Niall Teasdale
Ugly, which is a superhero novel, comes out of years of playing a MMO called City of Heroes, and the characters who populated that world. The two main characters, Cygnus and Twilight, represent two different aspects a character called Nitoichi, aka Annette Barrington. She was a shy young thing who blossomed into a sword-wielding killing machine to avenge her brother.
Ugly also, pretty obviously, came out of a desire to explore transformation and the effect it has on identity. Identity is a bit of a theme in a lot of my stuff recently. The Aneka Jansen books are about identity: who and what are we? Does physically changing us make us a different person?
And, lastly, I really wanted to do a superhero novel, so... Ugly.
Ugly also, pretty obviously, came out of a desire to explore transformation and the effect it has on identity. Identity is a bit of a theme in a lot of my stuff recently. The Aneka Jansen books are about identity: who and what are we? Does physically changing us make us a different person?
And, lastly, I really wanted to do a superhero novel, so... Ugly.
More Answered Questions
Gordon Clason
asked
Niall Teasdale:
Are you ever going to resolve the plot thread of Aneka's being shopped to the Xinti by Deltram without Aggy's knowing it? Something to do with Onakad and Magdigan conspiring to murder Aktana, speed up the human uplift, so they will wipe out the Xinti and take over the production of Chuck disease, perhaps? There are also a couple of dangling plot threads in Thaumatology.
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