Page 1 of 2
By Chris (2007-10-09)
Hi Peadar! Welcome to my blog, and thanks for taking part. Have a cookie!
A: Thank you for the cookies.
The Inferior is the first in your YA/SF trilogy. Could you tell us about your début, and what is planned for the final two volumes in The Bone World Trilogy?
A: I'm trying to write a series about survival. How low are we willing to sink just to keep going as a species? I've created a kind of laboratory to find out. In my first book, aliens are hunting humans to extinction through the ruins of a vast city. Everything on the planet is poisonous. Except the aliens. If it's intelligent, it's food. I gave my poor savages the most horrible lives I could conceive and they still manage to make something of themselves. They have family loyalties and a species loyalty that informs everything they do.
My story revolves around two main conflicts, both triggered by the arrival of a woman from a technically advanced human society. The first is a personal feud between Stopmouth and an older brother who seems superior to him in every way. The second is a battle of ideologies between civilised values and the more primitive ones that ensure survival. All of this takes place against a background of bloody hunts, alien attacks and Assorted Terrors.
Book two will mostly resolve the values battle.
Book three will mostly resolve the personal conflict.
Book four will not exist. Please shoot me if it ever does.
What do you hope to achieve as a writer?
A: My ambition is to be somebody's favourite writer. Somebody, that is, I'm not related to, that I've never met. A great many fine books are written that nobody loves enough to keep out of the second-hand shops. I don't want to finish my writing career as an author who never wrote a "favourite book".
Will it be a long wait for the other books in the trilogy? Are they already written? To sell a trilogy, you must have a clear idea of where the story is going to go. How much of it is planned out and is concrete, and how much lee-way do you allow yourself to move away from the original vision?
A: Book two is about half done and should be appearing in a year's time. Book three is just a plan on paper, but I don't expect the plot to change a lot. I have what I think is a great ending for the trilogy and it would take a major shift in my values or personality to make me want to alter it.
Even before UK publication, rights have quickly been picked up to publish The Inferior and the rest of The Bone World trilogy in other languages. It's currently at eight, I believe? How does it make you feel to be being published in so many countries? They are clearly showing a lot of faith in you and your works.
A: They are and it's been wonderful. It helps calm my self-doubts to know that others think I've produced something good enough to pay for. It makes it easier to believe that ordinary readers will do the same. 
| 
