Hello, hello! Welcome to today's installment of the
Stormdancer Blog Tour! Today I have the pleasure of sharing an interview with none other than Jay Kristoff, the author of
Stormdancer (to be released in the US on Tuesday!), with all of you. I hope you enjoy the interview. The man definitely has some awesome answers!
Marla: Hi, Jay, and welcome to StNC! Thanks for stopping by today. My first question to you is: How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Jay: Tall, angry, nerdy.
Marla: On a good day, I'm two of the above. If my neighbors are involved, then I hit the trifecta.
I love hearing about sources of inspiration. Where did the idea for
Stormdancer originate?
Jay: It all started with a dream I had about a griffin with broken wings, and a little boy trying to teach it to fly. But “I had a dream…” is the SINGLE lamest answer and author can give to that question, so I’m going to make up a better one. Something with ninjas. Sex ninjas, maybe. Although I’m not 100% what it is sex ninjas do…
I liked the idea of doing a steampunk book, but I felt like Victorian England had been done, and a lot of steampunk just seemed to be paranormal romance dressed up in a frock coat and goggles. No-one seemed to be playing with other cultures and steampunk from what I could see (remember I wrote Stormdancer nearly three years ago) so it seemed like a good way to have the book stand out from the pack. A lot of steampunk seems to look back on the advent of industrialization as some marvellous, liberating event in history, and gloss over all that unpleasantness about child exploitation and slavery and whatnot that came with it. I wanted to tell a story where the machine was the enemy. Where technology wasn’t just killing people, but the land they lived in.
Not that I’m yearning for the days of rural bliss where we had to grow our own potatoes and died of tooth infection at age 24, but yeah…
Anyways, sex ninjas were involved somehow.
Marla: My father used to grow potatoes. I can attest that there are much more fun things to do.
There are authors that one just loves to read and authors that make you want to write into the wee hours. Who are your biggest influences when it comes to writing?
Jay: William Gibson. Alan Moore. George Orwell. Stephen King (I was reading him when I was 10, which apparently makes him YA – who knew) Great storytellers and character writers like David Simon or David Knauf. And strangely enough, a lot of the lyricists of the bands I listen to. Telling a story in 100,000 words is easy. Telling in in three minutes with a few dozen is hard.
Marla: This is all too true.
Being a writer in the early stages of a novel, I always wonder about authors' publishing experiences. What was your road to publication like?
Jay: I kinda half-assed it into being an author. It’s embarrassing to admit - I see a lot of authors telling stories about how they wrote their first book at 13 and it’s all they ever wanted to do. But to be honest, I always dreamed of being a rock star, or maybe the corrupt dictator of a small island nation, and when I was 13 I was too busy fantasizing about Dr Beverly Crusher in Star Trek: the Next Generation to write down much of anything….
As I got older, I wrote as a hobby, but never took it seriously. I worked in an advertising agency, and the last thing you want to do after writing TV scripts all day is come home and write more words. My first book began as a scene I scribbled down when I was bored at work, and somehow over the next 18 months, it became a book. A screaming train-wreck of a book, granted, but still a book. I discovered that I really liked the process, so I decided to get serious, learn how publishing actually worked and see where it took me.
After I wrote STORMDANCER, it all seemed to click. I got four offers of rep within a couple of months, and we had three publishing houses bidding for the book at auction. It’s just one of those moments of weirdness – after bumbling and stumbling around in the dark for five years, everything seemed to fall into place. In hindsight it happened very quickly, although I still remember having fulls out to literary agents, and every day waiting for a reply seemed like forever.
Marla: It must be said: Griffins are fan-freaking-tastic! However, some readers may be curious about the choice to include griffins instead of dragons. Care to share your reason for the awesome decision?
Jay: Huzzah, another griffin fan! :D
Dragons get done a lot. Like, A LOT. I wanted to do something different with this book. I did a Japanese-inspired story because everyone was doing Steampunk in Victorian London. I did griffins because everyone was doing dragons. The market is so competitive now, there are simply SO. MANY. BOOKS out there vying for attention. If you write what everyone else is writing, you have to be very lucky to stand out, among agents, publishers, and eventually readers.
