Interview with Leigh Bardugo, author of SHADOW AND BONE

It's my honor to introduce to the Inkpot debut fantasy author Leigh Bardugo, author of SHADOW AND BONE, book 1 of the Grisha Trilogy, a high fantasy series set in a Russian-themed fantasy world. Scheduled for release June 5, 2012,  SHADOW AND BONE is already garnering lots of positive attention, including being named as an Indie Next Selection and as one of ABA's Best New Voices.

CC: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? Can you tell us about your personal journey from concept to publication?

When I was a kid, I made up stories to keep myself entertained. (Most of them involved having a lot of siblings, sleeping in a hayloft, solving crimes, and/or running a hotel.) Sometimes I wrote them down or illustrated them, but most of the time I just walked around muttering to myself. (Still do. I think it's an only child thing.) When I got older, writing became a survival mechanism. It got me through everything from boring classes to the day to day barbarism of junior high school. From then on, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I flailed around for a good long while. I changed my major about twenty times. I worked as a journalist and a copywriter. It took time for me to find the story I wanted to tell and the discipline to tell it.

From concept to query, writing SHADOW AND BONE took me about a year. I sort of tricked myself into finishing it. I told myself that, once it was done, I would shove it in a drawer or toss it on a bonfire. No one would ever see it. It helped shut down a lot of those negative, critical voices in my head. So I was that much more terrified when I finally did turn it over to my beta readers. I gave them all kinds of caveats-- it isn't very good, it's my first book, all that mumble and fuss. (For the record, I don't recommend doing this. Just let your readers read.)

After I started querying, things moved quickly. Jo offered me representation, we went on submission just a week after I'd signed, and a few weeks later we were at auction. It was thrilling, but I want to stress the fact that I got very, very lucky. It's not that I don't believe in my book, but the timing also happened to be right for me. If people are out there querying or if they're on submission and the wheels are turning a bit more slowly, I don't want them to get discouraged.

CC: How did you come to write fantasy fiction? Have you always been a fan of that genre? Are there particular authors or works that have been an inspiration or influence on you?

When I look back on the books that I really adored growing up, that I read and reread, so many are fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It's what I love and it's the way that I prefer to look at the world. As far as specific influences and inspiration, A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET and DUNE were pivot books-- books that actually shifted the way I viewed the world. I read tons of Stephen King; IT and EYES OF THE DRAGON were favorites, though the quote that always stayed with me was from THE GUNSLINGER: "There are other worlds than these." It was almost like a mantra for me. More recently, George R. R. Martin's A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series completely wrecked me. Or, I guess, since the series isn't finished, it's in the process of wrecking me.

CC: What made you decide to write books for teens?

I'm not sure I can call it a decision. I set out to write a story about characters who were at a particular place in their lives. It was only later that I realized I was writing YA.

CC: As someone who knows how exhausting it can be to build a society from scratch, I loved the world-building resources on your website, including the historical images that served as inspiration for your Russian-themed fantasy world.  How did you come to choose Russia as a template for Ravka? Do you have a personal or family connection to Russia?

(I just need to take a second to fangirl out a little and tell you how much I love your world building, particularly the elegant way magic is ordered in the Heir series. </end squee>)

Somewhere way back, my family has a connection to Russia, but I don't think that's why I chose it as the cultural touchstone for my world. I think many outsiders already view Russia as a kind of fantasyland. When you ask someone unfamiliar with the culture to describe it, they'll come back with these incredibly disparate sets of images. One set is lush, beautiful, decadent-- the Winter Palace, jeweled eggs, ballet, St. Basil's. The other is extraordinarily brutal-- the gulag, breadlines, mass graves, the murder of the Tsar's family. Neither of these extremes is the real Russia. They're fantasies; they romanticize both the best and the worst of Russian history and culture. I don't know if I succeeded, but I wanted to tap into that and then go further.

CC: Some readers assume that we fantasists write fantasy so we don’t have to do any research. What kind of research did you do to lay the foundation for your world?

Do they really? How quaint. I honestly enjoy research. You make all kinds of surprising discoveries and you can never tell where a good idea may come from. I focused most heavily on history, culture, and folklore, but I went through cookbooks, old atlases, collections of fairytales, and one of the filthiest books of slang I've ever set eyes on. I built up a library of images (textiles, landscapes, city plans) and kept long lists of names, notecards describing how peasants ate and how nobles ate, songs, superstitions, illustrations. Erdene Ukhaasai was kind enough to help me untangle some choices in Russian and Mongolian when it came to building the Ravkan language. (As a little thank you, I named the Grisha combat instructor, Botkin Yul-Erdene after her. She probably would have preferred a gift card.)  

