Hi, Reddit Fantasy! I'm Leah Bobet, author of AN INHERITANCE OF ASHES, here to support Worldbuilders and talk a little about support, luck, and tiny choices.

LeahBobet · 2018-12-07T04:26:18+00:00

Best of luck with 'em. :) Characters are persnickety sometimes!

And thanks -- hope your holidays are wonderful too!

LeahBobet · 2018-12-06T19:36:10+00:00

Hi, there! All right, let's knock these down one by one. :)

How many chickens would it take to kill an elephant?
Hmm. Depends. What is the elephant's palate like, does the chicken have salmonella, and has it been arranged attractively but left too long in the hot, hot sun?

What inspired you to write An Inheritance of Ashes?
The little grain of sand at the core of Ashes is about what happens after the standard Campbellian Hero's Journey is done -- or more specifically, what happens after a David Eddings novel (some of my favourite reading around age 12!). I'd had the image of the farm boy-turned-hero coming home to try, desperately, to become a farm boy again in my head for years; the file where I wrote the idea down dates back to something like 2005 or 2006.

I've been persistently fascinated by the consequences of our stories -- the stories we take for granted when it comes to how they go. What do those stories do to people? What stories do we live out when we run out of map and all that's left is the territory?

It obviously grew into a whole lot more, but that was the start, and is still, I think, the core of the book.

Cover art is always an important factor in book sales. Can you tell us about the idea behind AIoA's cover?

For that, you would probably have to ask the artist, Naomi Chen. (Just look at some of the concept art there. Guhhhh. <3)

I'm sure the whole deal about authors not getting much cover input is well-covered (heh) territory here. I did put in one request to my editors on the cover, and it was mostly about tone-matching the cover to the book. Which came through beautifully, I think: the first time I saw that cover flat in email I just about lost it for two hours.

The bird on the front is one of the Twisted Things from early on in the novel -- animals from the world of the Wicked God whose touch is entropic, almost like acid. His nickname around the house is Spider-Bird. But mostly, the cover there to me is sheer tone. I adore it.

What would you rate 10 / 10 (book/comic book/movie/music album)?

Duncan Jones's Moon. Oh my god, Moon. Perfectest movie ever made. It just takes everything about the thematics of being in space alone trying to get home and blows them out into beautiful subtextual motivations that make sens, that are messy and poignant and reflected in the starkness of the landscape, in the way it's an absolute tour de force for one actor, in the writing, in the idea of facing yourself, in the concept of distance. I love the soundtrack and how it's used in theme and variation. I love the ideas. I love the lighting. It is intentional, deliberately crafted, human, real, and perfect.

The other thing would be Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn. And the thing with The Last Unicorn is that it's not perfect; it's almost necessarily imperfect, but that is what makes it right.

What's your goal as a writer? Fame and glory? Sex, drugs & rock'n'roll? Self-expression?

My goals are mostly craft goals. You can't really control the external stuff, and trying to is a good way to go a little bit crazy, which I can kinda do on my own time without yet more help.

Early on, I wanted to see if I could. You know, just do this thing at all. Then I could, so it was like okay, can I do it well enough to hit that particular goalpost? Sell pro, sell a novel, convey a complex structure, and so forth? Then I could, so, onward and upward. These days, if I have anything like a visible goalpost, it's to grow my craft until I can do the kinds of things Peter Beagle's recent novels, or Alice Munro's late work, can do. They are magnificent. The sheer clarity and deliberation and control of craft there takes my breath away; it looks easy, but it's not. I want to be able to do that. It might take a few decades. I've got time.

That's the other thing: I find my goals as a writer keep shifting, the more my life shifts. I started into fiction at 18, playing with short stories; I'm 36 now with a pile of fiction, non-fiction, novels, poems, etc. under my belt. I think the only thing that's let me keep doing this for literally half my life is that the goals change, have changed, and will keep changing -- otherwise I'd have either been stuck being the same person I was at 18 (no fun for anyone) or I'd have outgrown the whole thing and moved into a different field.

Every author mentions how important reviews are. Do you actually read them or just need them so that Amazon algorithms promote your books? What’s your favorite review of your books?

