Zoe Dickens

Zoe Dickens asked Gail Carriger:

Where did you come up with supernatural beings like Alexia being a soulless?

Gail Carriger After deciding on a setting, I started idly toying with the idea of how a person would become undead. After all, if vampires and werewolves are bouncing about, what’s to keep them from turning everyone? There must be biological procreation controls in place. Taking into account what I knew of Victorian scientific theory, I hypothesized that an excess soul found in only a few people might account for bite–survival rates. This led me to investigate the measuring of the soul – which an American scientist actually tried to do in the late 1800s. This, in turn, lead to the idea that if some people had too much soul there should be others who had too little, or none at all. And these people could act as nullifiers to supernatural abilities. Thus Alexia was born.
You can read more about it here: http://www.gailcarriger.com/about/int...

More Answered Questions

RL asked Gail Carriger:

How does your writing now differ from your writing when you were younger?

Susan

Susan asked Gail Carriger:

I just finished Imprudence, and it was so much fun! When you started the series, did you know it would be a series? I keep writing books, and I think I will write another with the same characters, but when I finish I get interested in another project and... no series. How do you stay focused on the same characters and setting?

James Anthony

James Anthony asked Gail Carriger:

Just finished Competence last night, and can hardly wait to see what becomes of... well, I won't spoil it for those who haven't gotten there yet. I wanted to say that I loved how Prim /described/ the food items she purchased, rather than naming them. It was fun seeing how many I could identify by description. The only one I couldn't was the purple one, which she said she liked best. Was that one Passion Fruit?

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