Interview: Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant

Interview with author
Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant!

Interview with Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant TBA: In September 2009, Seanan McGuire published her first novel Rosemary and Rue. This urban fantasy debut quickly received attention as one of the best debuts of 2009. Now the multi-talented author has three new books scheduled for publication in 2010. Two are continuations of her Toby Daye series: A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night. The third will be published under the pseudonym 'Mira Grant' and will be titled Feed. As McGuire says: "Who needs sleep?"

Book Love Affair (BLA): Thank you for joining us today at Book Love Affair! And, of course, congratulations on the up-coming releases! You must be incredibly excited to be working on multiple series in the same year. First, let's discuss your Toby Daye series and then move on to your new Newsflesh trilogy. But first of all, I have to ask: how are you balancing your time writing so much in one year? I can only imagine that the schedule must be incredibly demanding. Seanan McGuire (SM): In a weird way, it's what I've been doing for years, only now other people get to give me deadlines! I deal with frustration and with plot blocks by switching projects, sort of like juggling. Right now, I'm in the middle of writing the fifth Toby book, the sequel to Feed (Blackout), and the first book in a series called InCryptid--that's the series title, the book is called Discount Armageddon. And I write a lot of short fiction, including an ongoing series of superhero stories called "Velveteen vs." It's mostly just a matter of being very firm with myself about making word counts, and keeping myself interested by keeping things challenging. BLA: Your first book, Rosemary and Rue, was a surprise hit. What do you think made that novel so successful? SM: Avoiding either false modesty--"oh, I don't know, I suppose it was luck"--or sounding like I'm bragging--"because it was awesome"--I think I hit a bunch of lucky confluences. I have a wonderful publisher who really supported me, and gave me an incredibly awesome, eye-catching cover. It came out at a good time in the year, and urban fantasy is such a diverse, vibrant place right now, it was just a wonderful place to be. The good press didn't hurt, either, I'm sure. A lot of it was word of mouth, and I'm really hoping that the elements that drew people to support the first book so stridently will carry into the second and third volumes. BLA: Personally, I fell in love with Toby, the protagonist of Rosemary and Rue and the 2010 releases: A Local Habitation (March 2, 2010) and An Artificial Night (September 2010). Can you tell us about how you created the character? What inspired you? SM: I first "met" Toby during a day-trip to the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park. The koi there are huge, gorgeous, and just amazing. I was watching them swim, and I thought "Spending fourteen years as a koi does very little for one's outlook on life." By the time I got home, I had a pretty good idea of who was saying that line. I've always loved folklore and fairy tales, and I knew I wanted to build a world that sort of integrated them with our everyday reality. The need to create that world informed Toby just as much as she informed it. There are elements of me in her, naturally; there are also elements of a lot of my friends and even some members of my family. BLA: You have two Toby Daye releases coming up this next year. A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night. Where did you want Toby's journey to go this year in these books? SM: Forward! Seriously, though, Toby is coming to terms with her place in Faerie--and with Faerie's place in her. She's trying to find the balance, and I'm really hoping that, between these two volumes, she can make some visible progress toward that goal. Also, I'd really like her to eat a sandwich. BLA: What can you tell us about A Local Habitation? SM: In A Local Habitation, Sylvester asks Toby to do something she hasn't done for a while: her job. She has to go check on his niece, January, who lives in the County of Tamed Lightning--it corresponds, roughly, to the real-world city of Fremont, California. So she takes Quentin and goes off to see what's going on. It's supposed to be an easy babysitting job. It turns into something a lot more complicated. You get to see Toby interacting more with the fae world, and practicing a lot of self-restraint by not punching people all the time. Also, she finally acquires that snazzy leather jacket she's wearing on all three book covers. BLA: What about An Artificial Night? SM: Oh, that one's going to be a lot of fun. You may remember Toby mentioning someone named "Blind Michael," and his Hunt. Well, in this book, we get to meet them up close and personal. This is the book where we learn that the Firstborn are