Professional Writer: The Merry Writer Live Remix

Interview with Sean Williams

Russell B. Farr interviewed Sean Williams in 1997 for his 10th and last issue as editor of the fanzine Piffle & Other Trivia. This long out of print interview captured a snapshot of Sean Williams of the time: a thirty-year-old writer on the verge of breaking into the big time. Russell B. Farr took the opportunity of TiconderogaOnline’s launch to catch up with Sean Williams for an update on one of Australia’s most successful and exciting genre writers.

It must be 7 years since the last time I interviewed you. Back in 1997, you were living under the flight path of Adelaide Airport, had recently given up smoking, worked in a CD store and had recently met your 10 year-old son for the first time. You’d had 1 1/2 novels published and probably at least 30 short stories. You’ve been busy since then haven’t you?

You could put it that way. I’m still not smoking, but I did finally move out of the flight path, after nine years under it. My son is 17 now (obviously!), and I haven’t worked in the CD shop for over four years, since going full-time with writing in 1999. I’ve had fifteen novels published, with another six on the way, plus a wonderful collection from Ticonderoga, and I’m expecting story #60 to appear in print this year. When I look back to that last interview, at the halfway point of my career, and think about all the many wonderful things have happened since, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in the position I’m in. It totally justifies my decision in 1990 to quit my Economics degree and give scribbling a go.

What music are you listening to at the moment? Do you get much time to listen to music in your schedule?

My listening is restricted to what I can write to, pretty much, plus what I can grab in-between. The atmospheric drones of Steve Roach are a favourite, as are some of the esoteric textures produced by artists such as Gas, Donnacha Costello, Vladislav Delay, Terminal Sound System, etc. For me, the album of 2003 was Goldfrapp’s Black Cherry.
Probably the saddest (and most fun) thing I did last year, in the musical sense, was on a solo drive to Melbourne just before Xmas. Fearing boredom, I decided to burn my favourite Gary Numan songs onto nine CDs and listen to them in chronological order from start to finish. I’m not going to claim any sort of enlightenment or anything as a result, but was certainly an experience.

How did you and Shane Dix get into the Star Wars caper?

It’d be great to say that we came to the attention of Lucas Licensing by means of fanfic that was just too good to pass up (as the rumour went at the time), but sadly it doesn’t work like that. To cut a long story short, the deal came about thanks to my agent, Richard Curtis, who sent copies of Evergence to the editors of the Star Wars line at Del Rey with a note saying, “Take a look at this. I think these guys are right up your alley.” Or words to that effect. The massive New Jedi Order series couldn’t have happened at a better time, from our point of view, as it created an opening we were primed to fill. From there, it was just a matter of patience and negotiation.

How beneficial has the Star Wars experience been to you as a writer, both in terms of market exposure and furthering your own writing?

The market response has been incredible. Sales of Evergence went through the roof when the deal was announced, and I’m sure all my titles have experienced similar boosts. You can’t buy exposure like that. As far the experience of writing the books went, they were a challenge in lots of ways, and also a lot of fun, like books should be. Probably the biggest challenge was fitting them in around the other six books I had to write in the same two-year period. That taught me things I needed to know about what I was physically and emotionally capable of doing, or at least tolerating. And lastly there was the money, which was nice to have. How many writers my age get to forget about paying the bills for a couple of years? That was a great luxury!

Did you feel in any way hampered by the limited creative control you had with the trilogy (not getting to kill off characters, etc)?

There were times when dealing with so many collaborators was a little taxing (I’m sure the feeling was mutual). That’s an inevitable consequence of working in someone’s universe, and to expect it to be otherwise is to guarantee disappointment. I went into it knowing there were things we wouldn’t be able to do, and although we did occasionally try to push the envelope, we knew who was in charge. We were writing Star Wars books, not Sean Williams and Shane Dix books. What the owners of those books say, goes.
That said, we did have many opportunities to add to the Star Wars universe, in terms of plot, character and setting. There was plenty of room to stretch our wings, so feeling cramped was the exception rather than the rule. It was just so much fun finding opportunities for story in the vast, tangled web that is the Star Wars Extended Universe. If one idea was squashed, ten more came along to take its place.

