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masterghandalfThis is a repost from Das_Sporking2. Previous installments of this spork may be found here.
MG: Well, everyone, I have a confession to make. I lied to you (accidentally). I’d promised you last time that my next Newcomb post would be the final one, covering my final thoughts on both Scrolls of the Ancients and the trilogy as a whole, along with maybe finally taking a look at that interview with Newcomb I’ve mentioned (the only one of substance with him I’ve been able to find) that came out at about the same time as the third book (which is why I’ve been holding off on it until now, as it has spoilers up through Scrolls). But looking over the interview again… I really think it deserves its own post. So today, it’s time to take a look at “A Conversation With Robert Newcomb” (originally posted on writerswrite.com) and then we’ll do my final thoughts on both the book and the trilogy next time! So, without further ado, let’s dig into this thing!
A Conversation With Robert Newcomb
by Claire E. White
Being a bestselling fantasy author is actually Robert Newcomb's second successful career.
MG: Ironic in hindsight, considering that Newcomb’s writing career would sputter out, deservedly, after his second trilogy and he has not to my knowledge published anything in any genre since 2007… In other words, this was a wee bit premature.
Before attending college, he traveled widely in his youth as a member of the American Institute for Foreign Study, studying both at the University of Southampton, England, and also aboard a university-sponsored cruise ship as it circled the Mediterranean. After graduating from Colgate University with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Art History, he enjoyed a successful career in his family's auto business, also serving as chairman of his industry-related consulting group. In 1997, he felt that the time was right for a change, so he made a difficult decision and sold the auto dealerships that had been in his family for seventy-five years and moved from upstate New York to Florida to decide what to do next with his life.
MG: …I promise this is getting to his books, but until then *eyes glaze over*
His wife had recently read a Terry Goodkind book while on vacation, and she suggested that Rob read it. Having never been a reader of fantasy, he was somewhat reluctant, but started reading. He was immediately hooked.
MG: So, I’ve mentioned before that Newcomb was inspired by Goodkind, and here we have the confirmation (I’d said before that the book he read was Wizard’s First Rule, which the interview actually doesn’t specify, though I’d assumed it would be the one you’d pick up without having read any others, and I still think some of Fifth Sorceress’ story beats seem to echo WFR specifically). Though, come to think, Newcomb can come off as a cheap copy of Goodkind in certain ways, and from what I’ve heard Goodkind in the 90s (before he went all in on the Randian stuff and became notorious for that instead, along with his disparaging comments about the fantasy genre as a whole) was mostly known as a cheap ripoff of Robert Jordan, and Jordan’s Eye of the World has in turn often been considered an inferior copy of The Lord of the Rings (somewhat unfairly to Jordan, in my opinion; as came out after Jordan’s death, it was actually his publisher who wanted a Tolkien-clone because he thought it would be easier to market and Jordan’s original pitch for WoT from the mid-80s which was released publicly a few years back was much darker and much weirder than the finished product, more Moorcockian than Tolkienian). There’s just something I find interesting of tracing this particular chain of influences, and attendant decline, from Tolkien to Jordan to Goodkind to Newcomb; it makes me wonder what a knockoff of Newcomb would look like and how bad it would be (thankfully, I can’t imagine anyone ever wrote such a thing, or would willingly admit to it, and certainly didn’t get it published if they did!).
That said, I can buy that the Chronicles of Blood and Stone were written by someone who isn’t really a fantasy reader; Newcomb uses a lot of common tropes, but in very shallow and superficial ways, like he clearly hasn’t put a lot of thought into them and doesn’t understand what they look like when they work, and also isn’t nearly as creative and subversive as he seems to think he was being based on answers later in this interview. And of course, I can only imagine Goodkind himself would be very irritated by this chain of events, for the implication that he wrote something as crass as a fantasy novel rather than a novel about important human (by which we mean Randian) themes.
His wife then dared him to take a crack at a lifelong dream of his: writing a novel. So he took the plunge, sat down at his laptop computer and started writing a fantasy novel which was to become The Fifth Sorceress (Del Rey).
MG: And we’d have all been far better off if he’d decided not to do that.
He found an agent, and the manuscript quickly started a bidding war between major New York houses. The manuscript was eventually sold to Random House as a three book deal, in the largest fantasy contract awarded to a first-time author in the U.S.
MG: And then less than a decade later they’d pull the plug on him entirely because sales and reception were so bad. Funny how that worked out.
The Fifth Sorceress, the first book in The Chronicles of Blood and Stone saga, was published in June, 2002. The Gates of Dawn was published June 2003 and The Scrolls of the Ancients, the third book in the series, is being released in June, 2004. The series is epic in scope.
MG: Not really. As we’ve noted before, it contains all of two countries (the sequel trilogy will introduce two more), only one of which is actually developed, and even that one not very much. And the actual narrative tends to be laser focused on the same small group of bozos, with little effort paid to exploring the broader world beyond them.
Set in the land of Eutracia, Prince Tristan and his twin sister Shailiha, who are the Chosen Ones of prophecy, face terrible enemies who attempt to destroy their world.
MG: …which, remove the proper nouns and one Chosen One, and you’d have a perfectly generic descriptor that could be applied to almost any epic fantasy novel from the period, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch the term “Chosen One.”
Born with endowed blood, Tristan and Shailiha have the inherent ability to wield magic, but only after intense training which they did not have before they were viciously attacked by the five Sorceresses.
MG: And which they never get at any point in the first trilogy, in fact! No, I’m still not over that. Even Shailiha’s trick with the butterflies is just a weird side-effect of her time with the Coven, not something she really had to learn.
The fantasy world is rich in depth and complexity
MG: No it’s not, trust me. It’s dull, generic, and paper thin, and when we do learn about new elements they tend to not gel very well with what’s been established beforehand.
and the sorceresses in the first book are some of the most disturbing and most interesting villains to come along in a long time in fantasy fiction.
MG: No, they’re not. “Gross and depraved” isn’t the same thing as “disturbing,” and they’re literally just evil women who are evil because they practiced evil magic because their evil blood made them do it and that made them evil. Blergh. And only two of them, Failee and Succiu, are even developed characters to that extent; Vona and Zabarra (remember them?) might as well be set dressing.
The response to the first three books has been phenomenal; Del Rey has just signed on for three more books in the series.
MG: “Phenomenal” doesn’t necessarily mean it was phenomenally good, I’ll note.
Rob and his wife Joyce, a practicing neuropsychologist and novelist, make their home in southern Florida. When he isn't writing, he enjoys weightlifting, Shotokan Karate, and going to the beach to do absolutely nothing.
MG: Funnily enough, his characters also enjoy hanging around doing absolutely nothing.
Rob spoke to us about his move from the auto business to being a bestselling author, and how he created his epic fantasy series. He also addresses the controversy that swirled around The Fifth Sorceress and his decision to make the worst villain a woman.
MG: “Making the worst villain a woman” isn’t quite the issue at hand, O Interviewer… but we’ll get to that more when we see Newcomb’s answer to it…
When you were a little boy, what did you want to be when you grew up? Was author one of the professions you dreamed about?
When I was a kid, my first choice was to become a doctor.
MG: So was mine, as it happens. Not remotely where my life ended up going, but sharing anything with Newcomb makes me feel icky.
As I grew older and went to college, I had plans to go to law school. But the family businesses beckoned, and frankly, they seemed too good to shy away from. In those days writing was never the plan. I had my favorite authors, and like most kids I toyed with the idea of writing a book one day. But by the time one gains the maturity to do a good job of it, it seems that real life has raised its ugly head and other matters become the priority.
MG: Urgh, and that feeling is familiar as well…
And so, my writing career seemed destined to wait a while.
Did you do any writing when you were in school or when you were growing up? Was there anyone who encouraged you in creative pursuits?
I did do some writing in high school, but none in college. Like most of us, I was too busy trying to get decent grades, I suppose.
MG: Speak for yourself. I did quite a bit of fiction writing in college – admittedly, I was an English major, so some of that ended up getting actually turned in for a grade😉, and much of the rest was fanfic. But I definitely wrote a lot in undergrad!
But when I was younger I was lucky to be encouraged in creative pursuits. My mother was a music teacher and my grandmother was a remedial reading teacher. They both encouraged me, and for that I'll always be thankful.
MG: Considering how Newcomb’s books portray the women in them, to see him citing his wife, his mother and his grandmother specifically as major influences leaves me side-eyeing this really hard (I mean, he dedicated Fifth Sorceress to his wife, and considering what’s in that book, I’d be a bit worried about that if I was her…)
I'd like to talk about the first book in this series, The Fifth Sorceress. How did this book come into being? What prompted you to finally sit down in a chair and start writing?
My wife was the one who suggested that I finally sit down and write The Fifth Sorceress. She had just finished reading her first fantasy novel and she liked it. She finally persuaded me to read it as well. The genre interested me because of its seemingly endless possibilities.
