ANOTHER CHAT WITH AUTHOR I. A. WATSON

Once again, The Free Choice E-zine has the opportunity to chat with author Ian Watson, who writes under the name I.A. Watson, so as not to be confused with another wordsmith of the same name.

TFCE: So Ian, what have you been up to since our last conversation, concerning your then recent release of ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S CHAMPION?

Author I. A. (Ian) Watson

I.A.W.: I failed in last year’s publishing objective to average a title a month. I managed to get ten things into print, but the sheer time lag of writing to publication thwarted my goal.

Last time, we’d covered up to

my World War II adventure/superhero romp SIR MUMPHREY WILTON AND THE LOST CITY OF MYSTERY, which was number seven or eight. Publication-wise since then, in chronological order, there has been:

“Sinbad and the Rakshasa’s Game” in SINBAD THE NEW VOYAGES volume 4, pitting the swashbuckling sailor against a dazzling damsel in a captive chess match where the loser dies. And...

THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL COMPANY, a contemporary SF weird science adventure novel featuring the staff of the go-to company for getting your packages shifted to other realities or parallel universes.

First out this year is SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERIES, a massive Kindle only collection of seven stories I wrote for the first six volumes of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, plus an additional unpublished tale, “The Adventure of the Failing Light”, pitting our investigators against the real-life mystery disappearance of three keepers from a lonely Outer Hebrides lighthouse in winter 1900. That’s about 130,000 words all together.

And by the time this interview is allowed out for the appalled public (he says with tongue very firmly in cheek), there will also be SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE volume 7, which includes my story “Spring-Heeled Jack”, pitting Holmes and Watson early in their career against that notorious Victorian bugaboo–all Canon friendly, of course.

All of this stuff is listed, along with free stories and samples and various other bits and pieces, at my author website at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.htm

TFCE: Airship 27 Captain Ron Fortier says you've submitted Sherlock Holmes mysteries through Volume 9 of that series.

I.A.W.: Really? I thought I had made it to Volume 10.

TFCE: Anyway, since you're comfortable in both genres, please recap for us the difference(s) between historic and traditional fiction.

I.A.W.: Historical fiction is clearly a subset of fiction as a whole. If you mean traditional fiction as the sort of stories that have been typically told in our narrative tradition, historical settings have always been popular within that whole set. The Greeks and Romans told myths of their ancestors–the Trojan War, for example. King Arthur’s tales were set in a fictionalised part era, written from the 12^th century but assumed to have happened around in the 5^th. Robin Hood’s ballads were placed back in the days of old King Henry II or his son Richard the Lionheart. Victorians liked to hearken back a century to the era of pirates; like Treasure Island. Pulp writers of the 1930s loved the wild west setting of the 1880s. Nowadays the gangster era and World War II seem to be the popular time-periods of choice.

Classic Pulps for any taste

The difference that makes it historical fiction is the setting. The backdrop, and often the whole plot driver, is some real or semi-real era of our past. Beyond that the distinctions are whether the story is dependent on the setting and how real that setting is.

For example, consider a romance story that just happens to be set in the middle ages, versus an adventure tale chronicling a soldier’s exploits at the Battle of Waterloo. One requires the sets and costumes and takes advantages of the manners and mores. The other depends upon established historical detail to shape the events that the characters endure. Most historical fiction lies somewhere between the two extremes of that scale.

The authenticity of the setting is also a dramatic choice. Few authors find it helpful to have their historical characters speaking the actual language of the time, or accurately portray their heroines with rotting teeth and pock marks, or include 100% accurate social and intellectual attitudes; otherwise the story becomes all about that. There is always a choice about how much history to admit and what to discard.

Special mention should also be made to that sub-genre, the alternative history, wherein a different past is depicted based upon some imagined time line change. What would the Victorian era have been like had James Watt invented space travel, or had Napoleon conquered the British Empire?

Reasons for using historical settings differ by author and story, but the main ones are, 1. to make use of some period or event for a story that could only happen there and then, e.g. the last days of Pompeii before the volcano; 2. as an exotic location to offer a different kind of atmosphere that isolates the cast from a mundane present; 3. to make use of historical figures as fictional characters; 4. because a particular historical setting has become a genre in its own right, as with the western or the war story.

TFCE: During our last chat, I asked if doing the research for such projects was a daunting/difficult task. Do you find it even harder as time passes further beyond the period when your subject(s) lived?

I.A.W.: There are deficits and benefits. Set the story in the 1950s and there is a wealth of material to draw upon to get things right, including many people still alive who lived through the time, thousands of movies and books of the time, and a shared cultural understand to which most readers will need no additional introduction. Set the yarn in World War I and there is still a strong shared understanding of the era, so long as the story is set in one of the “famous” parts of World War I, and not in central Asia or somewhere. But settings and circumstance are more open to author interpretation. Go back to Victorian London and we’re close to a fictionalised consensus reality that often digresses quite a bit from a purely historical portrayal.

By the time we get back to the middle ages or to classical periods we have rather less to go on. Readers will bring with them a kind of mental summary of the times and places, which can either be supplemented or contradicted by the present story, but the author has to select which interpretations of history are best relevant for the purpose of storytelling. In these cases research can be harder but sources are fewer, requiring less broad reading.

Recently I’ve been working on three classical novels, a two-part historical fantasy called ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, of which volume one is out in February 2015 and volume two in April 2015, and on a mythological fantasy,

LABOURS OF HERCULES. The former is set in late 3^rd century North Africa, in the crumbling days of the Roman Empire, and I’ve tried to paint in the culture, attitudes, beliefs, society, and behaviours accurate to that time. The idea was to have one fantastic element, a nigh-unstoppable dragon, drop into what is otherwise a normal world of politics, economics, military strategies, and social wranglings. What would a lottery of virgins to feed to the wyrm do to that ordered Roman society?

The Hercules story is set in that semi-mythological continuity established over a millennium by Greek and Roman writers, a collection of tales of heroes and gods as connected and complicated as the modern-day exploits of Marvel and DC comics superheroes. There are all kinds of parallels too; all written over many years for changing societies, by multiple authors with different emphasises, levels of skill, and regard for established canon. My research for LABOURS OF HERCULES was partly about selecting which versions of the source tales to give priority and partly about rooting the fantastic elements of those stories into a consistent, credible, and relate-able civilisation.

TFCE: In the specific case of Saint George and the Dragon, just how fictional or historic is the legend? After all dragons, as they are portrayed in fantasy novels today, didn't really exist, did they?

I.A.W.: The core source of the legend is that medieval best seller The Golden Legend, which at one point in the middle ages had sold more copies than the Bible. The book is a collection of wonder-stories about the lives of the saints, of which St George is the best known and most remembered today. Based on that success came many imitators, and St George became the exemplar of the paladin knight, adopted as patron saint by England, Portugal, and Georgia.

TFCE: Since there's one in the United States, could you please clarify which Georgia?

I.A.W.: Certainly. I'm referring to the Caucasan nation of Georgia, formerly part of the U.S.S.R.

However, the U.S. state of Georgia was named after English King George II, who was named after King George I, who was named after... St. George!

St. George is or was also the former patron saint of Ethiopia, Genoa, Milan, Beirut, Malta, Aragon, Catalonia, and Moscow. Moscow's ancient coat-of-arms shows him slaying a dragon. He is the patron saints of the Boy Scouts of America and of the U.S Army's armor branch.