Last interview all you said you were working on “a couple of projects... Widow of Opportunity and ... Poles Apart”. A case of best laid plans?

That’s life. Poles Apart was scuppered by another novel based on the same idea that came out around the same time as the interview. Widow is still in development — one of those books that needs time to gestate. Quite a few projects stalled in the last seven years, but many are still bubbling away. Just for the record, I have two YA novels on the boil at the moment (The Custodian and Year of the Dragon), a solo space opera (Saturn Return), a stand-alone fantasy novel based on my story “Among the Beautiful Living Dead”, and the next three books in the Evergence series. Nothing may come of these, and you’ll probably hold it over my head in 2011, but that’s okay. Playing with ideas is fun.
What are confirmed at the moment are two new series: a solo fantasy quadrilogy, the Books of the Cataclysm, the first book of which, The Crooked Letter, is just finishing up now; and Geodesica: Ascent the first of a new duology to appear under the “Sean Williams with Shane Dix” moniker next year. Note that, after writing four trilogies on the hop, I’ve finally broken the pattern — but not completely: if you average these two projects out, they still come to three books each. While there’s no pressure to come up with trilogies per se, it is an attractive structure, and one that’s easy to market.

Do you think you’re a different writer to the guy who was “hopelessly broke and relatively unknown”?

I’d be disappointed if I wasn’t. Being as busy as I have been in the last few years has forced me to learn certain skills very fast. I write regularly now, instead of in bursts, and I can write just about anywhere, anytime — as long as I have a set of headphones and some Steve Roach to keep the real world at bay. I’ve got some stuff out of my system along the way — a need to write gloomy endings, to explore more “literary” styles, to dabble in fantasy — and I think I’m coming to a very exciting phase in my career right now, where I can take everything I’ve learned, all my success and failures, and produce the sort of book I simply couldn’t have written seven years ago. That books is Geodesica: Ascent. I’m very excited about that, right now.

Do you think you get more or less excited about your projects now?

The same. The same, in fact, as when I first tried writing in primary school. I love every stage of writing (although some bits are harder than others) and I’m amazed when I stop to think about it that other people are excited about my books too. I’m very lucky. (Or, as Kevin J Anderson says: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”) As long as I keep having ideas I feel passionate about, I’ll keep doing it.

With your Change trilogy you attempted to create a fantasy world into an Australian setting. How well do you think you succeeded and how well was it received by the wider reading public?

I think it was a mixed success — not so much because of the setting, but because it took me a book or two to get my head around writing fantasy rather than SF. While I love the first book immensely (for personal as well as professional reasons) it does have its flaws. Its reception has been remarkable, given that. I receive more positive feedback on that series than any other, much of it from males in their teens and women in their thirties, and it has sold very well across the board.
The series has met some resistance in the US, where I’m still trying to find a home for it. I can’t tell if that’s because of the setting or the flaws in the first book. I’d like to think the latter — that the fault lies with me, not the incredible landscape of South Australia, where the books are set. Fantasy should be the ideal place to explore new environments. That so much of it is set in a thinly-disguised Europe or America seems very strange to me.

How did it feel to see your name on the New York Times Bestseller list?

Awesome. Flabbergasting. Incomprehensible. Thanks very much, George Lucas!

What did you do when you found out?

Ah, well. The harsh reality of my boring life comes out. I smiled, rang Shane, sent out a couple of emails, then went back to work. There may have been a bottle of champagne at some point, but I really don’t remember. The bottom line is that, barring a complete catastrophe, the Star Wars novels were always going to be NY Times bestsellers. The day I have a book in the same list off my own back — then I’ll celebrate, and hard.

I believe you’re in the process of adapting “The Soap Bubble” into a play with the Bluetongue theatre company. How’s it going? How does it feel to see your story translated to a different medium?

