Interviewing Jeremy Szal

Helloo!!

Its nice to dust off the interviewing chair again! Been a while but lets get all parts of this blog up and running again! Last week I really enjoyed Wolfskin by Jeremy Szal a big epic war novel ending the powerful Space Opera The Common Saga. It was a pleasure to invite Jeremy back to the blog to discuss this finale

How would you like to booktempt Wolfskin?

It is about as epic and widescreen as space opera gets. Interstellar battles, mammoth spaceships, nomadic factions of space-firing warriors, space cults, a great congregation of species and alien races, all coming together for a grand finale to determine the fate of the galaxy.

And yet there is still a tight focus on characters and emotions and relationships and personal stakes, which have never been higher. If anyone is a fan of Red Rising, Mass Effect, and Star Wars, or all three, The Common Saga and Wolfskin will be right up their alley.

Vakov goes through a traumatic arc in this story, and I definitely felt that he’s changed by that experience. What did you want to explore with him in this book?

Vakov does get brutalized quite often, doesn’t he? In this book, I wanted him to have to make the darkest and hardest decisions, morally, while also having the chance to show his heroic side. His truly badass side, where he’s coming out on top, where you can see how things have all been orchestrated and planned and executed, so the audience gets that stand up and cheer moment. He’s still an anti-hero. He always will be. But still, his heroic moments do get to land.

His voice also changed. I suppose that’s a consequence of my own voice changing – I first wrote Vakov when I was 21, and when I delivered Wolfskin I was 29. Like always, Vakov’s own journey and evolution mimicked that of his creator, and so the Vakov in Wolfskin is more scarred, but also a little wiser, less irreverent, more controlled.

The relationship with Artyom was also a key feature of this story – what made you want to explore a brotherly relationship?

I wanted to make a love story that was purely platonic in nature. And that’s what these books are, fundamentally. Personally, I don’t think there are as many depictions of brotherly love and brotherhood in adult SFF, at least relative to romantic relationships, and I wanted to show that here. For Wolfskin, I knew that Artyom would have to be in the centre frame, not as an antagonist, or someone locked away, but integral to Vakov’s journey. And after two books of build-up, we get to see it unleashed here.

In some ways The Jackal is also both a main villain and a mirror to Vakov. What drew you to creating this menacing figure?

 I grew up watching a lot of anime and shows where the villain and protagonist were often tied together in some way – funhouse mirrors of each other, and I wanted to take a stab at doing that myself.

Creating an evil villain is easy. Creating a menacing villain is fun. Creating a menacing, yet human villain, is tough. I went for the tough one because while the Jackal does terrible, awful things and is far past the point of redemption, I wanted to show the ghost of humanity that still lingered in him. That he was, deep down, like so many of us, someone who had been mistreated and needed someone to love him. Unlike Vakov, he never had that, not really. Vakov knows that he is the man he is because of the people around him, and that without them he’d be more spiteful, blacker.

And that, without that support, he might have become someone resembling the Jackal. The two of them understand this, and understand each other because of it. I thought it added a very complex, human dimension to their relationship.

This was your first space opera series, what did you learn from writing it?

I’ve written space operas before Stormblood (they remain unpublished and probably always will). But I’d never written anything of this scope and size before.

It meant that I had to jump around a lot, that one scene didn’t necessarily have to lead to the next in terms of what the characters were doing. It just had to show the most interesting thing, the most necessary thing.

Instead of showing all the sequences happening on screen (the gathering of species, the launching of warships, the accumulation of war material), I could skip ahead and then weave all the essential details in. It meant gutting and rewriting a few scenes, folding them into other ones, but it also showed me that it’s okay to do that! You’re allowed to experiment and see what happens – and as a result, I felt that I produced some excellent scenes.

What else can we look forward to from you in the future and where can we find out more? 

Well, I currently have a short story collection out called "Broken Stars," which collects 20 of my best pieces of short fiction, and if you sign up to my newsletter, you will get a free novella too. As for future projects, I don't wanna say too much about them 'cause I feel like they need to remain mine for now before they get absorbed into the vast meat grinder that can be publishing sometimes. I will say this, there are two projects in the works. I'm giving them the code names Rage and Redemption. Rage is my main project, the one that I will actively try to traditionally publish. It is big and grand and epic and widescreen, and is certainly very much the sort of thing that you will come to recognize from me, but also different. Redemption is another beast entirely. It is very much not my usual fare, a different style, a different genre, a different type of character, and I'm really enjoying playing around in a new sandbox and seeing what comes of it. I will probably explore self-publishing this myself. Maybe. Work is continuing on them both, and I will announce them when they are ready, not before.

What great books have you read recently?

I just finished The Strength of the Few by James Islington. It's a sequel to Will of the Many, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A work of great, towering ambition that manages to pull off daring feats, while still leaving plenty of unanswered mysteries. I also have an ARC of Islington’s new book, Scion, on my desk. I’ve never seen him do cyberpunk/near-future SF before, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

I'm also dabbling in We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory, which is not my typical reading fare, but I've read Daryl's work before, and I know it to be excellent, and this one is too. In terms of nonfiction, I'm clawing my way through The Rape of Nanjing by Iris Chang. It is very much not a pleasant read, but I'm finding it to be eye-opening and educational in the most stomach-churning way possible.