Today’s post is special, because it features
two fellow authors as guests. The first one is Viola Veloce, the Italian
bestselling author of “Omicidi
in pausa pranzo” (not yet available in English). Viola recently interviewed
in her blog Richard J. Galloway,
author of the science fiction novel “Amantarra”,
and she gave me permission to publish the original version of this interview on
my blog. Richard talks about his trilogy, “The Ascension of Valheel”, and the
publication of the Italian version of his first book, “Amantarra”
(translated by me).
Dear Richard, welcome to my blog. Let’s start
with a classic question: who is really Richard J. Galloway?
An
extraverted showman with a flair for self-promotion and a need to be the centre
of attention; I could not in any way be described as any of these things. What
I possess in abundance is a quiet empathy, a phobia of unfinished stories
thanks to the Hobbit, an obsession with the mysterious, implausible world of
fantasy, and an urge to write it all down. I like to take an ordinary everyday
event and provide an alternative and slightly stranger explanation to its
apparent meaning. My own term for this is “exposing the illusion of the ordinary”;
it’s a sort of literary paranoid psychosis. Incidentally, if you want to know
how the Hobbit is involved in all this, I
wrote a blog about it.
“Amantarra”
is your first book and it’s also the first one from a trilogy, so there’s still
a long commitment in front of you before getting to the end of the series. How
do you write a series of novels? Are you already writing the second one? What’s
the title? Do you already know the end of the series or you have a set of
options among which you’ll choose one or you haven’t decided it yet?
The title
of the second book is Saranythia and yes I’ve already started writing it. I
only have a rough plot for the third book, but I know where and how the series
will finish. The plot for the third book will be fleshed out as I write the
second.
How do you
write a series? The short answer is that I will tell you when I’ve finished.
The long answer is that Amantarra was originally never intended to be more than
a single book, but at the end of it I couldn’t resist leaving a hook into
another story. I thought at some point I may return to it, but at the time I
had no ideas for a plot. I’d started work on something completely different
when I realised that some of the plot threads were drawing parallels with
Amantarra, and suddenly I had a plot. It quickly became apparent that there was
a third book in there as well. So I adapted some of the characters in the new
work and wove them into the fabric of Amantarra’s world.
The main characters of “Amantarra” include both
teenagers and adults; it’s a book suitable to all ages, but, as we know,
science fiction is often considered a genre mostly appreciated by men. This is
true in Italy, at least. Do you think women might like your novel? Why?
My proof readers are both woman and they liked it. “But,” I hear you
cry. “Wouldn’t they say that anyway?” Perhaps, but knowing who they are,
perhaps not. While I was writing this I asked them directly what it was that
they liked about the book. They both replied that it was the humour and the
romantic elements that appealed, but don’t take their word for it. I’ve had a
couple of very positive reviews from woman on Amazon, one of whom did not
consider science fiction as her usual genre. The book is written on the
premise; that to primitive cultures, all sufficiently advanced technology looks
like magic. So the science fiction is shrouded and presented to the reader as
magic. I only hint at the technology behind the science. This gives the story a
fantasy feel.
Let me tell you a little bit about the plot, it
might help you understand who it may appeal to.
Amantarra is the younger of two sisters. She is
one of a race of beings so evolved that they left their physical forms behind
half the age of the universe ago. Immortal, they live in a city built on the
inside of a sphere which occupies its own set of dimensions. They were being
slowly and secretly wiped out by an unknown enemy. This is the story of how
Amantarra fights for the survival of her race. Up to now the description is all
very science fiction, but I bring it into the world of the plausible when
Amantarra, despite her best efforts, unwittingly brings the fight to Earth.
At this point in the plot I move the action to
a group of bawdy teenagers at a school in 1970’s England.
With humour that is typical of the north of England,
it’s here that the advanced technology of a race of immortal beings meets the
residents of an industrial town. One of them finds out that death is not as
final as he thought, in fact he hadn’t realised that he was dead until someone
told him. There’s mystery, change and romance for some. More than one type of
magic in the air.
One of the main characters is called John, and
your middle name’s initial is J. I bet it isn’t a coincidence. Which characters
of “Amantarra” bear with them a part of you?
Yes, you
guessed right, my middle name is John, but there were other factors which led
to me lending my name to the character. Amantarra started out as a story about
a silver pocket watch I received as a child. The name “J. Godbert” is inscribed
on the inside of the watch, which seemed an obvious choice for the character. I
just needed something for the “J”. As you rightly suspect John Godbert was
initially based around my personality. I say initially because when I was
writing the third version it became obvious that I couldn’t manipulate the
character in a way that was necessary when I thought of John as me. I’m very
good at observing human nature, but that’s the problem, how do you observe
yourself. All of my characters are based on the idiosyncrasies of people that I
know or have known. Some are made up of traits from multiple people and others
from a single person. I’m still a part of John, some of his thought processes
are mine, but John is based more around the same person that Scott Briggs is
based on than me. I find it easier to write as a puppet master than a puppet.
That said; the romance between John and Elleria is based purely on the start of
my relationship with my wife.
One of the
things you will notice about my work is that I like strong female leads. Elleria
in particular is based around someone I went to college with. She went on to
manage the information technology department of a large financial institution
in London. Amantarra herself is more complex
and she is based on a number of people, all of whom have strong personalities.
Indie authors like us must have a day job,
actually it often applies to many traditionally published ones, and this fact
tends to delay our writing. It is even more difficult with the first book,
because you aren’t experienced yet, so it might take even more time to complete
it.
How long has it taken between the day you wrote
the first scene of “Amantarra” and the one you published it? What has this
commitment taught you?
