Charles Coleman Finlay 2009 Interview
Charles Coleman Finlay is nominated for his novella “The Political Prisoner.”
Authors, based on interviews that I’ve read and conducted, seem to be driven creatures. When was it that you realized that you just had to write stories?
I started drawing comics when I was 8 or 9 and writing stories shortly after that. In college, I wrote poetry and short stories, I drew comics and political cartoons, and had some very minor work published. But all in all, I was a dilettante. I daydreamed about being good at writing or art, but I wasn’t committed to doing the hard work. It wasn’t until I was almost 30, after my first son was born, that I decided to be serious about it.
You have to understand that my own father had wanted to be a painter but life had always gotten in the way. So there he was, struggling and in his 50s, when he won several million dollars in the lottery. Suddenly he had everything he needed, but he couldn’t seem to paint. He’d lost whatever spark he had. I looked at my own son and didn’t want to end up the same way. I didn’t want to be telling him “Go pursue your dreams” when I had never chased my own.
I’m not a naturally gifted writer like so many of my friends, but I love story. Story is very important. Fiction or non-fiction, history or autobiography--story is the way we make sense out of our experience in the world. So I started working at the craft of story-telling, trying to become the best writer I could be.
Interesting life story there! You speak of your love of story and how you had to work at the craft of storytelling. What are some of the things about story crafting that you learned over the years?
Not to overthink it. Internalize the skills and then stop thinking consciously about them. If I can make the story visceral and immediate and meaningful, I want to do that and get out of the reader’s way.
Your first novel, The Prodigal Troll, evolved out of a novella, “A Democracy of Trolls,” that was first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. How did this story develop, from its initial novella form to its current state?
Actually, it worked the other way around. The novella was born of the novel. Back in 1999 or 2000--I forget now--Warner Aspect sponsored a first novel contest that was eventually won by my friend Karin
Lowachee for her amazing novel Warchild. I wrote a present tense fantasy novel about a young boy raised by trolls called A Democracy of Trolls. When I didn’t even make the finalists list with it, I started rewriting it into past tense and excerpting pieces as standalone stories, which were bought by Fantasy & Science Fiction and Black Gate. I’m vastly oversimplifying the story, but eventually Lou Anders got wind of the book and bought it for his debut line at Pyr. He insisted that I make some good changes, including the title. It was a much better book because of the extra revisions.
Interesting, as when I was reading it, I kept feeling as though it were a series of episodic stories tied into a whole. Didn’t know the original story started as a novel first. What sorts of changes did you make to the overall story once you decided to connect the excerpted pieces back into a unified novel?
The Prodigal Troll is an example of a story that I overthought. I wanted to create echoes of Tarzan and The Jungle Book with it, but structurally I also had in mind Daniel Defoe’s novel Captain Singleton, about a young boy who is kidnapped and raised by gypsies, makes a journey across Africa, and then ends up a pirate. So I wanted to show human society from the inside, and troll society from the inside, then explore Claye/Maggot’s inability to fit into either, and then his integration of traits from both cultures as he chooses his own path. I made revisions to emphasize those four distinct parts or phases of the book. The infant Claye/Maggot makes a journey out from the castle, and then returns place by place to the same scene where the book started, but transformed. I also wanted to critique the idea of the noble savage and fantasy’s fascination with nobility-as-heroes. And I was trying to do all that in the context of an entertaining adventure story.
Now I realize it was too much. For one thing, how many people have read Tarzan, The Jungle Book, *and* Captain Singleton? Some reviewers, like Rich Horton, seemed to get exactly what I was trying to do with the book. But for the most part, all the changes I made to emphasize the structure and themes seemed to get in the way of the adventure.
When I read The Prodigal Troll, I too got the Tarzan and The Jungle Book references, but being unfamiliar with that DeFoe work, I wouldn’t have made that connection. In your work since then, besides trying to avoid overthinking, what else has changed about how you approach telling a story?
I’ve tried to make my stories more direct and accessible. Many of my early stories were in conversation with the past, referring to or expanding on ideas or stories by other writers. I think a lot of science fiction is written in this vein, with authors counting on the fact that their readers have read certain other stories or novels that came before. The problem is that, as a culture, we have fewer and fewer pieces of shared written fiction. With “The Political Prisoner” or the Traitor to the Crown books I’ve tried to tell stories that stand alone and are immediate, that can be enjoyed by people whether they’re familiar with the past or not.