MG: And so what you produced was something with the skeleton of every generic high fantasy epic ever (an ancient evil is returning and a prophesied hero must go on a quest to stop it! Never seen that before…) covered in a thick smearing of misogyny, gore, eugenics and general grossness.
One year later, it was finished. I really didn't know whether it was a viable commodity until I received several enthusiastic offers of representation from literary agents. No one was more surprised than I.
MG: I’m surprised too; then again, considering the time period, and other publishers having found success over the last decade with ongoing “fat fantasy” epic series, they must have been really desperate to try and find the next Jordan/Goodkind/Martin etc (Del Rey didn’t have a series of that exact sort contracted at the time, AFAIK, and I suspect they were searching for one because they contracted James Clemens’ The Banned and the Banished pentalogy at the same time, which is not as bad, IMO, but has… its own issues).
How did you approach building the world which is the setting for this series? What was the greatest challenge in creating this world?
It is my belief that the plot must fit the world -- not the other way around.
MG: Ironic because, again, Eutracia et al is a paper-thin world that clearly exists for no other reason than to support the existence of the Chronicles of Blood and Stone within it…
If the author tries to mold the world to fit the plot, he or she will invariably end up with a square peg in a round hole -- it will seem forced and contrived, and that's the death knell for a good story. I didn't really understand that when I started, but as the saga took shape it quickly became obvious. The greatest challenge was creating a magic system that sprung from a rational, believable source, and that would continue to be revealed as the books went along. With each successive volume it shall be my intention to reveal just a bit more of how the magic really works, and how it affects the characters I have created. It will be a puzzle that they will all solve together, taking the reader along with them as they go.
MG: …just leaving it here, but I think the idea that there’s anything “organic” about Newcomb’s worldbuilding or that it arose from anything but springing into existence piecemeal as he needed it is pretty ludicrous, as I’ll got into more detail with in my final thoughts. On the other hand, I do think it’s interesting that Newcomb brings up the magic system entirely on his own, using that exact term. Over the past few years I’ve grown increasingly weary of what I think of as “magic system discourse” and in particular whether “hard magic” with strictly defined rules or “soft magic” that’s more mystical and mysterious is superior and they way everyone involved seems to jump immediately to taking their personal tastes on the matter as if they were objective fact (my hot take – it depends entirely on what sort of story you’re telling, and I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of stories with both kinds). But one idea I’ve seen brought up fairly often (presumably by younger fantasy fans, or possibly older fans with heavy nostalgia goggles and a preference for softer magic) is that the concept of “magic systems” in general is a new one, either a cross-pollination from video games or something Brandon Sanderson invented and single-handedly popularized circa 2006, and before that everyone knew “real” magic was soft and “magic systems” were never any sort of selling point in the genre, and possibly not a concept that existed at all. Which is fairly ludicrous if you’ve read, like, anything in the genre before that (yes, lots of classic authors had very soft magic! Others did not! Sanderson himself loves to cite a bunch of people who were doing it long before him! DND’s magic system was basically ganked wholesale from Jack Vance’s books, hence why it’s sometimes called “Vancian magic!” And the divide is not always as stark as its made out!) but I do think it’s a notable datapoint that even Newcomb – someone who by his own admission had read very little fantasy before starting his own – could casually weigh in on the concept, speak reasonably coherently on it (regardless of what you think of his magic system itself – spoilers, I think it sucks whether you like hard or soft magic) and use that exact terminology that people have been talking about and weighing the typology of magic systems long before the current discourse was a thing. Anyway, this is something I intend to come back to in my final thoughts when I discuss Newcomb’s magic system in more detail; it’s just something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while.
The sorceress Succiu is a fantastic villain: she's unbelievably cruel, sadistic, brilliant, totally focused on her own goals to the exclusion of any other considerations and perhaps a bit mad. How did you create Succiu? What was the greatest challenge in creating her?
MG: Well, I’m not privy to Newcomb’s creative process, but I’d peg her origins as being “the author’s deep-seated sexual hangups,” most likely.
Succiu was indeed fun to bring to life.
MG: …yeah. I could tell (but perhaps not for the reasons Newcomb means to be talking about here…)
I wanted a villainess who was at same time beautiful and deadly, yet also a bit warped.
MG: Unfortunately, what you got was a sadistic sex maniac and rapist who was more gross than scary. Alas, just as it takes more to make a king than a broken elvish blade, it takes more to make a compelling villain than strutting around naked while torturing people and having a laundry list of depraved atrocities to her name.
She isn't afraid to contradict Failee from time to time, either.
MG: Succiu as the Starscream to Failee’s Megatron could’ve made for an interesting dynamic… alas that it never really goes anywhere or amounts to anything…
The greatest challenge in creating her was to make her extreme behavior seem almost normal -- at least in her mind.
MG: Well, you certainly failed there, because it’s clear that you still found all that depravity titillating and it came through in the gross way you lingered on all of it and lovingly sexualized it. If Succiu’s cruelty was so normalized to her she basically treated it like a normal routine and didn’t really have any more emotional reaction to it than that, it would’ve been so much creepier, not going to lie.
What some might call the over-the-top behavior of the sorceresses had to have a substantial reason backing it up.
MG: And the reason is “the author got off on it,” I’m afraid.
This was accomplished by making them all mad as a result of their improper uses of the Vagaries -- especially in Failee's case.
MG: “The bad guys are all crazy because of dark magic” is one of the laziest ways you can handle something like that, Newcomb! Especially since you don’t seem to have a firm grasp on “doing something because they’re brainwashed” vs “doing it of their own free will” anyway, which prevents any sort of real exploration of the idea or what impact said corruption might have had on the sorceresses as people. Making it even worse is that we eventually learn in Scrolls that the sorceresses all had strongly left-leaning blood signatures, which inclined them towards the Vagaries anyway and makes it seem like they never had a choice in which kind of magic they’d practice. In the end, they’re evil because they are, that’s why, and the heroes have zero guilt in killing them or other Vagaries users, and that’s all you give us.
It is also important to convey the idea that villains and villainesses don't really know that they're bad. As more of the biological aspects of endowed blood are revealed, this concept will take on greater importance. My readers will learn that all practitioners of the craft are as much compelled toward their behavior by the nature of their blood as they are by their free will.
MG: You know, “all the characters are just puppets being jerked around by their blood and none of them have any real agency” has been a criticism I’ve had of this story going back to Fifth Sorceress… but I hadn’t been expecting Newcomb to just cop to it outright, good lord! Also “villains and villainesses don’t really know that they’re bad” should be an opportunity to explore why these people believe what they believe and do what they do and why they think they’re justified, not to just shrug and say “they’re bad because their blood makes them do bad things” and leave it at that. Not only is it unfortunate-implications-ridden, it is, again, just lazy.
In effect, without evil, there can be no good.
MG: …that has nothing to do with anything you were just saying.
The book was controversial with some fans and critics about the fact that the villains were all women, in fact some people even claimed that you were misogynistic. What's your answer to those people?
MG: Oooh, boy. Here’s a good one, let’s strap in!
I find it interesting that for centuries, untold stories have been written and told about evil men; and as far as I know, there has never been any backlash over that. But when a story comes along in which the baddies are women, for some untold reason that just isn't acceptable.
MG: Okay, Newcomb? Let’s be real here. The issue isn’t that “the bad guys are women.” There have been plenty of stories with villainesses over the years, too, including fantasy stories. Jadis springs to mind, and while much has been written about sexism in Lewis’s work and his own various hangups over the years as well, Jadis herself is iconic because she actually is both interesting and genuinely threatening! The Wicked Witch of the West is one of the most recognizable and beloved villains in American cinema; Morgan le Fay is a mainstay of Arthurian myth and retellings thereof. You’re not breaking the mold in some daring and controversial way by having the villains of your first book be women.
But you didn’t just have the leaders of the enemy faction be women, did you? You explicitly framed the conflict as a gender war, with the men good and women evil. You had your good and noble wizards make learning magic illegal for all women in Eutracia for centuries because of the actions of a handful of women whose reasons for turning evil had nothing to do with their gender. You characterized said evil women in grossly sexual, heavily gendered ways, playing into stereotypes of powerful women as debauched, hedonistic, oversexed, power hungry and vain. You had the main heroine of the trilogy spend most of the first book catatonic, being tortured, or having been brainwashed onto the villains’ side, while most of the other major good women in the story existed only to suffer nobly and die horribly to make the men sad. And you made sexual violence – both against women, and committed by women against men – a central theme of the story without having the ability to engage with it in a mature and respectful way at all. And that’s just the first book! That, Robert Newcomb, is why people think Fifth Sorceress was sexist, because it’s absolutely pervaded with this stuff to an inescapable degree. Failee being a woman and the main villain is just the tip of the iceberg.
I didn't write The Fifth Sorceress to be sexist or to be controversial, or to espouse some anti-politically correct viewpoint.