CC: Are you a plotter or a plunger? Why does your method work for you? Do you have the entire Grisha trilogy planned out?

Can we please write a dystopian where the world has broken down into warring tribes of Plotters, Pantsers, and Plungers? I always feel like a bit of a fraud talking about my methods because I'm still so new to this. Disclaimer aside, I am most definitely a plotter. I outline everything and I've always known how the trilogy will end. Still, things change in the writing. I kept alive a character I had every intention of killing in Book 2, so the structure of Book 3 will change because of that. Also, it's not like the outline is some tidy, ordered thing. It's basically a rambling mess of a draft. It's full of questions and comments like "Why does X need the Y thingie" and "Make this make sense." But once I have the beginning, middle, and end down on paper, it makes returning to the story so much less daunting.

CC: In your other life, you’re a makeup artist—and you create illusions for television and movie productions. What are the commonalities and differences between creating fantasy on the page and on the skin? How does one form of art fuel or complement the other? Is it energizing to shift media in that way?

Wow. Interesting questions. Makeup is temporal in a way that writing is not. There's something satisfying about setting out to craft something and being able to see the finished product so quickly. But in both makeup and writing, it's about creating illusion. Whether I'm using words or prosthetics, if I get it right, you won't see the seams or cracks. You won't be aware of the process; you'll just experience the result. I do think that working visually sometimes helps free up ideas and words. I always find it useful to step away from the page, to do something else, something active that engages the mind in a different way. Otherwise, you're just overworking the same muscle.

CC:  I am a great fan of complex, layered, antagonists. You've done a great job with that in SHADOW AND BONE. Do you have a method for creating three-dimensional characters of all kinds? 

I don't know that I have a method, but I think there's a fine line between hero and villain. Very few people set out to do evil. They don't go to bed at night rubbing their hands together and cackling malevolently about all the bad, bad things they're planning. Most of them do damage in a misguided attempt to do good.  And in the end, it depends who tells the tale, doesn't it? I think it would be easy to look at some of the   choices that heroes and heroines make and see them as selfish, indulgent, and short-sighted. This is one of the reasons I love books like WICKED and WIDE SARGASSO SEA.

CC:  Can you give us any hints about the next book in the series? Dish, please!

I want to blab everything, but I can't! I can tell you that readers will get to travel beyond Ravka's borders, and I'll be introducing a few new characters, including one that is probably my favorite of the whole series. He's a privateer and he's so much fun to write. Just about everyone from Book 1 will be back, though I can't promise you that they're all going to make it through unscathed. *Rubs hands together, cackles with glee* Hmm, maybe I was wrong about villains.

Before I go, I just want to say what an honor it was to be interviewed by you. I'm such a fan and this still doesn't quite seem real. Also, big thanks to everyone at the Enchanted Inkpot! 

SHADOW AND BONE is set for release June 5, 2012. Visit Leigh here for more information on the world of the Grisha.  

Cinda Williams Chima is the author of the Heir Chronicles and Seven Realms novels. Her upcoming novel, The Crimson Crown, releases October 23, 2012. Find her on the web here.

TOTW: Shades of Genius

As readers, many of us can point to the book or story that cemented us in the would-rather-read-than-eat category of humans (mine was my older brother's copy of Trixie Belden's Mystery at Mead's Mountain when I was five or six). As writers, I wondered if we had that same type of experience, where we scribble a few sentences and think That's it. This is what I'm going to do with my life. I rule.

Turns out, pretty much yeah.

Lena Coakley

When I was in junior high school I wrote a very earnest, very looooong play called Phaeton's Chariot of the Sun. It was about an ancient but advanced civilization on the island of Atlantis. When the island gets destroyed in a nuclear power accident, only a scholar and his daughter are left to rail about the dangers of nuclear power as they sail away from the sinking island in their little boat.

Ouch! Just writing the synopsis makes me wince-but at the time I thought it was utterly brilliant. I think it was the first time I wrote something that gave me that thrill of accomplishment all of us writers are addicted to.

Keely Parrack

The first time people told me I could write, at school, I guess I was about 13/14 and we used to have to write stories from prompts - actually I think it was part of the English exams. I wrote one about a ghost looking out at the sea from a window and remembering her youth, another about the end of the world when a guy woke in an alley way to discover he was the last person left in the world, and another on an old bed ridden man living out the remains of his days in a haunted bedroom.

Guess I was a fun child LOL - too bad it took me several decades to try again!

Ellen Booraem

The first story I remember writing was, I think, when I was seven. It was a day in the life of a Mexican cat. (I lived in Massachusetts, mind you, and had never been south of Maryland. I did have a cat, so I had that going for me.) As I recall, there was an evil dog involved. Also tortillas.

