Ask the Author: K.V. Johansen
Answered Questions (13)
K.V. Johansen
Thanks for letting me know -- 'hopelessly addicted' makes my day. Yes! The final book in the series is coming out from Pyr in the spring/summer of 2019. The working title (and I think that it's been decided to go ahead with that as the real title) is The Last Road. The books together have now got a series title, too -- Gods of the Caravan Road. (That was Tom Lloyd's name for them and once he told me that, it was so obviously right I couldn't think of them any other way.) The Last Road is set quite a while after the end of Gods of Nabban and brings Holla-Sayan, Moth, and Mikki, who were off-stage for GoN, back into the thick of the action, with Ahjvar and Ghu and Yeh-Lin. It was a hard one to write -- for a long time I couldn't find the right way into it and it kept spinning off into whole new cultures and plots that really should have been new worlds of their own, but I got there in the end.
K.V. Johansen
Right now, given that I'm tired, and it's hot, and I'm trying to finish a very long book in too little time ... I'd go to Wildcat Island and just sit under a tree and look at the lake. Not very exciting, but I'd get some work done while I was there. Or better yet, Uncle Jim's houseboat actually out on the lake. Yeah, that's it ... Of course laptop batteries being nonexistant in 1930, I'd have to remember how to compose without select and delete and backspace.
K.V. Johansen
Anthony Ryan's Legion of Flame was on it, but he kindly sent me a copy, so that's already read! (And it was great.) What else? I'm really looking forward to Tom Lloyd's Princess of Blood and Yoon Ha Lee's Raven Stratagem. Martha Wells' All Systems Red is on the 'things I'm going to read soon' list as well. I've also got Classical Guitar for Dummies, since I used to play classical guitar a very, very, very long time ago and am suddenly getting the urge again, but before I plunge back into Noad's Renaissance Guitar I need a serious back to basics refresher. This is a very long-term project.
K.V. Johansen
Where, oh where, is my other sock?
Okay, not that one.
When I was about nineteen, I had the very vivid impression of seeing myself in a dusty mirror in a dim room. I looked about twenty years older and had long hair, which at that point I'd never had. Me-in-the-mirror looked very sad and worried and intent. When I was about forty and long-haired, I one day glanced into a mirror and saw that exact face, shocking, like seeing someone you recognize but haven't seen in years. I hadn't had that recognition brushing my teeth the day before and never had it again, just that one moment. So ... (cue the foreboding music) ... all very myffic, right? What precisely was I trying to tell or warn or advise my younger self about ...?
Maybe ... don't grow your hair long. It doesn't actually work for you, you know. Really. Keep it short. Embrace disshevelment. Windblown Mick Jagger -- it's you, love. Honest. Just get some decent styling gel for a bit of body. There'll be some good stuff along in twenty years. Hang in there.
(That said, I notice my author photo on here is still long-hair me ... but it's such a nice photo of Ivan-the-Wicked.)
Clearly my mystery book plot is a comedy.
Okay, not that one.
When I was about nineteen, I had the very vivid impression of seeing myself in a dusty mirror in a dim room. I looked about twenty years older and had long hair, which at that point I'd never had. Me-in-the-mirror looked very sad and worried and intent. When I was about forty and long-haired, I one day glanced into a mirror and saw that exact face, shocking, like seeing someone you recognize but haven't seen in years. I hadn't had that recognition brushing my teeth the day before and never had it again, just that one moment. So ... (cue the foreboding music) ... all very myffic, right? What precisely was I trying to tell or warn or advise my younger self about ...?
Maybe ... don't grow your hair long. It doesn't actually work for you, you know. Really. Keep it short. Embrace disshevelment. Windblown Mick Jagger -- it's you, love. Honest. Just get some decent styling gel for a bit of body. There'll be some good stuff along in twenty years. Hang in there.
(That said, I notice my author photo on here is still long-hair me ... but it's such a nice photo of Ivan-the-Wicked.)
Clearly my mystery book plot is a comedy.
K.V. Johansen
As Valentine's Day is coming up, I'm going to assume that means 'romantic couple' rather than a non-romantic partnership ...
Hmm ... my favourites would be couples where both are strongly-realized and fascinating characters each with their own story, where the stories intersect and go on together. You don't feel that the characters reaching the point of pairing up is the conclusion, or the reason for the story existing, but a development that leads on to something more.
Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane would be one. Their relationship develops so plausibly over time (from Strong Poison to Gaudy Night, which is one of my favourite books, and Busman's Honeymoon), with so much psychological realism, that it stands out as something very exceptional in literary courtships. The troubles that keep them apart -- after Strong Poison -- are the very realistic ones of Harriet's state of mind after her murder trial, rather than plot-convenient obstacles tossed in to keep things exciting. The way the relationship exists in the background of books like Murder Must Advertise and Have His Carcase, too, really adds to that.
Howl and Sophie (Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, House of Many Ways) would be another couple I really enjoy, both in their courtship and in their marriage.
