INTERVIEW: Liane Merciel

Admittedly, this is an interview that's been in the hopper for a couple of weeks. This was as a result of the formation of SBR. The preference was to bring reviews and interviews here and be more ad hoc on the personal blog.

With that having been said, this is an interesting author I fully expect to be reading for a while. She has her own site, which was recently (past few months) established, as was her debut novel, The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Liane Merciel...


Speculative Book Review: How does a law degree wielding Yale graduate, and world-traveled “Army brat,” get interested in writing fantasy fiction?

Liane Merciel: The short version: I started out in game design and, after many years of GM'ing, finally got so irked with PCs sabotaging my games that I decided to take the standard advice that if you don't want PCs mucking up your ideas, you should just write a book instead.

SBR: As a reader, what fantasy fiction have you enjoyed?

LM: I could write pages and pages on this. Fantasy has really exploded over the last 15 years or so; now is a wonderful time for diversity in the genre. Writers are pushing the boundaries to encompass new ideas and novel settings, mining deeper into psychological realism and historical accuracy, and constantly raising the bar for polished prose, sophisticated world-building, sheer badassery of their characters... basically, almost anything you could want as a reader, someone out there is doing it phenomenally well.

ASOIAF blew my mind and re-ignited my love for fantasy after I'd wandered away from the genre for several years. The Wheel of Time was a favorite in high school (though, I confess, I muddled off somewhere in the middle). More recently, I've read and enjoyed everything from Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books in urban fantasy to Cherie Priest's Boneshaker in steampunk to Ellen Datlow's phenomenal collection of short stories in Lovecraft Unbound. Although he writes science fiction rather than fantasy, I'm consistently in awe of Paolo Bacigalupi's skill. And, finally, I'm looking forward to starting Robert Bennett's Mr. Shivers soon. Horror in the hobo camps of the Depression -- sounds fantastic.

SBR: The cultural incorporation of magic within a theological context seems natural enough, but isn’t as commonly found as one might expect. Would you elaborate upon your use of this approach in The River Kings’ Road?

LM: Miracles, and magic, are almost always associated with some kind of faith in the real world. Often they're part of an organized religion, but even when not, there's a certain inevitable mysticism in the telling and retelling of supernatural phenomena -- just look at the mythos that's grown up around the Roswell Incident. Whenever something is unexplained, and unexplainable, people build the structures of faith around it. So that was one starting point: I would have had a very hard time developing a magic system that didn't have some trappings of religion.

Then there were practical political considerations: if magic is real, it is going to exert an enormous influence on the world in which it exists. The people who have it are going to occupy a specialized, prestigious social niche. Other people are likely to associate with them in order to capitalize on the benefits of that association, because they are genuinely in awe of that power, or for other reasons of their own.

Put those things together and you end up with a social structure around magic that looks a lot like an organized religion. Once there, it's just one small step to introducing competing factions by giving them different approaches and powers -- and then you have endless conflicts, internal and external, to play with. I think there are a lot of storytelling possibilities in the interplay of those forces, so that's what I used. Magic is religion, and religion is magic.

SBR: As a new parent, many of the scenes involving Odosse and the two infants were heart breaking. Did you expect or anticipate that such a character, amidst such circumstances, would so thoroughly grip a reader’s (ok, a parent’s) heart so fearfully?

LM: No. Hope for it, yes. Expect, no. But I am glad to hear that the hopes were borne out. ;)

SBR: Most of us would say that we can tell right from wrong, or good from evil. With Prince Leferic, we see where an individual can begin to blur lines and accept the typical self-justifications created after a course of action has been taken, or decided upon. How difficult was it to steer the direction of that particular story thread into grey waters?

LM: Not at all.

I don't usually think of characters in terms of designated villains or heroes (and I do a lousy job when I do succumb to that categorization, so for me that is a trap to be avoided). They're just people who do things for reasons that they believe are right and sufficient, given the situations they're in. Readers may agree or disagree depending on their own personal views, but for the characters that never enters into the equation, so I try to avoid thinking about it too.

