Q: What was it about the setting of The Grand Dark that drew you? It feels as though it came first and then the story within it – or was it the other way around?
RK: All of my previous work had been set in real places, primarily Los Angeles and San Francisco. With The Grand Dark, I wanted to build my own world from the ground up. The character of Largo appeared pretty much at the same time as I was creating the city of Lower Proszawa in my mind. I wanted someone somewhat innocent and with very little power to contrast with the weight and complexity of the city. But he had to be fluent in the streets. Largo could have been a crook, but instead I made him a bicycle messenger. Someone at the mercy of the weather, the traffic, and moody cops.
Q: What fears did you have about moving away from Sandman Slim and into different waters?
RK: I was very nervous. Largo was the opposite of my best-known characters, especially James Stark, aka Sandman Slim. Stark is confident and powerful. Largo is just the opposite. His defining characteristic is the constant fear he lives with because of his brutal childhood. But Largo isn’t a wimp. He finds his strength as the book progresses. Stark, and even Coop in my caper novels, were already strong and didn’t need a lot of lessons. People associated me with that kind of character and I got some pushback at first. But now that the book is out, readers seem to be coming around to Largo and the tough time I give him in The Grand Dark.
Q: Some critics have said that speculative fiction, no matter what time period it’s set in, is about the times in which it’s being produced. Do you think that’s true of The Grand Dark, and why or why not?
RK: Trust me, this book wouldn’t have been nearly as dark if I’d written it at a different time and under a different president. We’re seeing the rise of a cruel, fascist ethos around the country. For me, it feels as if we’re hurtling toward some kind of great calamity, which is what’s happening to Lower Proszawa in the book.
Q: Does having written for comics shaped your novel writing process? Do you have a vision for a graphic novel version of The Grand Dark?
RK: I’ve always been a visual writer, so comics were a natural extension for me. Writing both comic and, now, film scripts has helped me break down stories to their basic components and put them back together again, scene by scene.
Q: What’s coming up next for you?
RK: I’m working on a new Sandman Slim novel and I’ve finished up a new film script that I really can’t talk about right now. I also have some comic proposals out. Because I’m also a photographer, probably the strangest thing I’d like to do is a photo tour of burial sites around the world, and then put them together in a book with a story about each place.
This was a guest blog post. Interested in blogging here?
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Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
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~K. Richardson
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Guest Post from Raven Oak: Linguistics in Fantasy"”To Thee or Not to Thee
Raven Oak discusses linguistics in fantasy.
“Since your book’s technological advances place it during the Renaissance, your characters are wrong because they should be speaking like Shakespeare.”
Imagine my surprise when a friend and avid fantasy reader said this to me. I can’t remember the last time I met someone who believed that level of linguistic authenticity necessary in a fantasy world. While I love Shakespeare, if every fantasy novel I read was written with historically and culturally accurate language, I’d go mad. I don’t speak German any more than I speak Old English. Egad! Not even the people of Shakespeare’s time spoke like Shakespeare.
Imagine if The Lord of the Rings trilogy were written like this:
When Mister Bilbo Baggins of Bag Endeth announc’d that he wouldst shortly be
celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special
magnificence, thither was much talketh and excitement in Hobbiton.
Or like this:
Hwanne Dryhten Bilbo Baggins of Faetels Ende abeodan se he dulmúnus aer gebréfan beon he endleofan-fyrest ongean a gebéorscipe fram déore, þider beon fela acwepan end onwæcenness in Hobbiton.
Not so bad in Shakespeare’s tongue, but how enjoyable would the reading be in Old English?
It’s a common misconception that all fantasy is based upon medieval Europe, and everyone talks like they’re in a Shakespeare play.
One reason I call shenanigans on this misconception is that when the day is done, it’s fantasy. It’s up to the author to build a believable world however they wish. That’s not to say that linguistics doesn’t play a crucial role in world building, but as the author, you have some wiggle room in how you develop your world or universe.
In my fantasy novel, Amaskan’s Blood, the world of Boahim consists of twelve kingdoms. Each one has their own culture that I built from a mixture of Earth cultures. But at its core, Boahim is a fantasy world that doesn’t exist on planet Earth and never did. I can set their scientific advances to be comparable to Middle Ages France, and yet, use magic to control indoor plumbing if I wish.