MG: Eh, I find the wording of “anti-politically correct viewpoint” kind of telling (I feel like if this interview had been done today, Newcomb would have said something like “anti-woke viewpoint” instead, with all that entails). And in any case, he may not have intended the sexism (and I do agree that Newcomb probably wasn’t trying to preach a particular viewpoint with these books – IMO, intentionally didactic fiction has a very particular vibe to it, and I don’t really get that from the Blood and Stone books) but he sure managed it anyway, which I think doesn’t speak well of his own unexamined prejudices. Because that is what I think we’re seeing infesting this book – that Newcomb has clearly internalized some deeply misogynist tropes and view points (not to mention elitist, creepily-pro-eugenicist viewpoints) and those ended up leaking out and infesting the entire story he was telling.
It just happened to be the particular story I wanted to tell to get the saga rolling.
MG: I would ask Mr. Newcomb to perhaps interrogate just why he felt so strongly this was the story he had to tell first, hmmm?
You might also find it interesting to learn that the vast majority of my readers and fans are women.
MG: Citation desperately needed. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a Newcomb fan of any gender in the wild. By the time I was getting into general fantasy fandom for the first time (around the mid-2000s or so), the only context you ever heard of Newcomb in was as a punchline, and his reputation has not improved since.
In addition, none of the agents who offered me representation found the book sexist, nor did any of the acquisition editors who bid on it. They're professionals, and they realized that it's only a story -- nothing more, nothing less. They were wise enough not to make it all about them and their personal sensibilities.
MG: In other words, it sounds like Newcomb is telling his critics to just get over themselves, jeez. Very mature *rolls their eyes* And like I said earlier, I rather strongly suspect that aforesaid agents and editors were more interested in looking for the next big thing in fantasy than in the actual content of your work… which I think says less about their own views and opinions (though those could very well have been very bad!) and more about what I can only imagine was a great deal of contempt for their own audiences, if they thought they’d eat this up.
The hero of the story is Tristan, the young prince who could literally be described as a blueblood, (and I'm not just talking about his royal lineage). How did you create the character of Tristan? Were there any traits you were particularly trying to avoid with him?
MG: …well, I guess even the interviewer couldn’t help but make the obvious joke, huh?
Rather than writing a book about some commoner who learns he has special gifts, immediately finds the love of his life, inherits a kingdom, and then lives happily ever after, I wanted a character that was already royalty, but didn't care much for his lofty station. Then he would lose it all, only to later appreciate it only after it was gone.
MG: Honestly, “privileged person gets kicked in the face with reality and has to learn and grow as a result” is nothing particularly original, either (hells, it’s one interpretation of freaking Gilgamesh, arguably the oldest extant piece of literature we have!). This just feels like a case of Newcomb trying to be subversive and ending up not being nearly as subversive as he thought… possibly again because he just wasn’t read well enough in the genre to meaningfully comment on it.
I wanted women to be drawn to him, but for him to struggle with his romantic relationships nonetheless.
MG: In other words, he’s a total playboy who has lots of sex but can never settle down with a lasting love interest because they all keep dying for his angst.
I wanted Tristan to be a bit of a rebel, but not so much that he becomes unlikable.
MG: *snorts* Well, you failed there. Honestly, you could’ve stood to make him more of a rebel. Make him actually criticize the power and privilege he’s been born into, or want something different from Eutracia than the system the Directorate have designed for it and maintained for centuries. Instead, Tristan just feels like he’s whining because he can’t stand that his privileged, carefree existence comes with actual responsibilities… which would make a lot more sense if he was about ten years younger than he is, but for a grown man in his early thirties to have an initial motivation that boils down to not wanting to be king out of sheer contrarianism is just kind of sad.
And above all I wanted him to be confused about the destiny into which he was so suddenly thrust by way of the return of the Coven, and the deaths of nearly all of the members of the Directorate.
MG: Well, you did succeed with that one… unfortunately, it’s because Wigg and the Directorate consistently refuse to actually tell him anything, even when it would be useful to him to know.
He had to grow up quickly, and he's still learning. He and his sister Shailiha will be doing so for a long time to come.
MG: *flatly* Love how Shailiha’s just an afterthought here. And again, one would think a couple of adults would have already “grown up” to at least some degree by this point – I still think Newcomb should have made them more mature (but still sheltered) from the start or shaved off a few years from their ages to make Tristan’s angst feel more appropriate. As it is, he hit exactly the wrong balance with the character, IMO. Tristan is too old for a coming-of-age narrative to fit him right, but also too immature for his age to be very likable; he's not the worst protagonist I’ve ever run across, but he’s still an obnoxious, selfish twit I don’t really want to spend any more time with.
The wizards, Wigg and Faegan, are complex characters who continually surprise us, for example, we find out that Wigg has a surprisingly active love life for an ancient wizard.
MG: *snorts* Surprising only because Wigg is so inherently unlovable… but honestly, Elminster? Belgarath? Going back to mythology, Merlin? Vainamoinen? “Ancient wizards” being dirty old men is a trope with a long history, let’s be real here. Not saying it’s good, just that “the old wizard has lots of sex” isn’t very original, either.
What was your inspiration for these two interesting characters?
I wanted a pair of wizards who were fallible -- and at first, slightly distrustful of one another.
MG: Unfortunately, that ship sailed pretty quickly. As for being fallible, they absolutely are – but Newcomb doesn’t focus on or often even acknowledge their worst flaws or mistakes, so it rings hollow and they feel like designated heroes we’re supposed to love because the author tells us to rather than deliberately flawed, multifaceted characters. Even when Wigg is forced to confront his guilt over letting the Minions massacre Tammerland in Scrolls, he doesn’t seem to learn anything from it, nor does it actually impact his behavior going forward in any way, so it falls flat and feels meaningless. So, if Newcomb really was trying to write the wizards as fallible and engage with their flaws… he did not actually manage that part!
It was important to me that they make mistakes, because they too are still learning about the craft. All in all, I would have to say that Wigg and Faegan's combined knowledge of the craft still only amounts to about 30% of all that shall eventually be revealed.
MG: Unfortunately, I as a reader am less concerned about the completeness of their knowledge than I am about their many, many moral failings – and those seem to be the areas Newcomb is least interested in dealing with.
But with two such crotchety old wizards in the mix, I knew I would have to take pains to make them different. So Wigg is stern, while Faegan is mischievous. Wigg is ambulatory; Faegan is crippled. And although Faegan is the current undisputed master of the craft, it is Wigg who best knows the many secrets of Eutracia and her checkered history.
MG: And while all of those are in fact legitimate differences, they also feel… weirdly superficial? Dig deeper, and they just come across as the same smug, self-righteous asshole in slightly different trappings to me.
Your magical framework was fascinating and, to me, very logical. Basically, either you inherited the ability to do magic or you didn't, much as we either inherit a genius IQ, the ability to be a world class athlete or we don't. What went into your decision to set up the characters' magical abilities in this way, as opposed to magic being something that anyone could learn or use?
MG: …am I the only one who finds it a little weird that our interviewer is conflating “a genius IQ or being a world class athlete” with, like, inherent superpowers instead of things that a person might be born with aptitude for, but still have to work tremendously in order to actually cultivate and make use of?
I wanted the ability to learn the craft to have both a biological and a mystical component that were inexorably linked.
MG: Fair enough. I know magic being innate or hereditary has come under fire recently, but depending on the nature of the story I don’t think it’s an inherently bad concept (and I’d certainly push back on the idea of learned magic being inherently less elitist, so much as differently elitist. Look at DND-style wizards, who require extensive, years-long training and education, along with lots of expensive books, tools, equipment and paraphernalia to use their powers. In a pre-modern society, what sort of people are going to have access to the kinds of time and resources to do that? Hint – it’s not going to be commoners. Then again, Forgotten Realms’ Halruaa was one of my first exposures to a serious exploration of the concept of a magocracy, and it’s clear that its rulers are wizards who have to learn their magic and coming up through the heavily structured apprenticeship systems is clearly something that serves to integrate new wizard-lords firmly into the culture, customs and society of the wizard-lords, while sorcerers with innate powers are regarded as dangerously unstable elements and potential threats to their rule). OTOH, we all know how badly Newcomb executed it, and he hits basically every unfortunate implication of the trope and then some, and there’s still the rest of his answer here, and the next one, to consider…
One needs endowed blood to learn the craft, and it is passed from generation to generation. This also allows for the learning of the craft to cut across both genders, and all of the various socio-economic classes of Eutracian culture.
MG: Which is why we end up with a country where magic is entirely controlled by an elite, insular group composed entirely of men who hold themselves aloof from the rest of society and form a distinct organization and social class within it. Riiight.
OTOH, this makes me think of David Hair’s Moontide Quartet (and its sequel series, the Sunsurge Quartet – they’re best thought of as two arcs that form a single overarching saga, IMO) which also features a magic system heavily centered around bloodlines and heredity, with a person’s power being determined primarily by the quality of their bloodline. And it does not shy away from all the implications, some horrifying and some just kind of squicky, inherent in this, or from the fact that a society ruled by wizards whose powers are literally based on the purity of their superior blood is going to be a deeply messed up, almost dystopian place (and also said wizards are generally portrayed very negatively, and a lot of their self-perceptions and pretensions of superiority get punctured as the series goes on). My opinion on that series as a whole, and in particular how it handles a lot of its plot and worldbuilding elements, is pretty mixed so I’d hesitate to recommend it… but it really does read in some ways like its magic system is a direct deconstruction of Newcomb’s, I can’t lie.
