{"id":23324,"date":"2013-11-18T06:30:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T17:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=23324"},"modified":"2013-10-31T22:36:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T09:36:35","slug":"favourite-questions-from-recent-interviews-ruth-todd-ask-where-malian-came-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/11\/18\/favourite-questions-from-recent-interviews-ruth-todd-ask-where-malian-came-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Favourite Questions From Recent Interviews: Ruth Todd Ask Where Malian Came From"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UK\/AU\/NZ Cover<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently, The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em><\/strong> was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award<\/a>, and as a finalist I was interviewed on a number of fora around the traps.<\/p>\n

I was asked a number of great questions so thought I’d share a few of them—plus my answers, of course!—here on the blog over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

One of the first interviews was with Bookenz presenter, Ruth Todd, on Beatties Bookblog–and she asked a great question about Malian. Here it is:
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruth:<\/em><\/strong> I love this epic adventure story, especially as you have a feisty young heroine , Malian, that female readers can really identify with. Where did she come from?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Helen: <\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s a great question, Ruth. I\u2019m never quite sure where characters come from. Sometimes they spring forth fully formed, Minerva style, and sometimes they evolve. Malian was one of the \u2018evolving\u2019 characters. I had the idea of an initially quite young heroine in a (literally) dark world for many years, and then a chance-heard phrase, describing some unknown person\u2019s life as a \u201crace along a cliff\u2019 sparked the idea of my heroine\u2019s life being one of magic and danger, roof top pursuits and flights by night. But The Heir Of Night<\/em> story in particular only took off when I had this vision of a very daring young girl — Malian — scaling the interior wall of an ancient, ruined castle while a storm raged outside. That image came with far more backstory around what her life was, and why, and the writing began.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the process of writing being what it is, that was still only the end of the beginning in terms of the development of the character. Since then Malian has continued to grow and evolve in relation to both events and the changes in the characters around her. It\u2019s very important to me that should happen, as I feel it\u2019s a vital part of making characters real. I\u2019ve heard Kate de Goldi talk about writers having \u201cbones\u201d that we gnaw on, in a metaphorical sense, and the whole notion of \u201cconsequences\u201d is definitely one of my \u201cbones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, the action in The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em> picks up five years after The Heir Of Night<\/em> closed, and not only is Malian older but she has been separated from some of her closest companions for most of that time. So a big part of the story is whether the friendships and the interests remain as closely aligned as they were in The Heir Of Night<\/em>. Other tensions revolve around who, in a world of conflicting ambitions, Malian can trust, and whether, given her power, she can trust herself\u2014as well as just how much she is prepared to sacrifice, and who, to defeat her enemies. Given actions have consequences, every decision she makes comes with its cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

I should add that one of the things I love about Malian is that although she does have a lot of female fans, she seems to have almost as many male readers who are enthusiastic enough for her cause to write and tell me so.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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Recently, The Gathering Of The Lost was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award, and as a finalist I was interviewed on a number of fora around the traps. I was asked a number of great questions so thought I’d share a few of them—plus my answers, of course!—here on the blog over the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-my-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23324"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23332,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23324\/revisions\/23332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}