Interview with Tim Lebbon and Chris Golden

LEBBON: What have you got there? Oh no, you bought yourself Platypus Blatter's Skull-Rooter! Do you actually expect to finish this interview in any state of coherence? We'd best move on ... THE MYTH HUNTERS also contains a mystery/detective sort of element. Did you find this more reality-based thread difficult to weave into a story that's primarily fantasy? And does it continue throughout the trilogy?

GOLDEN: One of the things that was important to me was rooting it all in reality, having an anchor in the mundane world. When Oliver Bascombe gets dragged through The Veil, he sets into motion what is essentially the destruction of his family and the home he knew. His father is murdered, horribly, and that's how we meet Sheriff's Detective Ted Halliwell. He's a weary man with a cynical shell over a wounded heart, divorced, and estranged from his daughter. At first he thinks that Oliver murdered his own father and then took off, but the more he looks at the case—and when other horrible murders similar to the elder Bascombe's come to light—the more Halliwell becomes determined to find the answers, even if they take him places he never dreamed. And yes, the connection to the real world continues throughout the story, with characters traveling back and forth across the Veil, and repercussions on the real world echoing throughout.

GOLDEN: Before you started getting bleary-eyed (after three watered-down Budweisers, Lebbon, shame on you. And you call yourself a Welshman!) you were talking about your characters existing in a sort of moral grey area, which of course is one of the things that makes the story you're telling so compelling. It isn't just the world of Noreela, but these characters. So...why don't you talk a little about the major characters in DUSK and, if you can, some of what prompted their creation. Where do they come from?

LEBBON: Bleary-eyed? That's grief at seeing you spill most of your last pint, Golden! I've killed a man for less. And so, onto the characters from DUSK. They're a mixed and varied bunch. In the planning stages of the novel—which consisted of an idea, a theme and a few pages of notes—I had a rough idea of the two main characters I wanted to write about: Rafe and Kosar. Rafe is the young, naive farm boy in whom magic once again seeds itself, prior to blossoming out into the world once more. I wanted to use someone like him for this because he knows so little about Noreela—he's never even left his home valley—and so it's a voyage of discovery for him as well as the reader. Kosar is a thief, but he's a good man (that moral grey area again). He has no real place in society—ironically, mainly because his thief's brands mark him as someone who was caught—and even though he's settled in Rafe's village for a while, deep in his heart he's still adrift. He's cynical and downbeat, but in reality he starts to enjoy the adventure thrust upon him. It gets him travelling again. Gives him purpose. And then once I started writing the book several other main characters introduced themselves, pretty similar to your own experience with THE MYTH HUNTERS. Hope, a witch and a whore, is a woman who's spent her long life looking for signs of magic. She's mad, and dangerous, and pretty single-minded. There's Alishia, a librarian whose entire knowledge of Noreela comes from her reading. There's A'Meer, Kosar's ex-lover, who to my surprise revealed herself to be much more than even Kosar ever believed. And then Trey, the fledge miner who has spent his whole life living underground, mining the strange drug fledge that allows the user to project their mind. His own life is violently interrupted by magic's miniscule reappearance in the world, when the deadly fledge demons — the Nax — wake up and attack his community. And one of my favourites is Lenora, the battle-scarred warrior of the Mages. She's very, very mean, and she became so much more integral to the whole vast story than I ever guessed. I think something that's true of virtually all of my characters is that they start the novel alone, victim's of nature's decline and the apathy that engenders, but they all change a huge amount throughout the two books. They become friends, whole people, and they all find a common cause that gives them hope.

LEBBON: So, I've shown you mine, now show me yours! Give me the set up for THE MYTH HUNTERS and the whole trilogy. How does it all get started.

GOLDEN: Oliver Bascombe is an attorney from a very wealthy old New England family. He's struggled all his life with his controlling father, made worse after his mother's death when he and his sister were just children. Oliver never wanted this life, never wanted to be an attorney. He wanted to be an actor. He loves myth and story, and remembers a time when he believed in magic. But he's become everything his father wanted him to be. He's very much in love with his fiancée, but the problem is, her father is also one of the founders of the law firm they all work for, old New England money, and marrying her is the final surrender to becoming the man his own father wants him to be. Oliver loves her, but he doesn't want to become that. The night before the wedding comes the first snowfall of the year, a real doozy. That night, from the blizzard, there comes a creature made of ice, wounded and in need of his help. It's Frost. Jack Frost. He's being hunted by a monster called The Falconer and if Oliver does not help him, he will die. Numb with disbelief, Oliver doesn't know what to do, but he ends up helping . . . and is dragged through the Veil into another world, where ancient "lost" civilizations still exist, where Amelia Earhardt opened a bar and started a family, where every bit of legend and folklore is real. The thing is, Frost is one of a special breed, called Borderkind, who can move back and forth across the Veil. But humans are NEVER supposed to do that. Those who slip through, the Lost Ones, are touched by the Veil's magic and can never return. But because Frost brought Oliver through, he CAN go back. And that makes him an Intruder. A fugitive. So while Frost is trying to figure out why the Myth Hunters are slaughtering the Borderkind and who's behind that conspiracy, Oliver is being hunted with him, and also has a death warrant sworn out for him throughout the Two Kingdoms beyond the Veil. And that's only the beginning. When an ancient horror is released after centuries and slips back into the human world, Oliver's loved ones are in terrible danger, and the more he learns about this new world the more he realizes that no one can be fully trusted and nothing is what it seems.