Elizabeth Wein Interview
Elizabeth Wein’s The Lion Hunter
For unfamiliar readers, could you tell us more about your The Mark of Solomon sequence?
The Mark of Solomon is in two parts, The Lion Hunter
and The Empty Kingdom
Telemakos considers himself a tracker; others consider him a spy. In The Lion Hunter
I like to keep the tension cranked up even when there’s nothing going on. None of my characters are ever safe. Part of what I consider The Mark of Solomon to be about is how to live with fear.
What fascinates you about Arthurian myth? How about Ethiopia? What sparked the idea to combine the two together?
If I had to sum up what I write about in a single word, the answer would have to be “FAMILIES.” And that is without a doubt what drew me to Arthurian legend. I suppose I could have gone for Greek gods and found just as much melodrama, but it was the heroism and pettiness, intelligence and goofiness of Arthur’s extended family that pulled me in. My own family, in many ways, is just as tragic and loving. This was a way to sublimate it.
My interest in Ethiopia was originally more academic. I wanted Medraut/Mordred to have a girlfriend from Africa or the Middle East. An uncle suggested that she come from the kingdom of Aksum, which was considered by some ancient writers to be one of the four great civilizations of the early centuries AD (the other three were, I believe, China, Persia, and Rome). The bonus of my choosing Aksum was that it was Christian, which to my mind made British Arthur more likely to have an interest in it.
Can you tell us about the kind of research you had to do for the books? What made you decide to visit Ethiopia?
The original research for The Winter Prince, my first Arthurian novel about Medraut, involved reading a lot of Rosemary Sutcliff, British ordnance survey maps and plant guides, and scrambling around Alderley Edge in Cheshire. It was pretty haphazard. The research for the following books, set in Ethiopia and Yemen, was more methodical. The main library I used was the Bodleian in Oxford, but I also read a lot of guide books. I had been to Kenya (visiting a friend who was doing fieldwork there for a degree in anthropology), but due to a particularly nasty border war I was not able to visit Ethiopia until AFTER the first two of my Ethiopian books were published. My uncle (the same one who put me onto Aksum in the first place) called this “Retro Research.” I was in the real city of Aksum on the day The Sunbird
Visiting Ethiopia for the first time I didn’t feel like I’d got things wrong; I didn’t find stuff I wanted to change in my portrayal of Ethiopia. But I did feel like I’d left things out. Possibly it’s the added detail in The Lion Hunter that makes it so successful.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Did you immediately aim for the young adult market or was it more of you writing and your fiction happened to be appropriate for that market?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 7 and started reading chapter books, and those are the kind of books I always wanted to write. I suppose I ooched my way up into the young adult age range unconsciously; originally I’d imagined my books would be aimed at a slightly younger audience. But I very much admired Alan Garner, Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Andre Norton (!), Ursula LeGuin, Diana Wynne Jones, and others of that ilk, and wanted to write books “like theirs.”
What are some of the challenges you faced writing for the young adult market?
Hmm, do you really want to open the door to this… I’m still facing challenges in the young adult market. It’s always been a weird market, with midlist sales chiefly going to schools and libraries rather than in retail channels. And there’s just SO MUCH out there now: the more esoteric stuff (like, say, mine) gets lost in the deluge. If my books had been published 30 years ago they’d have had a much longer shelf-life than they do in today’s high-turnaround market; it was only with a great deal of whining and battling that we managed to keep The Sunbird
What’s your writing process like?
In general, I make up the story in my head while I’m driving, walking, cycling, swimming, shopping, ironing: that’s when I meet the characters and work out the plot. Then I write it all down, longhand, in spiral bound notebooks. Then I type it up on the computer as I finish each chapter.
I find I have to vary my hangouts a lot. I am not very good at writing at my desk. If I get stumped I have to go sit in a coffee shop.
Who are some of your favorite authors or what are some of your favorite books?
My all-time favorite book is James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks
My favorite book of the past ten years is easily Atonement
I also read that you’re part of a book group. Could you tell us more about the book group you’re participating in and how this aids you as a reader/writer?
Well, actually, it was my book group that put me onto Atonement.
My book group grew out of a “new moms” baby group. We were just so sick of talking about diapers, Fisher Price, real estate, etc. that we decided to reconstruct our meetings as a Book Group. We now call ourselves The Chocolate Club, having realized that our secret ulterior motive is actually to consume chocolate while we talk.
For a while my book group was my lifeline to sanity because I had so little contact with other readers and writers while my kids were toddlers. I did my work in a vacuum; I lived for the moment it would become 2.00 p.m., which meant it was 9.00 a.m. in New York and I could start to e-mail people. My book group only met once every eight weeks or so at that time, and I looked forward to the meetings with something like desperation.
Most of what we read is fluff, but every now and then something wonderful comes up which does aid me as a writer. We read Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns
You’ve had some short stories published. Which medium are you more comfortable writing: novels or short stories?
I’d say novels, as I tend to be very long-winded. My short stories all feel to me like they’re trying to “grow the claws and fangs of a novel,” as Nabokov wrote of the story that became Lolita. But I like short stories because they’re such instant gratification. Most of mine have been written on request, and I’ve been pretty lucky with my acceptance record. What happens is: someone else gives you a prefabricated idea, you write the thing to a specified deadline, send it in and get the cash. It’s so FAST compared to the process of writing and getting the contract for a novel.
But I like writing short stories because they give me the chance to go off in very different directions. I’ve written three stories about airplanes. And one about church bell ringing. And one about a circus train.
What got you started when it comes to poetry?
I’ve always written poetry, but in the last decade years my output has been ridiculously lame… one every two or three years. I tend to write them as presents. I really love reading and reciting poetry, and I like to show off my versifying skills every now and then (for example, I wrote the verses to the Rhymers’ Pageant in my novel The Winter Prince).
If there’s anything about the industry that you’d like to change, what would it be?
I’d socialize it. No more “front list.” No more mid-list ghettoizing. I can’t tell you how deeply I deplore the hierarchy of publicity.
What projects are you currently working on?
I’m working on The Sword Dance, a sequel to The Mark of Solomon, and the book that will complete the cycle begun in The Winter Prince. (It has a couple of goofy working titles in my head, including “The Return of the King” and “Telemakos in Love.”) But I’d really like to try something a bit different for my next project, and plan to novelize the story of my family’s three years in Jamaica in the early 1970s.
ELIZABETH WEIN was born in New York City. She grew up in England, Jamaica and Pennsylvania, and graduated cum laude with Distinction in English from Yale University. She learned to ring tower bells in the English style known as “change ringing” while working on her PhD in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which is where she met her husband, at a bell ringers’ dinner dance. They and their two children have lived in Scotland since 2000. They are both recreational pilots. Elizabeth’s blog can be found here.
CHARLES TAN is a speculative fiction fan from the Philippines. He has lots of online doppelgangers, including a Singaporean politician and a Filipino basketball player, but people should be warned that the “real” Charles Tan is a bibliophile who stalks his favorite authors. His blog, Bibliophile Stalker is updated with daily content including book reviews, interviews, and essays. He is also a contributor for SFF Audio.
