Kelly asked Jo Walton:

Ms. Walton, I admire the ingenuity of Tooth and Claw, namely that it's animal fiction for adults. In my experience as an author, the market for these types of novels has all but died in the last decade. Have you considered continuing the Tooth and Claw story or creating another animal universe? If so, is the present market a deterring factor?

Jo Walton No. Not at all.

I was surprised when I published Tooth and Claw to discover that some in the anthro/furry community saw it as an animal book, because I'd never seen it that way. Dragons are mythological creatures not real animals, and to me animal books were Redwall and Watership Down, not dragon fantasy. The concept of "animal universe" wasn't in my mind at all ever. I have also been surprised sometimes to have people ask if it's for kids because it's all dragons. People are weird sometimes.

I enjoyed writing it, but then I was done with it. I started a sequel (first chapter is on my website) but got bored, I'd said everything I wanted to say in that universe, and wanted to move on. I was done with Victorians and dragons. "The present market" had nothing to do with it -- and it was 2005 anyway, so if things have changed in the last decade I don't know about it. It won the World Fantasy Award. My publishers would have been delighted with a sequel. I wanted to do different things.

Since then I have written robots and aliens as well as humans. I like odd points of view. Tooth & Claw is a standalone because I like change in what I write.

Maybe I wrote it and sold it because I didn't know I wasn't supposed to? I didn't know it was an animal book and I didn't know adults don't want to read them, so I went ahead and did it? It was my fourth book and I already had an editor and an agent, and so I didn't have to run whatever gauntlet might stop a first novel with dragons being picked up? Maybe the Trollope pastiche trumped the animal issue? Or maybe people aren't writing these books because they "know" something about the "present market" that isn't true, and because they aren't writing them they aren't selling them and nobody is reading them? People pass on these things about what editors don't buy, and it often seems like it doesn't fit my experience. Beats me. Glad you like it anyway.

flag