every bit as scary as their reputation makes them out to be. We also get some big shockers about people we've known since book one, and we get to see Quentin's response to things getting nasty. BLA: I know Rosemary and Rue's title was inspired by Shakespeare, but what inspired the title of A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night? SM: Actually, all the books in Toby's series are named from Shakespeare. A Local Habitation takes its name from a quote in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and An Artificial Night is named from a quote in Romeo and Juliet. Looking forward, book four, Late Eclipses, takes its name from King Lear, and book five, The Brightest Fell, gets its name from Macbeth. I try to make sure that the names--and the plays they come from--say something about the theme and thrust of the book itself. BLA: Seanan, you're also releasing a novel in 2010 called Feed under the pseudonym "Mira Grant" (to be released April 27, 2010). From my understanding this novel will be entirely different than the urban fantasy/mystery setting of the Toby series. In fact, it seems that this novel will be horror--and maybe zombies? What can you tell us about this new pseudonym and trilogy? SM: Feed! Oh, the Newsflesh trilogy makes me so happy. This is a three-volume series of science fiction distopian political horror novels--yes, with zombies. The best starting point is probably "The West Wing meets Night of the Living Dead," getting serious from there. They're pretty dark, and pretty gritty, and definitely very different from Toby. The pseudonym is actually there in part to keep people from picking up the one expecting the other. I love the Newsflesh books like nobody's business, but they're not fairy tales, and I don't want people to judge them as if they were. In the world of the Newsflesh books, the zombie apocalypse comes in 2014...and we win, largely because the bloggers and the internet save our butts by getting out the information on how to fight back while the traditional media is still pretending there are no zombies. Feed starts roughly twenty years later with a pair of journalists, Shaun and Georgia Mason, and their friend, Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier, being selected as the official bloggers of Senator Peter Ryman's presidential campaign. There's a lot of action, a lot of science, a lot of journalism, and a lot of violence. And, of course, zombies. BLA: Now, information has been thin on this Newsflesh series. Who will the protagonist be? How will this protagonist be different--or similar--to Toby? SM: Our protagonists for the Newsflesh trilogy are Shaun and Georgia Mason, a pair of internet journalists. Shaun's what they call an "Irwin," a blogger who specializes in action reporting and doing dumb things for the camera. Georgia is the more level-headed of the two; she's a "Newsie," a blogger who basically seeks out and reports on the truth. They were adopted by the Masons immediately after the Rising, and they've never known a world without the looming threat of the infected. They're very pragmatic, devoted to each other, and devoted to their jobs. BLA: Did you find that writing horror was a lot different than urban fantasy? Was one genre more difficult than the other for you? SM: It's definitely a very different ballgame. There's no magic to save my characters if I stick them in a corner--I have to depend on science and bullets to keep them in one piece. I can go further with certain aspects of the story, and have to pull back on others. I didn't find either genre more difficult, because they're both so fascinating and so much sheer fun. I mean, with Toby, I get to read ancient Celtic mythology, and with the Masons, I get to study the natural epidemic patterns of viral transmission. It's a win-win situation! BLA: My final question to all interviewees: My blog, Book Love Affair, is named after my passion for books, but what would a "book love affair" mean to you? SM: To me, a "book love affair" would either mean exactly what it means to you -- I'm pretty sure I've been in long-term relationships with some stories -- or, if you wanted to get really silly and go for something a bit more literal, it would mean the song "X-Libris" by Talis Kimberley, which is basically the story of a man being propositioned by a book. ("She was dressed in clinging vellum, / She had title, she had poise; / She was the kind of first edition / Sorts the men out from the boys...") BLA: Seanan, thank you for answering Book Love Affair's questions! We're all excited to see your 2010 releases and wish you the best of luck!

Want to find out more about Seanan McGuire? Either visit SeananMcGuire.com or MiraGrant.com for more information or click on any of the covers at the top of the website to view the titles at Amazon.

If you have a question for the author that BLA didn't cover, go ahead and leave it in a comment. McGuire has agreed to pop in sometime today and answer a few!