TFCE: So who was Saint George?

I.A.W.: There are all kinds of arguments about George’s actually identity. In my books, I go with the majority in identifying him as George of Cappadocia, a senior Roman military officer who died under the persecution of Emperor Diocletian at the start of the 4^th century. There are similarly arguments about where ‘Silene’, the place where he fought his dragon and rescued a princess, actually was. Much medieval tourist money depended on the outcome. I’ve plumped with Cyrene, in modern day Libya, because that part of Africa has a long and notorious association with serpents and snake-monsters, and perfectly fitted the rest of the story’s economic and political aspects.

As for the reality of dragon, there are two ways one could take that aspect of the story. Libya still has archaeological and documentary traces of a snake cult, with subterranean carvings and classical accounts. One city of that time in that area was Crocodilopolis, reputedly so named because prisoners there were fed to a sacred crocodile. It’s not impossible to imagine a society where ritual human sacrifice to a huge snake or croc took place until the arrival of a militant Christian knight ended the practice.

Or there’s the way that I took, to dig back into prehistory. After all, reptiles ruled the Earth for three million years, a hundred times longer than humans have managed so far. What if dragons were the apex of dinosaur evolution, sentient, intelligent, dominant, language-using, science-using, what-we’d-call-magic using? What if one of them survived the extinction cataclysm that wiped all traces of their civilisation from the world? What if he awoke from eons of sleep to find a human infestation has crawled across his planet? And what if he was a really, deeply, truly evil bastard?

The dragon is the one fantastic element in this book. There are other monsters, and magic, and rites, and visions, but all the overt supernatural elements process from that one point. The dragon is the change to “proper” history.

That said, the time period contains its own changing belief systems about the world and about supernatural things. In those dying days of empire, when the Romans had all but abandoned Rome and were fighting schismed wars over Byzantium and Nicopolis while barbarians nibbled away their borders, the official Roman pantheon was in decline. New heresies such as outlawed Christianity were growing in strength. It would be impossible to do even a vaguely historic account of St George and the Dragon without addressing issues of faith.

Painting by Briton Riviere

There are no overt miracles in ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, either from the

Christian God of George’s father and of George’s humble monk companion (George himself is not speaking to God at the start of our story, for reasons that become apparent later), or from the Greco-Roman deities of Lady Sabra, so-called “princess of Libya”, daughter of the Roman Cyrenean governor. Those of Christian or pagan faiths will be able to make a case for divine interest in the story anyway, as they do in actual history. Those who would prefer different explanations will be able to comfort themselves with mundane solutions. That is the way faith works–or doesn’t.

That doesn’t stop our protagonists having things to say about religion, though. One of my favourite scenes is Princess Sabra formally addressing her gods to curse her enemies in the way we know from archaeological and literary sources often happened in that era. One might argue that the gods heard her prayers; but the gods help those who help themselves. Another scene I liked has humble Brother Jacob absolutely baffling the dragon’s charms and temptations by contemplating the 23^rd Psalm. Dragons so rarely encounter religious poetry as a means of fending them off.

TFCE: How many times has Saint George and the Dragon been covered in literature before? And how accurate were those past recountings?

I.A.W.: It’s hard now for us to grasp how big a character George was in middle ages writing. The sheer volume of copies of The Golden Legend and its imitators that have come down to us today illustrates how widespread circulation must have been.

By Hans Acker, circa 1440

As for George, as well as being the patron saint of England, Portugal, and Georgia, he is recognized as saintly by the Catholic, Anglican, Lutherian, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches. He’s listed as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers whose intervention Catholicism holds to be particularly efficacious. He is particularly good with leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases. Patronages of Saint George also exist in Aragon, Bulgaria, Catalonia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Palestine, Romania, Russia. Serbia, Syria, and Ukraine, as well as many cities and the Scout Movement. His red cross on white background has contributed to the flags of England, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. And yet, as one early pope said of him, he is amongst those saints whose actual acts “are known only to God”. The church no longer makes dragon-slaying claims for him.

The Victorians were the last people to really like writing St George stories. There’s even a volume about the patron saints of England, Ireland, Scotland, France, and a bunch of other teaming up as knights to go fight evil. It’s that period that emphasises additions like a villainous Moorish knight who kidnaps Princess Sabra, requiring a second lengthy rescue while she must continue to invent ways of preserving her virtue. I’ve ignored these later accretions, not least because of their disturbing racist undertones. If Silene was Cyrene then there’s a pretty good chance that their princess was a person of colour anyhow.

As for accuracy, given that we can’t agree on who “the historical” George was, or where his encounter with “the dragon” took place, it’s hard to judge how accurate various stories were. The middle ages tendency to dress historical figures as then-contemporary knights and to assume that customs and manners were the same in the third as the thirteenth century doesn’t help.

There are some clues to help us, though. The traditional Roman legionary soldier was more or less gone by the third century A.D. A new class of horse-mounted, armoured officer has arisen, the equites–the knight. There were even cataphractii, heavy mounted knights, the tanks of the battlefield. Okay, they hadn’t yet invented things like the stirrup, but they were a good way towards the medieval conception of a knight in shining armour. They even wore cloth surcoats over their mail, so a white tabard with red cross on it is far from impossible.

North African history in the latter half of the third century was characterised by a gradual decay of Roman central authority, a series of revolts from Roman rule, civil war, and a slow climate change that saw formerly fertile farmlands be claimed by the spreading Sahara. It seemed credible to me that under such circumstances there would be no help from central authority for a governor with fantastic claims of draconic attack, especially when his prefecture was so late in making due tax returns. We know that various troop withdrawals left these African provinces dangerously vulnerable to barbarian raids and piracy. We know that the declining economy, mounting security issues, political instability, and religious upheavals were tearing those areas apart. I saw those realms as one big dragon away from reverting to horrible customs of human sacrifice.

TFCE: Was it necessary to take any liberties with the character(s) that others didn't, or fixed any past misconceptions/mistakes?

I.A.W.: George’s main source material comes from an era when characterisation wasn’t that emphasised. He is portrayed as the perfect Christian knight.

Of course, that makes for rather tedious modern reading. It also requires an absolute assumption that George was right in his assertions of faith, in his crusader-like zeal, and in his pious actions. I felt it better to offer a George behind the middle-ages P.R., a rather more flawed and reluctant saint, dragged unwillingly into a situation where he must choose whether to be a good man and do the right thing at incredible cost. We call people who make the difficult right choices in such situations heroes.

Hence we start with George playing Han Solo or Sam Spade, a wandering mercenary knight. He’s been let down by the world, betrayed by his empire and emperor, and has become bitter and cynical about the faith he was brought up in by Christian parents. I think that’s a position many readers will be able to identify with.

True Christian faith is represented by his travelling companion, Brother Jacob, a young monk who would never get lauded as a saint but who, in the New Testament sense, undoubtedly is. Jacob believes his job is “to believe for George until George is ready”. Jacob is as annoying as any earnest door-knocking evangelist, but redeemed in my view by his utter, simple, kind faith and total dedication. Jacob does not have answers for George’s complicated theological questions. He just believes, in God and George.

The other issue with the source material is the princess who is rescued. She isn’t even named until later in George’s publishing history. She gets no dialogue. Her only role is to get chained to a post to be eaten by a dragon and to be rescued by the hero.