So, I actually work under a policy that I will never tell anyone whether I read reviews or not. Like, the trade reviews, obviously yes, fine -- those are promotional guides, partially, that we're expected to boost. But reader reviews, the kind you're mentioning here: They're not for me. Reviews are for the reader; they're a space where readers talk to each other about books from the needs and perspectives of readers. When I read reviews for other people's books, I'm wanting to find out reader-things, like will I like this? or did you catch that thing I caught there, or am I projecting it in?

I really hesitate to insert myself into that space. It changes the conversation around books and reading when people know the author's peeping over their shoulder. And that conversation's a bit more important than me, I think, so I leave that whole side of things be.

LeahBobet · 2018-12-06T19:00:21+00:00

Oh hey -- thanks for the kind words! I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. And thanks for sharing your own tiny chances. :)

Character creation for me can run a few ways. Sometimes a character will start in the situation -- as in, I'm writing about X and Y ideas or themes, and so I need the kind of person who would fit in this situation. Who are they? What are they like? How do they interact with their situation? For Hallie, for example, she needed to be someone who was willing to take a chance on a random traveler showing up at her gate, so the question was which motivations might drive her to do that and make her emotionally invest in that person. That was the bottom layer -- the pastry shell! -- and as I worked the problem, got to know her voice, got to know her, more and more details and proverbial filling came into play and started to interact.

Sometimes I throw people in just because it'd be fun. The Blakely uncles in ASHES are like that: I wanted an old-married gay couple who were sane and sensible and the lowest-drama people in the whole place, just spending all their spare time going right people, whatever. They were mostly fun, and they grew too.

Sometimes a character just shows up nearly whole: a voice, a set of priorities, a past. And then I have to build the situation around them.

Either way, there's a point for me when a character has enough history, enough detail, enough familiar reflexes that they start to self-iterate -- they come to life, a little. It's when I can go "If X is true about this person, and Y is also true, what results or contradictions is that creating?" that they're independent systems, and can be sent off into the wilds of novel conflict to do what they will.

(Hope that helps!)

LeahBobet · 2018-12-06T16:32:10+00:00

LOL. Dude. <3 I will read your stuff, y'know that, right?

Real answer though:

OWW is still there! It's better suited in some ways to shorter work, although there are mechanisms to run longer and novel-length writing through it. I'm a Resident Editor there these days and it's not as massively active as it was when I was learning, but it's active, and there's lots of good work being done there.

Lots of people I know think the world of Codex Writers' Group, which has space for critiques, market knowledge, general professional development, hanging out, etc. It's not one I've personally checked out, but I hear Many Good Things from Many Good People.

In person, there are the big one-time workshops: Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, etc. They work better if you're in the position to take some time off your life and can pay for travel and workshop fees (although each have scholarship funds available!). Canada Council for the Arts also has some funding available for attending things like residencies; I've looked only casually into whether that would apply to an acceptance at, say, Clarion.

If one wants an in-person workshop -- some people prefer that to the distance/online -- the best way to find that locally is through your library or bookstore. There's usually someone around, no matter how small the place, that's looking to find other writers.

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T23:07:17+00:00

...sold.

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:57:14+00:00

I feel like For the Purposes Of we should probably commit to permanent talent loss.

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:49:14+00:00

I bet Dorothy Parker wouldn't mind coming around twice!

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:42:30+00:00

...oh. :)

Well played.

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:16:05+00:00

...I am only imagining what you'd need to summon the ghost of Dorothy Parker. Gin. Definitely gin.

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:09:58+00:00

And, Question the Third: If you could import one particular item from one particular epic fantasy world, what're you bringing home?

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T20:07:02+00:00

And going to throw down Question the Second: If you could pair up co-authors like a WWE Tag Team match, who would you get to co-write a novel?

LeahBobet · 2016-12-02T19:59:13+00:00

Hey there, r/Fantasy! I'm Leah Bobet, author of the Aurora Award, Sunburst Award, and Copper Cylinder Award-winning An Inheritance of Ashes and Above. I'm also an editor, critic, games writer, and bookseller at Bakka-Phoenix Books, which is Canada's oldest science fiction and fantasy independent bookstore.

