I had this interview with Brent Weeks, for my Turkish blog during a blog tour of
The Way of Shadows...
Thank you for accepting my interview request, I know you are on a deadline, so I will try not to take too much of your time. I must say, I am not huge fantasy fan (or so I kept saying that and reading the genre over and over again) and still I am fascinated by The Way of Shadow, especially with the characters… It is your first published book in Turkey, so can you tell us a little about yourself? And how you came to be writer ( I heard that story is fairly direct :) )
Thank you for having me as your guest! It feels a little surreal to be doing this. I never imagined I would get to have one of my books published in Turkey! I think I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was thirteen years old, when I started my very first novel. I did, however, spend some time trying to convince myself to pursue a career that was actually practical. But I gave up on that and decided to do my best to get published while I was young, so that if I failed I could fail early rather than always wondering if I might have made it. I spent five years on a novel, starting when I was in college. I ended up having to throw it
away, and then I started writing The Way of Shadows when I was 25 years old. I worked odd jobs for a while, and then my wife supported me while I wrote full time. I was 30 when The Way of Shadows was finally published here in America.
The way of Shadows was your first book and a trilogy which all three of them were published consequently in three months. This was a little surprising for a debut author. What’s the story behind it?
After I finished The Way of Shadows, I knew that the smart thing to do while I was trying to get it published would be to write a book set in a different world. After all, it would be ridiculous to write Book 2 in a series if Book 1 never sold. And the book publishing industry is very, very slow. But I had a problem: I loved this story. I didn’t want to tell any other story. So I asked my wife what I should do, and she told me to follow my passion. So I did. I foolishly wrote Shadow’s Edge over the next two years. Then, figuring that I had already gambled everything on this anyway, I went ahead and wrote Beyond the Shadows. All the while, I
knew that if no publisher bought the Way of Shadows, I had wasted the last four years of my life.
But what seemed like a terrible idea turned out to be a brilliant one in disguise. Orbit launched all three books quickly, as you said, and fans loved the idea of not having to wait years in between books. There was only one downside: after I spent six years writing this trilogy, but got them published all within three months, I kept getting emails from fans, asking if I would publish three more books next year!
Without giving away too much, can you reveal what’s in store for the readers when they crack open the way of shadows and of course how did the idea come up? What was the starting point?
The Way of Shadows is primarily the story of Azoth, a young kid on the streets who wants nothing more than to not be afraid anymore. And when he sees Durzo Blint, the most masterful assassin of the age, he thinks that if he can be like that, he’ll never be afraid again. Of course, that’s just the beginning of Azoth’s problems.
It’s a story of love and betrayal and murder and violence and magic and redemption. It starts out pretty grim in the first 50 or so pages, but if you can handle that, I think you’ll like it a lot.
Now you have another series out there as well, Lightbringer. I don’t know when of if we are going to read this one anytime soon here (I sure will do), can you tell us a little about it? I have read that you used magical elements which are very unique, and I am curious.
Oh, I’d love to talk to you about Lightbringer! But seeing as my answers have already been very long, and Lightbringer won’t be coming to Turkey for some time, maybe I’ll just have to come back and visit again.
I am sure after five books under your belt, you have your own fan base now, but I am sure you were and probably still are a fan for someone out there. Who is your favourite author? In this genre and out of it?
The writer who hooked me in the first place and made me want to be a writer was Edgar Allan Poe. I love his mastery of language and envy it still. Of course, Tolkien was a formative influence. When I was young, I would read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then read some book at random from the fantasy section, think it was terrible, and go back and re-read The Lord of the Rings trilogy again. Now, however, I think is a wonderful time for fans of big fantasy books, from the darker stuff of George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie and Richard Morgan to Peter Brett and Saladin Ahmed and N.K. Jemisin and Robin Hobb to Brandon Sanderson and Brian McClellan -- and those are just the ones that I’ve read in my own limited
reading time!
I am always fascinated about writer’s writing process, what’s it like for you? Do you outline or let the story take you to where it’s headed? And what’s your revision process like?