That doesn’t fly for modern audiences. It doesn’t sit well with a modern telling of the tale. Why is she at that dragon-post? Was she volunteer or victim? What was she thinking? What did she want? What events had led her to this place and this doom? What did she feel for George? Why should we care about her, other than a very basic woman-in-peril reflex from male readers? Sabra needed work. Sabra needed to be a person, not a plot point.

Sabra got the work. Sabra has as many scenes as George. Sabra has enemies to deal with and a plot line all of her own. Sabra is bloody lethal.

TFCE: The Saint George saga takes place earlier than the legend of Robin Hood. Considering the difference in eras, how “politically correct” were things back in the 1400s, compared to how they are today?

I.A.W.: The middle ages were characterised by a stratified society. The European feudal system placed people very clearly in classes, each with their own laws and duties. While there was, famously “one law for rich and poor alike that forbids begging and sleeping under bridges”, there were in actuality ecclesiastical courts reserved for clergy, royal courts for nobles, trial-by-combat, and a whole range of other legal recourses that the powerful could invoke over the poor.

Slavery still existed, which classed people as animals that were property of others. Serfdom was not much better, forbidding the serf from leaving the land to which they were “tied”, denying them ownership of possessions, the right to marry without their lord’s approval, and other freedoms. It was a world away from our contemporary self-reflections about whether we treat people different from ourselves fairly. Many believed, or purported to believe, that feudalism was God’s natural order.

Women were generally treated as inferior to men, with a very few remarkable and fascinating exceptions. Certainly women of low birth were not accorded much power or respect. Noble women were most valued for their dowries and alliance prospects and as breeders of legitimate heirs. Indeed, medieval law on rape says nothing about the harm done to the female victim but is concerned about compensation due to her male relatives for her loss in value.

The sort of free-speaking, educated, socially-enlightened heroine beloved of our romantic and adventure fiction was very rare in actuality.

Perhaps the most distinctive difference was the utter societal belief in its right to impose its needs and values over those of rivals. Modern critics of the crusader movement tend to judge the Christian knights by different ethical criteria than the Moorish adversaries they displaced. Actually neither side conducted itself well by modern standards, but both were considered exemplary by their own cultures at the time.

The middle ages included first encounters between Europeans and a range of other cultures, especially in Africa and the East, because scholars vary about whether the New World was reached. I find very little primary evidence that either side of these conformations gave much consideration to the culture or needs of the other.

The late Roman setting for ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON offers a different set of social standards. Higher born women had more rights. They could hold property, could divorce, and were often highly educated. Many of them held secondary religious roles within their families or at local temples at some time in their life.

On the other hand, slavery was a fundamental part of Roman culture. The economy depended upon it. Some estimates suggest that one quarter of the population were slaves. Although a huge body of law existed regarding slavery, most of it was about protecting an owner’s asset or establishing how someone might become or cease to be enslaved. The slave him or herself had few personal rights, including any right to object to sale or to sexual exploitation, or even to being killed by their owner. Brother Jacob, an ex-slave himself, has some thoughts upon this in the novel.

One modern prejudice that we rarely see evidenced in Roman literature is skin colour. Emperor Septimus Severus, born in Leptis Magna, Tripolitania, who ruled A.D. 193-211 was of Berber heritage. That probably meant he was dark-skinned, so he is often cited as “the first black Emperor of Rome”. If so, then the five Emperors descended from him may also have had Black African complexions. Likewise Cleopatra may have been dark skinned. That we do not know is a good indicator of how little it mattered to writers at the time.

TFCE: What about your other historical projects you mentioned last time, like the Women of Myth and the possibility of tackling King Arthur?

I.A.W.: LABOURS OF HERCULES is historical, if one is willing to allow mythological elements into the story. I’ve tried to be faithful to what we know of the society in which those events were described as taking place, as the hundred or so footnotes to the novel attest.

WOMEN OF MYTH is already book length but I’d like to add a fourth story to the collection if I can ever find the right way to tell it. One of those stories could easily be classed as a crossover with the Hercules novel since it features some of the same characters, including Hercules.

I already have four or five book’s worth of King Arthur material ready to go. I’m just waiting the right time and market.

Cover to Volume 1

In addition to those, some material I wrote for Pro Se press will be hitting the shops sometime soon. “The Curse of Urania” is a story of the 1920s occult character Semi-Dual. I just proofed a final version of that for an anthology, so it’ll hopefully be coming soon. Likewise a novella called “Race Against Death”, featuring 1930s aviator detective Richard Knight, will be appearing as THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT volume 2. Also scheduled for release are four more alternate-history novellas set in a 10^th century where Christianity never happened and magic never vanished, the BYZANTIUM series. Next up in that run is BYZANTIUM: FIRE AND STONE.

Also written and sent off are two more stories for Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective volumes 8 and 9, another Holmes story set, remarkably, in Elizabethan England, and two different jungle action stories set in the 1930s. I’m really trying for that twelve publications thing this year!

Lurking on the hard drive is THE FALL OF BABEL, a fair play murder mystery set in the Biblical tower just before it comes down. It’s Conan Doyle does Conan. He’s a barbarian king, she’s a sacrificial virgin, together they fight crime! That one turned out so well it’s sitting there for now so I have something to offer if a major publisher ever knocks on the door.

My problem usually isn’t turning this stuff out, it’s getting it to print.

TFCE: By the way, I hope I'm not out of line asking this, but has there ever been a footnote you didn't like? I've even come across a couple in The Transdimensional Transport Company.

I.A.W.: That has certainly become something of a writing mannerism, to the utter frustration of my various publishers. There was even a reference to footnotes I made in my non-fiction essay volume WHERE STORIES DWELL which had a footnote that read “Because footnotes are good”.

I started using them in fiction because I use them all the time in my factual writing and find them so useful. They’re great for offering explanations that allow readers to understand material that may not be common knowledge any more, for offering attributions to facts and quotes, for translating from English to American English for the benefit of trans-Atlantic readers, and for adding to the fun for those who like that kind of diversion but not in-story. So I use ‘em.

Also, they completely baffle Kindle, requiring hours of additional prep work for people assembling my books.

My inspirations for how to do historical material are Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius, Claudius the God, The Golden Fleece, Homer’s Daughter and other fine works, and George MacDonald Frasier, author of the Flashman series and other period pieces. Both of them include copious footnotes and appendices, so I never really questioned whether I should do the same.

I think writers write best when they play “their natural game”. Unfortunately my natural game includes many footnotes.

All of author I.A. (Ian) Watson's work is available either through Amazon.com or at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.htm

Image sources: I. A. Watson, Wikipedia's Public Domain file sharing system, and Clip Art.

A CHAT WITH AUTHOR I. A. WATSON (PART 2 OF 2)

In his writer's blog yesterday, our Editor-In-Chief announced the cancellation of the Pro Se anthology Pro Se Presents.
But amongst the stories in that just released last issue is I. A. Watson's novella: Robin Hood and the Maiden of the Tower; thus giving The Free Choice E-zine the opportunity to finally present the second half of our interview with the author.
If you missed part one of our interview with Ian Watson, who writes under the name I.A. Watson, so as not to be confused with the other wordsmith of the same name, you can find it here.

Pro Se Presents 20, cover by Sean E. Ali

TFCE: Ian, your Robin Hood stories were mentioned briefly during our last discussion, but you have done quite a bit of work with the Sherwood Forest archer and company.

