Page 3 of 3 Interview with Paul
Kearney By Patrick
(2006-03-08)
What impact would you say has the patronage
of a well-known author like Steven Erikson on the sales
and awareness of your books?
PK: Certainly Steve's enthusiasm for
my books has given them a higher profile - especially in
America. We were corresponding for a while a few years
back, and I was moaning on about how unhappy I was at
Gollancz, so he said I should give Simon Taylor at
Bantam a call, and the rest is history. He's a damn fine
writer, not to mention a very decent chap.
How many books do you envisage in The
Sea-Beggars sequence? And do you hold to your statement
in a previous interview that after it is done you may
start writing 'mainstream' fiction, possibly instead of
fantasy?
PK: At present, the plan is for the
series to go to four, but though they are a 'series',
they are all stand-alone novels. Certainly, a reading of
previous books in the series will be a help, but I
intend that readers will be able to start with any one
of the four.
As far as the future goes beyond Beggars, I've always
wanted to try my hand at a proper historical novel, and
also at a 'magical realism' type of story which I've
been working on for years. So to be honest, I don't
know. There was a time when I intended to give up
writing altogether, but I found I just couldn't do it.
It would be like losing a limb. So, for better or worse,
I guess I'm destined to keep turning them out.
Your books are noted for their brevity, to
the point of leaving the reader crying out for more. How
do you avoid the pitfalls that seem to dog many writers
of letting their stories get out of control and expand
across thousands of pages?
PK: It's not a conscious decision. I
think it's mainly to do with the fact that my plotting
is very rudimentary - I basically make it up as I go
along. So as I'm writing, I'm as keen as the reader is
to find out what happens next. For that reason, my books
tend to run along at a fair old clip. There is also the
fact that I hate 'wordiness.' There is no reason
whatsoever to have info-dumps every few pages, or to
linger lovingly on descriptions of ball-gowns, or even
on the appearance of characters. If you cannot get
across your intent, or paint a picture, in just a few
sentences, then you have not got what you want to say
clear in your head yet, and you should step away from
the keyboard until you do. Or else write all the purple
passages you want, but go back and prune them away
afterwards. Stephen King once said that you should lose
10% of the wordcount with every draft, and I couldn't
agree more.
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Interview by Patrick fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Copyright - Patrick fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
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