The good news is, when everybody is doing the same thing, is really easy to stand out – you just write something different. Tell someone you wrote a steampunk book, they’ll say “Oh, cool.” Tell them you wrote a Japanese steampunk book, they’ll say “Oh, cooooooool!”
Marla: Well, I want to say thank you for deciding to write about them! I love seeing a book with a not-often-done creature angle within.
Quick! What are you reading and how would you describe it in a sentence?
Jay: I just finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak yesterday. I’d describe it as “A beautiful book about the wonderful and terrifying power of words”. I really enjoyed it. Great book.
I think the next book I read will be King Rat by China Mieville. Or maybe Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Not sure yet. Both are waiting on my nightstand. They might get into a knife fight soon (my money is on China).
Marla: That would be an interesting knife fight, indeed.
I have 1 last question for you. You find yourself in a foreboding wood and stumble upon a really pissed off griffin. Maiming is in the near future unless you act quickly. What would you do?
Jay: I think I might get eaten. Sadly, unlike Yukiko, I can’t speak to animals telepathically. :(
I’m really tall, so maybe I could grab a handful of branches, stand really still and hope it mistook me for a tree? Although I’m not sure if griffins mark their territory like dogs. Being mistaken for a tree might be all bad…
Marla: Thanks for a great interview, Jay. Best of luck and congratulations on both your TorUK release and your rapidly approaching US release day!
Jay: Thanks so much for having me!
About the Author
Jay Kristoff is a tragic nerd, but has spent the last ten years
dumping expeez into his Intimidation stat, with the result that nobody
is brave enough to say it to his face. He grew up in the second most
isolated capital city on earth and fled at his earliest convenience,
although he’s been known to trek back for weddings of the particularly
nice and funerals of the particularly wealthy. He spent most of his
formative years locked in his bedroom with piles of books, or gathered
around dimly-lit tables rolling polyhedral dice. Being the holder of an
Arts degree, he has no education to speak of.
Jay prostituted his writing arm in the soulless crack-house that
is “creative advertising” for over ten years. He’s hocked petrol
guzzling monstrosities to sexually inadequate men, salty condiments to
schoolchildren, and toilet paper to anyone with a bottom. He has won
several awards that nobody outside the advertising industry gives a
toss about.
Jay’s debut novel, STORMDANCER, a Japanese-inspired steampunk
fantasy, will be published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press
& Tor UK in 2012 as the first installment of THE LOTUS WAR
trilogy. He is represented by Matt Bialer at Sanford J Greenburger Associates.
Jay is 6’7 and has approximately 13870 days to live. He abides in
Melbourne with his secret agent kung-fu assassin wife, and the world’s
laziest Jack Russell.
He does not believe in happy endings.
Where to Find Him: Site /
Facebook /
Twitter /
Goodreads
About the Book
A DYING LAND
The
Shima Imperium verges on the brink of environmental collapse; an island
nation once rich in tradition and myth, now decimated by clockwork
industrialization and the machine-worshipers of the Lotus Guild. The
skies are red as blood, the land is choked with toxic pollution, and the
great spirit animals that once roamed its wilds have departed forever.
AN IMPOSSIBLE QUEST
The
hunters of Shima’s imperial court are charged by their Shōgun to
capture a thunder tiger—a legendary creature, half-eagle, half-tiger.
But any fool knows the beasts have been extinct for more than a century,
and the price of failing the Shōgun is death.
A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL
Yukiko
is a child of the Fox clan, possessed of a talent that if discovered,
would see her executed by the Lotus Guild. Accompanying her father on
the Shōgun’s hunt, she finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in
Shima’s last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled thunder tiger for
company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved
his life, all she knows for certain is he’d rather see her dead than
help her.
But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.
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