From that basic premise soon came the concepts of full and partial blood signatures, forestallments, blood quality assaying, blood signature lean, etc.
MG: In other words, Newcomb just immediately from “magic is hereditary” to “special magic bloodlines determine everything about a person’s abilities and moral inclination.” That sort of stuff is why people say inherited magic as a trope has unfortunate, elitist and even eugenicist implications – and Newcomb just takes it from being subtext and makes it flat-out text. And admits it. Charming.
If all persons could both learn and use the craft, then it would cease to be special, wouldn't it?
MG: Kind of telling that Newcomb seems to equate “special” with “elitist,” isn’t it? In any case, I raise the counterexamples of DND’s Eberron setting, a “wide” magic setting where low-level magic is extremely common in all levels of society and presents a society that’s basically had a “magical revolution” instead of an industrial revolution (but truly powerful individuals are still rare and impressive), or Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom were people who know a few basic Charter spells related to their professions seem to be very common (though, again, really powerful Charter mages are much rarer) or Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera (which while certainly not without its own issues I honestly much prefer over his more famous Dresden Files for numerous reasons I won’t get into here) where literally everyone in the titular nation has some degree of magical abilities, though some people are much stronger than others. And “special magical bloodlines” are hardly the only way to make magic something not everyone plausibly has access to. Going back to DND, even just looking at arcane magic we have wizards (magic as an academic discipline), bards (magic as a form of performance art), sorcerers (magic as inherent superpowers, which might be directly tied to your ancestry or might not) and warlocks (magic as something you have to bargain with powerful beings to get); several distinct ways to get and use magic, all of which provide various sorts of restrictions for who can access it, all distinct from pure “your magic is in your blood and that’s that.” There are lots of ways to handle magic systems, and explain why not everyone can do magic… and Newcomb chose the least-interesting, most unfortunate-implications ridden of them all, because of course he did.
The magical system of the Vagaries and the Vigors is quite complex, and very intriguing. The system seems to have an almost mathematical symmetry about it. What are your thoughts on this subject? And will we eventually find out all the mysteries surrounding the workings of the system?
MG: *snorts dismissively* “Mathematically symmetry?” Don’t make me laugh. Newcomb tosses a lot of jargon at us, sure, but that’s not the same thing as actual complexity – especially when I’m still vague on basic elements like “what powers to wizards have?” “how do you cast spells, anyway?” and “what exactly is the difference between the Vigors and the Vagaries and why should we care?”
There is still much to be learned about both the Vigors and the Vagaries, and the Ones Who Came Before and the Heretics of the Guild.
MG: That’s true. Unfortunately, most of it is going to end up contradicting what Newcomb has already established on these topics.
From the very beginning, I wanted more than just an earthly struggle between good and evil. I also wanted to display an uber-struggle that continually goes on in the heavens, and eventually comes to affect the struggle on earth.
MG: So, it’s kind of funny he’s going to end up abandoning this concept entirely in the second trilogy in favor of “the Ones and the Heretics aren’t godlike beings who dwell in the heavens at all, but two powerful but mundane empires on the other side of the world, ruled by wizards who are powerful and immortal but in no way divine or spiritual beings.”
Like the craft, bits of information regarding this higher, more spiritual conflict will also be revealed as the books go along. Will we ever learn all of the workings of the magic systems? I don't really know. I guess that will depend upon how many more of my books my publisher ends up buying! (laughs)
MG: Considering the series ends on book six with almost everything important unresolved – Newcomb, you tempted fate and got bit hard, and I can’t help but laugh a little! Also, see previous comments about retcons.
Although the characters face terrible situations -- and even torture, in some cases -- and some of the plot twists have a horror element to them, the tone of the books overall is uplifting and optimistic. Do you consider yourself an optimist? What methods have you used to get you over the difficult times in life?
Yes, my books are graphic. From the very beginning, I wanted them that way. The story I am telling can be very brutal, and I want the readers emotionally involved. But I also try to balance the darkness with beauty -- such as with the Fliers of the Fields, the Caves of the Paragon, the various chambers of the Redoubt, etc. Good triumphs, but it has to go through hell to do so. Those who practice the Vagaries mean to see it rule the world, and they will do anything to make that happen. I guess the various challenges in my life have been overcome in largely the same way as my characters have done -- with lots of perseverance, and some luck thrown in for good measure.
MG: So, this is something I’ve alluded to at various points across the sporking, and that is Newcomb’s stated desire to balance horror and beauty in his works. And I respect that, in theory, and think it’s an important thing to do and can be very powerful if done well. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Newcomb isn’t someone who has much personal experience with either moments of great power and beauty or of great trauma and horror in real life, and it shows in how badly and more importantly shallowly he handles both topics. His depictions of evil and horror mostly just end up being lavish descriptions of depravity, relying on gore and sexual violence to shock the audience while the actual implications of all of this (including trauma for the characters who survive it) goes unexplored at best or are outright handwaved away at worst. His depictions of goodness and beauty are equally shallow – pretty butterflies and beautiful caves and fancy buildings that have no more depth and meaning beyond “look at this shiny thing that exists!” The former is gross and shlocky, the latter is superficial and twee, and having them both in the same story feels jarring and dissonant. Again, mixing beauty and horror and using them to counterbalance one another is entirely possible to do – but crucially, looking at an author like Tolkien who I think did a very good job with it, he actually had a well of experiences of both to draw upon, and was very well-read in other literary depictions. I suspect Newcomb can say neither of those things, and isn’t a good enough writer to fake it, and his work suffers badly as a result.
What is the greatest challenge you faced in writing The Scrolls of the Ancients, the third book in the series? What is the greatest challenge in writing this series?
The greatest challenge in writing Scrolls was that in this volume I had such a big story to tell.
MG: I mean, looking back on it, this actually is kind of true – for much of the middle portion of the story, we’re following four distinct narrative strands (Tristan at sea, Wulfgar and Serena at the Citadel, Celeste, Shailiha and the wizards in Tammerland and Marcus and Becca with the Scroll) that all weave together into the overall story. But it still feels small, and I think, again, that’s because Newcomb isn’t very good at making all of this feel like necessary elements of the story or tying them into the broader setting.
I wanted the reader to become acquainted with partial blood signatures, and herbmastery and blaze-gazing -- not to mention the significance of the Isle of Sanctuary and the Fortress of the Citadel. Each of these "new" locales has a significant place in the history of the craft, and their stories will be more fully revealed as the books go along.
MG: The Citadel, yes. Sanctuary… I double checked, and I’m not sure it actually gets mentioned in any significant way again in the second trilogy? So, uh, whoops?
I also wanted to make this book nautical, with sea battles, pirates, etc, and that was a bit of a challenge in itself.
MG: *flatly* I can tell, considering you can remove the whole “pirates” subplot without impacting the book much at all (seriously, I’ll go into this more in my final thoughts, but if you had the Minions rescue Tyranny’s fleet from the Screechlings instead of the pirates and cut out the whole detour to Sanctuary, the story plays out the exact same, it’s just shorter).
Tristan's love interest is Celeste, a beautiful and intelligent woman who has endured horrific circumstances for a very long time. How do you approach writing love scenes? Are they easier or harder for you to write than an action sequence?
MG: *snorts* Well, isn’t that appropriate – we start off the question talking about Celeste’s trauma, and then suddenly swerve into asking about writing sex scenes instead of addressing it. Did Newcomb himself ghostwrite these questions, by any chance?
I don't really find writing love scenes to be any more difficult than the others.
MG: Well, they’re certainly not of any different quality than the rest of the story (which is to say, they’re very bad, but so is everything else).
But when I approach one, I have to make sure that I slow down and make the moment count in a different way. The characters' motivations must be well examined beforehand -- falling in love at first sight doesn't work as well in print as it does on the screen, for example. Every scene an author writes is in some way about exposing the heart. The only difference between them is which part of the heart you wish to illuminate, and why.
MG: And am I the only one who notices that, despite all that rambling, not only does Newcomb not really say anything of substance, but he also manages to do it without Celeste herself actually coming up again?
I understand that when you sat down to write The Fifth Sorceress you didn't even know how to turn on a computer. Now you have an extensive website, your own people to run a message board. How do you feel about the Internet now? Can you live without it? Have you become a technophile? Have you succumbed to the lure of owning lots of tech devices: laptops, PDA's, cell phones etc.?
I have certainly not become a technophile, nor do I own many such devices. I know my way around a computer, but to this day my typing remains atrocious! I think that the internet is a wonderful advancement. The sharing of useful information on such a grand, worldwide scale is truly mind-boggling. But like other brilliant technological breakthroughs, it easily lends itself to some serious crazies -- not to mention unscrupulous business practices. To this day I still know people who think that simply because something appears on the Internet, it must therefore be true. That's scary, to say the least.
