Books – The Online Home of Christian Bone

Interview With YA Fantasy Author Leigh Bardugo

Recently I was lucky enough to get the chance to ask bestselling young adult author Leigh Bardugo some questions, on behalf of Starburst Magazine.

If you are familiar with her work, you’ll know that she’s one of the best fantasy writers around at the moment. If you haven’t read her stuff, get thyself to a library now! I’d recommend starting with Six of Crows and then going back to her Grisha trilogy. At least, that’s what I did.

Leigh talks about the writing process for her new book Crooked Kingdom, her approach to tackling her upcoming Wonder Woman novel for DC and she also gives a quick word on her new adult book series Ninth House. You can read the interview here.

If that tickled your fancy, my reviews of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom can be found by clicking those colourful words you just read.

NEW BOOK: After Avalon – Short Story Anthology

I’m cockahoop to announce that After Avalon, a new short story anthology from 18th Wall Productions, is launching today!

Here’s the gorgeous cover to ogle, as well as the synopsis:

King Arthur is dead. Camelot has fallen. Britain drowns in Saxons.

These are the stories of what came after.

Merlin’s prophecies begin such, in introduction:

“In the days when Arthur’s dream was dimmed, as grey embers under storm, actors from our reverie still ventured forth. A boy enters decaying Broceliande with the May Hawk’s daughter, both in search of fathers. Sir Gawain, bereft of his nation, rides in search of my tomb—but finds a friend turned enemy. In the Britain’s hour of need, the round table will be restored to defend Logres in the sky, in the London Blitz.

“My tutor, Bleys, will take a fool’s horse, and two adventurers will trace my dying steps across the world. Sir Lionel’s remains will visit the remains of the Arthurian world, and the Victorians will strive to make a gentleman of Mordred. The Questing Beast will never cease to haunt Pellinore’s line, no matter how far north they trend. The old witch, Morgan, will seek forgiveness. The holy lance will appear once more. And a queen who is no longer a queen will meet a knight who is no longer a knight, and both will marvel at the grave of the greatest king who served his country.

“These may be read, in full, inside.

“But I am tired now, and Nimue calls for me…”

An all-new anthology from the award-winning curator Nicole Petit, featuring stories by Colin Fisher, Leigh Ann Cowan, Amy Wolf, Thomas Olivieri, Jon Black, Patricia S. Bowne, Claudia Quint, David Wiley, Christian Bone, Patrick S. Baker, and Elizabeth Zuckerman.

After finding out the premise of this book, I had to get involved. The open end of the classic Arthurian legends, with Arthur promised to return one day to save Albion once again, has always fascinated me and seemed ripe for further writing.

As it is, my story for the anthology, ‘The Confession of Mrs Fay’, is more of a comedic, but hopefully also touching, slant on the legend rather than a grand sequel. I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope that you’ll have fun reading it. If you so chose to purchase the book, that is. No pressure. Though I should warn you that, if you don’t buy it, I do know an old woman who is more powerful than she looks…

After Avalon can be purchased directly from 18th Wall Productions’ website. If you wish to get your hands on a physical copy, you can grab it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

My Top 5 Novel Opening/Last Lines

It’s often said that the hardest bit of fiction writing is the middle – as that is usually the bulk of the thing – but getting that amazing opening you know your story deserves and nailing that ending that will leave your readers reeling can often be even more stressful. In my experience, the first and last lines of your story either come to you straight away or you spend ages trying out different ones until you find the diamond in the rough (go one, have a guess as to which one happens more often).

When I’m stuck for a great opening or closing line, I find it helps to think about my favourite ones from literature for inspiration. Some of which, in case you hadn’t guessed from the title, I’m going to talk about today.

Let’s start, as is tradition, with the opening lines.

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

The Graveyard Book is a wonderful all-ages novel, and one that really gets off to a perfect start with this cracker of an opening line. It’s simply the perfect template of how to start a book; a short sentence which packs in menace, mystery and intrique. There’s no way you can read that setence and then not read on.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell

It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

One of the most famous opening lines of the 20th century, Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel (still the greatest) begins with this deceptively simple first line. All seems well with this world we are about to enter into until unlucky number ‘thirteen’ appears. At once, we know this is a different world from our own and the use of that specific number immediately conjures up negatives images, setting up the tone for the rest of the novel.

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

The Hobbit‘s enchantingly simple opening line always inspires me, largely due to its origins. One day, Tolkien was marking some school papers when he had a lightbulb moment and wrote this simple line down – spool forward a few years and he had created one of the most popular storyteling worlds around it. It’s always nice to remember that even the great stories started just the same as any other; popping out of nowhere from a bored writer’s head.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (‘A Scandal in Belgravia’) by Arthur Conan Doyle

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman.

A very personal favourite this one. For years now I’ve had a deep-seated love for the heroics and heavy fog of the Holmesian canon of Conan Doyle. Though I had read the first two novels appearances of the great detective I was yet to catch the bug – but this all changed upon reading the first short story collection of Sherlock’s exploits. ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ is one of the very best Holmes stories and it begins with a tantalising of opening lines – surely the cold and logical Holmes has not fallen for a woman? From there on in, I was hooked.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Marley was dead, to begin with.