You are a member of the Blue Heaven writing group. What was the genesis of that group?
Back in 2003, I was trying to figure out how to make the transition from writing short stories to novels. A lot of my friends were in the same boat. Since we had a boat, we found an island.... Actually, the island found us. Another non-writing friend of mine, Marvin Robinson, owned a bed and breakfast called Himmelblau, or “Blue Heaven,” on Kelleys Island, this beautiful spot in Lake Erie. He had been after me to do a retreat there.
So I brought the two worlds together, and twelve of us spent a week’s retreat on the island critiquing each other’s books. The group that first year included Karin Lowachee, Christopher Barzak, Tobias Buckell, Paul Melko, M. Rickert, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and some other writers who ought to be just as well-known. We’ve been doing it almost every year since, the same core group of us, with new writers filling the empty spots. I’ve been lucky to work with and learn from some of the best young novelists of my generation that way--Paolo Bacigalupi, Daryl Gregory, Sandra McDonald, Tim Pratt, Sarah Prineas, Ian Tregillis, Catherynne Valente, Greg van Eekhout. The list goes on. The last time I counted, we’d sold twenty-five or thirty books.
Blue Heaven has made a huge contribution to my understanding of craft and of the business of writing. And it’s where my best friends are. It’s my favorite week of the year.
How would you describe the way each of you interacts with the others during this annual retreat? Is it akin to a traditional writing workshop, or are there other elements that go into the Blue Heaven retreat?
I wanted it to be like Damon Knight’s Milford workshops, but for novels, and I think that’s what it’s become. So in that sense, it’s very much like a traditional writing workshop. But it also requires a higher level of commitment: everyone reads eleven other first-fifties and at least two complete manuscripts. That’s more reading than for most workshop retreats, and we start preparing for it by mailing list a few months in advance.
We interact the way writers everywhere interact in my experience. We trade ideas about creativity and business, and have great conversations and tell great stories. The isolation creates a situation where we can focus on nothing but writing for a whole week. Most of us have other jobs, other responsibilities, so that immersion is something we look forward to.
Would it be fair to say that Blue Heaven, along with other writers’ retreats and workshops, helps writers not just with the mechanics of their writing, but with the social aspects that sometimes goes with being a published author?
Yes. It would be great to give you a longer, more complicated answer than that, but it’s not that complicated. As writers, we do most of primary work alone. The process takes so long that it takes years to build a body of personal professional experience. Workshopping not only alleviates the effects of isolation, but allows us to draw on the collective experience—successes and mistakes—of our peers. If you’re smart, and you get in with the right group of people, it can dramatically increase your creative and professional development as a writer. The downside is that, if you get with a group you’re not well matched with, it can really slow you down.
I have heard before that there is a major difference between writing short fiction and writing novels. Is there truth to this? Since you have published both short and long fiction, how does your approach vary in the planning and writing of each?
Short stories and novels are very different forms. I’ve written the rough draft of a story in one sitting, but I don’t think anybody has written a decent novel in one sitting. (Although saying that is like daring the internet to prove me wrong.) Short stories allow greater focus, placing a microscope on a single theme or idea. You can also have fun with style or voice without worrying about sustaining it past the point where it’s fun. From a practical perspective, at least for me, novels require greater pre-planning, more research, a plan for sustained writing effort, and so on. The basic unit of the story is the sentence, or maybe the paragraph. The basic unit of the novel is the page or scene. Novels need a much stronger through-arc, and at the same time greater variation in tone and content. You have to hit some of the beats harder, just so they stand out. And the climax has to reward the reader for marching 400 pages to reach it. I find I have to think about things on different scales as I write novels.
One of the criticisms I heard about The Prodigal Troll was that it felt like a fix-up novel, too episodic and meandering. A big part of that was because I was using short story skills to try to fix problems in the pacing and structure. When I started work on my new Traitor to the Crown series, I stopped writing short stories because I just don’t have the chops to jump back and forth as easily as some other writers do. It’s the same reason I stopped writing poetry when I started writing more fiction. I admire those writers who can make the quick and seamless transitions between different forms, but I’m not one of them. Now that I’ve turned in the third book to Del Rey, I’ve been working on some short stories while I outline and plan the next novel project. I love short stories, so ideally I’ll find a way to keep writing them.
