An Interview with the Authors of the Steel Seraglio: Mike, Linda and Louise Carey
Tuesday, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:19pmThe Steel Seraglio is a great read. I've been excited about this book since reading its companion chapbook, The Seven Djinni back in October. And so I was very pleased that the authors of The Steel Seraglio were kind enough to stop by our website and chat about the writing of their new book, the perils of Djinnis granting wishes, and the importance of stories.
The Steel Seraglio came about?
: Can you tell our readers a little about how: It has a long and circuitous backstory. There was a time when I was pitching an earlier, simpler version of it as a comic book idea. It would have had to be a Vertigo or an indie book, but I couldn't get anyone excited about it in the shape in which it existed then. So I put it on the back burner for a while. Then there was a time when Lin, Lou and I were talking about possible ideas for a joint writing project, and I mentioned what was for me the core of the story -- the women becoming an army and taking the city from which they'd been exiled. Lin and Lou liked it a lot, and the first thing they did was to start differentiating the female protagonists, which I hadn't done at all up to that point.
: Once the women had taken over the city there was the question of how they were going to run it. So I came up with the idea of an older woman, one of the senior concubines, who'd be the unofficial leader because of her vast experience. She's more-or-less lost her looks, but she's had a lifetime of understanding men and winning them over, and the sultan got into the habit of consulting her on political matters. This became Gursoon, and we had a lot of fun with her.
: And then Lou came up with the character of Rem, and a lot of things came into very sharp focus. I'd already invented Zuleika, so we had our triumvirate -- or whatever the female equivalent of a triumvirate is.
: What was the collaborative process like, having the family write together? Was it difficult to find a collective author's voice which was unique from your individual styles?
: At first it was difficult to figure out how exactly the collaboration was going to work, but once we'd decided on the division of labour things went pretty smoothly. I really enjoyed working with mum and dad -- I think my favourite part of collaborating with them was the lengthy discussions we had. Throughout the planning and writing process we had semi-regular working lunches where we just chatted about the direction the novel was taking, the development of the different characters, and the general shape of the plot. It was great being able to spend time exploring a creative world with my parents, finding out how they function as creators and how they craft stories. : The great thing about collaborating was that some of those meetings would move the whole story in a different direction: one of us would come up with a new character, or say, "We need this to happen" -- and suddenly there would be a new development that felt as if it should have been there all along. It was an exciting process. We didn't always agree with each other -- I remember a couple of 2-1 votes -- but I think all the important decisions were unanimous, even if it took a while to get there.
: We put a lot of time into harmonising the narrative style. We all wrote sample passages in what we thought of as Rem's voice, and read them aloud to each other. Then we talked -- a lot -- about what worked and what didn't, and converged on a voice that felt comfortable for all of us. Even after that, though, it took a while to get our ear in. Some of the early chapters ended up being changed a lot.
: The importance of story and the telling of tales run through the novel, which stories made you three wish to be writers?
Lucifer, and I remember just being amazed that my own father could handle words with so much eloquence and power. Before that point. I think I'd always just unconsciously assumed that authors were magical people, with talents far surpassing any I could hope to possess. Knowing that my dad could write, and write well, made me think that I could do it too.
: It's kind of difficult to say; I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, so it's hard to pin down a single story or group of stories which put the idea into my head. Dad's writing had a huge impact on me in terms of convincing me that I could write in the first place. I must have been about eight years old when I read my first issue ofThe Wolves of Willoughby Chase, set in an alternate 19th Century England. My own writing started with imitations of those books. I went on to study English Lit at university and discovered so many inspirational writers -- stories that make you want to tell stories too -- that it's hard to pin down any one. I suppose the two writers who have given me the most lifelong delight, in different ways, are and . But with the writers you love the most, it's not really a matter of imitating them -- you're just glad you share the same planet.
: I've enjoyed alternate-worlds stories ever since I discovered at about seven: she wrote a huge number of kids' and adults' books, but my favourites were a series that started withThe Steel Seraglio in a "lost time" of our own world rather than within an entirely fictional one?
: Why set: I think a large part of that was about keeping faith with the source material. And probably the other big issue was the sexual politics. Setting the story in a pre-capitalist Middle East, even if the exact historical period is vague, brings real-world expectations about gender relations, and we play off those expectations very consciously and deliberately all the way through the story.
: It was important to us that Rem should be able to speak to the reader as a contemporary -- which allows her to act as a bridge between the experiences of the characters in the story and the lived experience of a present-day audience. That only works if her future is our present.
The Steel Seraglio?
: Is there any chance you'd return to the world of: I'd do it like a shot. We talked about an Anwar Das novel as our next joint outing, but we've opted to do something a bit more radical. There's lots of potential...not for a sequel, exactly, but for a revisiting.
: Same here! We had so many ideas when planning the novel which never made it into the finished thing; I would love to go back and give them stories of their own. The world of Seraglio was a fun one to inhabit, and I think it's robust enough to stand up to some more exploration.
: Definitely: there are characters and themes that we'd love to revisit. Maybe not the City itself, but all the things round the edges.
: I love your description of the Djinni as "the axle on which the world turns." What would motivate each of you to seek out such beings, and what would you ask of them?
: I'd ask for something big and reckless. Say...a world in which anyone who actually wanted to be a leader -- a president, a prime minister, or whatever -- was magically prevented from being one. I think we'd do a lot better if our statesmen and stateswomen weren't always wealthy sociopaths, but the logic of the political race makes it hard for sane people to get a look in.
: Given the way their gifts turn out in our stories, I'd be chary of asking them for anything at all. Or...okay, following Mike, how about a world where there's an absolute link between fanatical, intolerant beliefs and early heart-attacks?
And now I'm already thinking how that one could rebound on me.
: Like mum, I'd be pretty hesitant about asking for a favour from anything that could kill me with a thought. If I ever went looking for the Djinni, I think it would be to satisfy my desire for wild adventures and strange sights, rather than with any specific request in mind. I'd just like to see what they looked like, really.
: What's next for the Careys?
The Steel Seraglio in that it's a narrative with lots of different strands and a large cast. You could say that the physical journey in Seraglio becomes a journey through different time periods in the second book -- and the supernatural or fantasy elements are maybe a little more prominent. We're really looking forward to it. Steel Seraglio was a liberating experience for all of us, and we've got a whole bunch of ideas for how to take those narrative freedoms further.
: Our second outing as a trio is going to be a novel with a very different setting and a very different set of characters. But it's similar toSee also:
Book Trailer for the Steel Seraglio
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