I.A.W.: Correct. Mostly by accident. Soon after I’d starting publishing fiction, I was approached by Airship 27 supremo Ron Fortier about the possibility of a novel. He sent me a list of characters he was interested in publishing and said, “Pick one.”

The one that appealed to me most of all was King Arthur, but I felt that was too big a proposition for a done-in-one book. Of the rest, Robin Hood seemed like a good bet. He’s a local lad to me, and he’s one of fiction’s major archetypes. Who couldn’t have fun writing about him?

So I set to work, with an outline that took the readers through Robin’s first year as an outlaw leader of the free men of Sherwood. Lots of Robin stories feature a bit of an origin, but I really wanted to get deep into what transformed a roguish bad lad into the people’s champion of justice over law. Unfortunately, that story turned out to require three volumes instead of one. Fortunately it nicely separated into three stand-alone stories that mean each volume can be read separately.

Book 1, cover by Mike Manley

ROBIN HOOD: KING OF SHERWOOD starts us off, with Robin accidentally

capturing a highborn damsel and that lady becoming Maid Marion. It show how they chivvy each other into becoming the heroes their age needs.

Book 2, cover by Mike Manley

ROBIN HOOD: ARROW OF JUSTICE tells what happens when folks start robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. The Sheriff doesn’t like it, for starters. That volume also includes probably the best-known Robin Hood story, the archery contest. ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM’S CHAMPION amps the action up as all the consequences of Robin’s rebellion play out. By now we’ve got Prince John, Black Guy of Gisbourne, the Sheriff, and half of England chasing Robin and his men to a really major finale.

The books are produced by Airship 27 in paperback, Kindle, and pdf format, all

Book 3, cover by Mike Manley

linked off my website whose address is down at the bottom of the interview. A short story, ROBIN HOOD AND THE SLAVERS OF WHITBY, is available free online at http://www.planetarystories.com/PulpSpirit14.pdf A Robin Hood comic strip with art by Rob Davis is in ALL STAR PULP COMICS #2.

I’ve also written the novella ROBIN HOOD AND THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER, which appears in issue 20 of Pro Se Presents magazine and takes place after the trilogy. It’s set a couple of years later, when Prince John is consolidating his power, and this time the action takes place in London; the Tower of the title is the Tower of London – and somebody has to break in there!

There’s a couple of other stories that need telling too. The novella ROBIN HOOD AND THE BLACK MONK is sitting on my hard drive right now biding its time. That one’s the final showdown between Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham.

TFCE: I’ve really enjoyed your Robin Hood stories. Considering how much of your overall bibliography it comprises, what attracted you to writing historical fiction?

I.A.W.: I like old stories that have resonance with us and our culture. Characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood are part of our literary DNA. Fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood speak to us from childhood at a very primal level. So I enjoy taking events that everyone has at least heard about and using them as elements of stories told using more modern writing techniques.

Author I. A. (Ian) Watson

For example: ancient Greek entertainers made a living telling tales of their hosts’ famous ancestors. That’s why the thirty-seat Argo has seventy-odd named occupants. Nobody wanted his great-grandfather omitted from the heroes’ list, and the minstrel who wanted his fee knew to expand the roster accordingly. But those tales of Jason and the Argonauts were told in a very different style compared to adventure fantasy stories today. There was little reported dialogue or conversation, little exposition about motive or background. We’re told what the characters did, but not always the why. So a talented writer could come to that story and retell it using contemporary literary methods and find a very compelling adventure drama.

And it’s been done. I recommend Robert Graves’ The Golden Fleece to anyone. Scholarly themed and massively entertaining all at the same time. If there’s anyone I try to emulate when I’m writing, it’s Robert Graves.

Historical fiction comes with other advantages. There’s the amazing backdrop,

which adds another dimension to the reader’s mind’s eye picture of events. There are remarkable developments which might not seem credible as made-up plot twists but that can be justifiably used because one can point to an ancient source and say, “See – it happened!” There are things that “everyone knows” about certain eras and events, so the writer can either use that to reinforce his narrative or else challenge it to wake the readers up when something contrary to what they thought was the case happens.

TFCE: What are the difference(s) between historic and traditional fiction?

I.A.W.: Stories set in the past need to inform the reader about the relevant cultural and technological differences. If the country’s occupied by invaders, then that back story needs to be made clear. If there’s a law demanding that all members of a particular faith wear marks to identify them, then that has to be spelled out. If medical science has not yet understood bacteria, then the audience has to grasp that. All assuming this is knowledge that is significant to how the characters and events of the story interact.

In other words, a modern reader can be expected to know what a character in a contemporary story is doing when he uses the Internet. No exposition is necessary. Readers understand that he can look up the address of a multi-national company and learn something of its sinister CEO. That same reader might need to be warned that traveling from York to London by stagecoach takes two days and requires a stop at a coaching inn half way there or that a feudal serf could not legally own property, not even the clothes he stood in, and required his lord’s permission to marry.

This sometimes requires a certain out of exposition. One tries to avoid, “Well, as you know, Lord Harry, since the imposition of Norman Law after 1066 it has become illegal for peasants and serfs to carry arms or bring hunting dogs into royal forests, on penalty of a hand or eye,” but there is a necessary function to inform modern readers of things that would be common knowledge at the time when the story is set.

Attitudes to women, to different ethnicities, to religion, to disability, and plenty of other things have changed through history as well. There’s a choice before any historical author about how to reflect appropriate mores of the time, a balance between realism, pragmatism, and the sensibilities and expectations of an audience.

One last difference is that the reader might know what’s about to happen. If you set your story in Pompeii 79 A.D., then most of your audience might be expecting a volcanic eruption at some point in the narrative. The author has to take into consideration what a reader might know of events to come and make some use of it.

There’s always a balance to be had, of course, between historical veracity and narrative necessity, but that’s no different from choosing how realistic a modern police procedural should be.

TFCE: Do you find doing the research a daunting/difficult task?

Edward Gibbon

I.A.W.: I’m blessed with a good education – although blessed wasn’t the word I’d have used at school. I have qualifications in history and archeology, so I don’t usually have to dig too far to get the basics. As a hoarder I have a good library – well actually, a library, a study, a dedicated comics room, and an overspill book attic in my house. Most of the standard reference texts are there somewhere (some may have crept into my daughter’s room these days), from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles to a weighty seven-volume tome on the Second World War. When that fails, these days the Internet can usually supply. I rarely need to leave the house to find what I need to know.

The sources of historical accounts vary by era and culture. Everything we know about time-of-Christ Britain was written by Romans, including Julius Caesar who had failed to conquer the country; so everything we read about druids and human sacrifice, about men going to war wearing only woad daubs to show how brave they were, is all filtered through Roman perceptions and Roman propaganda. If one wanted to tell a story of Celtic Britain, one would have to decode and select from writings of the period to assemble the facts one wanted to use. Likewise, one would have to decide what of the various historical reports – that is, things written as histories after the period – one wanted to accept.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

For example, Geoffrey of Monmouth was a twelfth century monk. He wrote a medieval bestseller, the epic History of the Kings of Britain, which starts with the Trojan-descended refugee King Brutus settling London, covers various interesting pre-Roman kings like Bladud the Sorcerer and Shakespeare’s King Lear, and gives us very early stories of Merlin and King Arthur. And that was supposed to be a history book. It was taught as history as late as the eighteenth century. Modern historians despise Geoffrey but I love him. He knew how to write things that were true even if they never really happened!