But what about linguistics? More specifically, word choice? If a kingdom is based on Renaissance France, must I write the novel in Old French? Tolkien certainly didn’t, and he was a linguistics master.
Yet Linguistics is more than word choice. It’s phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and the order of parts of speech. (You can read more on each of these here.) These are all elements an author must consider as they write a story in a fantasy world.
Rather than dealing with absolutes, writers should consider linguistics as an essential piece of world building. You would no more have a character in Renaissance France talking about gigabytes or than you would a scullery maid speak with a refined and educated diction.
So how do we find balance with our linguistics?
Your language must be believable. It should fit the time period and culture of the society, unless it has a strong reason not to do so.
Don’t overdo it with newly invented words. If I need a glossary at the end of the book to translate all your made up words, I’ll be sucked out of my enjoyment to do “homework.” Harry Harrison’s West of Eden comes to mind. I made it twenty pages in before the chore of translation drove me to toss the book in the “donate” bin.
Don’t overdo dialects. Dialects are also indications of language and cultural status, and should be used sparingly. If over used, it can fatigue the reader. (You can read more about dialect here.)
While Tolkien sprinkled bits of Sindarin, Khuzdul, and the Black Speech throughout his trilogy, he did so sparingly enough that it became flavor text””enrichment to his world building rather than a stopping block for the reader. That should be the author’s goal as well””enrichment.
While revising my fantasy novel, I kept a running list of terms that felt modern or out of place as I reread the novel. Then I used the Online Etymology Dictionary to look up the offending words. (There were over 300 of them, but it was well worth looking them up to ensure a good reading experience.)
For example, the word faux pas, French for false-step, dates back to 1670. In Boahim, one kingdom’s culture is heavily influenced by Renaissance France. It made sense in my timeline and culture for the word faux pas to exist. All that was left was double-checking whether a particular character would know and use the word. Word choice is as much a part of who your character is as the culture in which they belong.
If the time period or culture had been wrong””say from the 1800’s””it’s my job then to research why/how the word came about. I would have to make the ultimate choice on whether that word fit into the world I’ve established and the character using it.
Ultimately, it is up to the writer to build their world and decide what the characters would and would not know. Do your homework with your world building, and we’ll gladly follow the characters on their journey.
Bio: Raven Oak is the author of the bestselling fantasy novel, Amaskan’s Blood, and the upcoming sci-fi novels, Class-M Exile and The Silent Frontier. She spent most of her K-12 education doodling stories and 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet.
She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach.
As I drank my morning coffee and scrolled through Twitter one morning, I stumbled upon a preview for the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. At first, I didn’t quite realize where it was from. The name sounded familiar, them it hit me! It was a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I was instantly intrigued. I thought, if the executive producers of Riverdale worked on it, it must good right?
Sabrina from the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.Before I get into talking about the gritty Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I should start at the roots. Now, I understand comparing a sitcom to a gritty satan loving Netflix original is quite silly, but hear me out.
I am one for originals so let me start with Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Of course I had watched the new version first, but for the sake of old times, I revisited the original. And may I say, it was everything I missed. Hilda and Zelda’s relationship was like every sister’s relationship. They would get on each others nerves but in the end they always looked out for each other. Sabrina was also their pride and joy and would do anything for her!Hilda, Zelda and Sabrina from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Sabrina, in the sitcom, I found to be very brave and thoughtful. The moment she found out she was a witch, she used her magic for her friends and yes, sometimes her uses could be selfish. However, all of her uses of her magic, no matter what it was used for, came from the heart. Especially when it came to Harvey, who as you may know is her soulmate. Despite him being her boyfriend throughout the series, it never stopped Sabrina from pursuing her dream. Sabrina had also always been passionate about her studies and succeeding. This is part of the reason why I have always loved her as a character.
Salem takes the cake though. He is a comedic gift from the Gods. I mean it when I say Salem is the best character on the show. As most of you probably know, Salem is their family cat and has been with Hilda and Zelda for years. Salem is their familiar, but Salem has a backstory which is undeniably hilarious. Salem was originally a witch, but after attempting world domination, he was sentenced to hundreds of years of being a cat. Despite him being a cat, that doesn’t stop him from causing tons of shenanigans throughout the series. This just gives him more character.Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Yes, it may be goofy and yes, it may not be gritty, but it’s lighthearted. Sometimes, you just need a little laugh.