Longer than
you imagine it would be. Amantarra has been written three times. It was
originally titled “The Architect”. It was, like most attempts at a first novel,
sort of school essay in structure, and quite frankly it wasn’t very good. The
second version was written as a satire and was based mainly on Earth. This was
the one I tried to publish using traditional methods and it became obvious that
my work was simply not being read by agents or publishers alike. There was
another factor that figured in decision to write a third version and that was
my father. The previous work had been written with him in mind. When he read
it, he liked the parts set on Earth, but stopped reading it when he came to the
science fiction / fantasy parts. Surprisingly, this was more liberating than
disappointing. We all like the approval of our parents, but when I knew that he
was never going to read it I felt free to do as I please. So the third version
was written as science fiction and I removed a lot, but not all of the humour.
So, how
long you ask. Well, from the first story about the watch to the publication of
Amantarra took an eye watering ten years. Granted, I wasn’t writing all the
time. Months would go by without anything happening. When it came to the third version,
which is 124,000 words, I’d started to write every day and from start to finish
it took around fourteen months, a vast improvement. I’m not sure commitment is
the right word; writing is more of an addiction with me. I get restless when I’m
not writing, but when I am I often wonder where the time goes.
Part of the story of “Amantarra” is narrated in
different periods of human history: prehistory, Nineteenth Century, the World
Wars, the 70’s. What kind of researches have you performed to write those
scenes?
The scenes
set in the 1970’s were easy, I was there, and nearly all of them are based on
real events. For example the game involving marked cards to extract money from
the school bullies actually happened, although it didn’t go as well for us as
the one in the book. The world wars are based on stories my father and
grandfather told me. I fleshed these out with descriptions from photographs,
television imagery and historical fact. The entire sub plot about the German
helmet from World War One was created from a single photograph. Similarly the
nineteenth century setting came from a single photograph. Prehistory was
probably the easiest. The only fact that I had to incorporate was the cave
painting. I then just assumed that human behaviour hasn’t really changed and
constructed a scene around that.
I’ve seen the pictures of Valheel in the
gallery on your Italian website. How has such a structure occurred to you?
Valheel was
fun to do. I’d had the idea that Amantarra’s race would exist in another set of
dimensions and that they could exist in our universe only as phantoms. What I
needed was a focal point so that I could place some action. Valheel started out
as just a just a city, flat in other words, but it was just floating in a void,
so how could I set its boundaries? I placed a bubble around it to separate it
from the void. This evolved into placing the city, now separated into four
zones, on the inside of the bubble. As the city was constructed of pure energy
and existed in its own set of dimensions, it could have its own rules to do
with gravity, atmosphere and other stuff. This brief description of the
evolution of the city of Valheel makes it sound as though it was
created overnight. This was not the case. Valheel evolved slowly. Once I had
the city in my head it started to drive the plot, but that created problems of
its own. So as a means to solve the plot problems I modelled the whole place in
3D. The images on my web site are taken from the model.
When will the second book be published? Will it
be translated into Italian?
I’ve learnt
a valuable lesson from Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli about the publication of
large works. Split it up into parts. This is what I intend to do with
Saranythia. I’m hoping to complete part one during a break between contracts.
And yes, it
will definitely be translated into Italian.
It’s a bit early to evaluate the experience to
have your book on the Italian market. Let’s talk about how you, as an
independent author, came to have “Amantarra” translated into Italian. How have
you get acquainted with the translator? How do you feel to see your book in
another language?
Rita Carla
Francesca Monticelli contacted me through Twitter and asked me if I’d
considered having my work translated into Italian. I must admit that it hadn’t
occurred to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a
good idea. One of my initial concerns was that a large part of the book is very
English. The characters, the humour and a lot of the settings are all based on
the people and places of the North East of England. The North East is not the
same as the bowler hatted, umbrella carrying, international image that the
English seem to have. Far from it, and I was worried that Amantarra might be
too strange an English image for the Italian market. People in the North East
are down to Earth, we don’t put on “airs and graces”, which is an English
phrase meaning to behave in false ways intended to make other people feel that
you are important and belong to a higher social class. So we holidayed in Sorrento last year to get a feel for the
Italian psyche, and get a sun tan as well. I found that Italian’s, or at least
the ones we met, are very much like the people of my region; down to Earth. I
felt very much at home there. Carla assures me that English science fiction is
very popular in Italy. Doctor Who, for instance. So I’m
fairly confident that my work will sit nicely in the Italian market. I do like
telling people that my work has been translated into Italian, it gives me quite
a thrill, and it does impress. Looks like I’ll have to watch those airs and
graces.
What are your resolutions as an author for
2014?
I’m
determined to complete Saranythia, not sure if I will, but I’m going to give a
good go. I’m also collaborating with Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli on
publishing her Red Desert works in English. I’ve been looking
forward to reading her work for a year, and now it’s finally happening.
Thanks for your kindness. It was great to talk
to you!
It was an
absolute pleasure, thank you for the opportunity.
Raised amid the heavy industry of the north
east of England on a diet of Star Trek, Doctor Who and fantasy novels, RICHARD J. GALLOWAY rebelled against his schools assumption that heavy industrial work
would be his vocation. Having exhausted the only apparent option, the careers
master would despair. "If you don't want to work in the steelworks, where
do you want to work?" His reply was always, "I don't know." The
industry he finished up in would not materialise for another ten years. No
wonder the master struggled. From school, via drawing office and architecture,
eventually he found himself working with large computer systems.
Career aside, the thread that bound it all
together has been fantasy. He has never lost his fascination with the imagery
that a good story invokes. After all it had shown him worlds beyond this one,
and possibilities beyond the steelworks. It continues to do so.
Richard still lives in the north east of
England with his wife, family, and a large cat called Beano. The heavy industry
has shrunk, but Richard's world of fantasy has grown. He often wonders what
advice he would have been given if the careers master had read the occasional
bit of science fiction.