Should one accord Geoffrey’s work importance in establishing a historic milieu? I think so. Not only did he have excellent narrative instincts, but for half a millennium people believed what he wrote to be the absolute truth; so any tale written in that five hundred years has characters who know history according to Geoffrey.

Sorry, a bit off topic there. Research doesn’t usually bother me. It helps me get into the right mood to write a particular era or style. I often write myself an essay to help me acclimatise the information. Sometimes the essays become features in their own right.

TFCE: Just how fictional, for example, is the legend of Robin Hood, compared to recorded history? In other words: what is reality and what is misconstrued? I know what little remains of the real Sherwood Forest is nowhere near its original size!

I.A.W.: Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Chronicle (1377-1384) says of the year 1283: “Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude, Wayth-men ware commendyd gude. In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale, Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.”

Soon after that, the seminal “first English poem” Piers Plowman mentions him, when the author admits he doesn’t know his Paternoster, but can remember tales of Robin Hood. There’s also a 1439 court case, where the defendant is accused of being “a Robin Hood”; so within two hundred years of the period Robin was said to be around he was a byword for outlawry. The earliest stories of Robin that have come down to us are from the early 15^th century, starting with Robyn hode in scherewode stod and Robin Hood and the Monk.

We have a very clear and detailed picture of life around the time in which Robin Hood is supposed to have been active. This is variously accounted to be during the reign and absence of King Richard the Lionheart and the rulership of his brother Prince, later King, John, or of their father Henry II, in the latter part of the twelfth century. It was a time when the feudal system bit hard. England was still in some ways a conquered, occupied country. It was only 125 years or so since Norman invaders had seized the land, imposing new rules over now-enslaved serfs and impoverished peasants. The international Catholic Church had displaced the indigenous and independent Celtic church and held as much control over a citizen’s soul as the Norman overlords held on his body. It was a time when law was used to perpetrate and perpetuate injustices, a time ripe for a folk hero to make a stand.

Robin Hood Statue in Nottingham

That’s not to say there was a Robin Hood; only that one was needed. It’s easy to see why stories of a laughing outlaw who thumbed his nose at authority and stood up for the little people might become such popular tavern fare.

There a small industy out there trying to find “the real Robin”, most of which I’ve managed to offend with my trilogy. It’s the only stuff I’ve written that has provoked letters to the local newspaper and an item on the radio! Nottingham’s multi-million pound tourist industry depends on its Hood connections, so when I followed the earliest traditions in placing Robin’s start in neighbouring Yorkshire (where Barnsdale Forest is), I was kicking over a hornet’s nest. A couple of years ago I even heard from the current Sheriff of Nottingham about it when we met at a dinner.

That said, I’ve drawn my cast and events from the oldest sources available, making choices where there were conflicting versions that best suited the story I wanted to tell, adding in motivations and explanations for events the original chroniclers didn’t bother to footnote. I’ve compromised where reality would trip up a good story – for example, I’ve only peripherally acknowledged that Norman lords, Saxon peasants, and educated clergy spoke three different languages in this era – and I’ve proceeded from the opinion that people will be people whatever their time of birth or social setting. I suspect an oily diplomat, blunt housewife, charming conman, or dedicated soldier are the same from ancient Babylon to distant future Alpha Centuri.

TFCE: Have you taken any liberties with the Robin Hood character(s) that others didn't, or fixed any past misconceptions/mistakes?

I.A.W.: The further back one digs for source material, the more range of choices one has, while still staying true to some version of the character. With Robin Hood, the big choice is whether to make him noble or common. The earliest stories call him a yeoman, that is a free commoner. He’s a low-born lad made good, “one of us”. It was only in Shakespeare’s time, when Robin Hood first appeared in stage plays, that he was associated with the Earl of Huntingdon and assumed to be of noble birth. Everybody loves a lord.

In the end I went with common Robin, the people’s hero. In part that was to avoid the somewhat dated and tacky trope of the superior individual deigning to join the downtrodden people and lead them to success through his innate superiority. In part it was for the fun of having low Robin and highborn Marian interact. For the pro-noble Hood faction, I did establish that the Earl of Huntingdon was probably his birth-father; just not on the right side of the sheets.

TFCE: Considering the difference in eras, how “politically correct” were things back then, compared to how they are today?

I.A.W.: Sticking with Robin Hood, recent versions have become very sensitive on issues of race. This was the time of the Third Crusade, Richard’s reason for leaving the country. Various TV and movie stories have felt it necessary to introduce a wise, noble, and sympathetic Moor to offer some kind of political correctness. Since the original stories have nothing to say about crusading at all, other than to acknowledge it was happening half a world away, I’ve omitted such indulgence. I don’t feel I’m being racist or endorsing religious violence by not bending a story out of shape to address it.

Likewise, various modern incarnations have shied away from Friar Tuck because he is a Christian religious figure. Depicting genuine Christian faith is a modern taboo. Almost all the original sources reference Christianity. On the one had there are the venal and scheming bishops and prelates of a rich and corrupt institution who are amongst Robin’s targets. On the other we have Robin and John’s avowed devotion to the Virgin Mary and Tuck’s flawed but practical Christianity. I’ve tried hard to depict both sides of the story taking place in a world where religion was a pervasive feature of everyday life. There’s plenty of nasty churchmen, and Tuck is a very fallible whiskey priest, but just occasionally when he acts or speaks, it is with true faith and proper Christian intent.

Friar Tuck

One of my favorite scenes is a campfire conversation between Marian’s knightly father and Friar Tuck, wherein the old crusader demands to know why a monk of Christ would associate with outlaws. Tuck replies:

“If our Saviour was amongst us in flesh today, Christ incarnate, where do you think he’d be? In a cathedral with those preferment-chasing modern Pharisees? At court dining with Prince John and his toadies, watching the bear-baiting before the whores come in? In Nottingham with the Sheriff helping him count up his taxes? Or with us in the villages, giving food to the sick, supporting the widows and the orphans, standing up for those the world has trampled down? Where do you think?” The fat friar reached for his tankard. “I’ll wait for him with the outlaws, thank you very much.”

TFCE: And what about Maid Marion? The 2006 BBC (America) adaptation had her take quite an active role, compared to, say Olivia de Havilland in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn in the title role.

I.A.W.: Marion is quite a late addition to the Robin Hood legends, although she was a legendary character in her own right in her own stories before ever she crashed into Robin’s tale.

TFCE: Really? Afraid I’m unaware of Marion having a solo career before Robin.

I.A.W.: There’s a very old tradition in northern Europe of May Day festivities – maypoles, morris dances, races, country masques, puppet shows and so on, along with some even more rural customs in the fields after sunset. There are traditional characters in these mummers plays, dating back to at least the fourteenth century and possibly much earlier. Marion is the traditional heroine in those stories. The characters are often called “the Knight”, “the Saracen”, “the Fool”, “the Devil”… and “the Marion.”

Marion painting by William C. Wontner

French born minstrel Adam the Hunchback, composing around the late 1200s, only a hundred years after the time of Robin’s stories, wrote the musical play Jeu de Robin et Marion, now the earliest surviving French secular music, but that Robin was a simple shepherd lad. Even then, Marion was a forest maid. It’s held likely that there are whole Marion story-cycles that we’ve lost now, where she was the star.

