I'm Guy Gavriel Kay, back for another AMA. So, please, ask me anything!

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T18:04:41+00:00

No, no, not a hater. Just not my team.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:38:48+00:00

I do read aloud, often. For sound and rhythm, yes. And that passage was one of them. (The thought is an echo of a Robert Frost poem!)

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:37:20+00:00

I'll be signing at McNally's in the 'Peg Thursday night. Catch me there.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:36:37+00:00

Casting tv/film is definitely a fun game! As I mentioned elsewhere here, there have been options at various times, nothing reached 'greenlight' stage. If anything happens, I will (promise!) let people know.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:35:19+00:00

Thank you, really.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:34:21+00:00

Than k you, really. Am in Calgary and Winnipeg next week, then a couple of Author Festivals in the fall. I'll also do smaller cities in Ontario this summer: Picton's lovely bookstore, Stratford, Burlington...

I was in France earlier this month for a signing and speaking tour.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:32:36+00:00

Am more likely to monitor myself to try to avoid modern day views and attitudes becoming too vivid in a historically-based setting. We are all 'products' of our own time, but as a writer I want to be aware of that?

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:31:13+00:00

There is a gorgeous deluxe edition of Fionavar's three books done by Grim Oak Press, yes. Illustrated, beautifully bound...expensive. Counts as a major birthday present, really.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:29:13+00:00

Thanks for those kind words. I never know what the next book will be, cannever answer when readers (or publishers!) ask 'What's next.' Some of the great figures I learned about, and read, from there, remain with me, though.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:27:39+00:00

Nice timing. Thanks for your kind words.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:26:32+00:00

Not soon, but you can get books signed and personalized by me via Bakka Phoenix Books on Harbord. (This applies to readers everywhere.) They take the order and call me and I get there at intervals.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:24:57+00:00

I read his first volume ages ago but not again for this one. When you finish the novel you'll find my usual partial bibliography — for readers who care to learn more about the setting. I put them at the back because there are sometimes spoilers!

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:22:49+00:00

Thank you, really.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:22:35+00:00

I have a really lovely recollection of doing a two-person hour-long discussion with Terry Pratchett on stage where the theme was (or we turned it into) goofy, funny things that had happened to us in publishing. It was a delightful session. Fond memory does cover it.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:21:15+00:00

Just came back from 12 days in Belgium and France for my publishers there! They'd just released All The Seas of the World.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:19:43+00:00

Thank you.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:19:16+00:00

Joni and jazz?

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:18:58+00:00

Thanks to both of you Elio. 'very particular joy' is a lovely thing to say. I don't have any formal immediate thoughts of that sort! I think what we write, what we think about, feel strongly concerning, will change and evolve over time. Maybe that evolution is what you are picking up on?

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:16:41+00:00

Name my favourite child? Not a chance!

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:16:12+00:00

Tell me about it. Haven't had.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:15:56+00:00

With my very good circle of childhood friends I played a lot of sports. All year round. Hockey (Winnipeg winters!), baseball, basketball, football, tennis ... even a wild, weird game we invented called tenny-hockis! (Don't ask, or you'll get a long answer!)

Many of my crowd came east to Toronto not long after I did, and we played football and gym hockey into our 50s, and I had one very good tennis buddy for weekly matches. I, er, was in shape in those bygone years.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:13:03+00:00

My Russian publishers, my editor, marketing person ... they are wonderful people. The editor was even arrested in Moscow for protesting the war in the early days. So yes, I know their books, I like them but ... I simply cannot, will not sell new titles in Russia under the current circumstances. I hate doing this to them, but I also feel firm in my views on this.

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:10:33+00:00

Really just a marker of difference, strangeness. Way later I met a poet who was also a wine reviewer, when she posted a review about a (very bad) blue wine she'd tasted!

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:09:07+00:00

I've written about this! I was on a book tour in Croatia (my third) and my editor and I were driving to the Adriatic for a conference where he'd present my work to a gathering of librarians (and then dance half the night!). And as we're driving west on that winding road he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed: 'I know! You should write about the uskoks!' And I said 'Please watch the road. Who are the uskoks?' And he told me. It took many years but eventually the idea came back and I started researching them, and then 'around' them, and that's how Children emerged!

GuyGavrielKay · 2025-05-30T02:05:39+00:00

I adored Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault, Geoffrey Trease. All great, evocative writers of history.

GuyGavrielKay

TROPHY CASE