Interview with Stephen Hunt
Been looking forward to this one for a while! Here we interview author and website owner Stephen Hunt as his new novel and the first of a new series is released.
For the benefit of those not familiar with your new novel, In Dark Service, can you tell us a bit about it?
The first thing worthy to note, I suppose, is that it’s an epic fantasy novel. The plot of In Dark Service concerns two central families, the Carnehans and Landors, whose children are kidnapped by slavers and snatched from the town of Northhaven in the Kingdom of Weyland.
The town launches a rescue expedition to free the taken from captivity, but with little chances of success given the large scale of the world of Pellas.
The first novel focuses on both the adventures of the pursuing towns-people and the slaves’ struggle to survive their harsh captivity.
In Dark Service is the first in a new series, although I think many readers will recognise your name from your Jackelian series, starting with The Court of the Air in 2007. Was it difficult to leave the series?
To be honest, I fancied a change. There are six books in the Jackelian series, now, each one a labour of love. It was time for something new to keep my increasingly befuddled brain fresh and ticking over.
How different is this new series?
Very. The Jackelian series was quite similar in structure to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels … stand-alone novels set in the same world, with a few shared characters that weave in and out of each novel. You can pick up any book in the series without having read the previous tome, and give each one a fair shot on its own merits. My new Far-called series is a proper linked sequence, à la Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, where you are going to want to start with book one and move sequentially through the series. That comes with its own set of challenges and fun to craft as well.
What do you like most about your new book?
Well, I know what the fans will like most. A map at the flipping front! For six years I’ve been getting at least one e-mail a day asking WTFM? when it comes to the Jackelian books. I’ve finally succumbed and learnt my lesson. It only took eight years. I’m a slow learner.
You’ve got, by my reckoning, over fifteen books published, most in the last decade. How is your writing now compared to your writing when you first broke through into being published? Many readers will want to know whether it becomes easier!
I think the main difference is that you learn a lot from fan feedback about what readers like and don’t like, and that hopefully allows you to hone your work as you develop across the years.
How did you get published? What do you think you know about writing now that you would tell your younger self, just starting out?
I was unusually blessed; in that The Court of the Air gave me the best intro to getting published any budding author could hope for. The first book went to auction, with all the big publishing houses bidding against each other for the rights to publish it. Shortly after that, it was voted Best Novel To Be Turned Into a Movie by the judging committee of the world’s largest film festival, The Berlinale.
I’m still waiting for the film, but the memories of the unusual degree of success the book met after being written still happily linger. It’s an uncommon experience, though . . . a real fluke. It was back then, and even more so these days. As far as advice goes, I’d travel back to the early nineties and tell my younger self to forget about putting science fiction book reviews on-line … get with the online gambling, auction sites, book stores, dating sites, search engines and payment systems. Then I’d have my own private space program to occupy me by now.
Would you give any advice to other writers just starting out?
Stick with it. Unless you’re a prodigy, you’ve probably got three to five novels worth of pure rubbish to get under your belt before you’re of publishable quality. That stage took me more or less a decade.
These days, marketing seems to be as much of the writing process as writing! How do you market your books?
No magic formula, there. Just persistence and graft in lieu of cash. Marketing was a day job for me at one point, though, which hopefully helps a little.
Some may (or not!) also know that you are the owner/administrator for one of the UK’s longest running genre websites – SF Crowsnest ( at www.SFcrowsnest.org.uk ). As an administrator here, I’m interested – how involved are you in the whole website/forum?
Actually, Geoff Willmetts has been editor of the site since 2000, with about forty active contributors with writer’s accounts set up on the content management system. I nominally still help out on the technical side, when it comes to coding and programming. The time I spend even working on development has sadly dwindled close to zero since 2007, though, as most spare time has been spent on fiction for the likes of Gollancz and Tor.
Like SFFWorld, Crowsnest’s been around as ‘a genre place’ for a long while. I make it getting on for something towards twenty years for us and over twenty for you. Some forget we were both around before social media – in fact, we both come from the days of dial-up! Things change fast these days – how important do you think both as an author and administrator, is social media? Is this too overwhelming at times or just plain fun?
A little too much fun and addictive. I know of some authors who are rumoured to hand their router to their spouse as he/she leaves for work, so they’re not tempted to check their FaceBook/Tumblr/Twitter every few minutes. The worse thing is that we authors can kid ourselves that we’re doing it for marketing, not because we’re a rat in a maze hitting the button for a random new food pellet every few seconds. Staying focused is harder now than ever with social media. Online has certainly seen a world of changes since the pre-Web walled-garden days of AppleLink, that’s for sure.
What do you do when you’re not writing/administering? Any hobbies?
Does reading count? That must be my main one, still.
The second book in your new series, Foul Tide’s Turning, is due in 2015. That’s a very quick turnaround – how’s it going?
Foul Tide’s Turning is finished and going through edits as we speak. I’m actually a good way into the as-yet-officially-unnamed third book in the Far-called series, currently.
And then, what’s next? Are you working on anything else at the moment?
I’ve got a short story I’m penning for an anthology set in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadow of the Apt universe. That’s a first for me, working in someone else’s play-pen. Both liberating and restrictive at the same time, but in a good way. In terms of novels, I’ve got a hundred times more ideas for new books than I’ll ever have time to execute. We’ll have to see when I get there . . . I’m still kind of making this all up as I go along.
Many thanks, Stephen.