Meanwhile, Robin Hood was associated with Clorinda, Queen of the Shepherdesses. She’s the earliest heroine in his tales (and in “The Slavers of Whitby”). Robin was quite established as a hero when Marion first appeared in his stories in the sixteenth century.

Marion has also become associated with a real-life historical figure, Matilda Fitzwalter (or Fitzwarren), daughter of one of the Earls who spearheaded the campaign against King John that led to his being forced to sign the Magna Carta. Real-life rumours of John’s attempts to seduce or ravish Matilda are mixed with legendary tales of his designs upon the fair Marion.

In my novels, I try and plot a good narrative course between all the different possibilities, but when we first meet Lady Matilda Fitzwarren in KING OF SHERWOOD, she’s on her way to Kirklees Abbey in disgrace after deterring Prince John’s advances with the assistance of a chamber-pot!

TFCE: Now that’s definitely more in keeping with the image of Maid Marion associated with Robin Hood today.

I.A.W.: True. These days it’s common to toughen up a historic heroine, give her fighting skills or command responsibilities to show she was liberated and capable even in an age where women were marginalised. That’s really not required with Maid Marion. One of her earliest Sherwood appearances has her disguised as a man, fighting Robin to a standstill before they discover each others’ identities. Marion has rarely been portrayed as weak, helpless, passive, or quiet. One ancient source described her: “A smirking wench, none of your coy dames.”

I wanted a version of Marion that could hold her own against a bouncing, exuberant, irreverent Robin. She had to be able to shine beside him, turn him from an outlaw lout to a forest hero. I was really lucky that after a while the two characters clicked in my head and provided their own dialogue thereafter. The problem was shutting them up.

1976 movie with sad ending

TFCE: Considering how some of the movies ended, either in "happily ever after" mode or more dire, like 1976's  Robin and Marian with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the title characters, where they die at the end; did the historical Robin and Marion ever have any children?
I.A.W.: There's nothing about it in any of the older (pre 20th century) stories, but then again there's nothing about any of the merry men's family lives, or the Sheriff's. Except if we follow the Elisibethan strand that identified Marian with Matilda de Fitzwalter, who had known issue by a husband not called Robin Hood (but who might have been Robin turned legit under a different name, I suppose). Her father was the first signatory of the Magna Carta after leading "the Baron's Revolt" that brought King John to heel. Or if we follow the other Elizibethan stage tradition that first made Robin the Earl of Huntingdon (who was actually crusader Prince David of Scotland). He definitely had descendants, one of whom was the famous Scots ruler Robert the Bruce.

TFCE: Obviously there is a lot of material to work with. Other than that yet to be published novella you mentioned earlier (Robin Hood and the Black Monk), is there any chance you will ever return to Sherwood Forest?

I.A.W.: There are a few additional Robin stories that I have considered telling, even to the point of contemplating a fourth volume in the series, but there is definitely at least one more I need to write. Every hero needs an ending. When the moment comes, I’ll get back to THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD. That’s as much a part of his lore as his contest for the golden arrow, or his assisting an impoverished knight, or his battle with Black Guy of Gisbourne, or any of his other deeds.

In fact, one thing we often miss out on today in our serial fiction is that final ending, the last bow shot. Batman and James Bond won’t ever really die with a lasting, iconic canon story. Because of that, for all their brilliance, their myths resonate just a little less brightly. King Arthur’s last stand at the Field of Camlaan and Robin Hood’s final bow shot into the forest elevate them to legend.

George & Dragon painting by Briton Reviere

Myths and legends after that? ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON is one scene off finished. Then I’m planning a volume of stories about Women of Myth. So far I’ve got Cinderella and Blodeuwedd the Flower Maiden done (that name’s pronounced Blood-eye-weath, by the way, saying ‘weath’ as in weather; she’s from The Mabinogion). I’m part-way through Hesione’s story, and then I’m going for Lilith. I’ve got a three-volume novel about the sinking of mythical Ys to run through a third draft of. And there’s lots and lots and lots of King Arthur material stacking up.

TFCE: And that’s on top of everything we discussed in our previous interview.

I.A.W.: These publishers are just so slow! It’s like they don’t want to publish monthly novels by me!

TFCE: Give them time Ian. As great a writer as you are, I (for one) am just not that fast a reader.

All images accompanying this article were either provided by the author or Wikipedia.

A CHAT WITH AUTHOR I. A. WATSON (PART 1 OF 2)

Today, THE FREE CHOICE E-ZINE is honored to talk with the very prolific and entertaining author Ian Watson, whose work is published under the byline I. A. WATSON, to avoid confusion with the other writing Ian Watson. So Ian, just what have you been up to lately?

I. A. Watson

I.A.W.: Recently a lot of projects have ganged up on me. Airship 27 has just released ZEPPELIN TALES, featuring my story “Airship 27”. It’s a tale of romance and adventure, when disgraced Navy weatherman Finian follows mysterious blonde Verity on the deadly maiden flight of “Airship 27”. As the blurb says: “What is the secret in Shed 13? What lies behind the strange sky phenomenon known as the fall streak? Who plots the destruction of crew and ship alike? And what are the strange creatures that dwell beyond the clouds?”

That was almost an accidental project. I needed to write something short to “cleanse my palette” between two bigger projects, and I thought a contribution to publisher Ron Fortier’s appeal for zeppelin tales might be just the thing. Unfortunately, once I got into the writing, trying to channel Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Jules Verne, and a pinch of H. P. Lovecraft, it became clear this was going to be anything but short. Hence the novella.

Cover art by Mike Fyles for Airship 27

Naming the airship in my story Airship 27 (after the publisher’s company) was pure cheek on my part. Ron Fortier has a fondness for airships, so it was really difficult for me not to give him a cameo within my tale too.

That’s just the latest of several short stories I've completed for anthologies – a Spider/Black Bat meeting for Moonstone in their THE SPIDER: EXTREME PREJUDICE volume, a pair of SHERLOCK HOLMES: CONSULTING DETECTIVE stories for volumes five and six of the Airship 27 series, an adventure featuring another classic character for Pro Se’s Pulp Obscura imprint, a one-off tale about what happens to a superhero’s girlfriend after he dies, a jungle girl tale, and a couple of magazine stories, including “Mr. Li’s Laundry of Doom” for WONDERLUST magazine.

TFCE: Something tells me that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I.A.W.: I’m surprised I haven’t gone through more keyboards. I've also recently written a story for GRAND CENTRAL NOIR, an anthology for charity that might just have become my best-selling work to date. I've done a couple of Robin Hood novellas, one for issue 20 of Pro Se Presents magazine and one to save for later – and a short Robin Hood comic strip with Rob Davis for ALL STAR PULP COMICS #2.

I've more or less finished a two-volume novel called ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, despite not actually discussing it with any publisher; I just wanted to write it. For the same reasons I’m rattling off another novel without even a working title yet about a modern-day jobbing occultist in Soho, London, and his weird little world. I’m 80,000 words in plus six associated short stories and there’s no end in sight. And just last week I was commissioned for another novella set in the 1930s, so I’m about 29,000 words into that. It’s a shame it’s only supposed to be 30,000 words long, because I suspect it’ll take rather more than my remaining 1,000 words to get to the big finish. The villain has just showed up to boast and explain the plot.

TFCE: I’m dreading to ask what you do for fun.