MG: Huh. Newcomb’s thoughts on the internet… actually seem kind of sensible, even prophetic reading this interview twenty years after the fact? *shrugs* Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.
I'd like to talk about the actual process of writing. Would you walk us through a typical writing day for you?
I sit down to begin writing between 10:00 and 11:00 AM, Monday through Friday. I normally work for about four hours, then quit. That usually produces five or six pages a day; or 100-120 pages per month.
MG: …word count’s a better measure of length and productivity than page count. Just throwing that out there.
During the evenings my wife critiques the current day's work.
MG: To be a fly on the wall for those conversations…
Saturdays and Sundays are typically used to plan the next week's upcoming scenes.
Do you outline before you begin your books, or did you let the story evolve on its own? Whether you outline, or not, does the story end up the way you planned?
I don't use an outline -- I find them to be too unforgiving. I know where the story is going, and I just write it. In each case the result has ended up the way I planned. Or in some cases it may have actually turned out better, I think, because I was free to chase various new ideas as they came along. That's where the real fun comes into play. For me, the not knowing is better than the knowing.
MG: Eh, using outlines or not is a personal preference (I don’t usually do a “hard” outline myself, though I do try to work out where I want to go and how I want to get there in some detail before I start writing). OTOH, I think maybe it would’ve helped some of Newcomb’s weird pacing issues if he could’ve looked at outlines of Gates of Dawn and Scrolls of the Ancients in particular and said to himself “do we really need all these scenes of Tristan and the wizards sitting around telling each other things?” or “does the detour to Sanctuary actually add anything to the plot?”
I'd like to talk about the editing process. How much input does your editor have on your work? Do you let anyone else, such as your wife, read your work in progress?
My editor has a huge role in the process. She line edits my work, and in so doing she always comes up with an entire host of questions about the characters, the magic, etc. She then sends the questions to me, and I answer them directly in the manuscript. The only other folks who read the raw manuscripts are other family members, and the fellow who is the webmaster for my official site.
MG: Funny, from reading these books, I find it kind of surprising they were edited at all… And does your editor do anything other than ask questions about the magic system, by chance?
I’m snipping the next couple of questions, which deal with Newcomb’s personal life – mostly about his study of the martial arts and family car dealership – and don’t really have anything to do with the books and aren’t very interesting.
Can you give us a sneak peek into the next book, Savage Messiah?
It's difficult to talk very much about Savage Messiah without also saying too much about The Scrolls of the Ancients, because the two stories are so closely linked.
MG: That’s true, which is why the decision to split the trilogies there is particularly jarring (notably, I don’t think Newcomb has referred to either trilogy by name – or to either of them as trilogies - in this whole interview, he’s just referred to “the series” which makes me all the more convinced he only ever conceived of it as one big series and it was Del Rey who split it up).
For now, suffice it so say that some more major aspects of the magic system will come to light, and the Heretics of the Guild will begin to take a more active role in what is happening on earth.
MG: I suppose that’s true, in that it will be revealed that the Heretics have been “on earth” and not in the Afterlife this whole time…
New characters will emerge,
MG: …that phrasing makes it sound like they’re going to come crawling up out of holes in the ground, doesn’t it?
and some characters who you might have thought the saga couldn't do without shall die.
MG: *nasty grin* Why, yes they will. Can you guess who?
All in all, I think you'll find it to be an exciting read.
MG: I mean, the second trilogy probably is an improvement over the first, as low a bar to clear as that may be…
Anyway, that’s it for the interview! What are my takeaways? Mostly that either Newcomb is the most obliviously self-congratulatory man alive, or that he’s desperately trying to present a better image of himself than the reputation his books had already earned for him (or maybe a bit of both). I can’t help but wonder if having a woman be the one to interview him and write this article was a deliberate choice on someone’s part to try and counteract his reputation for misogyny (and certainly the questions all seem phrased deliberately in a way to kiss his butt, to a degree that’s frankly embarrassing to read knowing what his books are actually like and how his literary career seemingly ended) but I don’t think he can help himself even so. Sure, you have him praising all the women in his life and his (shallow and unconvincing) explanation for why Fifth Sorceress totally isn’t sexist, guys, but it all rings hollow, especially when you notice that outside of the sorceresses, the interview only discusses Shailiha as a sort of afterthought to Tristan’s story, and Celeste only as Tristan’s love interest (and it’s the interviewer who brings her up in the first place!). Tells you something about where his priorities lie, doesn’t it? Beyond that, it mostly confirms my suspicions that Newcomb’s understanding of fantasy as a genre is pretty shallow (and that he was a new reader of the genre before he started writing in it) and that’s why his attempt at epic fantasy feels so flat, and not nearly as clever or daring as he seems to think it is. And, for that matter, it really can’t help but seem like Newcomb has a much deeper and more complex version of this story in his head (assuming he’s not just talking himself up, which is a distinct possibility) that he utterly failed to convey on paper… which doesn’t speak well of him as a writer.
But, now, with the interview at last out of the way, we’ll be ready to move on to my final thoughts for Scrolls of the Ancients and the Chronicles of Blood and Stone overall next time, and finally bring this project to a close! We’ll se you then!
MG: Well, everyone, I have a confession to make. I lied to you (accidentally). I’d promised you last time that my next Newcomb post would be the final one, covering my final thoughts on both Scrolls of the Ancients and the trilogy as a whole, along with maybe finally taking a look at that interview with Newcomb I’ve mentioned (the only one of substance with him I’ve been able to find) that came out at about the same time as the third book (which is why I’ve been holding off on it until now, as it has spoilers up through Scrolls). But looking over the interview again… I really think it deserves its own post. So today, it’s time to take a look at “A Conversation With Robert Newcomb” (originally posted on writerswrite.com) and then we’ll do my final thoughts on both the book and the trilogy next time! So, without further ado, let’s dig into this thing!
A Conversation With Robert Newcomb
by Claire E. White
Being a bestselling fantasy author is actually Robert Newcomb's second successful career.
MG: Ironic in hindsight, considering that Newcomb’s writing career would sputter out, deservedly, after his second trilogy and he has not to my knowledge published anything in any genre since 2007… In other words, this was a wee bit premature.
Before attending college, he traveled widely in his youth as a member of the American Institute for Foreign Study, studying both at the University of Southampton, England, and also aboard a university-sponsored cruise ship as it circled the Mediterranean. After graduating from Colgate University with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Art History, he enjoyed a successful career in his family's auto business, also serving as chairman of his industry-related consulting group. In 1997, he felt that the time was right for a change, so he made a difficult decision and sold the auto dealerships that had been in his family for seventy-five years and moved from upstate New York to Florida to decide what to do next with his life.
MG: …I promise this is getting to his books, but until then *eyes glaze over*
His wife had recently read a Terry Goodkind book while on vacation, and she suggested that Rob read it. Having never been a reader of fantasy, he was somewhat reluctant, but started reading. He was immediately hooked.
MG: So, I’ve mentioned before that Newcomb was inspired by Goodkind, and here we have the confirmation (I’d said before that the book he read was Wizard’s First Rule, which the interview actually doesn’t specify, though I’d assumed it would be the one you’d pick up without having read any others, and I still think some of Fifth Sorceress’ story beats seem to echo WFR specifically). Though, come to think, Newcomb can come off as a cheap copy of Goodkind in certain ways, and from what I’ve heard Goodkind in the 90s (before he went all in on the Randian stuff and became notorious for that instead, along with his disparaging comments about the fantasy genre as a whole) was mostly known as a cheap ripoff of Robert Jordan, and Jordan’s Eye of the World has in turn often been considered an inferior copy of The Lord of the Rings (somewhat unfairly to Jordan, in my opinion; as came out after Jordan’s death, it was actually his publisher who wanted a Tolkien-clone because he thought it would be easier to market and Jordan’s original pitch for WoT from the mid-80s which was released publicly a few years back was much darker and much weirder than the finished product, more Moorcockian than Tolkienian). There’s just something I find interesting of tracing this particular chain of influences, and attendant decline, from Tolkien to Jordan to Goodkind to Newcomb; it makes me wonder what a knockoff of Newcomb would look like and how bad it would be (thankfully, I can’t imagine anyone ever wrote such a thing, or would willingly admit to it, and certainly didn’t get it published if they did!).
That said, I can buy that the Chronicles of Blood and Stone were written by someone who isn’t really a fantasy reader; Newcomb uses a lot of common tropes, but in very shallow and superficial ways, like he clearly hasn’t put a lot of thought into them and doesn’t understand what they look like when they work, and also isn’t nearly as creative and subversive as he seems to think he was being based on answers later in this interview. And of course, I can only imagine Goodkind himself would be very irritated by this chain of events, for the implication that he wrote something as crass as a fantasy novel rather than a novel about important human (by which we mean Randian) themes.