Anne Nesbet

I wrote a lot of stories when I was little, most of them gloomy or ridiculous or both gloomy AND ridiculous, but my first actual real novel was called "Liz in Artland," written when I was 11, and it totally took over my brain for some months. I had the whole story all worked out: Liz was going to be sucked into a museum catalog and find herself in a world where paintings by Paul Klee and Marc Chagall and Vassily Kandinsky had all come to life! and where monsters in Surrea, the dreadfully scary land of the Surrealists, were about to destroy the Castle of the Mind! which would mean the end of all painting and drawing everywhere unless Liz could SAVE THE DAY!! Which she was totally going to do in a really dramatic scene involving filing cabinets! You know what? Just thinking about "Liz in Artland" still makes me happy.

In real life, what happened was I wrote the first thirty-five pages and then the story got worn in a rain boot, which was completely my own fault in a very complicated way, and some of it was destroyed, and that was the end of "Liz in Artland."

Lia Keyes

I got busted for autographing the flyleaf of my parents' books before I actually knew how to read and write.

Later I got busted for writing stories on the paper lining my parents' chests of drawers, the inside of cupboards, and other such things.

I bought an old typewriter with my pocket money at an antique fair when I was eleven and started writing a novel. Only no one ever told me to write what you know. I wrote a cowboy story about taming a wild horse. I was a London schoolgirl. What did I know about such things? But there was a cute boy in it. I knew about cute boys.

Jacqueline West

For the final unit of my sixth grade year, my language arts class was given blank hardcover books (oh, the delicious blankness!!!) to fill with our own fiction. I was deliriously excited about this, having not known that such a beautiful thing as blank hardcover books existed in the world, and I proceeded to write a giant, ridiculous fantasy tale involving a rebellious princess, an evil enchantress, a golden eagle and a crystal orb, etc., etc. My handwritten story was much too long to fit in the blank hardcover book, so I had to type it (on a typewriter, as these were pre-home-computer days; lots of Wite-Out was involved). Even typed and single-spaced, it was still too long to fit in the precious book, so I had to glue in extra pages to accommodate the words and illustrations--but at long last, my work was finished.

During the final week of school, the sixth graders all brought in our books and read one another's work, which was thrilling and terrifying. And then, on the very last day, when I went to the language arts classroom to bring my work home, I discovered that my book had disappeared. The teacher and I looked everywhere, but it was gone. Someone else had taken it. Of course, I was disappointed that something I'd worked so hard on had vanished...but even at the time, I remember thinking that it was pretty cool that one of my classmates had liked my (terrible) book enough to want to keep it for him- or herself.

Dawn Metcalf

The first full-length novel I wrote was called "The Eye of the Ancients"--it was 365 pages long and probably had an equal number of various characters and subplots. It was a rambling, cliched, mess of a first-draft quest story starring a female heroine, Galena, and I was incredibly proud of it. It was printed on enormous feed paper on a Commodore 64. I was 11 years old. I still have a copy to this day.

Lisa Gail Green

My first story was about a talking giraffe. I was seven, and my mother, the librarian, bless her, thought it was a masterpiece. Honestly though, it was her encouragement, legitimate or not (ahem) that gave me the confidence to go for it so many years later. :D I suspect she still has it. Let's hope it never mysteriously surfaces anywhere!

Leah Cypess

The first story I wrote, in first grade, was told from the point of view of an ice-cream cone being eaten. And my parents still DO have a copy of that one.

The first full book I wrote, in third grade, was about a girl who got trapped on a desert island with her faithful and loyal collie dog. It was basically a mash-up of The Black Stallion and Lassie. Only, a lot less sophisticated than that sounds. I hadn't quite mastered breaking text into paragraphs yet, so I figured I would have to hire someone to do that for me before I got it published.

Can you see the genius fairly sticking out of all these early masterpieces? For my own part, my first story was about a Very Friendly Monster who had to take over the class when the teacher ran away screaming at the sight of him. She had very little imagination (unlike me, obviously).

What about you all? Do you have special first stories that clearly marked the path you were to take? Please share!

A New Deal of Shamelessness!

We only have two Inkies with shameless news this week, but boy are they doosies!

Starting out with Leah Cypess, she has sold a short story to Sword & Sorceress, and it will be published in the next edition of the anthology (Sword & Sorceress 27.) The story is called Straw-Spun and it's a "sequel" to Rumpelstiltskin, which, I'd like to point out for the record, is one of the creepiest of the Grimm's Fairy Tales. Can't wait!

Meanwhile, Kate Milford has sold not one, but TWO new books!

