I recently reviewed They Mostly Come Out At Night by Benedict Patrick and found the atmosphere captivating. I'm pleased today to share here my interview with the author.
What inspired
your world building process?
Folktales and
fairytales have always captivated me. From an early age, I was surprised at how
many different versions of traditional tales were out there. I had a storybook
of Red Riding Hood were there was a (with hindsight, very disturbing) picture
of the huntsman opening the sleeping wolf’s stomach, loading it with stones,
and then with a flip of the page the wolf was drowning in a nearby river. My
friends had not heard that version before. As I grew older, I enjoyed finding
more obscure folktales – East of the Sun, West of the Moon was a favourite.
When it comes
to my own worldbuilding, particularly for the Yarnsworld novels, storytelling
traditions are one of the first aspects of worldbuilding that I tackle, whether
it’s the warning tales of the Magpie King’s forest and the Crescent Atoll, or
the hero worship that is going on in the City of Swords, the stories that the
characters in my world tell each other dictate how they act, and what the world
around them is like.
Who are you
writing for and why?
The correct
answer here is for me, isn’t it? 😊
There’s
definitely part of that, especially in the beginning, but I’ve been very lucky
to develop a small but dedicated readership, who’ve stuck around through three
very different books. Nothing gives me a bigger kick than hearing from those
people that they enjoyed my latest story.
What do you
do to recharge your creative energy?
I like to
game. I try to game as much as possible, but time is a cruel taskmaster. I used
to play a LOT of video games, and I do have a Nintendo Switch and a gaming PC,
but any time I spend on there now tends to be playing Lego games in co-op with
my son. I’m much more successful carving out tabletop gaming time. I meet up
with a bunch of friends most Sunday evenings to play board games (and tend to
tweet a lot during those sessions!). Once a month, I meet up via Google
Hangouts with a bunch of fantasy authors (Timandra Whitecastle, David Benem,
Josiah Bancroft and Phil Tucker) to play Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve recently
started to release our games sessions as a podcast, Crit Faced.
What
reactions do you hope to inspire in others?
Oh, I like
catching people off guard, I guess. Bring them to a place they’ve not been to
before, share unusual characters and settings. Hopefully the story they finish
isn’t quite the story they believed it was when they began.
Where is your
writing taking you?
With regards
to overall career, I definitely aspire to making this a full-time gig in the
next few years, but that is still a long road to travel, albeit a road I’m
pretty confident I’m on, now. As I mentioned earlier, I’m very fortunate to
have found a readership who like what I do, and that readership keeps growing.
One of these days, it’ll be nice to put aside the never-mentioned day job and
focus on story all the time.
With regards
to the types of stories, I’ve been jumping around the Yarnsworld for the first
three novels, visiting different locations and different characters. For the
next few Yarnsworld books, I’d like to revisit some of those locations, see how
those stories have developed over time. In saying that, I read Nick Eames’ Kings of the Wyld last year, and that
book hit me like a sledgehammer. It was fun, just pure, unfiltered fun. I would
love to create something that made readers feel a fraction of that, and that
desire is weighing on my mind a lot as I figure out which projects to tackle
next…
More of Benedict Patrick's work:
Twitter:
@benedictpaddy
Facebook: Benedictpatrickbooks
Crit
Faced Podcast: www.critfacedpodcast.com