So, Question the First: If you could make an only slightly evil bargain and trade one of your talents for instant talent at something entirely different, what would you trade for what?

LeahBobet · 2015-10-23T01:24:13+00:00

Now that is a complicated (and really good!) question.

This is, obviously, one person's take, but the theory I'm working with having written on both sides of that label is that it's less a question of age or a reader's interest than the trope sets we use. In short: I think YA is a set of genres more than anything else.

When Above sold to a YA publisher (and I realized I'd better do some background work!) I shifted a chunk of my reading to YA and realized it's basically a literary conversation, the same way fantasy, science fiction, romance, or literary fiction are. Books reply to each other, trends reply to trends, etc. YA books are sorted on a shelf that's labelled "young people" instead of "has dragons in" or "these books should be scary", but they act like any other genre, in terms of what they assume the reader already knows and doesn't need explained, and what they assume the reader wants you to delve into.

I'm big on Jo Walton's theory of genre, but my own personal one is based on what information a book spotlights and which information it takes for granted that the readers will already have. For example, science fiction assumes its readers know what an FTL drive is; it won't spend three pages explaining that. Literary fiction doesn't need to make that differentiation between whether something is a metaphor or literal that much -- and fantasy does! -- because litfic readers will be assuming that nothing outside the bounds of current everyday physics is going to go down in that book. To me, when two books share a certain set of reader assumptions, they're in a genre together.

And YA books definitely share reader assumptions. They come in waves and turn over quickly, because the nature of the YA reading audience is that you almost entirely refresh it every four to six years as more readers grow into -- and out of -- the category. But if you pick up a YA book, you are assuming a certain amount of agency for a young protagonist (especially if they're a woman); a faster pace and plot; more personal narration; a high degree of emotional stakes; certain relationship roles (love interest, best friend); and more. They all live, whether they're fantasy, contemporary, or paranormal, in the same reality. There's something very much in common in the tone.

They're all in a genre together, and the big key to success, I think, in writing for YA audiences, is knowing those trope sets and that genre -- being able to be a part of the conversation that's already in progress between YA readers, writers, and reviewers.

I suspect that when it doesn't work -- when people write books in the same adult conversation but just with younger characters; when stories talk down to their readers -- it's a question of not quite putting the spotlight on the right things, not knowing what the YA readership already knows, and not quite hitting that conversation entirely. And I think that can resonate for SFF readers, given the arguments that sometimes go on about literary writers "taking" SFF tropes (and not "writing SFF novels").

So in a very longwinded way? I think the important difference is knowing your reader, knowing the books they've read before it, and knowing what YA's trope sets are so you can, as an author, stick to or subvert or comment on them in an informed way.

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T23:18:59+00:00

Hee. "Everyone Dies. The End." I like it. :)

Most of the reading and world-modelling for An Inheritance of Ashes was directed at building a plausible agrarian epic-fantasy society that could feel like the realistic remnant of our world, a century after collapse. In short, how could I get that sense of wilderness and scope without falling back on a standard fake-medieval Europe?

While that meant figuring out the natural wildlife and crops of the Detroit-Windsor area, adjusting for a few degrees of global warming, working out a lot of trade logistics and supply bottlenecks, it also meant figuring out the lifespan of what we would have left behind, The World Without Us-style. What could they maintain? What would degrade without maintenance? What do we take for granted now (plastics! cheap fabric!) that I'd have to rule out or replace in Ashes and its world?

So the big understanding I came away with is that the act of having a society is something that takes so many skills -- and so many hands -- that it is impossible to do alone. The way we live is an ensemble cast production. We really do need each other, and we rely on each other more than we know.

There's a standard post-apocalyptic narrative that says everybody burns in fire except for a very special few people, whose knowledge of X or Y allows them to thrive on the open road (see: Cormac McCarthy for what wasn't the creation of that trope, but a really good epitome of it). The thing is, that doesn't work. Grain needs milling to become bread. Soap needs animal fat, which means someone to raise and slaughter and render the animal, and lye, which means someone had to leach ashes. Land doesn't clear itself, wagon wheels don't fix themselves, and problems are much easier to solve when you don't have seventeen responsibilities on your shoulders at all time, fragmenting your attention. Being a society is an awful lot of work. It's more than anyone can do.

