Interview with JAMES TREADWELL

James Treadwell is the author of Advent and Anarchy, two novels that seem to have taken the UK (and perhaps the US?) by storm. In advance of my belated reading of the novels, Hodder were kind enough to hook me up with an interview with James. Read on!

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is James Treadwell?

I think he’s that tall confused-looking bloke in the back row, the one who needs a haircut. He also appears to have bad shoes.

Anarchy, the sequel to Advent, was recently published by Hodder. How would you introduce the series and novel to a potential reader?

I’m very bad at these “elevator pitches” ... I suppose one way I might do it is by asking someone if they’ve ever wondered what it would be like – what it would really, really be like – if something impossible happened to them.

But if I was trying to give a more general thumbnail description of the books, I’d probably say that they’re about the return of magic to the world. To our world, that is, the real world we live in; the one in which we all know there isn’t actually any magic.

What inspired you to write the novels? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

Advent is based on something that’s been in my thoughts for years and years, long before I ever thought there’d be a time when I could try making a book out of it. As far as I can remember it started with an image of a boy walking alone in a wood and meeting something inexplicable on the way. Why that particular image felt like it had a story in it I don’t know, but apparently it did.

Guest Post: “The Worldbuilding of the Four Realms” by Adrian Faulkner

Hot on the heels of last week’s interview, Adrian Faulkner has written a guest post on how he went about creating the setting for his debut urban fantasy novel, The Four Realms.

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In The Four Realms, we spend some time in the world of Venefasia and the city of New Salisbury that lays within it. Connected to our world through various gateways, black market goods and elements of our commerce have found their way in. New Salisbury has a Starbucks and the streets are filled with diesel-chugging lorries and Tuk Tuks. It’s a fun and complex world to write but it started with a very simple image.

I was watching the news or something like the Discovery channel when they were reporting on an Amazon tribe. Apparently this was one of the most remote tribes in the world, with next to no human contact. The report was making a very big deal out of this. And yet, there in the background a small child was running around in a Nike T-Shirt.

Interview with ADRIAN FAULKNER

The Four Realms, Adrian Faulkner’s upcoming debut novel, sounds really cool. It’s an interesting new take on Urban Fantasy and parallel cities. After first hearing about the novel and author, which wasn’t that long ago, I thought it would be nice to get in touch with Adrian and see if he could tell us a little more about his work.