Interview with Samantha Shannon - #YAGlasstownChats
Please welcome Samantha Shannon, the author of The Bone Season series as well as The Priory of the Orange Tree, to our blog!
Our giveaway might be over, but there are still many #YAGlasstownChats interviews to share with you, so keep checking here and on our social media for them!
What can you tell us about your new book, The Priory of the Orange Tree? Were you writing it at the same time as The Bone Season series?
The Priory of the Orange Tree is a re-imagining of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, intertwined with mythology from around the world and sixteenth and seventeenth-century history. It’s told from the perspective of four characters — Tané, Niclays, Ead and Loth — who are all from very different backgrounds. I started writing it in 2015 while my editor had The Song Rising, the third book in the Bone Season series, which was out of my hands for a long time while she prepared her notes. I'm a full-time author and had nothing to do with myself during this period, so I decided it was high time I wrote a dragon book – a childhood dream of mine. Due to its scope and the amount of research it involved, it took me about three years to write and edit.
What’s it like to plan a seven book series – is the plot fully formed, or do you have a vaguer idea of where it should go?
I know approximately where the story is going, its main twists and turns, and how it will end, but I sometimes change my mind about things. I started writing the septology when I was nineteen and I'm now nearly twenty-seven, so there was always going to be some change to my original vision. I've sometimes talked about what I call the flesh-and-bones plot structure: I know the "bones" of the series, and the "joints” (the key events), but how I get there — the connective tissue — can change, and often does. Sometimes I’ll have planned a scene for ages and it’s worked brilliantly in my head, but when I actually come to write it, it falls flat, or the characters won’t cooperate, so I have to re-approach it from a different angle.
What about world-building, what advice can you give to aspiring writers?
Ask yourself questions about your world and try to come up with answers to them all. Even if those answers never make it to the page, it’s important that you have a decent idea of how your world works behind the scenes, or your readers may sense the gaps in your knowledge. Consider, as well, how your world differs from ours and why. Think outside the box.
In that sense, how did your process differ between a world somewhat based on our own, such as in The Bone Season series, and your new book, The Priory of the Orange Tree?
It was hugely different. Although The Bone Season is based in the real world (albeit a fantastical version of it), it’s been set so far in places I know well, like London and Oxford, and I was able to jump straight in to defamiliarising them so they appear quasi-magical to the reader. The Priory of the Orange Tree was easier in some ways, but more complex in others. Although it’s high fantasy, so I’m not bound by the laws and geographical boundaries of our world in the way I am with The Bone Season, its fictional lands are loosely based on events and legends from real-world countries, which meant I had to do a lot more historical research than I have before. The most challenging aspect of the worldbuilding was devising a naming system. I’m something of a magpie in The Bone Season, stealing slang and names from the Victorian era and sprinkling them where I fancy, but in Priory, it took me much longer to devise a way to weave languages into the fabric of my fantasy realm. I didn’t like the idea of just stirring vowels and consonants together, but I also didn’t want to rely too heavily on languages that are still in use today. Although I do use some modern words, I ended up creating most of the place and personal names from extinct or archaic languages, including Old Chinese, Gothic, Sumerian and Proto-Japanese. I have an etymology document, over 5000 words long, to remind me of where each name originated.
In The Bone Season series music has a heavy presence, and you also create playlists for each book, so it’s safe to say music is important to you. How has it influenced your writing?
I could write without music, but it would be hard. Music helps me tune in to my creativity. My Priory playlist, which I’ll release at some point in the near future, contains 100 songs or instrumental pieces that helped me settle into particular scenes or perspectives, including music from the era that inspired Priory. And of course, in The Bone Season, real music is mentioned. Often the lyrics of songs I mention will contain messages that are pertinent to the scene.
If time stopped, which book would you read over and over again?
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor or Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft. Both such wonderful, lush, life-affirming books.
Which 3 fictional characters would you want to have an adventure with?
Ósa from A Shiver of Snow and Sky by Lisa Lueddecke, Frey from The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke, and Helene from An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir.
Do you want to recommend any books, comic books, podcasts, games, TV shows, anything that you’re enjoying right now?
I recently finished Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. It’s wonderful — a sapphic love story that takes place in a Southeast Asian-inspired fantasy world, where young women are forced to serve as concubines to a ruthless Demon King. It's brutal and sumptuous and heart-rending.
Some other brilliant books I've read this year are Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng, State of Sorrow by Melinda Salisbury, A Spark of White Fire by Sangu Mandanna, Nevernight by Jay Kristoff, Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Katherine Webber, Blood and Sand by C. V. Wyk, and The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X. R. Pan.
As for TV shows, I’d highly recommend Empresses in the Palace, a Chinese drama about a young woman who rises to become a favoured imperial consort during the Qing Dynasty, making friends and enemies as she ascends.
A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.
Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.
Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.
Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
This interview was conducted by Diana Sousa, Glasstown Entertainment's graphic designer. She lives in Portugal, where she splits her time between all things design and illustration related, and all sorts of nerdy things. You can bribe her with chocolate, comic books, video games, Dungeons and Dragons shenanigans, and yet more chocolate. And, of course, books.
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