His wife then dared him to take a crack at a lifelong dream of his: writing a novel. So he took the plunge, sat down at his laptop computer and started writing a fantasy novel which was to become The Fifth Sorceress (Del Rey).
MG: And we’d have all been far better off if he’d decided not to do that.
He found an agent, and the manuscript quickly started a bidding war between major New York houses. The manuscript was eventually sold to Random House as a three book deal, in the largest fantasy contract awarded to a first-time author in the U.S.
MG: And then less than a decade later they’d pull the plug on him entirely because sales and reception were so bad. Funny how that worked out.
The Fifth Sorceress, the first book in The Chronicles of Blood and Stone saga, was published in June, 2002. The Gates of Dawn was published June 2003 and The Scrolls of the Ancients, the third book in the series, is being released in June, 2004. The series is epic in scope.
MG: Not really. As we’ve noted before, it contains all of two countries (the sequel trilogy will introduce two more), only one of which is actually developed, and even that one not very much. And the actual narrative tends to be laser focused on the same small group of bozos, with little effort paid to exploring the broader world beyond them.
Set in the land of Eutracia, Prince Tristan and his twin sister Shailiha, who are the Chosen Ones of prophecy, face terrible enemies who attempt to destroy their world.
MG: …which, remove the proper nouns and one Chosen One, and you’d have a perfectly generic descriptor that could be applied to almost any epic fantasy novel from the period, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch the term “Chosen One.”
Born with endowed blood, Tristan and Shailiha have the inherent ability to wield magic, but only after intense training which they did not have before they were viciously attacked by the five Sorceresses.
MG: And which they never get at any point in the first trilogy, in fact! No, I’m still not over that. Even Shailiha’s trick with the butterflies is just a weird side-effect of her time with the Coven, not something she really had to learn.
The fantasy world is rich in depth and complexity
MG: No it’s not, trust me. It’s dull, generic, and paper thin, and when we do learn about new elements they tend to not gel very well with what’s been established beforehand.
and the sorceresses in the first book are some of the most disturbing and most interesting villains to come along in a long time in fantasy fiction.
MG: No, they’re not. “Gross and depraved” isn’t the same thing as “disturbing,” and they’re literally just evil women who are evil because they practiced evil magic because their evil blood made them do it and that made them evil. Blergh. And only two of them, Failee and Succiu, are even developed characters to that extent; Vona and Zabarra (remember them?) might as well be set dressing.
The response to the first three books has been phenomenal; Del Rey has just signed on for three more books in the series.
MG: “Phenomenal” doesn’t necessarily mean it was phenomenally good, I’ll note.
Rob and his wife Joyce, a practicing neuropsychologist and novelist, make their home in southern Florida. When he isn't writing, he enjoys weightlifting, Shotokan Karate, and going to the beach to do absolutely nothing.
MG: Funnily enough, his characters also enjoy hanging around doing absolutely nothing.
Rob spoke to us about his move from the auto business to being a bestselling author, and how he created his epic fantasy series. He also addresses the controversy that swirled around The Fifth Sorceress and his decision to make the worst villain a woman.
MG: “Making the worst villain a woman” isn’t quite the issue at hand, O Interviewer… but we’ll get to that more when we see Newcomb’s answer to it…
When you were a little boy, what did you want to be when you grew up? Was author one of the professions you dreamed about?
When I was a kid, my first choice was to become a doctor.
MG: So was mine, as it happens. Not remotely where my life ended up going, but sharing anything with Newcomb makes me feel icky.
As I grew older and went to college, I had plans to go to law school. But the family businesses beckoned, and frankly, they seemed too good to shy away from. In those days writing was never the plan. I had my favorite authors, and like most kids I toyed with the idea of writing a book one day. But by the time one gains the maturity to do a good job of it, it seems that real life has raised its ugly head and other matters become the priority.
MG: Urgh, and that feeling is familiar as well…
And so, my writing career seemed destined to wait a while.
Did you do any writing when you were in school or when you were growing up? Was there anyone who encouraged you in creative pursuits?
I did do some writing in high school, but none in college. Like most of us, I was too busy trying to get decent grades, I suppose.
MG: Speak for yourself. I did quite a bit of fiction writing in college – admittedly, I was an English major, so some of that ended up getting actually turned in for a grade😉, and much of the rest was fanfic. But I definitely wrote a lot in undergrad!
But when I was younger I was lucky to be encouraged in creative pursuits. My mother was a music teacher and my grandmother was a remedial reading teacher. They both encouraged me, and for that I'll always be thankful.
MG: Considering how Newcomb’s books portray the women in them, to see him citing his wife, his mother and his grandmother specifically as major influences leaves me side-eyeing this really hard (I mean, he dedicated Fifth Sorceress to his wife, and considering what’s in that book, I’d be a bit worried about that if I was her…)
I'd like to talk about the first book in this series, The Fifth Sorceress. How did this book come into being? What prompted you to finally sit down in a chair and start writing?
My wife was the one who suggested that I finally sit down and write The Fifth Sorceress. She had just finished reading her first fantasy novel and she liked it. She finally persuaded me to read it as well. The genre interested me because of its seemingly endless possibilities.
MG: And so what you produced was something with the skeleton of every generic high fantasy epic ever (an ancient evil is returning and a prophesied hero must go on a quest to stop it! Never seen that before…) covered in a thick smearing of misogyny, gore, eugenics and general grossness.
One year later, it was finished. I really didn't know whether it was a viable commodity until I received several enthusiastic offers of representation from literary agents. No one was more surprised than I.
MG: I’m surprised too; then again, considering the time period, and other publishers having found success over the last decade with ongoing “fat fantasy” epic series, they must have been really desperate to try and find the next Jordan/Goodkind/Martin etc (Del Rey didn’t have a series of that exact sort contracted at the time, AFAIK, and I suspect they were searching for one because they contracted James Clemens’ The Banned and the Banished pentalogy at the same time, which is not as bad, IMO, but has… its own issues).
How did you approach building the world which is the setting for this series? What was the greatest challenge in creating this world?
It is my belief that the plot must fit the world -- not the other way around.
MG: Ironic because, again, Eutracia et al is a paper-thin world that clearly exists for no other reason than to support the existence of the Chronicles of Blood and Stone within it…
If the author tries to mold the world to fit the plot, he or she will invariably end up with a square peg in a round hole -- it will seem forced and contrived, and that's the death knell for a good story. I didn't really understand that when I started, but as the saga took shape it quickly became obvious. The greatest challenge was creating a magic system that sprung from a rational, believable source, and that would continue to be revealed as the books went along. With each successive volume it shall be my intention to reveal just a bit more of how the magic really works, and how it affects the characters I have created. It will be a puzzle that they will all solve together, taking the reader along with them as they go.
MG: …just leaving it here, but I think the idea that there’s anything “organic” about Newcomb’s worldbuilding or that it arose from anything but springing into existence piecemeal as he needed it is pretty ludicrous, as I’ll got into more detail with in my final thoughts. On the other hand, I do think it’s interesting that Newcomb brings up the magic system entirely on his own, using that exact term. Over the past few years I’ve grown increasingly weary of what I think of as “magic system discourse” and in particular whether “hard magic” with strictly defined rules or “soft magic” that’s more mystical and mysterious is superior and they way everyone involved seems to jump immediately to taking their personal tastes on the matter as if they were objective fact (my hot take – it depends entirely on what sort of story you’re telling, and I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of stories with both kinds). But one idea I’ve seen brought up fairly often (presumably by younger fantasy fans, or possibly older fans with heavy nostalgia goggles and a preference for softer magic) is that the concept of “magic systems” in general is a new one, either a cross-pollination from video games or something Brandon Sanderson invented and single-handedly popularized circa 2006, and before that everyone knew “real” magic was soft and “magic systems” were never any sort of selling point in the genre, and possibly not a concept that existed at all. Which is fairly ludicrous if you’ve read, like, anything in the genre before that (yes, lots of classic authors had very soft magic! Others did not! Sanderson himself loves to cite a bunch of people who were doing it long before him! DND’s magic system was basically ganked wholesale from Jack Vance’s books, hence why it’s sometimes called “Vancian magic!” And the divide is not always as stark as its made out!) but I do think it’s a notable datapoint that even Newcomb – someone who by his own admission had read very little fantasy before starting his own – could casually weigh in on the concept, speak reasonably coherently on it (regardless of what you think of his magic system itself – spoilers, I think it sucks whether you like hard or soft magic) and use that exact terminology that people have been talking about and weighing the typology of magic systems long before the current discourse was a thing. Anyway, this is something I intend to come back to in my final thoughts when I discuss Newcomb’s magic system in more detail; it’s just something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while.
The sorceress Succiu is a fantastic villain: she's unbelievably cruel, sadistic, brilliant, totally focused on her own goals to the exclusion of any other considerations and perhaps a bit mad. How did you create Succiu? What was the greatest challenge in creating her?
