Q: Your earlier titles feature mostly male protagonists, and your more recent titles (especially the four-book series Dragon Assassin) tend more toward female protagonists. How conscious was that shift, and did it come from a place of author growth, confidence and desire for a different challenge; or from reader or publisher feedback; or from something else?
A: My very first book, Draugr, had a female protagonist. Then the next one was a male protagonist. And it was mostly male protagonists until this dragon series. I can’t say whether that was a conscious decision. The protagonist often comes from that first image that I get for a story. That sense of what the character looks like and who they are. The first scene of Dragon Assassin was my first inspiration for the story: a girl with a sword fighting her brother. It seemed very mythical to me. So I decided the whole series would be told from her point of view.
Q: Does writing from a female point of view provide any particular challenges or rewards to a male author?
A: It’s curious, but as a writer I often forget that I am there writing the story. In that process of creating a character, if they arrive in the story naturally, they will unfold and sound real and authentic. But the real work comes in the rewriting and in wondering how would this female character handle a challenge differently than a male character? Men are, generally, taught to power their way through situations. If you give Conan an enemy, he’s not going to pull out a chess board, he’ll unsheathe his sword. But the interesting thing for me when writing about Carmen is that she is more likely to look for a way of solving the problem without banging her head right into it. Or her daggers, for that matter. So I think that kind of female character is a challenge for my “male” brain to understand.
Q: In general, do fantasy thrillers draw male and female readers in equal numbers, or am I right in guessing they’re slightly more boy territory?
A: Fantasy might generally be seen more as “boy” territory because there are swords and dragons and danger and all those things we consider to be male interests. The interesting thing to me, is that the readers for this series seem to be more female than male. (It is hard for me to tell, but I’m judging by comments left by readers and emails sent to me). That may be that there just are more female readers for this age group. Or that readers of this genre aren’t as stereotypical as we think. I would add that I have been surprised by how many grandmothers in their seventies have written to say how much they loved the stories. So, in conclusion, it’s very hard to know what an audience really likes. Other than everyone seems to like dragons.
Q: Given that you’ve written both young adult and middle grade, and both series and standalones, do you see yourself continuing to switch between these two dualities, or are you gravitating toward anything in particular?
A: I think I am generally moving towards that middle ground between young adult and middle grade. I find that an interesting place to plant my creative flag. The stories have the more lean storytelling of middle grade books with some of the complexity of teen stories, without getting caught up in either side. Of course, in terms of marketing, that does make it tricky to market. The market wants you to write one or the other. In between is bad! But I think I’ll stay there for the next few years. Again, it always depends on the idea. And fantasy seems to naturally lend itself to the idea of series, so I will be continuing on in that vein.
Q :What books are we likely to see from you in the near future – any new twists on genre, or personal goals?
A: I’m really enjoying writing pure fantasy. That whole idea of creating another world and populating it with your own characters and drawing inspiration from the stories I read as a kid, well, that energizes me. The possibilities are endless. Right now, I’m working on a portal fantasy, that is a story where people from this world go through a portal (like the closet in Narnia) and arrive in another world. Except in my world the portal is only open at a rock concert. So it’s this odd mix of heavy metal and fantasy! We’ll see whether readers can handle that.