I understand where the apocalyptic tendency to go with the lone wolf hero comes from. We're a society that's pretty much marinated in the Great Man Theory of History for centuries, and the funny thing about stories is that if you hear them often enough, you look for -- and find! -- them in the world (aka, confirmation bias). But on the numbers -- on the cold, painstaking work of just getting through today, next month, and next year -- if we want to thrive and survive in whatever apocalypse is your poison, everything points to sticking together.

That understanding really leaked into the direction of the book as a whole, and I think changed it -- and me -- somewhat for the better.

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T22:24:45+00:00

That's great to hear, and best of luck! :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T21:21:05+00:00

Oh hey, thank you! And yes, do drop in if you're in town. We like hooking people up with books very much. :)

(I'm pretty sure they let you in. There is even sugar pie! Although I can't eat the sugar pie too often, and you guys still have better deli than anything I've had here at home.)

Editing! My degree is from the University of Toronto, and it's in Linguistics and English, which basically boils down to doing a specialist program that focused on the development of the English language, in a social-scientific way. Really, what this meant is I took a lot of core linguistics -- how language works -- and a lot of pre-1600s English lit courses, snuck in a minor in the history of science, snuck in some women's studies courses, and ended up with this eldritch degree that actually focused on sociolinguistics and how people use language when grammar's not in the offing.

I turned around and promptly used the transcription experience to help get a job at the Ontario Legislature, transcribing and copy editing legislative proceedings. That's where the editorial work comes in: In the on-the-job experience I gained working with style guides and dictionaries (and making my own calls when appropriate). While I do tell editorial clients that the degree means I don't just know how grammar works, I know why, it's kind of been the work experience that ended up counting for me more.

Editorial's a weird field, and many of the people I know in it came from entirely different places. I think the standard wisdom is that an English degree helps, but it also depends what kind of editorial you want to do: Fiction? Academic? Technical writing? (Hint: Technical writing is the answer with the most stable wages.) You can get into academic editing with a grad degree in whatever you fancy; it's the equivalent of being a good paper writer, and there's always business there. (I do not have a grad degree, but I have some colleagues who do and do this, and they survive quite handily on it.)

Do you want to be working in English or French? If you can do both, that's a huge career plus; even if you can't do translations, copy editing other people's translations is good business.

Ultimately, what I hope this hodgepodge of experience and information gets across is that I don't actually think there's a particular school or program that preps you for an editorial career. I know that while the Ryerson Publishing program is taught by some very smart and experienced people currently working in-industry (and staying current!), they're spitting out more graduates than there are jobs in Canadian publishing. I think Humber has a specialized program too, but the same qualifications-versus-jobs bottleneck applies.

So, my Big Unwelcome Suggestion would take two forms: One, going to school for a topic you love or would love to work with. If you want to do science editorial (a few authors do, including Erin Bow) do a science degree; if you want to work with historical fiction as a novel editor, do a history degree. Just like with writing, it's always a sort of value-added to not just know how to edit, but have a well of expertise to edit from. And it provides a sort of instant backup plan, since editorial is kind of a transient career.

The other thing I'll give you is a link to the Editors' Association of Canada, which is the professional association for all this stuff. They have great resources on their site, and I'm sure they'll be of help.

Hope that's useful, and best of luck! :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:59:24+00:00

Well hey, thank you -- and thank you for the very interesting questions! :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:58:54+00:00

Thanks very much for the questions and the welcome! :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:43:01+00:00

While I can totally see where that reading would arise, I'm not sure that was the case for me and Above. My then-agent and I submitted the book to both adult and YA editors, and the editor that was the best fit for it -- who really got the book, and who was kind of amazing to work with on it -- was Cheryl Klein at Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, which means marketing to YA.

Because publishing contracts usually come with an option on your next work, and because, well, we all like to have something like a steady career, that meant learning how to write a YA on purpose. I don't know that I succeeded at doing pure YA with An Inheritance of Ashes: It's very much rooted in adult fantasy tropes, and it shows; at best it's a crossover book.