MG: Well, I’m not privy to Newcomb’s creative process, but I’d peg her origins as being “the author’s deep-seated sexual hangups,” most likely.
Succiu was indeed fun to bring to life.
MG: …yeah. I could tell (but perhaps not for the reasons Newcomb means to be talking about here…)
I wanted a villainess who was at same time beautiful and deadly, yet also a bit warped.
MG: Unfortunately, what you got was a sadistic sex maniac and rapist who was more gross than scary. Alas, just as it takes more to make a king than a broken elvish blade, it takes more to make a compelling villain than strutting around naked while torturing people and having a laundry list of depraved atrocities to her name.
She isn't afraid to contradict Failee from time to time, either.
MG: Succiu as the Starscream to Failee’s Megatron could’ve made for an interesting dynamic… alas that it never really goes anywhere or amounts to anything…
The greatest challenge in creating her was to make her extreme behavior seem almost normal -- at least in her mind.
MG: Well, you certainly failed there, because it’s clear that you still found all that depravity titillating and it came through in the gross way you lingered on all of it and lovingly sexualized it. If Succiu’s cruelty was so normalized to her she basically treated it like a normal routine and didn’t really have any more emotional reaction to it than that, it would’ve been so much creepier, not going to lie.
What some might call the over-the-top behavior of the sorceresses had to have a substantial reason backing it up.
MG: And the reason is “the author got off on it,” I’m afraid.
This was accomplished by making them all mad as a result of their improper uses of the Vagaries -- especially in Failee's case.
MG: “The bad guys are all crazy because of dark magic” is one of the laziest ways you can handle something like that, Newcomb! Especially since you don’t seem to have a firm grasp on “doing something because they’re brainwashed” vs “doing it of their own free will” anyway, which prevents any sort of real exploration of the idea or what impact said corruption might have had on the sorceresses as people. Making it even worse is that we eventually learn in Scrolls that the sorceresses all had strongly left-leaning blood signatures, which inclined them towards the Vagaries anyway and makes it seem like they never had a choice in which kind of magic they’d practice. In the end, they’re evil because they are, that’s why, and the heroes have zero guilt in killing them or other Vagaries users, and that’s all you give us.
It is also important to convey the idea that villains and villainesses don't really know that they're bad. As more of the biological aspects of endowed blood are revealed, this concept will take on greater importance. My readers will learn that all practitioners of the craft are as much compelled toward their behavior by the nature of their blood as they are by their free will.
MG: You know, “all the characters are just puppets being jerked around by their blood and none of them have any real agency” has been a criticism I’ve had of this story going back to Fifth Sorceress… but I hadn’t been expecting Newcomb to just cop to it outright, good lord! Also “villains and villainesses don’t really know that they’re bad” should be an opportunity to explore why these people believe what they believe and do what they do and why they think they’re justified, not to just shrug and say “they’re bad because their blood makes them do bad things” and leave it at that. Not only is it unfortunate-implications-ridden, it is, again, just lazy.
In effect, without evil, there can be no good.
MG: …that has nothing to do with anything you were just saying.
The book was controversial with some fans and critics about the fact that the villains were all women, in fact some people even claimed that you were misogynistic. What's your answer to those people?
MG: Oooh, boy. Here’s a good one, let’s strap in!
I find it interesting that for centuries, untold stories have been written and told about evil men; and as far as I know, there has never been any backlash over that. But when a story comes along in which the baddies are women, for some untold reason that just isn't acceptable.
MG: Okay, Newcomb? Let’s be real here. The issue isn’t that “the bad guys are women.” There have been plenty of stories with villainesses over the years, too, including fantasy stories. Jadis springs to mind, and while much has been written about sexism in Lewis’s work and his own various hangups over the years as well, Jadis herself is iconic because she actually is both interesting and genuinely threatening! The Wicked Witch of the West is one of the most recognizable and beloved villains in American cinema; Morgan le Fay is a mainstay of Arthurian myth and retellings thereof. You’re not breaking the mold in some daring and controversial way by having the villains of your first book be women.
But you didn’t just have the leaders of the enemy faction be women, did you? You explicitly framed the conflict as a gender war, with the men good and women evil. You had your good and noble wizards make learning magic illegal for all women in Eutracia for centuries because of the actions of a handful of women whose reasons for turning evil had nothing to do with their gender. You characterized said evil women in grossly sexual, heavily gendered ways, playing into stereotypes of powerful women as debauched, hedonistic, oversexed, power hungry and vain. You had the main heroine of the trilogy spend most of the first book catatonic, being tortured, or having been brainwashed onto the villains’ side, while most of the other major good women in the story existed only to suffer nobly and die horribly to make the men sad. And you made sexual violence – both against women, and committed by women against men – a central theme of the story without having the ability to engage with it in a mature and respectful way at all. And that’s just the first book! That, Robert Newcomb, is why people think Fifth Sorceress was sexist, because it’s absolutely pervaded with this stuff to an inescapable degree. Failee being a woman and the main villain is just the tip of the iceberg.
I didn't write The Fifth Sorceress to be sexist or to be controversial, or to espouse some anti-politically correct viewpoint.
MG: Eh, I find the wording of “anti-politically correct viewpoint” kind of telling (I feel like if this interview had been done today, Newcomb would have said something like “anti-woke viewpoint” instead, with all that entails). And in any case, he may not have intended the sexism (and I do agree that Newcomb probably wasn’t trying to preach a particular viewpoint with these books – IMO, intentionally didactic fiction has a very particular vibe to it, and I don’t really get that from the Blood and Stone books) but he sure managed it anyway, which I think doesn’t speak well of his own unexamined prejudices. Because that is what I think we’re seeing infesting this book – that Newcomb has clearly internalized some deeply misogynist tropes and view points (not to mention elitist, creepily-pro-eugenicist viewpoints) and those ended up leaking out and infesting the entire story he was telling.
It just happened to be the particular story I wanted to tell to get the saga rolling.
MG: I would ask Mr. Newcomb to perhaps interrogate just why he felt so strongly this was the story he had to tell first, hmmm?
You might also find it interesting to learn that the vast majority of my readers and fans are women.
MG: Citation desperately needed. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a Newcomb fan of any gender in the wild. By the time I was getting into general fantasy fandom for the first time (around the mid-2000s or so), the only context you ever heard of Newcomb in was as a punchline, and his reputation has not improved since.
In addition, none of the agents who offered me representation found the book sexist, nor did any of the acquisition editors who bid on it. They're professionals, and they realized that it's only a story -- nothing more, nothing less. They were wise enough not to make it all about them and their personal sensibilities.
MG: In other words, it sounds like Newcomb is telling his critics to just get over themselves, jeez. Very mature *rolls their eyes* And like I said earlier, I rather strongly suspect that aforesaid agents and editors were more interested in looking for the next big thing in fantasy than in the actual content of your work… which I think says less about their own views and opinions (though those could very well have been very bad!) and more about what I can only imagine was a great deal of contempt for their own audiences, if they thought they’d eat this up.
The hero of the story is Tristan, the young prince who could literally be described as a blueblood, (and I'm not just talking about his royal lineage). How did you create the character of Tristan? Were there any traits you were particularly trying to avoid with him?
MG: …well, I guess even the interviewer couldn’t help but make the obvious joke, huh?
Rather than writing a book about some commoner who learns he has special gifts, immediately finds the love of his life, inherits a kingdom, and then lives happily ever after, I wanted a character that was already royalty, but didn't care much for his lofty station. Then he would lose it all, only to later appreciate it only after it was gone.
MG: Honestly, “privileged person gets kicked in the face with reality and has to learn and grow as a result” is nothing particularly original, either (hells, it’s one interpretation of freaking Gilgamesh, arguably the oldest extant piece of literature we have!). This just feels like a case of Newcomb trying to be subversive and ending up not being nearly as subversive as he thought… possibly again because he just wasn’t read well enough in the genre to meaningfully comment on it.
I wanted women to be drawn to him, but for him to struggle with his romantic relationships nonetheless.
MG: In other words, he’s a total playboy who has lots of sex but can never settle down with a lasting love interest because they all keep dying for his angst.
I wanted Tristan to be a bit of a rebel, but not so much that he becomes unlikable.
MG: *snorts* Well, you failed there. Honestly, you could’ve stood to make him more of a rebel. Make him actually criticize the power and privilege he’s been born into, or want something different from Eutracia than the system the Directorate have designed for it and maintained for centuries. Instead, Tristan just feels like he’s whining because he can’t stand that his privileged, carefree existence comes with actual responsibilities… which would make a lot more sense if he was about ten years younger than he is, but for a grown man in his early thirties to have an initial motivation that boils down to not wanting to be king out of sheer contrarianism is just kind of sad.
And above all I wanted him to be confused about the destiny into which he was so suddenly thrust by way of the return of the Coven, and the deaths of nearly all of the members of the Directorate.
MG: Well, you did succeed with that one… unfortunately, it’s because Wigg and the Directorate consistently refuse to actually tell him anything, even when it would be useful to him to know.