Almost every aspect of A Christmas Carol (it’s compulsory to read this or Narnia every yuletide) has passed into the public consciousness – including this atmospheric teaser of an opening line. You can almost hear Dickens himself laughing maniacally as you read it. No, wait, hang on – is that an ethereal bellringing I hear?

And now let’s do something sacriligious and skip right to the closing lines.

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

I took her hand and… I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

He might go on a bit in the middle but it has to be said Dickens knew how to start and end a novel. Here, after we’ve followed the ups and (mainly) downs of Pip’s tormented romance with Estella, Dickens gives us just what we want by delivering an ending which suggests a hopeful future for the pair but intelligently does not tie everything up in a bow. A great improvement on Dickens original dour ending

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Lastly, she pictured… herself a grown woman; and how she would keep… the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would… find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child‑life, and the happy summer days.

Yes, that’s quite the sentence (hey, it is from 1865) but it also gets to the heart of the endless appeal of Alice and other such children’s books. You fall for a fantasy world like Wonderland as a child, then grow up to tell it to your children who in turn tell it to their children… A beautiful summation of the wonderland of children’s literature.

The Great Gatsby
by F Scott Fitzgerald

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

An exquisitely lyrically line this, and one which is so evocative of the rest of the story, which sees Gatsby try to acheive something more than his past. Probably my favourite book ending – in terms of pure skill and technique I don’t think it can be beaten.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

No question now what has happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Yes, Orwell joins Dickens for having an opening and closing line of theirs on this list. While Dickens is best for character and drama, Orwell is one of my favourite writers for prose style, he has a crisp way of writing which gives each sentence a real punch – and none more so than this one.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.

I really can’t go without mentioning one of the most famous book endings this century. Though Rowling originally planned to end the beloved Potter saga with the word ‘scar’, this was probably the only ending that could properly appease her die-hard fans (which I very much was one growing up). Much like Dickens’ Great Expectations, after all those books we really just wanted to know Voldemort was dead and Harry would have a happy life. Sometimes the simple endings are the best.

Happy World Book Night, everyone!

Distorting Myths and Legends

I’m very happy to announce that Distorted, a fantasy anthology in which a story of mine appears in, is out now!

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (even if it is as good as this one) so here’s the back cover blurb for more:

Tantalizingly bloody tales featuring human pitted against beasts and gods, with the true horror and majesty of the afterlife, with love and death and desire…

Eight writers modernize ancient mythologies in DISTORTED, proving that not ever story has been told.

Sounds good, no?

My offering, amongst the work of some very talented writers, is a flash fiction entitled ‘Lost in the Labyrinth’ in which I aim to shed light on ‘the truth’ behind the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

As this may suggest, one of my favourite things to do, as a writer, is to take an existing story and give it a fresh spin – and my favourite types of stories to do this with are fairy tales and mythology. These are stories that have endured for so long and are so familiar that it’s hard to resist the challenge to tell them in a fresh and innovative way.

I have had a fascination for such ancient stories for a very long time. It’s a discussion that could fill many scholarly essays, but for now I’m going to say that myths such as this one still appeal today, particularly to the young, because of their basic story of hero versus adversity, usually in the form of a monstrous beast. Don’t we all like to root for a good guy against a horrid villain? In my story for Distorted, however, I wanted to add a shade of grey to the roles of ‘hero’ and ‘monster.’ What if we’ve been rooting for the wrong one all this time?

It’s difficult to trace these things (like going through a certain monster’s maze in fact) but I should think one of the earliest sources which sparked my interest in myths and legends would be The Storyteller, a fondly-remembered television series in which John Hurt (and later Michael Gambon), aided by a Jim Henson-made comic relief dog, presented dramatisations of fairy tales and myths. Here’s a clip from the episode about the Minotaur story.

If The Storyteller was the impetus of my interest in myths in general then I have other sources to thank for my passion for giving them a twist. One of these influences would have to be Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, a collection of well-known fairy tales which Carter remodelled in her own image: emphasising the sensual aspects of the stories and making the usually passive heroines into paragons of female agency. Likewise, Neil Gaiman is another who loves to tell his own tales by borrowing from myths and folk stories. His Sandman series of comics contains numerous allusions to all kinds of different legends, which is a trait that he carried over into his novels – including his look at mythological beings in the modern world, American Gods.

The Beast of London from Gaiman's Neverwhere. A bit like a Minotaur? — The Beast of London from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere has horns and resides in an underground Labyrinth. Sound familiar?

I have both of these writers, amongst others, to thank for lighting a bulb above my head. Through their writing I realised that just because the paths of these stories have been walked before does not mean that you can’t make your own route through them, leading your readers back into the labyrinth of myth and legend.

For more on the writers of Distorted – and to enter a great giveaway – see here.

You can like the anthology’s publishers, Transmundane Press, on Facebook here and follow them on Twitter here.

Distorted is available now on Amazon, Smashwords and Kindle.