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Winterbirth, first volume of the Godless World Trilogy by Brian Ruckley(2008).
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Mania Exclusive Interview: Winterbirth Author Brian Ruckley

Featuring skillfully-crafted narrative, multilayered characters, and politics more bloody than a George R.R. Martin parley, Brian Ruckley’s Winterbirth delivers an epic tour de force in what Entertainment Weekly describes as “heroic fantasy splashed with 300-style gore.”

The first volume of The Godless World Trilogy, Winterbirth introduces us to a world threatened by its own grisly past, where Thanes battle for control of a feudal system quickly spiraling out of control. There’s a reason the gods abandoned this world…and not even all-out war may prevent an even darker transgression from occurring. Rulers will be overthrown, borders will be rewritten in blood, and heads will fly as the veins of ancient feuds are once again opened.

In his debut novel Ruckley has carved out a new path in the wilderness of epic fantasy and in doing so has avoided some of the subgenre’s most unforgiving snares; Ruckley is an author who can world-build without bogging down plot, and unlike most fantasy epics Ruckley’s Godless World had a definitive ending before the first installment even made it to the press. With the mass market release of Winterbirth debuting this week and Bloodheir, the second volume in the series, hitting shelves in June it’s high time we sit down with the Scottish author and discuss his experiences writing speculative fiction, his inspirations in fantasy, and the future of The Godless World.

Mania: Brian tell us a little bit about yourself. From your site www.brianruckley.com I've gleaned that you've worked in nature conservation, fundraising, and environmental consulting. What road led you to writing fantasy?

Brian Ruckley: I was lucky enough to have jobs and work in a field – the environmental charity sector – that I greatly enjoyed. Still, thinking about being a writer is like having an itch, and sooner or later you have to decide whether or not you’re going to scratch it. Eventually I figured the time was right to have a go at producing a novel, and fantasy was just what seemed to come most naturally and easily. Once I’d got a complete manuscript, things fell into place in a fairly fortunate way. I was able to get an agent very quickly (the first one to read the thing said yes), and was lucky that I was in a position where I could turn myself into a freelance consultant, which freed up a lot of writing time without bankrupting me. Mind you, it still took over three years from signing on with an agent to Winterbirth actually being on bookstore shelves. The gears of this business grind glacially slowly a lot of the time.  

Have you always known you wanted to become a writer? Did you have any formal education to prepare you for writing fiction?

I had good English teachers at school, but no training in writing beyond that. I certainly always wrote stories, pretty much from the day I figured out which end of the pencil went on the paper. The idea of being a published writer was always at the back of my mind, although how seriously I took it as a proposition varied considerably depending on what else was going on in my life. What I never had, importantly, was the slightest bit of discouragement – right from when I was a tiny little kid, I don’t remember a single teacher, family member or friend ever being anything other than positive and supportive about the theoretical idea of being a professional writer. That, I think, was at least as valuable as any sort of ‘formal’ education in writing fiction. Probably more so, really – I’m an agnostic, with slightly skeptical tendencies, on the question of how much of writing can be formally taught.          

What novels in the genre, past and present, have inspired you in your craft?

Too many to name is the short answer to that. Like most SF and fantasy readers, I picked up the habit young, and the stuff that got me hooked was the same as the stuff that got thousands of other people hooked: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books. As I got older, I drifted away from the genre for a while. The writer who really dragged me back in more than any other was Guy Gavriel Kay, especially with his stand-alone books like Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan. I was blown away, and inspired all over again, when I discovered them.

For all of our readers who are not yet familiar with your work, what, in a nutshell, are Winterbirth and The Godless World Trilogy about?

The followers of a rather apocalyptic creed called the Black Road, who think they know how to get back the gods who long ago abandoned the world, set out to re-conquer and subdue their ancient enemies. Amidst that chaos, a new and greater threat begins to emerge, which means that even the most powerful players begin to find things slipping out of their control. The books follow several characters, human and otherwise, who are caught up in these events, through a web of battles, pursuits, conspiracies, assassinations, betrayals. All kinds of good stuff, in other words.