How would you describe your prose style to potential readers who are unfamiliar with your work?
I strive to write simply and directly. When I use images or descriptive language, I want it to illuminate and add layers to the world-building or characters. I admire writers who can craft beautiful and moving descriptive prose, and at the same time keep the reader engaged with the story. But I’ve come to learn that’s not my strength.
Would you agree that style, whether it be ornate or a more “transparent,” plain style, is an essential part of the writing process? Which other authors’ styles have you admired most and who, if any, has influenced your prose writing?
Style = voice = what’s on the page. I don’t know how to separate them. But the writers I admire aren’t necessary the ones who’ve influenced my prose. These days, I seem to love writers whose styles aren’t anything like mine--Neal Stephenson, Patrick O’Brian, John LeCarre. Even someone like Naomi Novik, who’s also writing historical fantasy, has a very different voice and style. But if I tried to write like those authors I would sound like a bad imitation of someone else instead of myself. You have to learn what your strengths are and develop those to their fullest potential.
You mention a new trilogy of yours, Traitor to the Crown, that is forthcoming from Del Rey later this year. How would you describe the basic premise? Also, what lessons have you learned from your earlier writing that you incorporated into this trilogy?
Traitor to the Crown is a secret history of the American Revolution, where witches play a crucial role in the outcome of events. I was working as a research assistant on a history of the minutemen when I got to thinking about the connections between the Salem witchcraft trials and the first battles in and around Boston. So many things about the Revolution are still unexplained, starting with who fired the shot heard round the world. The books are about a young minuteman named Proctor Brown who has a hidden talent, and the way he’s drawn toward Deborah Walcott and her underground circle of Salem witches. Together, they change the course of the secret war for control of magic and the world while explaining many of those unsolved mysteries.
I’ve become a better writer over the past five years. The new books are more seamless, with the structure less visible and the adventure more prominent. The themes and the history are woven more smoothly into the narrative. My goal is to tell stories that keep people up all night reading the way my favorite books keep me up all night. I’ve still got room to improve, but I’m closer than I was before.
As a historian by training, I find the synopsis above to be very intriguing. What amount and type of research did you do while constructing the Traitor to the Crown trilogy?
Too much! I was already familiar with a lot of the history and the period from my own graduate school training and related work. So I was familiar with the minutemen, the major battles, and figures like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Betsy Ross. Then I read for the things that are, in Tim Powers’s words, “too cool not to use.” For example, in May 1780, near the end of the war, New England went completely dark in the middle of the day--not an eclipse, but no sun reaching the ground either. People at the time thought it was the end of the world, but it was largely forgotten as the war ended and time passed. Modern scientists have found explanations for it, but--if you’re writing a historical fantasy about the Revolution--you have to grab that and make it about the possible end of the world! There were so many events and people that tied into occult explanations that I couldn’t use them all. Then I did a lot of reading for the things that are too obvious too ignore--the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the version of the Bible that they read, the kinds of houses they lived in.
Interesting. In reading The Patriot Witch, I noticed the pains you went to tie in the characters and their actions with what was unfolding in the Boston area in April 1775. Were there times where you had to bend the “rules” a bit and have actual events take place in an altered time line in order to fit the story? Or did you find yourself having to change the story in order to make it fit in with the actual history to the smallest degree?
I tried not to alter the time line or bend the history. I worked hard to make sure that the historical figures were where in the right places at the right times, doing things that we know they did. With Proctor or the witches at The Farm outside Salem, I found the biggest problem was the need to cover periods of time where things didn’t happen. Phrases like “several days later” or “weeks later” were important throughout the series. In an invented story, I would have smashed events together and made them take place continuously without a break. By the time I got to the third book, it was a gift: Proctor needed to undergo some major changes, and this period of time between events that I wanted to connect was the perfect place for that to happen.
Your 2008 novella, “The Political Prisoner,” was recently announced as being a finalist for a Hugo Award. For readers wanting to know more about it, what would you say was the genesis for the story? Also, what theme or themes were you exploring there?
