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The Brand
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Questions for Bryan Benson!
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Apr 21, 2014 07:53AM
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What world is The Brand supposed to be set on? Is it Earth? Is it Earth in a potential future?What was his cultural model for the norians?
If his book was a video game, what kind of game would it be (his bio at Amazon says he works on games as his day job)? RTS? FPS? Adventure? Platformer?
Who does he enjoy reading in his down time? Who does he think are his biggest influences?
If he were to cast The Brand as a movie, who would he imagine as each character? What about A Dance of Cloaks?
Thanks for you mega generosity to the KS and also for being ballsy enough to put yourself out there! :)
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If you could give one piece of advice to prospective authors, what would that advice be?
A lot discussion this month (and a lot of discussion in the author interviews over the past couple months) has centered around the "grimdark" genre. No one seems to agree on what that term means, and a few authors on the show have claimed it just doesn't exist, it's a boogeyman of the genre. What is your definition of grimdark, and what do you think the value is in the grimdark novel?What strikes me about your own novel is it features two BA lady protagonists. In mainstream fantasy literature, it seems like, even when female protagonists are around, they are vastly outnumbered by the male protagonists or POV characters in their books. Why do you think fantasy in 2014 still has problems with representation? is self-publishing a space that allows for greater diversity in protagonists?
Hello everyone! Bryan here. Since we didn't get to all of the questions, I wanted to stop by and answer a few!
First of all, thanks for the time to ask them and to read my book, if you've gotten the chance. I really appreciate it!
Terp, to answer your questions that we didn't get to...
The norians are partly inspired by aspects of Japanese culture, but their actual cultural behaviors didn't have any particular influences. I just thought of interesting situations to put Reikah in and that helped to guide the norians' strict laws.
In my downtime, I've been trying to catch up on Jim Butcher's books and random books that I've somehow missed over the years.
The author I admire the most is probably Ray Bradbury, but I love Jim Butcher's world building. I feel his magic system in Codex Alera is really understandable and I love that.
I've actually thought about who I'd like to be in a movie, but I can't really nail anyone down. I'll get back to you on that!
Thank you so much for the questions and kind words, Terp!
Walter, the one piece of advice I would have is something that I've seen Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and (I think) Ray Bradbury say.And that's to just finish. This is something I've struggled with time and time again myself. I would get halfway into my book and then just decide I needed to rewrite it. Now not to say that you should force a bad story out, but if you're happy with your story, just try to get to the end before you start your edits. At least that mindset has helped me!
Rob, I think self-publishing offers more space for writers to try out ideas that traditional publishers are sometimes afraid to do. Similarly to what has been going on in the games industry.
Thanks for answering my other questions, Bryan! I gotta say, when you said on the show that you could see the world in an RPG, it was the same thing if been thinking. I'd play a game in that world (though I'm an RPG sucker).I look forward to seeing your next one... :)
Thank you!I really enjoyed your answer to my question in the podcast-- people really do get stuck on genre rather than letting enter just be a generally useful thing. I think your answer is going to be a good thing for all of us to keep in mind with this next pick as we a
L get tempted to get stuck in the mire of "is this hard scifi?!"
