I've been chatting with David Edison
http://davidedison.com/ about his new book The Waking engine:
The Waking Engine was released
Feb 11, 2014 in the US—we don’t have a UK release date yet.
David Edison was born in Saint
Louis, Missouri. In other lives, he has worked in many flavors of journalism
and is editor of the LGBTQ video game news site GayGamer.net. He currently divides his time between New
York City and San Francisco. You can find him on Twitter.
Read
chapters one and two of The
Waking Engine on Tor.com.
Tell us a little about the
world of the Waking Engine & the City Unspoken
The Waking Engine is the first
book in a quartet of books which center around the City Unspoken. If death had
a capital city, this would be it: a city older than humanity, built and rebuilt
like a palimpsest through the ages.
The world—the metaverse—arose from my dissatisfaction
with existing takes on the afterlife: I wanted a premise that would give
mortals more time to learn how terribly messed-up we are. 'Way, way too
long’ seemed a more promising definition of one’s existence
than ‘way, way too short.’ That led me to dismantle deities and see
what kind of flawed people might be hiding within, and by that point I had the
makings of a book.
One of the strengths of the
book is its complexity – did it take a long time to write & edit? What was
the path to publication like?
It did indeed take a long time
to edit - we went through two major edits after the sale, and one before.
I began tinkering with the ideas that would become the book around 2003,
but shut them up in a drawer until 2008-2009, when I finally found myself in
front of an agent, and she told me to finish the few chapters I had.
About 18 months later, I brought back a completed manuscript—my agent told
me to cut 100 pages and change the ending, so I did. Then my editor at
Tor told me to do the same thing, so I did, again! After the first edit
at Tor, my editor, who is wonderful, said, “This is what a book normally looks
like when we first buy it.” I got the hint, and know what to shoot for
this time around.
How would you describe its
genre? If you agree with the New Weird label its getting can you expand on what
you think makes a book New Weird?
I absolutely agree with the New Weird
label, because labels help books reach their target audience, and most things
that fall under New Weird already have a handicap in that regard. I don’t put much stock in
the New Weird concept myself, insofar as I don’t think about it when I’m writing—my attitude is,
forget about genre while I write. Someone will assign it a genre if they
think it will sell.
We live in a world of elevator pitches: I
don’t begrudge an
industry an umbrella term that catches the interstitial or cross-pollination
of genres. My concept of New Weird is that it must have elements of
fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and be otherwise immune to
categorization. I’m sure there are better definitions!
You’re obviously a big fan of
Walt Whitman (no spoilers), which writers would you say influenced you most
whilst writing this book?
I really drank deeply from the
well of writers I chose to inhabit for the epigraphs—I begin most chapters with
a fictional quote from a deceased writer, sort of my chance to be an actor and
a writer on the page at once. What might Sylvia Plath have written, had
her suicide failed the way it would have in this world? All of them were
inspirational and therapeutic. When I couldn’t stand the sound of my own
voices anymore, I’d go pretend to be Jack Kerouac for a bit.
British fantasist Storm
Constantine is a huge, huge influence on me as a weird writer and a queer
writer, both. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that her work was largely
responsible for teaching me that I could write the weird, queer things I wanted
to write.
If you could be a character
from the book who would it be and why?
I spend a lot of my time acting
just like Purity Kloo. That’s my wish-fulfillment. I remember Anne
Rice talking about how Lestat was her alter-ego—well, Purity might be mine.
What are you working on right
now? (apart from this interview of course!)
The next book! I realized
early on that this story would not fit into one volume, decided to make it a
quartet rather than a trilogy for multiple reasons (mostly I’m bored of them
and worry that the middle volume always seems to suffer), and threw myself at
the task. I’m about 60,000 words in and am just finding my stride.
I love my job.
What are you most proud of
about the book?
Its mere existence. I
know it’s a cliche, but I suffered so much doubt about the viability of this
story that to see readers and reviewers enjoying and responding to it—how much
more can I want? To have your work generate conversation, that’s the
brass ring, as far as I’m concerned. Also I pulled off those
epigraphs.
You are a graduate of Clarion
West – how did you find that experience?
Truthfully, I did not even meet
another speculative fiction writer until I had finished the novel. I kept
myself in seclusion, I was so afraid of losing my nerve. When I finished,
and realized that I had a lot more to learn, Clarion West was an absolute
oasis: I met 19 soul mates and learned at the feet of giants like Neil Gaiman,
Joe Hill, Ellen Datlow… I had to make peace with the fact that The Waking
Engine would not benefit from my Clarion West education, which took some
resolve, but now I’m more excited than ever to continue with the work.
Clarion West was six weeks at
Hogwarts, Starfleet Academy… It was heaven. Anyone even thinking about
applying should do it.
Do you have a set writing
process, if so what is it? What did you learn about writing whilst writing the
book?
I am a critter of habit, so I
have a routine, but it isn’t particularly special. I wake up, write over
coffee or tea, then go off and do other things, and then come back to writing
in the evening and late at night. I write most days, but when my brain needs
to rest, I let it. I always warn the men I date that my job is 60%
daydreaming, and I’m protective of that. You can’t sit down with the
intent to daydream—you’ve got to create space in your life for daydreams to
sprout on their own. Or at least I do. Room of one’s own
kinda-sorta thing.
What I learned? Oh, SO
MUCH. To stay humble, that perfection is an ever-receding horizon, to
listen to criticism especially when it hurts, and to slaughter my darlings left
and right.
In one sentence what is your
best piece of advice for new writers?
KEEP WRITING. I’ve yet to
learn anything half so important as that.
Bristol Book Blog review -