I do both, but the process is always messy and always different for each book. I tend to spend some time just coming up with cool ideas and fun snippets of dialogue and great action sequences. Then I map out the book as well as I can and at least figure out the big turning points of the plot. But then as I write heading toward those goals, I try to find the best path to get there. I usually have a very strong idea of what will happen at the end of the book, but here as I write my sixth book, I actually have two different possible ideas in mind for the end of book seven. Revision, then, is a huge part of the process, and I’m a writer who is willing to make deep cuts and significant changes to make my book be the best it can be. It’s always painful to have to throw away things that you’ve written that work decently well, but you should always be willing to do it if you can replace it with something that works brilliantly.
And of course, characters and world building. I suppose, one of the most time-consuming processes of writing epic fantasy is world building and complexity and depth of characters. (And I have to admit, you have some complexity in there, I was lost at times :)) what are a few of your favorite world aspects, favourite characters and what inspired them?
I compare myself a little bit to a literary magpie. Do you know this term? A magpie is a bird that likes to collect shiny things, so in their nests you can find the most outrageous and weird assortment of stuff: bits of mirror, bolts, pieces of foil and so forth. I like to do that with world history. I almost never steal characters wholesale from history, but probably my most egregious theft was in the side character Lantano Garuwashi, who is based significantly on the early 17th-century Japanese Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi is said to have killed 60 men in duels by the time he was 30 years old. In fact, he got so adept at fighting that he
came to believe that it wasn’t fair for him to fight an opponent sword-to-sword. So he would use a wooden practice sword against there fine steel. He was also the first person to ever even try to fight with a full-sized katana in both his left and right hands. (Sure, people do it all the time in the movies now, but actually being coordinated enough to make that left-hand sword a real threat is something very few people could do.) His sense of honor led him to only use two swords, however, when he was being attacked by more than one man at a time. Having read a few books about Musashi, how could I not include that?!
I also love to make magic systems that make sense, that seem like they could really work in the real world. And making deep characters is a special love of mine. I love to make characters who not only grow throughout one book, but through all three.
How did you life change after becoming a NYT bestselling author other than the title added
in front of your name?
Very slowly, at first. I guess at some times it’s a good thing that the publishing industry moves at a glacial pace. I noticed mainly that I got busier. And that my editor and agent started replying to my emails much more quickly! Really, it took a few years for my day-to- day life to change. I mean, a big part of my day is spent wrestling with words, and that isn’t going to change whether ten people buy my book or a million do.
But, eventually what happens is you get a second job, and that’s running all the business that you didn’t have before. I have a webpage now, and it needs to be updated frequently. I have twitter and Facebook and Google+. I have contracts to read. I have blog interviews to do. I go on book tours. I go to conventions. I make up contests to give away books. I then have to mail those books out to people. I get royalty statements that are incredibly complex and difficult to understand, and I need to understand them. Now I am very fortunate to have an assistant who helps me keep all these things straight. (She was the one who came and knocked on my door an hour ago and said, “Brent! You need to finish this interview!”)
But the biggest adjustment of all is probably that I have fans. This is a wonderful and curious thing. It’s also something I’d never dealt with before, so it comes with its own set of stresses. All in all, though, I have to say that I am living my dream, and even if filing personnel paperwork with the government wasn’t part of my original dream, being able to write and make a living at it is a huge privilege and a huge blessing. This is the only job I could have that I would be happy doing, so I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world to get to be doing it.
Do you know any Turkish writers? And of course what would you like to tell to your newest fans from Turkey?
Sadly, I don’t! For a long time, American pulishers didn’t look beyond our own borders for fantasy writers. They already get so many thousand submissions a year, I think they are just perpetually overwhelmed. In recent years, that has changed somewhat. Polish writer Andrezj Sakowski and French writer Pierre Pavel have both been published in English, but there still aren’t that many overseas authors translated here. Do you have any recommendations for me?
And I would like to tell my Turkish fans that I hope they love my books. I will write for them
the very best books I’m capable of writing and please blame all the errors on the translator!
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