Interview with David Anthony Durham

Q: What extensive research, if any, did the writing of Acacia: The War with the Mein entail?

A lot more than you would think, considering it’s all made up! Right from the start I wanted to draw on our real world complexity to make sure the Known World felt authentic. So I sampled mythologies: Ancient Greek, Norse, Middle Eastern. I stole inspiration from history: the rise and fall of various dynasties, the Atlantic Slave Trade, Chinese opium consumption. And I sampled from the modern world: biological warfare, fractious alliances with unscrupulous "friends and allies", global trade monopolies. For a year or so I really worried about covering all the bases I could in terms of worldbuilding. After that, though, I loosened up a bit. The Known World was my world by then, and I felt more comfortable trusting my own instincts in shaping it.
It all ended up being a big mixture. The Epic of Gilgamesh inspired some of the tone of the cult of Maeben that Mena’s a priestess of, but it’s set on an island that’s part Maori, part Indian, with a bit of Japanese clam farming thrown in… It’s a real hodgepodge, but that’s what I loved about writing it. I could pick and choose pieces of our world and set them in different situations and create or change whatever I wanted. That was a lot of fun.

Q: With the success of Pride of Carthage, professionally speaking, following it up with an epic fantasy novel such as this one is somewhat of a gamble. As a critically acclaimed author, why take that risk? I am aware that you are a fantasy fan, but why choose to do so at this juncture in your career?

I’m not exactly famous for my decision-making ability. Who knows – it may prove to have been a wopper of a mistake. If so, though, it’s one that I made from the heart. All of my books drew me to them, regardless of whether or not they were obviously good ideas. Gabriel’s Story was a Black Western – not exactly a hot market, especially as it’s also a literary novel that needs to hit a mainstream literary audience. Walk Through Darkness was a fugitive slave narrative – a long shot as the country only makes a slave-related novel a hit once every ten years or so. Pride of Carthage was an ancient war novel. That one, at least, joined a strong market, with popular authors like Steven Pressfield, Conn Igguldan and Bernard Cornwell doing well with similar material. Problem is that my war novel is ultimately an anti-war novel in which the heroism of the characters is undermined by the reality that everybody in the thing suffers more than they gain. That’s not exactly pitch-perfect for the target audience of such books. But with each of these books the stories and characters got under my skin, and they seemed the most important, challenging stories I could tell.

Acacia, well, let me say this… I didn’t take it for granted that I’d be able to write books as long as I wanted to. Life doesn’t work that way. I pitched the book to my editor saying, truthfully, that if I could only write one more book it would be Acacia. I hope there are many more to come, but I didn’t want to assume that I could get around to it at my leisure. Why Acacia? Because I was remembering my love of epic, imaginative stories, and because I dreamed up the basic Akaran family structure based on my wife’s family, and because I believed a fantasy world would allow me great potential to explore real-world issues in a creative way, and because I wanted to honor the fact that fantasy brought me (and so many others) to reading and that it deserves the opportunity, at least, to earn mainstream respect, and because it was the first of my novels that I could discuss with my children. I could tell my son about Aliver fighting the Antok creatures, and talk with my daughter about Mena, sword-wielding princess that she becomes, going to do battle with a winged god… I loved that. For all those reasons it was worth it to me.

Q: Do you have a different approach when it comes to writing epic fantasy or historical novels?

No, not really. I get to make everything up in fantasy, but in all historical novels you have to make a great deal up also. You may have a basic framework of generally accepted facts, but that does not a novel make. The things that bring the facts to life are the many narrative details of storytelling. Same goes with fantasy. I get to build the historical backdrop, but as soon as that’s in place I have to set real-seeming characters down in it and let them stumble their way through it. So Imco Vaca, the foot soldier from Pride of Carthage, isn’t that different than Leeka Alain, an officer of the Northern Guard. Hannibal and his brothers aren’t so different than Aliver and his siblings, or Hanish and his brothers, for that matter…