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of seven stories I wrote for the first six volumes of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, plus an additional unpublished tale, “The Adventure of the Failing Light”, pitting our investigators against the real-life mystery disappearance of three keepers from a lonely Outer Hebrides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 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.