Upon Winterbirth's release it was critically hailed as a new benchmark of epic and heroic fantasy. Being the new kid on the block, so to speak, do you feel the need to keep abreast of other epic fantasy series, most notably those by authors such as Robert Jordan, GRR Martin, or Steven Erikson?

Although I’d quite like to be able to read everything that’s published in the genre, I don’t feel any great pressure to do so. Quite apart from the fact that there’s an awful lot of it nowadays, the truth is that when you’re spending most of your time writing epic fantasy, it’s quite nice to read different stuff in your relaxation time. It’s easier to switch off that way. 

That said, I do make time to read some authors, out of pleasure rather than duty: I’m a big fan of both GRRM and Steven Erikson, for example. Those guys really have, in their very different ways, set new benchmarks for what you can do with epic fantasy. I’m kind of staggered by the ambition of what they’re doing, and dazzled by their skill in pulling it off. And I’ve started reading Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora series, and have fallen victim to its immensely addictive qualities.

Tying in with the last question, I feel one of the biggest pitfalls in writing epic fantasy is losing sight of tight, streamlined narrative, but unlike most epics of comparable scope The Godless World is a definitive trilogy. After completing Winterbirth was there ever any doubt of the series' overall length? Have you ever had the desire to expand it beyond more than three novels?

From the first, faint twinkling of the idea that became The Godless World, the story had a very definite beginning, middle and end, so it pretty naturally fitted into the traditional trilogy format. I’ve known how it all finishes, and roughly how all the various characters get to that ending, from day one. At this point I really wouldn’t have the inclination – or the stamina, probably – to write more than three books that use the same plot and characters. Anyway, at current rates of attrition, I may not have any characters left alive by the end of book three to carry on with, even if I wanted to… 

As an aspiring writer myself, and for all the other Maniacs here at the site who dream of becoming authors themselves, how did you go from only two previously published works in the '90s to such a solid series opener? What was your process in cultivating the trilogy and writing Winterbirth?

I do think I benefited from starting with short stories in the 1990s. I didn’t write very many of them (and sold even fewer, of course!), but it did teach me to be much more critical of my own writing, and to recognize the difference between what was publishable and what wasn’t. Once I switched my attention to trying to produce a full length novel, it was a fairly relaxed process. Until I got near the finishing post of typing ‘The End’ on the manuscript, I didn’t feel any great need to rush things, so I let the ideas simmer away and would often spend weeks or even months without writing a word. That’s a luxury you lose, of course, as soon as you actually sign a publishing contract – it’s a different ball game then. 

Fortunately, I avoided one potential pitfall: I never fell uncritically in love with my own work. That’s useful, because even when you think a manuscript’s finished, chances are it’s not. I made major revisions to the thing as a result of discussions with my agent and then again following feedback from the potential publisher. I’ve always had the attitude that feedback on your work from friends and family or even other aspiring writers is nice, but should be taken with not just a pinch but great heaped bucketfuls of salt. The only opinions that really matter, if professional publication is your aim, are those of the professionals: agents, editors, publishers. They do, on the whole, know what they’re talking about.

While studying abroad in college I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Scotland and the Isle of Skye in the Highlands. The first thing I noticed was how reverent the Scottish people were to the land and to the mysticism of the wild, a venerable quality that's clearly reflected in your novel. How else has your homeland influenced Winterbirth? 

I’ve been a bit surprised at how many people have picked up on the Scottish influences in Winterbirth. I thought I was being relatively restrained in mining that particular source of inspiration, but evidently not. It’s certainly true that the landscape is a kind of over the top version of Scotland’s, the wildlife is kind of like Scotland’s was before us pesky humans tidied it all up (i.e. exterminated half of it – there were limits to our historic reverence for the wild!), and the climate is pretty Scottish: mists, rain, snow, more rain, interspersed with brief bouts of gorgeous sunshine. 