Writing Leferic was pretty straightforward: here is a person who has X goals in mind, honestly believes he is the best person to fulfill those goals, but also accepts that sometimes you lose a few pieces in the chess game of power. To me that's just basic pragmatism, nothing especially complicated or remarkable. At one point I actually wanted to cut him out of the story because it was getting too long and I didn't think he had anything interesting to say.

How readers have reacted to the character was wholly unexpected and is bizarrely fascinating to me. Some people seem to think he's a sympathetic villain. Others view him as a hero, albeit a morally compromised one. The range of reactions is all over the place. It's very strange to me.

But evidently it was a good idea to keep him in the book after all.

SBR: The self-interest of love abandoned to the self-sacrifice of duty is a compelling theme. Would you describe how you created the dynamic between Sir Kelland and Bitharn and what inspired it?

LM: I'm fascinated by the costs and sacrifices inherent in fulfilling any duty. This is probably more explicit in HEAVEN'S NEEDLE (at least in its current draft) than RKR, but it's in play for RKR too.

The Knights of the Sun -- of which Kelland is one -- are charged with riding around huge chunks of the world constantly putting their lives on the line. They are away from their home city for months or years at a time. They have to be scrupulously impartial in all their personal and professional doings. That's not a job that you can easily balance with a happy home life. Once you have a family, the prospect of being away from home facing horrible dangers and dread plagues all the time is a lot less appealing. So for that, and other reasons, the order imposes an oath of celibacy.

However, then there's Bitharn's perspective: why would anyone who isn't a Sun Knight sign up for this lifestyle except out of love? Accompanying someone on such arduous, never-ending journeys requires extraordinary devotion. That could be a squire/knight dynamic, or a Sam/Frodo supportive friendship; it doesn't have to be romantic. But I thought a thwarted romance had more dramatic possibilities, so that's the direction I took.

SBR: On the back of the book, toward the end of the blurb, the words, “a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic,” were an instant hook. There is just something to it that goes back to the most thrilling, primal and frightening tales of childhood. What was the development of this storyline like?

LM: Credit for that line goes to the copywriter, not me. I am no good at all when it comes to doing blurbs.

The Thorns (and the Iron Fortress that harbors them) originated as recurring antagonists for the game I was running at the time. I spent a lot of time thinking about their theology and mindset, what would draw people to that way of life, how they would interact with ordinary people, and so on... including how I could most effectively use them to creep out my PCs. It seemed like a waste to leave that unused once I had it all worked out, so I ported big chunks of it to the novel-world.

In RKR, we don't really see a lot of the Maimed Witches and get just a glimpse of their long game, but the one who does show up is a strange, strange lady.

SBR: It’s not horrific, but the question begs asking: Were you overheard saying something nasty about the official responsible for assigning cover art? Or kick their dog?

LM: I have nothing bad to say about the cover art. Also I have never kicked a dog, despite being occasionally tempted by my grandma's.

I will note that Stephen Youll also did the original cover art for A Game of Thrones, Gardens of the Moon, and Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, and that is pretty darn good company to keep. So, to the extent that his style links my humble book with those in readers' minds, I've got no complaints.

Except maybe that they might harbor unrealistic expectations about what's in the covers, but as long as they're fooled up to the cash register I'll live with that.

SBR: NDAs withstanding, can you project at this point the number of books to your Ithelas saga?

LM: I have no idea. There will be at least one more. Beyond that, it's hard to say. I'm sometimes drawn toward the notion of a great big rousing epic clash finale, but I don't think I have the skills to pull that off yet. For now, all my ideas are for linked stand-alones scattered around different parts of the world and using a varied, semi-overlapping cast of characters.

I'm working on ideas for the next two books after HEAVEN'S NEEDLE, but they're both in very early, amorphous stages right now.

SBR: As the creative hand behind the work, please tell us what this book and the series means to, and for, you?

LM: Truly I don't know. It's hard to have much perspective in the middle of the maelstrom, and that's where I'm standing right now.

Writing the book was fun. That much I can say for certain. Hopefully, reading it is too. :)
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It was gracious and kind of Liane to take the time to respond and I would like to extend a special thanks to Sarah Reidy, publicist at Simon & Schuster for facilitating the ARC and the author contact/interview.