Back in March, I opened up my DMs/ email to my Grimoire subscribers for a round of ‘ask me anything’ and you guys did not disappoint. This post is a lot later than I planned for various reasons, but here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions. Enjoy!
When is ‘Crossing Places’ coming out? Is it still happening?
Okay, let’s tackle this one first. For those of you who found me via my historical fiction or through Harker & Blackthorn, Crossing Places is the title of the forthcoming and paused second collection of Unveiled novellas and short stories. Where the first collection – Dead Roads – takes us from just after book 1 to just after book 6, Crossing Places covers the time period from the end of book 4 (potentially confusing but that’s ghosts for you – no respect for linear time) to several years after book six, and will feature a crossover finale novella between the three main series planned in this universe. (I mean, there are others planned but more than three series threads is a lot of tying up to ask of one novella.) It is definitely still happening. If I can make it happen this year (2022), I will. It is on hold at the moment however because I need to get a certain amount of H&B and histfic done before I start pulling it all together. Basically, I don’t want to over promise and under deliver or set an unrealistic deadline, but I would certainly like to get Crossing Places out by the end of the year.
Do you listen to music when you write and if so, what?
Ah, a nice easy question. Yes, I do, unless I’m writing historical fiction. For some reason my brain refuses music when it’s negotiating medieval England. But for everything else I write, I love a background soundtrack. It would be a very long list if I started telling you what I listen to – my music taste is eclectic (possibly even idiosyncratic) – but you can find my playlists here. I’ll add more when I’ve got time.
You write a lot about music, musicians and folksongs, do you play a musical instrument or sing? Do the songs in your books have music to accompany them? Will we get to hear them?
Right, well yes. Kind of, to the first part of the question. I play guitar (badly), piano (less badly), bodhran (hahahaha) and sing (reasonably well). As to the second part of the question, where I have used well-known and less well-known folksongs, there is obviously sheet music available. Where I have needed to make up a song for say Blood & Chocolate to perform…yes, there is music. Because I like to make extra work for myself *cue nervous laughter*. Will anyone other than me ever get to hear them? Er…we’ll see, I guess?
Will there be more King’s Knight books/ historical fiction?
Short answer: yes, there will definitely be more historical fiction. I have several series planned – again mostly set around medieval Europe. Specifically King’s Knight books? I do have outlines for another three. The only thing holding me back right now is time. You can check on my progress with various projects here.
Why are the King’s Knight books so short?!
I was commissioned to write three novellas set around the reign of Richard II by Sharpe Books. Those novellas became the King’s Knight trilogy. If you would have preferred a longer book, or three longer books, you are not alone. It’s something I hear a lot. All I can say is that I was bound by word count constraints – which I still broke on every single book! But contractually, I was really only supposed to be turning in 20-40K. (Sharpe were very understanding in allowing me 20 -30K more words on top of the agreed limit.)
Who are your favourite authors and how have they influenced you?
How long have you got? Seriously, though, we would be here a very long time if I tried to list them all! The only longer conversation would be about my favourite books. As a sample, however; Stephen King, David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Bone Clocks), Michell Faber, Samantha Shannon, Phil Rickman, Rosemary Clement Moore, Frank Herbert, Sharon Bolton, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Seannan McGuire/ Mira Grant, Richard Adams, Robin Jarvis…
As to how they influenced me, in many cases, probably so subtly it would be impossible for me to tell. There are childhood favourites I haven’t mentioned that made me want to write in the first place. I went through a phase of being obsessed with the nineteenth century novel during my teens – to the point of being quite put out that that was no longer the in-vogue style for writers to deliver books in. Margaret Attwood made me want to explore big ideas via speculative fiction, but Stephen King finally managed to knock the ridiculous notion that I needed to be literary to do it out of my head. In hindsight, Robin Jarvis – particularly the Deptford Mice – probably sent me skipping merrily down the path to what I would eventually write. Elizabeth Goudge’s Little White Horse and Peter S. Beagle’s the Last Unicorn added some whimsy and fairy tale elements. Brian Jacques and J M Faulkner gave child-me a love of adventure stories. This is still a far longer answer than I intended – better stop or it’ll be a blog post. This is how I overshoot my word targets!
What made you want to write about cryptids?
I’m paraphrasing this question since a number of people asked me why I write about ghosts/ monsters/ spectres etc but it’s a similar answer to all of them. The short version of the answer is that I have been fascinated by the idea of creatures which crossed the line between folklore and biological fact since I was a child. The slightly longer answer is that I am, at heart, a folklorist. I first encountered folklore in snippets hidden inside fairy tales – the somewhat saccharine retellings the Victorians considered suitable for tender ears as opposed to the originals which I would track down later. There wasn’t a lot to grab me in those stories. Even as a child, I felt like something was missing. When I encountered a book of Celtic fairy tales later in my childhood, I was struck by how eerie and horrible many of them were. These were folktales which had not been given a PR facelift.
I can’t honestly say I enjoyed them at nine-years-old either, but there definitely wasn’t that sense of something being left out. Paired with my fascination with myths and legends from all cultures, I gradually and very subconsciously came to the realisation that there was a huge web of story out there. It hung from such points as folksongs and fairy tales, and formed the structure behind more modern stories. Here were dragons. Or at least, here were snow leopards, okapis, clouded leopards and possibly sasquatch, all woven in with herbal remedies and pieces of folk advice.
It’s tempting to look back on childhood memories and add a filter of adult understanding. I’m trying to avoid that here but it’s difficult. The drawback of hindsight is that you start to ‘reason-make’ retrospectively. Still, I think it’s not inaccurate to say that my fascination with all things ‘folk’ and ‘ghost’ and definitely all things ‘cryptid’ came of these origins.
I wanted to write about cryptids – specifically those which were as close to the folkloric parameters as I could get them – because I enjoy the juxtaposition of science and magic in fantasy, and I thought it would be fun to blur the boundaries a little. Give a lindwyrm a plausible evolutionary pathway, for example, or suggest a possible explanation for how telekinesis might work. It’s not really that long ago that many of the things we take for granted now would have been considered ‘magic’, after all. Science, and humans, sometimes just need time to catch up.
Chocolate or Cheese? Tea or Coffee? Wine or beer?
If I can only pick one, then cheese. Not that I object to chocolate but I’d rather have a selection of cheeses. Tea is my beverage of choice. I do like coffee but I prefer tea – my Irish heritage is proving out there as I get older! I don’t really drink alcohol anymore (meds turn one unit of alcohol into about six) but an occasional glass of red wine or a beer still goes down well.
What are you planning on working on in the future?
You’ll be able to find that out in a more up to date way here once I get the page updated. But in short, after Harker & Blackthorn, I have a series set in the same universe, between Unveiled and H&B timeline wise, which follows a charming trickster named Melanie Beckett. I also have a prequel series to Unveiled which tells you exactly what Aunt Mary was up to during the Cold War. If you’ve read Betwixt & Between, you may remember Aoife? It’s looking likely that she’ll get a few books that will happen concurrent with the latter half of Harker & Blackthorn (more sídhe!)
I have more historical fiction planned – further details to come.
I also have a super secret-squirrel project in the planning stages. Can’t say much more now but think Lovecraftian and haunted house plus found family and the child-adult divide 😉
I didn’t manage to answer every question I was asked but I’ve saved the good ones for a future post. And hey, you can always drop me a line (jaironsideauthor@gmail.com) if there’s something you want to know.