Cherryh's Morgaine and Vanye, too. Cook's Croaker and the Lady. Those are both series I've long loved where the couple becoming a couple is a thing that happens along the way, not the end of their journey. Ned and Julian in Scott & Griswold's two Mathey & Lynes mysteries, too, are a more recent couple I've very much enjoyed -- again, it's a journey and not an ending.
Hmm ... my favourites would be couples where both are strongly-realized and fascinating characters each with their own story, where the stories intersect and go on together. You don't feel that the characters reaching the point of pairing up is the conclusion, or the reason for the story existing, but a development that leads on to something more.
Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane would be one. Their relationship develops so plausibly over time (from Strong Poison to Gaudy Night, which is one of my favourite books, and Busman's Honeymoon), with so much psychological realism, that it stands out as something very exceptional in literary courtships. The troubles that keep them apart -- after Strong Poison -- are the very realistic ones of Harriet's state of mind after her murder trial, rather than plot-convenient obstacles tossed in to keep things exciting. The way the relationship exists in the background of books like Murder Must Advertise and Have His Carcase, too, really adds to that.
Howl and Sophie (Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, House of Many Ways) would be another couple I really enjoy, both in their courtship and in their marriage.
Cherryh's Morgaine and Vanye, too. Cook's Croaker and the Lady. Those are both series I've long loved where the couple becoming a couple is a thing that happens along the way, not the end of their journey. Ned and Julian in Scott & Griswold's two Mathey & Lynes mysteries, too, are a more recent couple I've very much enjoyed -- again, it's a journey and not an ending.
K.V. Johansen
Hi Nathan! First, an apology for not answering this earlier. I somehow missed seeing it. Sorry, sorry, sorry!
I'm currently working on a fifth novel, which I expect will finish off this sequence of stories that are loosely tied together by Moth and Mikki wandering through them (not that they have much presence in Gods of Nabban but still, they're the thread it's strung on and they're back in what I'm calling the Thing, for now, with a vengeance). There's the short story "The Storyteller" as well, which comes before Blackdog and starts M&M on their wanderings. There are various tangents to the main thread that keep occurring to me; maybe someday those will show up as short stories. The world's also vast enough in time and space that someday I might do something quite different set in it. For now, though, I have just this final-ish book burning in my mind. Can't give you an expected date on it yet, though. Stay tuned ...
I'm currently working on a fifth novel, which I expect will finish off this sequence of stories that are loosely tied together by Moth and Mikki wandering through them (not that they have much presence in Gods of Nabban but still, they're the thread it's strung on and they're back in what I'm calling the Thing, for now, with a vengeance). There's the short story "The Storyteller" as well, which comes before Blackdog and starts M&M on their wanderings. There are various tangents to the main thread that keep occurring to me; maybe someday those will show up as short stories. The world's also vast enough in time and space that someday I might do something quite different set in it. For now, though, I have just this final-ish book burning in my mind. Can't give you an expected date on it yet, though. Stay tuned ...
K.V. Johansen
Hi! I think the short answer is, no, you don't have to read them in order. The stories are all connected, and chronologically, happen in publication order, with what happens in one having an effect on what follows after, but though Gods of Nabban would certainly be enriched by having read Leopard/Lady first (and Blackdog and even the short story "The Storyteller"), it tells a separate story that I think you could enjoy on its own. What happened to the two main characters of Gods of Nabban before you meet them at the start of GoN to bring them to that point is alluded to where necessary, but I'm pretty sure you can take Ahjvar and Ghu from where they are then without feeling baffled and lost. (That was a not-so-short answer, I fear!) I hope that helps (and that you'll enjoy them all, in time!)
K.V. Johansen
I don't wait to get inspired; I just get up in the morning and turn on the computer. Inspiration is great when it comes upon you, but you can't sit around waiting for it, or even go hunting for it. Just work, and it'll come when it does, often out of the words themselves as you write.
K.V. Johansen
The Leopard and The Lady are one long book divided in two, so I can't really answer that for The Lady alone. The roots of the idea are in Blackdog, in references there to the situation in the city of Marakand on the caravan road. Naturally I then had to write Marakand (The Leopard and The Lady) to find out what was really going on there. The shape of story of in the two books (which aren't really a sequel to Blackdog so much as a related history in the same world and time) was shaped by the new characters of Ahjvar and Ghu -- for me, the character is nearly always the thing that drives where the story goes.
K.V. Johansen
Several things in various stages, always. An old world, a new world ... i.e. more in the Blackdog world, another Torrie, something entirely new, and there's a non-fiction First World War letter collection I'm editing, which I hope will be out soon.
K.V. Johansen
Read. Read widely, read deeply, and read many things written long before you were born, not merely contemporary works.
K.V. Johansen
Getting to write, and hearing that what I write is able to take people away from their daily lives for a time, and maybe bring them back a bit changed.
K.V. Johansen
Generally, I take getting stuck and unable to write a section as a sign that the story has taken a wrong turn, so I tend to deal with it by backtracking a ways and seeing if it goes better along a new path, as it were, or from a different character's point of view. I think of the progress through writing a book as exploring a wilderness, with some glimpses of distant heights I need to get it to, but lots of unknown along the way. But sometimes writer's block is simply a sign you need more sleep!
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