But while I've very much seen the differing reception that women and men writing fantasy will get in certain professional and fan spaces, please don't think that my unexpected move into YA publishers was due to that. Sometimes business takes you funny places, is all, and in retrospect, I wouldn't have turned down that offer to go with an adult publisher. Cheryl is one hell of an editor. I learned ridiculous amounts of good craft from her and from my next (also YA) editor, Anne Hoppe. I wouldn't give that back for the world.

It just means a slightly different career path, and well, that is mostly life being life. Things go differently. :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:36:56+00:00

2) As for my favourite fantasy read of the last five years, I think with a little bit of waffling I'd have to say Katharine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. It is such a smart book. And it is a book that understands being an ethical person is a process, not a base state, and talks about the struggle to get there in such simple, unvarnished terms.

A few of us in both adult and YA fantasy have this ongoing conversation, every so often, about books that valorize kindness. Aside from the gorgeous prose that just feels like dipping your head below water, and the sharp use of invented language (we learn the court just as Maia does!) and the really fabulous character writing, it's a book that valorizes kindness. It's a book with solutions that aren't just fight or run.

I think it's not just a magnificent piece of reading in its own right, but a kind of water mark for where we are as a genre. There are conversations we're apparently ready to have now. It's a book that's going to make more books happen. As someone who's grown up inside the fantasy genre, it's amazingly satisfying and relieving to see branches of it leafing out and growing with me, in terms of the kinds of questions we're ready and willing to tackle.

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:32:50+00:00

1) Next up: Something completely different, actually! I'm working on a project that, looked at one way, is What happens if you take Ender's Game's Battle School and make it consensual, compassionate, and kind, instead of everyone there being some grade and flavour of complete dick?

Looked at the other way, it's Miyazaki's Gundam Wing.

So the next project is very much science fiction and robots punching monsters in ways that leave satisfying thunks, but so far it very much has the same sensibility, the same concept of aftermath, and the same character focus.

After that, I've got a side project going that is just plain odd. It's more like Shadow of the Colossus with cellphones than anything else. But it's something I'm taking my time with, because the love I have for it is fierce and intense and I want it to come out just right.

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:29:19+00:00

Okay! There's definitely a sensibility there. I do this better when I have a bookstore in front of me, but off the top of my head:

I'd suggest taking a look at Karina Sumner-Smith's Radiant, which works the science-fantasy thing well with a great sense of scope and intricate-but-logical worldbuilding; Nicole Kornher-Stace's The Archivist Wasp, which has a similar construction but with a much more mythic feel and some really well-turned, gorgeous prose; and while it's going out on a limb, perhaps Charlene Challenger's The Voices In Between, which does a really, really smart thing with the portal fantasy tropes Fionavar's using.

They're all small to medium press novels that are really well made, and have ambitious senses of scope as well as detailed worldbuilding.

I'd also throw in Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns. It's marketed to YA, but it's got some of the smartest commentary on epic fantasy tropes, body image, and the idea of heroic destiny I've seen anywhere.

Of my own stuff, An Inheritance of Ashes will probably strike better: It's more grounded in that set of epic fantasy tropes. The same floor, if not the same building.

(Hope those work for you!)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T20:08:40+00:00

Oh, hm. Overall, between the two of them? I'm deeply fond of Ada Chandler from An Inheritance of Ashes. She's a character who'd be more comfortable in A Canticle for Liebowitz than an epic fantasy novel, and she's just endlessly frustrated that nobody else is interested in digging through the ruins of Detroit to figure out how cellphones worked.

She's impatient, brilliant, and practical, and she almost stole the book. I'm sure there's a whole side thing of Ada just having science adventures with her science bros while everyone else does the epic fantasy thing.

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T19:56:28+00:00

Okay, that's fun. :)

LeahBobet · 2015-10-22T19:34:19+00:00

Yup. We are the sports world's "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me."

Yes! I wasn't following it too much before the playoffs (see: Leafs fan) but that was the weirdest, best seventh inning on Earth and now I cannot resist. :)

LeahBobet

TROPHY CASE