Tad Williams - Author Interview

Ok so I mentioned a while back that Tad Williams had agreed to answer a few questions. Here are Tad's answers to the questions I forwarded to him. Many thanks also to Tad's wife Deborah Beale for her assistance.

Tad thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me, it's a real honour. Shadowrise, the third volume of the Shadowmarch series is out - I'm having a great time with it. How does it feel to be coming to the end of a series you first started working on so long ago?

It's always a thrill to write things long imagined. It's also a relief that it's finally happening [laughing as he says this.] This is the third series that I've done that's eaten up most of a decade of my writing life.

I particularly like the interplay and conflict between the peoples of Eion and Xand. I am reminded in part of historic relations between Africa and Europe in our world. Is there a particular reason you chose to lay out the setting in this way?

I actually tend to make maps first and then let those inform the geopolitical invention. So most of the interplay between cultures springs from my inventing a history based in part on the invented geography that came first.

These tensions are set against the looming non-human threat from beyond the Shadowline. Tell us about your vision for the the fairy folk, the Qar?

These are closer to the Celtic view of the fair folk, in that they have a multiplicity of forms and attributes. I chose that only because I thought it would be interesting and because I was slightly bored with variations on Tolkien's elves.

Yes and they tend to be a lot more sinister as well in the Celtic Tales. This series was originally conceived as a film, and then a TV series, before being put out as an online series. Only afterwards being transferred to book form and then conceived as a trilogy, and now expanded to four books. That's quite a journey, what have you learned from the process?

[Tad's laughing as Deborah reads the question] Absolutely nothing.

Haha, fair enough! Well Do you think the final work is better because of the journey you've been on with it?

As a book, certainly. The first volume still contains fossils of its origin as an online serial. But since then it's become more and more one of my Big Stories.

How does it compare to your previous work, I'm thinking particularly Memory, Sorrow and Thorn?

I think it's more about family and I suspect that's mostly to do with where I am in my life now, as opposed to when I wrote MS&T.

I think Deborah may have mentioned that this will be your last epic fantasy for a while, so where next for Tad Williams?

My next books will be closer to what's thought of as contemporary dark fantasy. They're about an angel who has a succession of really bad days. It will be, like most of my work, different than what came before it and yet extremely Tad-like. The first book will be called 'Sleeping Late On Judgement Day'. The books are normal thriller-length too. For now I think I've explored everything that the epic can give me.

You're involved in a lot of different media. In this entertainment overloaded age, what are the forms of storytelling that you find the most compelling?

I will always be interested in writing because in some ways, it's the purest form of the creator's idea being expressed; but I am also increasingly fascinated by what will happen in gaming and virtual-environment storytelling.

You're also working on Young Adult stuff with your wife. It seems to me the YA market in Fantasy has really blossomed of late, certainly from when I first started reading Fantasy. What are your thoughts about writing for a younger audience?

I have to write everything for an audience of me, because that's how I judge whether a story is any good. So with fiction for younger readers, I tried to remember that the readers have perhaps a slightly shorter attention span. But other than that I treat them like I wanted to be treated as a young reader -- with full respect.

And writing in partnership, is that more difficult than writing on your own?

Of course. Collaboration always complicates things, but the compensation (new ideas, new perspectives) is more than worth it.

Some people in the mainstream press dismiss adult Fantasy, and suggest that Fantasy can only have relevance for children. What do you think about this, does Fantasy have anything relevant to say?

Those readers and reviewers are mistaking the ballast of a commercial genre for the genre itself. What is The Odyssey? What is The Elder Edda? Many great works could be termed 'fantasy' and many fantasies are great works. Yes, a lot of what's being marketed as Fantasy is mediocre, but that's to fill a market need.

Deborah adds: Fantasy, magic realism, gothicism, call it all what you will - it persists, century after century, millennia after millennia. Therefore I would say it's central to world literary culture. Don't think there's much point arguing that, either.

Tad Williams you have the opportunity to be transported anywhere or anywhen, you can experience anything you want and when you return no time will have passed. Where do you go and why?

I'm very interested in the mysteries of 18th dynasty Egypt. It would also be fascinating to see the real-life Christ or Buddha or Muhammed founding their faiths. And I wouldn't mind bopping around in Ancient Rome.

But I'd settle for seeing Hendrix at Monterey.

Tad Williams (& Deborah Beale), it's been a pleasure.

Shadowrise is available now. You can read an excerpt of this the third book in the Shadowmarch series by Tad Williams at Orbit Books. Shadowrise will be followed by the concluding volume in the series Shadowheart early next year.

For more information on Tad Williams visit his personal website here

Look out later this week for the first of my reviews of each of the books in the series so far.