Author of THE BONESHAKER and THE BROKEN LANDS Kate Milford's LEFT-HANDED FATE, a nautical fantasy set in 1813 in which three kids from both sides of the conflict join forces to find the pieces of a legendary device they believe will stop the wars in the Atlantic, to Noa Wheeler at Holt Children's, for publication in Fall 2014, by Ann Behar at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency (World English).

Author of THE BONESHAKER and THE BROKEN LANDS Kate Milford's GREENGLASS HOUSE, about a boy who discovers that each of the strange guests snowed in over the winter holidays at his parents' remote inn believes there is a secret hidden somewhere in the house, and he and the cook's daughter, a role-playing gamer, make up a campaign to find the inn's secret before anyone else, to Lynne Polvino at Clarion, for publication in Spring 2014, by Ann Behar at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency (World).

How insanely awesome is that? And to top it off, her Kickstarter campaign for The Kairos Mechanism is at 102% so the project is a go!  There are two weeks left for fundraising. At $7500, the paychecks for the young artists who are illustrating the special edition will be increased; at $9500 Kate can announce the second volume in the series (for 2013); and at $13500 she'll have raised enough to commit to doing a reader-illustrated edition for that second novella. So anyone who hasn't become a backer that wants to should hurry over!

Interview with Kate Milford about The Kairos Mechanism

Today we're interviewing Inkie Kate Milford, whose second book, The Broken Lands, is being published by Clarion in September. Kate wrote an accompanying novella, The Kairos Mechanism, to be released along with the book, and set up a Kickstarter page to raise money to self-publish 300 paperback copies. Today, I’m here to find out more about this fascinating project.

Tie-in stories, novellas, etc., seem to be a big thing in promotion these days – mostly in ebook only editions. Can you tell us about the process of deciding to write a novella for The Broken Lands, and why you decided to do a print run instead of just keeping it online?

I think there are two things that make this sort of thing exciting for readers. Firstly, I think we all wonder what’s happening to the characters we love when we’re not looking. Secondly, I think we all get excited about the idea of having “insider information”—clues and special insights that not everyone gets.

As far as how I came to the decision to try my hand at this kind of thing: I get to know the worlds and the people and the history of the things I write, I start coming up with—for lack of a better term—extra stuff. Some of those ideas turn into novels (The Broken Lands started out as one like that, for instance), but not all of them do. I always had this idea that it would be really fun to give readers the opportunity to do a little bit of extra digging and find extra layers and history to uncover. Plus, The Broken Lands is related in a sort of sideways fashion to The Boneshaker. The Kairos Mechanism gives a few extra clues as to how they’re really connected, and what’s yet to come for Natalie, when we return to Arcane (the setting of The Boneshaker).

As for doing a print run—well, I guess there are two things. The first is that I don’t own an e-reader. I just don’t enjoy reading books that way, plus I love books as objects. So it was never an option not to do a print edition; that was the thing I wanted to do most. The second thing is that I work a couple days a week at McNally Jackson, and I’ve gotten kind of addicted to the book machine. It’s really kind of amazing. So I’ve been looking for an excuse to use it for my own nefarious purposes for a while.

Actually, there is a third reason: promotion of The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands. During the September Broken Lands launch, I’ll be offering discounted paperback copies of The Kairos Mechanism with pre-ordered copies of The Broken Lands; with copies of both The Broken Lands and The Boneshaker, they’ll be free.

What Makes a Classic?

We all want to write the best book possible. For many it's a struggle just to get published. But imagine if the book you do write becomes a classic. Can you picture it? There are so many fantasies that come to mind when you think of that word. Lord of the Rings, the Oz books, Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth, Harry Potter - I could go on and on. But what's the secret ingredient? What makes something a classic?


Fellow Inkie, Hilari Bell put it beautifully when she said, "I think what makes any book into a classic, fantasy or not, is how much it touches your heart and soul.  How deeply it moves you.  When I think of classics, across the genres, one thing they pretty much all have is "heart."  Also, usually, some wisdom..."


I agree! But there's something else I noticed about the books I've marked as classics, at least in my own mind. They each have an endearing, typically unlikely hero/heroine who faces adventure head on in a wonderfully fantastic world. 

Even the high fantasy books fit this description. Why not take LOTR as example? Frodo, the simple hobbit, agrees to go on a dangerous quest and leave the safe Shire in order to accomplish it. He isn't even as big as a human man and has no magic. We instantly connect with him as readers and vicariously enjoy the danger and excitement we find while traversing Middle Earth.


 I believe that when we find which of our "modern classics" endure the test of time, it will be those with characters readers easily identify with, rich worlds, and plenty of adventure. Is there anything you've read lately that falls into this category? Do you agree or disagree with my analysis? Let's chat!