I.A.W.: I've started going over some of my earlier work, revising it so it doesn't make me cringe, getting it fit

to do something with. I've found a bunch of stories that might well cluster together for an anthology volume sometime. I’m about half-way through editing them.

Finally, Tommy Hancock of Pro Se Press talked me into writing my first non-fiction book, a collection of articles and essays about writing and odd people throughout history. That’s WHERE STORIES DWELL, due out around the end of the year.

TFCE: With everything else you have going right now, how did that come about?

I.A.W.: I came to write WHERE STORIES DWELL almost exactly the same way I got my first non-fiction in publication. Around four or five years ago, I got hauled into a project by White Rocket supremo Van Allen Plexico. I’d written some articles on the Avengers superhero team for his two essay books ASSEMBLED! and ASSEMBLED 2. He passed my name on to Ron Fortier, Commodore of Airship 27 publications, who needed a Sherlock Holmes story, stat, to meet a deadline. I think Van must have described me using the words “fast and cheap”.

I've been writing as a hobby all my life, but I've shied away from fiction publication because when your hobby becomes a job you need a new hobby, right? On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes is a fun character to write, and I hate saying no to creative folks with big ideas. So I wrote the story and thought no more of it.

TFCE: But obviously, and thankfully, you were wrong.

Art by Mike Manley for Airship 27

I.A.W.: Right, but here’s where the namedropping gets really bad. I went to a Buckingham Palace garden

party – that’s a whole other interview really – and was talking to a Personage there about my brush with publishing. It was suggested to me that I should consider pitching a book. The argument was that the discipline of writing to deadline with an editor could only improve my abilities. At that time Airship 27 wanted stories featuring classic heroes, and Robin Hood’s really an archetype. So I went for it. The odd route was: writing for fun, editor asked for material, someone at a party gave me a push, I fell.

TFCE: It sounds like you were a bit reluctant to undertake the WHERE STORIES DWELL assignment. Why?

I.A.W.: I’d already written quite a bit of my first non-fiction volume for my own interest. I often run off little articles about things that catch my attention, either to help me process and remember them, or just because I like telling stories. When I’m researching a historical period for a fiction tale, I often write a factual essay to get me into the era and the mood. Then I inflict these articles on other poor writers who share mailing lists with me.

One day, the unquenchable Mr. Hancock e-mailed me about collecting the stuff into a book; except that Tommy’s e-mails are never simply a little ping of the inbox. Somehow Tommy has the talent to make every message seem like it’s been written on the wall by a blazing finger. Anyhow, he wanted a book. I needed convincing. He gave me the finger.

And then I went to another party. I’m not really a party animal. I think I've now mentioned both social events I've been to this millennium. It was just that, in real life I set up projects for people or troubleshoot businesses, and I’d happened to make (or save) this particular company an awful lot of money, and they insisted I come to their event. They took over most of a county for it, I think, and I was the only person there who didn't arrive in a private helicopter. Long story short, I got talking to a lady whose name I cannot recall but whose dress I can remember exactly, what little of it there was. She convinced me that I was interesting enough to, um, go away and write down things I said. From her perspective, preferably in a dark room, far away. In a different county.

Anyway, I've been quite busy recently, and I've got a lot of “latest work” piled up on the desk right now.

Art by Ingrid Hardy for Airship 27

TFCE: So we now know basically how you became a writer, but why do you write what you do?

I.A.W.: I’m a big fan of old stories. I don’t mean stuff that was published a mere century ago or whatever, although I read and like a lot of that. I’m thinking of the Greek and Norse myths, of the medieval legends, of the Biblical narratives, of fairy tales that go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Those stories are deeply ingrained in our society. They shape it - and us.

All the great stories of today are recombinant retellings of older ones. Jason and the Argonauts is the archetypal team-goes-on-a-quest adventure. Robin Hood is the lone maverick who defies the system to bring true justice. King Arthur’s round table is the heroes’ varsity, banded together for common noble cause. Perseus and Andromeda or St George and the Dragon are template hero-kills-the-monster-saves-the-princess stories. I love ‘em all!

When I write, all those things are unavoidably crammed into my head. I’m not really interested in telling slice-of-life/world-is-a-bleak-place mundane narratives. I want big concepts, I want good and evil. I want hard choices and unexpected twists. I like stories with deep roots, old associations, hidden meanings, layers.

Those ancient storytellers in their fire lit caves, those cloistered monks with unfettered imaginations, those starving dime-a-word writers at their battered typewriters, they all knew that they had to grab their audience and hold it. They did it by going for the stuff that matters most to us – life and death, hope, love, betrayal, danger, triumph, tragedy. They did it by dazzling the minds and quickening the hearts of their readers through words and plots that spoke to the intellect and the emotions. On my best days that’s what I’m aspiring to emulate when I sit down to write.

TFCE: So you apply the lessons of the past to today when you write?

Cover by Bryan Fowler, from Airship 27

I.A.W.: Where applicable, yes. Editors or publishers often ask me to write stories featuring established characters. Those are challenges because one wishes to honour the work of those characters’ creators and delight fans of that work, while telling a new story with something fresh to say. I've done half a dozen Sherlock Holmes mysteries now (I've even got an award on my mantel for one of them). I’ve told stories about detective airman Richard Knight, about African adventurer-for-hire Armless O’Neil, about Sinbad the Sailor, Harry Houdini, the Spider, the Black Bat, and plenty of others. I enjoy the discipline of having to follow another creator’s lead – and I love to dig back to the archetypes behind the story.

Other times I’m working with fellow writers creating new collaborative mythologies. My contribution to these efforts is often in the world-building, drawing on the mythic roots I was talking about. For example, my short story in BLACKTHORN: THUNDER ON MARS, and the subsequent novels BLACKTHORN: DYNASTY OF MARS, and BLACKTHORN: SPIRES OF MARS was underpinned by all sorts of background material I generated, some of which is available for inspection at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/blackthorn/whoswho.htm and the pages linked off it. I was similarly enthralled by the historical planning necessary for the GIDEON CAIN: DEMON HUNTER anthology.

Art by Adam Diller, White Rocket Books

TFCE: But what inspires you to write?

I.A.W.: Funny story. After my visit yesterday to a parent/teacher evening at my son’s school, his classmatesasked him if his father was a member of the Mafia. I went straight there from work, business-suited and black-long coated, and I suppose I trailed the grim professional demeanor I need to adopt as a management consultant and business troubleshooter. In my view, I probably looked more Russian gangster than Italian.

Anyway, my day job in the business world is getting projects off the ground, sorting them out if they falter, and making things happen. Actually, that does sound like a Mafia job. It requires a lot of fast-talking, a lot of hard-headed planning, tough, sometimes horrible decisions, and a work persona that keeps people listening to what I tell them.

So when I get home, when I relax, I want to do something entirely different. Fiction and essay writing are escapes, very different from preparing business plans or development assessments or redundancy lists. I can sit alone in my study all night, without anyone arguing except the characters in my head. I can make worlds with narrative sense to them. I can travel to times and places far away from grey office rooms. So I write to escape.

TFCE: A lot of people are avid readers, but never have any interest in becoming a writer. What first sparked your interest in writing?

I.A.W.: I first told stories to amuse playmates as a child. Then I wrote stories and plays for friends to act as a teenager. My first theatre directing credit was at age sixteen, for a play I’d written. Later I wrote stories for my wife, and after that for my children. My daughter is probably my most prominent reader now, and my severest critic. So although I write to escape, I also write to entertain. I enjoy communicating the worlds and words that were in my head with other people. Even writing is something of a performance art.