Now that I have clearly state my love for the 90s sitcom, I should state my thoughts on the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Now, in this series being a witch is no surprise for Sabrina unlike in the Sitcom. She has known she was a witch since she was little and in this series, her parents have passed leaving Hilda and Zelda (including her cousin Ambrose, who was not in the sitcom) to take care of her. In the sitcom, Sabrina isn’t allowed contact with her mortal mother or her mother will be turned into a ball of wax. Her father, in the sitcom, was out traveling and working. The way they approached her parents in the Netflix series was just rather bleak.
Salem the cat in the new series, does not talk. He also does not have his awesome backstory not to mention that Sabrina attains Salem by summoning her own familiar. I would have nothing against this way of approaching introducing Salem. In fact, it is more or less that I’m angry that Salem doesn’t talk. He doesn’t bring anything to the table in the new series. Salem, in fact, is hardly shown in the show despite him being very important in the sitcom version.
Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.You may say that it’s petty of me to be upset about a cat, but Salem is apart of the Spellman family, so to not include him in the new series seems ridiculous to me.
Now, let’s talk about Harvey. This is something that I hold a lot of thoughts on. In the sitcom Harvey is a doof. He’s goofy and somehow never found out that Sabrina was a witch for years. Netflix must’ve upped Harvey’s IQ because he does not skip a beat in the new series. Not to mention the fact that despite Harvey being Sabrina’s boyfriend, he was always sort of a side character.
In the Netflix series, you are introduced to Harvey’s family. Of course, you’ve had some backstory for Harvey in the sitcom. You knew his parents were together, he had sibling and his dad worked as an exterminator. In the Netflix series, Harvey has a brother and a dad, and his dad works in a mine. His dad, in the Netflix series, is rather aggressive and abusive, which was never established in the sitcom.
My final comparison about Harvey comes to his reaction to when he finds out that Sabrina is a witch. In both series Harvey is clearly did not handle Sabrina being a witch very well. In the sitcom Harvey ends up breaking up with Sabrina for a very short moment. Towards the end of the series, Harvey ends up patching up things with Sabrina. In fact, they end up becoming very good friends like they did in the beginning of the sitcom. In the Netflix series, Harvey wants to end all ties with her. He acted like being a witch was the equivalent of being a monster. In fact, even when Sabrina tries to patch things up and help Harvey, he still treats her like a monster.Harvey and Sabrina from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
This leaves me to my final thoughts. I would like to end this post talking about how the two series deal with the topic of witches. In the sitcom, they treated witches differently than in the Netflix series. In Sabrina the Teenage Witch, all the witches lived harmoniously. They had their own government, The Witches Council, and lived in what they called the Other Realm. However, some witches chose to live in the mortal realm, which is earth.
In the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, they use cliche witch backgrounds. They make them seem quite evil when they really are not. Of course I am not saying there aren’t any witch stereotypes in the sitcom. In the sitcom, they have their familiars and also make potions in cauldrons, however, those do not compare to the stereotypes portrayed in the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. In the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, they portray witches like every media platform does. This bothered me the most.From the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
I love the sitcom because it is not full of stereotypes. It doesn’t make witches out to be Satan loving monsters. Not all witches, in my opinion, are Satan loving monsters. I understand they wanted to make a gritty remake, but what made the sitcom so original to me was how lighthearted it was, even if they did touch up on difficult topics.
The way Netflix portrayed witches to me was something that I’ve seen so many times before. Making witches Satan worshippers is so. . .overused and not at all true. Today, there are people who identify as witches who do not worship Satan. I find the use to having a “dark baptism” and celebrating their “lord Satan” in the Netflix series is stereotyping and frankly, rude.
From the Chilling Adventures of SabrinaI’m not saying the Netflix series is all bad. There are aspects of the show that are enjoyable. However, it was not my favorite. I found there to be a lot of things I did not enjoy. Not to mention, there are things I would definitely tweak, but overall, the editing was well done and I believe it was well produced. Although, I’d take a goofy talking cat in a silly sitcom any day.
Lou is a writer of rom coms, eater of pizza, lover of 90s boybands and cat enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter at @aweosmewriter.
Recently I reviewed Richard Kadrey’s The Grand Dark for Green Man Review. I enjoyed the book and kept thinking about it, so I had some questions. Richard kindly agreed to a follow-up interview. Here’s his answers to those questions.
