilan Tellers who have known each other since they were children. Leish and Mallesh, selkesh brothers who end up leading their people across the Eastern Sea, driven by dreams of conquest. I was fascinated by the ways these pairings played out. Nellyn's from a society that has no concept of change or linear time; Lanara's from a society that exalts history and the recording of it. Alea is a powerful but obedient Alilan Teller, while Aldron's power is wild and dangerous and forbidden. Leish hears the songs of far countries (for the selkesh, every living thing, including the earth itself, has a particular song) but has no desire to follow them with boats and weapons, as his ambitious brother Mallesh does. So there's conflict between the members of these pairs from the very beginning - but when they all come into contact with each other, the personal conflicts become both more intense and more political.

A few other extremely important characters: Princess Ladhra, only child of Queen Galha, whose death is what drives the legend Jaele knows, so many years later. Baldhron, a scribe who loves the Princess, hates the Queensrealm, and knows some potentially devastating secrets about both. And of course the Queen herself - but I won't give away anything about her!

CS: Hmm...what to give away...
A love triangle! A princess in disguise! Pirates and a very unusual sort of treasure! (Enough of the exclamation points, now.) Ancient, elemental creatures: some with beaks, talons, and fur, and others with scales and fire-throwing eyes. Societies with drawn maps; societies with "mind-maps" that sketch the geological makeup and movements of the earth. People who believe in fate; others who believe only in the inscrutability and inevitability of change. Priests who fly; priestesses who delve. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. A partial list!

This new story has been inspired by the Bronze Age history of the Mediterranean - so my islanders may (rightly) strike readers as vaguely Minoan, while the mainlanders may remind them of Myceneans. I've also used elements of Greek myth - namely, the harsh tale of Atreus, King of Mycenae, his Cretan wife Aerope, and his brother Thyestes, with whom Aerope has an affair. Despite my historical and mythological sources, the book(s?) won't be straight historical fantasy, or alternate history. I don't intend to depict, with any great degree of fidelity, archaeologically precise details of the Bronze Age. This may annoy the more literal-minded among my readers; I hope it will be absorbing for most.

But you know, plans are funny things. I've written 40,000 words of this next story, and lo and behold, there's another story nagging at me too. This has never happened to me before. I don't know which will demand to be told first. My readers will just have to wait a few years to find out!