“The Soap Bubble: A Space Opera” has come along very easily, even though (or perhaps because) we’ve decided to turn it into a musical. I love collaboration, and the people working with me on this project are incredibly talented, open-minded artists coming at the story from angles I would never have thought of. Theatre is something I’ve dabbled in down the years — I acted and worked backstage on a number of plays back in the late ‘80s — so the form isn’t completely unfamiliar, and it’s something I’ve wanted to revisit for some time. It makes a wonderful holiday from writing novels.
Of course, it has a long way to go before being polished enough for the stage. A quick glance at some of the lyrics reveal just how far I have to go in that area:

Inside this old bomb
it’s hardly Utopia —
not if you suffer from
claustrophobia.

It’s a little bit wobbly
but our warp drive
will almost probably
get us there alive.

Still, it could be worse. It could be written entirely in haiku.

What would you say your proudest achievement has been to date?

Hmm. It’s hard to pick just one thing. I don’t like talking about sales because they’re beyond my control in lots of ways, both to the publisher (because my agent handles most of that) and to the reading audience (ditto with sales teams). Awards are a nice pat on the back, but aren’t why I’m doing this. Simply surviving as a full-time writer was the goal I aspired to 14 years ago, and was still aspiring to the last time we chatted. It’s not a single achievement; it’s composed of many small achievements that flash by every day without acknowledgement. Sometimes just switching the computer on is a chore. :-) At the end of the day, to be a professional writer in all senses of the phrase is the achievement I’m most proud of.

How do you feel about the decline in your short fiction output at a time when there seems to be more Australian short fiction published than ever before?

Seems to me that it’s the perfect time to be writing less short stories, as there’s more competition for what openings there are. :-) But it’s not a conscious decision, or a decision I have terribly much control over at the moment. Writing novels is (for me) a completely different exercise to writing short stories, and given that the former is how I’ve always wanted to devote my time — and what I need to do to in order to pay my rent — I’m best served by concentrating on that area these days. In the month I spend writing a short story, I could write half a novel. Looked at that way, there’s really no argument. That said, I do squeeze out the odd short-short every now and again. My average word length for the last five stories I wrote was less than two thousand words, a far cry from the 10k monsters I used to produce. I think if these sorts of stories as my hobby, not something I take too seriously. They (and the odd dreadful haiku) help keep me from feeling swamped by all these big fat books.

What can we see from you in the near future?

The Crooked Letter is out in July from HarperCollins Australia. This is a novel I’ve wanted to write for years, and stands as a prequel to the Books of the Change as well as the first of the Books of the Cataclysm. It’s a darker and more adult novel than my previous fantasies; its settings are also more urban, for the most part, and required research into areas outside South Australia. It’s been quite a challenge. Geodesica: Ascent is scheduled for January ‘04. It falls midway between Orphans and Evergence in lots of ways — theme, style, setting, ideas — and I think it strikes a much more comfortable balance between high concept and big- things-blowing-up than those other books. Was it Bradbury who said that authors should write on the edge of their emotions? Whoever it was, they’re absolutely right, and I think this book has proved it to me. So many of the issues touch on aspects of my personal life in the last two years. That makes for a rich and rewarding writing experience, if a little harrowing at times...

Where do you see yourself in another 7 years?

Professionally, there are a few goals I’ve yet to achieve. I’d like to write a novelisation, as a tribute to my childhood reading Dr Who and Alan Dean Foster novels. I’d like write some YA SF books for the US market. I’d like to write a technothriller and/or a crime novel. I’d like to write a screenplay. These are all earmarked for the next decade or so, and as these things have a way of falling into place unexpectedly, I hesitate to say exactly what might happen when. And there are probably a half-dozen things I haven’t thought of that will be on my resume in 2011. The most important thing is that I’m still supporting myself by writing, and still loving it.

Everything else is negotiable.

Sean, thank you for your time.

New York Times-bestselling author Sean Williams lives in Adelaide. He is the author of over fifty published short stories and fifteen novels, including the Books of the Change and (with Shane Dix) the bestselling Evergence and Orphans trilogies. He has co-written three books in the Star Wars: New Jedi Order series and is a multiple recipient of both the Ditmar (including Best Collected Work for his 1999 collection New Adventures in Sci-Fi published by Ticonderoga Publications) & Aurealis Awards. For a change of pace, he likes to DJ and cook curries.

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