Interview with Scott Lynch

Q: Speaking of those novellas, what can you tell us about them? Any tentative release dates? Will the omnibus that will be released by Gollancz next summer be comprised of the same novellas that Subterranean Press will publish?

The first two will be called The Mad Baron's Mechanical Attic and The Choir of Knives; the title and topic of the third, at this point, are an utter mystery to me. The first two deal with the acquisition of the cask of Austershalin brandy that the Gentlemen Bastards use in their scam in TLOLL, and the consequences of that acquisition. Call it a prequel in two parts if you like.

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Q: Speaking of Subterranean Press, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an ARC of their limited edition of The Lies of Locke Lamora. How cool is it to see a special edition of your work so early in your writing career?

It's just freakishly damn cool, is all. I cannot for the life of me wrap my brain around Bill Schaefer's business model; he pays an extremely respectable fee for the subsidiary rights, then he hires a world-famous illustrator to do multiple color paintings for the thing,and then he puts out lovely-looking custom typeset edition in very limited quantities, and he... conquers. He flourishes. He must be Cobra Commander or something, using this as a legitimate front for some nefarious revenue-generating operation.

I suppose you wouldn't expect me to bad-mouth them even if I disliked their presentation, but I'm fortunate. I really love it. They're just really incredibly cool-looking and well done.

Q: What was the spark that generated the idea which drove you to writeThe Gentleman Bastard series in the first place?

Gah derp argh. It's pretty difficult to recall, at such a late remove,and after spending several years deepending and broadening a thing, what 'the spark' was. I've cited a lot of other aspirations and influences elsewhere, so I guess I'll just restate one of my underlying rules. I wanted to write a series in which I was never allowed to wave my hands about the alleged cleverness or wittiness of the characters... regardless of whether you actually agree that what's happening is genuinely clever or witty, I have to show my work. I have to show the processes, the plans and counter-plans, the intellectual swashbuckling between protagonists and antagonists. I don't get to just write something like, "and then the characters all spent a happy night laughing at one another's delightful jokes." I need to show the delightful jokes, or skip them entirely, but just alluding to them is the prime no-no.

Q: Now that it's water under the bridge, I was wondering what went through your mind when the whole "bribes scandal" occurred last summer. In the end, I believe that the amount of publicity the novel received because of that debacle turned the entire thing into something positive in terms of sales and exposure. But still, it musthave been like a slap in the face to be the object of such accusations?

"Scandal" is a bit much, isn't it? It was essentially one reviewer saying some really silly things, and a few people here and there choosing sides, adding perspective or nonsense as they saw fit.

The amount of hot air expended on that teapot tempest was ridiculous, as is any attempt to frame it as some sort of momentous event. I would have been utterly charmed to read a scathing review of TLOLL if onlythe reviewer had described the plot accurately. God, hate away, despise it at length in sarcasm-drenched paragraphs, but for crying out loud get the simple facts of what you've read straight. I cherish entertaining and/or incisive abuse directed at my work, so long as it's directed at my actual work and not a vague semblance of it.

If the editors I work with really did have the resources and the lack of scruples necessary to simply bribe their way to a mass state of hype, why would they waste money sending manuscripts and ARCs on a purely speculative basis to early readers and reviewers, including me? I've been heaped with ARCs in the past couple of years, some of which were utterly delightful and at least one of which I flatly refused to endorse. A publisher could have saved an awful lot of money on that one, for example, by not even bothering to send it to me without the promise of a good word. If they could have just paid me to lie, or spent the money on an internet sock puppet campaign or something, why didn't they?

Publishers do what they do in the undeniable hope of generating interest and sales, but to suggest that all hype, especially in our genre, comes from some sort of networked lie machine is just batshit. If a large number of people like something you don't, the message the universe is sending you is "tastes differ," not "conspiracy afoot."