Is the theme of the series something you’d been developing for a while, pre-publication?
Kat Richardson: The theme of the series as I see it is “shape your own destiny, even if you don't like the road you've been placed on”--which is kind of the goal of my life, so it's a theme I've had a lot of time to work on.
I'd played with the concept of the book—the nature of the paranormal, how uncanny creatures might need help and how to get it, the ramifications of that for the investigator, etc.--as a short fragment in college arising from ideas I had as a kid, but it was pretty horribly executed and I didn't have time to work on it then.
Later I got back to it and made major changes to the ideas and assumptions, then being influenced by things I'd read after college—like particle and quantum physics, metaphysics, philosophy, and a lot more local history.
Where there any significant differences writing the second in the Greywalker series (Poltergeist) that you did not experience with the first?
Kat Richardson: Quite a few. I'd never written such a long piece to a deadline before—only shorter non-fiction or game-manuals--and I had only 11 months from the time I delivered an “acceptable” draft of Greywalker until I needed to submit a first draft of Poltergeist, so I had to work a lot faster and the initial draft had to be a lot better.
Luckily, I had a much better sense of direction and better judgement of my own prose quality than I'd had with the first draft of Greywalker and it was a little easier to judge what was worth keeping and what wasn't and where I was headed with the story and the longer arc it contributes to.
Supernatural fiction, especially those with female protagonists, seems to have a pretty decent chunk of the popularity market right now. What do you attribute that to?
Kat Richardson: I think the genres that are being mixed have a pretty wide appeal anyhow and there's been a rising interest in the paranormal and spiritual for a while so stirring those together draws a lot of potential readers.
A lot of Urban Fantasy has Mystery and or Romance elements that draw still more potential audience. Then add the fact that women read (and write) more books than men and it's not too strange that there are a lot of female protagonists.
But exactly what the catalyst was that made it suddenly more than a flash in the pan, I don't know. I'm not sure the world is any more bleak and awful than it's ever been, but there is certainly a lot of media telling us that it is, so maybe people want to believe in magic and benevolent monsters as a respite from what often seems a rather unmagical world full of all-too-human monsters. And, let's be honest, who doesn't like to see smart, sexy, competent women kicking butt?
The idea of walking the line between two worlds opens up all manner of interesting ideas for a writer to explore. Have you got anything interesting ideas up your sleeve that relay to this not yet addressed in either Greywalker or Poltergeist?
Kat Richardson: Oh yes. Reading local history and ghost stories and Mysteries gives me all sorts of new ideas I'd like to put a spin on. I don't want to get into too much detail right now, because that would spoil the surprise, but I certainly do have a lot of neat stuff to play with in the next few Greywalker novels and since we just worked out an agreement for three more, that means I'll get to pull out a bunch of my favourite weird ideas, like hungry ghosts, lots of new monsters, urban legends, the purpose and origin of nightmares, and ethnic ghost stories as well as some variations on various Mystery themes and a bit of Horror as well.
In another interview, read about Kat Richardson's Greywalker protagonist, Harper Blaine.
 |