I went through a phase in college where I read concentration camp survivors like Tadeusz Borowski (This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman) and Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz), and, going further back, a Russian Jewish short story writer named Isaac Babel who served with the Cossack cavalry in the suppression of the Poles. The themes in those works—who counts as “human,” what are our obligations to strangers, how do we do right when all choices seem to lead to evil—resonate with me on a deep level. Science fiction is a great medium to explore those themes, because you can make the “non-humans” literally non- or (in this case) post-human. You can draw sharper lines around our obligations. You can move the setting off-earth to amplify and intensify the circumstances and their consequences. It’s like a laboratory for moral exploration.
But if I talk about it that way, it sounds like I’m overthinking things again! This novella is a sequel to “The Political Officer,” which was a Nebula and Hugo finalist in 2003. I started the new story before the first one was published. It took me six years and at least that many drafts to write because it took me that long to learn how to get out of the way and let the experience emerge directly on the page.
Are there any plans for writing more stories set in the world of “The Political Officer” and “The Political Prisoner”? What about the possibility of expanding either one or both of the novellas into full-length novels?
I’ve started a third Maxim Nikomedes novella, “Dukh and Strakh,” which takes place right after “The Political Prisoner,” and moves Max from his home on Jesusalem to the life of a political refugee on Adares, the home of the post-human camp survivors. It took me six years to write the last novella, so I don’t know how long it will take to write this one. It’s still gestating. The three novellas together, with some bridge material, form a single story arc, but I don’t know if there will be any interest in it as a novel. We’ll have to wait and see. I do know that I want to write more Max stories. I have a 30,000 word novella draft of Max as a child, before the civil war on his planet. It’s rough though, and the first part of a sequence of stories about his childhood. I won’t go back to it until after I finish “Dukh and Strakh.”
What are your future writing plans? Are there more short fiction or novel-length works due to be released after your Traitor to the Crown trilogy?
On the short fiction side, I have a Proctor Brown story I’m working on, the new Max novella, and half a dozen other stories in various stages of draft. But for the first time since around 2000, I don’t have any stories in inventory anywhere waiting to be published. These days I only work on short stories when they won’t leave me alone, when I love the character or idea so much I have to finish it. There are enough of those stories that I don’t worry about running out of things to write any time soon.
What I hope is that readers will like Traitor to the Crown enough that I can continue the story during the Civil War. With Mary Lincoln holding seances in the White House, William Mumler taking photographs of spirits on the battlefields, and missing Confederate gold, I think there’s plenty of raw material to start with… even before you get to the men who will later put on hoods and call themselves wizards. But this is a market-driven business: so much is going to depend on whether readers grab onto the first set of books. I’ve run a few ideas for new novels past my agent, including the Civil War series and some contemporary thrillers. I’m at the point where I need to start drafting first chapters for all of those projects so that they’re ready to go if there’s interest in them. Until then it’s wait-and-see.
photograph by Michell Daniel
Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of four novels (including the Traitor To The Crown trilogy, published as C.C. Finlay) and a collection of short stories. His fiction has been translated into numerous languages and reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy, Year’s Best Science Fiction, and Best New Horror. He’s been a finalist twice for the Nebula Award (in 2003 for “The Political Officer” and in 2009 for “The Political Prisoner"), and has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Sidewise, Sturgeon, and John W. Campbell awards. He’s been an instructor at Clarion and the Alpha Writers Workshop, is the organizer of the Blue Heaven novel writers retreat, and from 2000 to 2007 he was the admin for the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife (and sometimes co-author) Rae Carson Finlay and two sons, all smart readers, who keep him honest.
If you want to read some of his free fiction online or want to know more, like how many other famous Charles Finlays there are, you can visit his website at: www.ccfinlay.com
Larry Nolen is a history and English teacher who has taught for most of the past ten years in Tennessee and Florida, in both public and private school settings. Fascinated with languages from an early age, he devotes much of his spare time to reading and translating interviews and articles from Spanish into English. Larry also has an unhealthy fascination with squirrels and dreams to one day edit an anthology of squirrel SF. His blog can be found at ofblog.blogspot.com.