There’re also faint hints of Scottishness in the culture of the Bloods, some of the character names and even things like the castles (one thing Scotland’s not short of is castles). Honestly, with most of this I never consciously thought ‘I’m going to base all this stuff on Scotland’, it just kind of seeped in. I guess that’s how influences work. 

Despite the fictional setting of the novel, Winterbirth and its characters reverberate with a profound sense of truth. How do you achieve such realism in your writing?

Thank you. Unhelpfully, I’m not sure I’ve got a good answer to that. I do read a lot of historical non-fiction, so I’ve got a certain basic awareness of how ancient societies and cultures work. Reading that kind of stuff teaches you that individuals, cultures and events are almost always more complicated and ambiguous than they at first appear, and I did consciously try to give my characters and my imagined world a hint of that quality. There are limits to how far you can go with realism in writing fantasy, obviously, but within those limits there’s no reason why the characters shouldn’t have much the same concerns, contradictions and motivations as real world historical (or even contemporary) figures.             

Do you have a favorite character in the series? Is there a character you find difficult to write, or one that makes your skin crawl when you see through their eyes?

My favourite characters tend to be whoever appears in any scene I’ve recently written that I think has worked out well. Whereas if I’m struggling with a scene, I’ll blame it on the stupid, stupid characters. Because clearly my ineptitude couldn’t be my own fault. 

If I had to pick one character I like at the moment, it would probably be a warrior called Taim Narran, just because he’s a fairly straightforward, decent kind of man who tends to keep his head while all those around him are losing theirs. As for seeing things through the characters’ eyes, even for the vicious or lunatic ones, I’m usually at least vaguely sympathetic towards whichever one I’m writing at any given moment. Even when they’re doing thoroughly reprehensible things, they generally have what seem to them to be good reasons for doing what they’re doing. Villains don’t, on the whole, think of themselves as villains.  

One of the major themes of Winterbirth seems to revolve around the cyclical nature of blood feuds and, more specifically, on the past's detrimental effect on the present and future. Is this a grim portent of things to come in the second and third installments?

True, in the background of the trilogy there’s a fairly consistent thread of references to all the different ways in which the past, whether it’s the personal or the cultural or the political past, affects the present, not often to the present’s benefit. Individuals are shaped by what’s happened to them in their youth, and similarly whole societies are shaped by what happened in their ‘youth’ hundreds of years ago. It’s something you can’t really avoid noticing in the real world, and it’s hard to imagine that things would be much different in any invented world. Is it a grim portent of things to come? I suppose the only honest answer to that is ‘Yes’.  

What can we expect from the second volume in the series, Bloodheir, and does the concluding tome have a title yet?

Bloodheir basically picks up from exactly where Winterbirth left off, and my standard answer when someone asks what happens is: ‘Things get worse for just about everyone involved.’ Which is a fairly accurate summary. Some new characters are introduced, some old characters meet unfortunate ends, and it starts to become a bit clearer just how much danger the whole world might be in. 

Barring unforeseen developments of major proportions, the third and final book will be called Fall of Thanes. Which is, as titles go, also a grim portent of things to come, I suppose.

Hah definitely sounds like it. Okay thanks for bearing with us Brian, last question: Beyond The Godless World Trilogy what's next on the horizon for you? Any chance you'll get back to that sci-fi epic about sentient lizards you wrote as a child?

No, that sci-fi epic is safely consigned to a drawer somewhere, and will hopefully never again see the light of day. The lizards were called Linons, by the way, and shot laser beams from their eyes if I remember rightly. Seemed cool at the time. I don’t actually know what’s next yet: I’ve got quite a few ideas for more fantasy (still no stories that would take more than a trilogy to tell, though!), but exactly what happens and when rather depends on what I can get a publisher interested in.