Ask the Author: Claire Fayers
Answered Questions (4)
Claire Fayers
I really hope so! I'm taking a break from the pirates for a little while so I can write some different books but I have an idea for a third pirate book and I'd love to go back to the Onion at some point. Thanks for asking! I hope you enjoyed the first two.
Claire Fayers
Wow, there are so many. (Ponders deeply) Right, this is a bit unorthodox, but Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin from the Modesty Blaise books. They're not technically a couple but they are friends, comrades in arms and partners in crime. And Willie comes up with huge, extravagant romantic gestures, like the time he went pearl diving in every ocean in the world and chose the best pearl from each to make into a necklace for Modesty. I like to think Cassie O'Pia and Ewan Hughes are a bit like them.
Claire Fayers
Technically, they’re not penguins, they’re evil, hypnotic, carnivorous fish-birds. But I know I’m fooling nobody. They’re penguins, and they’re at the North Pole.
There are two reasons for this.
1. I love penguins. They are nature’s perfect blend of sinister and cute.
2. My pirates had to go north. There’s something far grander about a quest to the top of the world than the bottom. And the Onion is following the path of the legendary mariner Orion, who sailed his ship all the way to the top of the world until he sailed up into the sky and became a constellation. Imagine what it would do to the stories if he’d sailed south and fallen off the bottom of the world instead.
There are two reasons for this.
1. I love penguins. They are nature’s perfect blend of sinister and cute.
2. My pirates had to go north. There’s something far grander about a quest to the top of the world than the bottom. And the Onion is following the path of the legendary mariner Orion, who sailed his ship all the way to the top of the world until he sailed up into the sky and became a constellation. Imagine what it would do to the stories if he’d sailed south and fallen off the bottom of the world instead.
Claire Fayers
You’re right – whales are not fish, but on two occasions in the book, people refer to a whale as a giant fish. They should know better, but they don’t.
The reason is that the world of the eight oceans has many echoes of our own world, but in terms of science they are mid 1700s at most. Aldebran Boswell came up with his equivalent of Newton’s Laws of Motion about a hundred years ago and steam power has not yet been invented.
Our modern system of the classification of animals comes from Carolus Linneaus who, in the 10th edition of his Systemae Naturae, introduced the classification of Mammalia and puts whales into it. That was in 1758. Before that, most people would follow Aristotle’s thinking that if something lived in the water, it was a fish. I gave Peter and Brine a scientific understanding of an intelligent person from around 1730 and so, to them (and most other people in my world) whales are fish.
Maybe I over-thought this one a little, but that’s the reason.
The reason is that the world of the eight oceans has many echoes of our own world, but in terms of science they are mid 1700s at most. Aldebran Boswell came up with his equivalent of Newton’s Laws of Motion about a hundred years ago and steam power has not yet been invented.
Our modern system of the classification of animals comes from Carolus Linneaus who, in the 10th edition of his Systemae Naturae, introduced the classification of Mammalia and puts whales into it. That was in 1758. Before that, most people would follow Aristotle’s thinking that if something lived in the water, it was a fish. I gave Peter and Brine a scientific understanding of an intelligent person from around 1730 and so, to them (and most other people in my world) whales are fish.
Maybe I over-thought this one a little, but that’s the reason.
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