Finally, I suppose when I’m not working for the Mafia, I like to make people happy. Writing stories is often an attempt to do that. Whether it makes a small-print publisher or online magazine editor happy, or a member of my family grin, or a paying audience of book-purchasers feel they spent their money well, I like the idea that I’ve done something that helped. In fact a few publishing projects I've been involved in, like this year’s ALL STAR PULP COMICS #2 and GRAND CENTRAL NOIR have been charity fundraisers, so they tick the boxes twice, once for hopefully giving folks an enjoyable story and once for raising some cash for much-needed good causes.

TFCE: Considering our conversation so far, what has influenced your style and technique?

The Saint (logo)

I.A.W.: I read a lot as a child. Some seminal formative authorsinclude J.R.R. Tolkein, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Leslie Charteris (The Saint), T.H. White, Robert E. Howard, Bram Stoker, William Hope Hodgson, Sir Walter Scott, and the books The Good Companions and Watership Down. I also discovered Shakespeare, but that was more through acting than reading. At university I discovered Anne McCaffery, M.R. James, Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett, Raymond Chandler, and H.P. Lovecraft. All of those must have left their mark because I still catch myself recycling phrases or situations of theirs if I’m not careful.

But alongside that I was massively influenced by comic books. I stumbled across a UK reprint of some Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four issues and that hooked me into the Marvel universe. Those early tales of Spider-Man, FF, X-Men, Doctor Strange, and especially the Avengers really spoke to me. I was an avid comics collector for thirty-five years.

The influence of those comics was incalculable. The serial nature appealed to me, and has tended me towards long-running series in my own writing. The interactions and banter of those flawed, yet heroic early Marvel characters informed my own growing perception of how to effectively use a cast. The reveals and sub-plots and cliffhangers all shaped my own style, and still do.

Finally, very few British children of my age grew up without exposure to Doctor Who. I was, and am, a massive fan of the series. It’s a great programme that recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary! For a slightly odd child who was sometimes “too brainy” it was a massively life-affirming thing to watch a hero who won by being smart, and who saved the day because he was different from everyone else. There is a basic decency and underlying eccentricity about the programme that has somehow, without me ever intending it, suffused almost everything I write.

TFCE: With everything you've done and have in progress, what would be your dream project?

I.A.W.: A while ago, in correspondence with Pro Se overlord Tommy Hancock, he pointed out that I was

St. George by Hans Acker, Circa 1440

unusual in not having a “signature” character, as many prolific writers do these days. He’s right. I haven’t yet established a series or primary protagonist I could really call “my own”. So an ideal project would give me the chance to develop some of the ideas in my head and on my hard drive into an ongoing series with characters that are mine, all mine, and whose direction and fate lie solely with me.

Nowadays I vary my fiction writing time between responding to publisher or editor requests for stories on subjects they set and writing stories that nobody has asked for but that interest me. I’ve been working on that huge ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON story for a couple of years now, and it’s complete now at around 160,000 words except for a final scene – but I have absolutely no idea what to do with it next! The same’s true of a World War II-based Saturday-matinee-style fantasy adventure that’s been awaiting a last-draft proofread for a year so far. And for a murder-mystery set in the Biblical Tower of Babel. It would be lovely to place some of these at some point so that readers could (hopefully) enjoy them.

TFCE: With such a busy schedule, where do you foresee yourself within the next few years?

I.A.W.: I have a vision of a fat, bald, gurning madman in some dirty and cluttered attic typing away at a grubby keyboard, not speaking to anyone for weeks on end, obsessively typing out words. Perhaps occasionally I will mutter to myself.

And I will finally learn to keep my sentence length and commas under control.

TFCE: With such a large bibliography to your credit, is there any character you would love to write, but have yet to have the opportunity to do so?

I.A.W.: Tough question. It depends on the genre and on the suspension of current copyright law, which are governed by different rules here in Europe than elsewhere.

In detective fiction, I’d really want to produce some new material for Simon Templar, the Saint. I’m a big fan of Charteris’ early work. The later stuff, much of which was ghost-written by others, is interesting but can’t compete. I’d want a Saint who runs around with the glorious Patricia Holm, who spars with and infuriates the gum-chewing Inspector Teal, who fights alongside big-hearted Hoppy Uniatz. I could so do a series with that Simon Templar and his war upon the ungodly.

In science fiction, I’d enjoy a go at Lois McMasters Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series – when she’s finished with it. It’s an excellent set-up full of rich nuanced characters, and I’d love to try my hand at it.

For horror, I’d enjoy a chance to redo the original penny dreadful serial Varney the Vampire for a modern audience. It’s been such an influential tale in the development of the genre, but it gets no respect or regard. Originally published serially in 220 chapters from 1845-47, predating Dracula by nearly forty years, the rambling 667,000 word story would strike most modern readers as slow and soapy, but its got a compelling core concept and it’s ripe for a modern retelling.

For historical series I’d probably pick George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman, even though the research required to get to half of what the original author simply held in his head would be massive. Fraser hinted at, but never really covered Harry Flashman’s exploits in the American Civil War and I always regretted that he never explained about the rogue’s second meeting with Abraham Lincoln or how he came to be decorated for merit and valour by both Unionists and Confederates.

In the adapted-from-other-media category, it would have to be Doctor Who. As I mentioned, I’m a big fan and the series has shaped me. I’d enjoy a chance to chronicle the first or seventh incarnation of the Doctor. Actually, I got a chance to write a pastiche story for an upcoming new SF series that allowed me to channel my inner Who-writer; that project should be announced presently.

TFCE: With everything we've discussed, what's next for Ian Watson?

Artist(s) unknown

I.A.W.: That depends on publishers. There’s plenty of things out there in the queues waiting to go to press. I've mentioned the forthcoming Pro Se non-fiction WHERE STORIES DWELL, the first in their new Pulp Studies imprint. Any day now the weird fantasy magazine WONDERLUST will be out with my short story “Mr. Li’s Laundry of Doom”. I’ve turned in work for SHERLOCK HOLMES: CONSULTING DETECTIVE volume 5, the most unusual Holmes story I've ever written and one I don’t think anyone had done before like that, and another mystery for CONSULTING DETECTIVE 6. White Rocket will be bringing out an anthology of tales about a classic historic fictional character sometime soon that will include my Lovecraft-tinted offering. Pro Se’s Pulp Obscura library is due to expand with some more work of mine about a classic occult hero. Airship 27 intends a series about a real-life person’s fictional adventures and I've turned in my work for that one. And just yesterday, Pro-Se Tommy talked me into writing a Richard Knight novella sometime in the next four weeks.

That should keep me busy for now.

TFCE: Perhaps, but we are not done with Ian folks, for there will be a follow up interview later on where we discuss Ian's historical fiction in greater detail, especially his visits to Sherwood Forest and writing the adventures of Robin Hood. Until then…

All of Ian's work is available via Amazon through its respective publishers, but for a complete list of his published works and links to free stories, visit his personal website at:

http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.htm

For more specific Robin Hood material, including maps and character profiles, feel free to visit

http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/robinhome.htm

and for additional Blackthorn stuff, including a full online novel, SPIRES OF MARS, visit

http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/blackthorn/blackthornindex.htm

All accompanying images provided either by the author, Wikipedia, or Google Search.