He had to grow up quickly, and he's still learning. He and his sister Shailiha will be doing so for a long time to come.
MG: *flatly* Love how Shailiha’s just an afterthought here. And again, one would think a couple of adults would have already “grown up” to at least some degree by this point – I still think Newcomb should have made them more mature (but still sheltered) from the start or shaved off a few years from their ages to make Tristan’s angst feel more appropriate. As it is, he hit exactly the wrong balance with the character, IMO. Tristan is too old for a coming-of-age narrative to fit him right, but also too immature for his age to be very likable; he's not the worst protagonist I’ve ever run across, but he’s still an obnoxious, selfish twit I don’t really want to spend any more time with.
The wizards, Wigg and Faegan, are complex characters who continually surprise us, for example, we find out that Wigg has a surprisingly active love life for an ancient wizard.
MG: *snorts* Surprising only because Wigg is so inherently unlovable… but honestly, Elminster? Belgarath? Going back to mythology, Merlin? Vainamoinen? “Ancient wizards” being dirty old men is a trope with a long history, let’s be real here. Not saying it’s good, just that “the old wizard has lots of sex” isn’t very original, either.
What was your inspiration for these two interesting characters?
I wanted a pair of wizards who were fallible -- and at first, slightly distrustful of one another.
MG: Unfortunately, that ship sailed pretty quickly. As for being fallible, they absolutely are – but Newcomb doesn’t focus on or often even acknowledge their worst flaws or mistakes, so it rings hollow and they feel like designated heroes we’re supposed to love because the author tells us to rather than deliberately flawed, multifaceted characters. Even when Wigg is forced to confront his guilt over letting the Minions massacre Tammerland in Scrolls, he doesn’t seem to learn anything from it, nor does it actually impact his behavior going forward in any way, so it falls flat and feels meaningless. So, if Newcomb really was trying to write the wizards as fallible and engage with their flaws… he did not actually manage that part!
It was important to me that they make mistakes, because they too are still learning about the craft. All in all, I would have to say that Wigg and Faegan's combined knowledge of the craft still only amounts to about 30% of all that shall eventually be revealed.
MG: Unfortunately, I as a reader am less concerned about the completeness of their knowledge than I am about their many, many moral failings – and those seem to be the areas Newcomb is least interested in dealing with.
But with two such crotchety old wizards in the mix, I knew I would have to take pains to make them different. So Wigg is stern, while Faegan is mischievous. Wigg is ambulatory; Faegan is crippled. And although Faegan is the current undisputed master of the craft, it is Wigg who best knows the many secrets of Eutracia and her checkered history.
MG: And while all of those are in fact legitimate differences, they also feel… weirdly superficial? Dig deeper, and they just come across as the same smug, self-righteous asshole in slightly different trappings to me.
Your magical framework was fascinating and, to me, very logical. Basically, either you inherited the ability to do magic or you didn't, much as we either inherit a genius IQ, the ability to be a world class athlete or we don't. What went into your decision to set up the characters' magical abilities in this way, as opposed to magic being something that anyone could learn or use?
MG: …am I the only one who finds it a little weird that our interviewer is conflating “a genius IQ or being a world class athlete” with, like, inherent superpowers instead of things that a person might be born with aptitude for, but still have to work tremendously in order to actually cultivate and make use of?
I wanted the ability to learn the craft to have both a biological and a mystical component that were inexorably linked.
MG: Fair enough. I know magic being innate or hereditary has come under fire recently, but depending on the nature of the story I don’t think it’s an inherently bad concept (and I’d certainly push back on the idea of learned magic being inherently less elitist, so much as differently elitist. Look at DND-style wizards, who require extensive, years-long training and education, along with lots of expensive books, tools, equipment and paraphernalia to use their powers. In a pre-modern society, what sort of people are going to have access to the kinds of time and resources to do that? Hint – it’s not going to be commoners. Then again, Forgotten Realms’ Halruaa was one of my first exposures to a serious exploration of the concept of a magocracy, and it’s clear that its rulers are wizards who have to learn their magic and coming up through the heavily structured apprenticeship systems is clearly something that serves to integrate new wizard-lords firmly into the culture, customs and society of the wizard-lords, while sorcerers with innate powers are regarded as dangerously unstable elements and potential threats to their rule). OTOH, we all know how badly Newcomb executed it, and he hits basically every unfortunate implication of the trope and then some, and there’s still the rest of his answer here, and the next one, to consider…
One needs endowed blood to learn the craft, and it is passed from generation to generation. This also allows for the learning of the craft to cut across both genders, and all of the various socio-economic classes of Eutracian culture.
MG: Which is why we end up with a country where magic is entirely controlled by an elite, insular group composed entirely of men who hold themselves aloof from the rest of society and form a distinct organization and social class within it. Riiight.
OTOH, this makes me think of David Hair’s Moontide Quartet (and its sequel series, the Sunsurge Quartet – they’re best thought of as two arcs that form a single overarching saga, IMO) which also features a magic system heavily centered around bloodlines and heredity, with a person’s power being determined primarily by the quality of their bloodline. And it does not shy away from all the implications, some horrifying and some just kind of squicky, inherent in this, or from the fact that a society ruled by wizards whose powers are literally based on the purity of their superior blood is going to be a deeply messed up, almost dystopian place (and also said wizards are generally portrayed very negatively, and a lot of their self-perceptions and pretensions of superiority get punctured as the series goes on). My opinion on that series as a whole, and in particular how it handles a lot of its plot and worldbuilding elements, is pretty mixed so I’d hesitate to recommend it… but it really does read in some ways like its magic system is a direct deconstruction of Newcomb’s, I can’t lie.
From that basic premise soon came the concepts of full and partial blood signatures, forestallments, blood quality assaying, blood signature lean, etc.
MG: In other words, Newcomb just immediately from “magic is hereditary” to “special magic bloodlines determine everything about a person’s abilities and moral inclination.” That sort of stuff is why people say inherited magic as a trope has unfortunate, elitist and even eugenicist implications – and Newcomb just takes it from being subtext and makes it flat-out text. And admits it. Charming.
If all persons could both learn and use the craft, then it would cease to be special, wouldn't it?
MG: Kind of telling that Newcomb seems to equate “special” with “elitist,” isn’t it? In any case, I raise the counterexamples of DND’s Eberron setting, a “wide” magic setting where low-level magic is extremely common in all levels of society and presents a society that’s basically had a “magical revolution” instead of an industrial revolution (but truly powerful individuals are still rare and impressive), or Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom were people who know a few basic Charter spells related to their professions seem to be very common (though, again, really powerful Charter mages are much rarer) or Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera (which while certainly not without its own issues I honestly much prefer over his more famous Dresden Files for numerous reasons I won’t get into here) where literally everyone in the titular nation has some degree of magical abilities, though some people are much stronger than others. And “special magical bloodlines” are hardly the only way to make magic something not everyone plausibly has access to. Going back to DND, even just looking at arcane magic we have wizards (magic as an academic discipline), bards (magic as a form of performance art), sorcerers (magic as inherent superpowers, which might be directly tied to your ancestry or might not) and warlocks (magic as something you have to bargain with powerful beings to get); several distinct ways to get and use magic, all of which provide various sorts of restrictions for who can access it, all distinct from pure “your magic is in your blood and that’s that.” There are lots of ways to handle magic systems, and explain why not everyone can do magic… and Newcomb chose the least-interesting, most unfortunate-implications ridden of them all, because of course he did.
The magical system of the Vagaries and the Vigors is quite complex, and very intriguing. The system seems to have an almost mathematical symmetry about it. What are your thoughts on this subject? And will we eventually find out all the mysteries surrounding the workings of the system?
MG: *snorts dismissively* “Mathematically symmetry?” Don’t make me laugh. Newcomb tosses a lot of jargon at us, sure, but that’s not the same thing as actual complexity – especially when I’m still vague on basic elements like “what powers to wizards have?” “how do you cast spells, anyway?” and “what exactly is the difference between the Vigors and the Vagaries and why should we care?”
There is still much to be learned about both the Vigors and the Vagaries, and the Ones Who Came Before and the Heretics of the Guild.
MG: That’s true. Unfortunately, most of it is going to end up contradicting what Newcomb has already established on these topics.
From the very beginning, I wanted more than just an earthly struggle between good and evil. I also wanted to display an uber-struggle that continually goes on in the heavens, and eventually comes to affect the struggle on earth.
MG: So, it’s kind of funny he’s going to end up abandoning this concept entirely in the second trilogy in favor of “the Ones and the Heretics aren’t godlike beings who dwell in the heavens at all, but two powerful but mundane empires on the other side of the world, ruled by wizards who are powerful and immortal but in no way divine or spiritual beings.”
Like the craft, bits of information regarding this higher, more spiritual conflict will also be revealed as the books go along. Will we ever learn all of the workings of the magic systems? I don't really know. I guess that will depend upon how many more of my books my publisher ends up buying! (laughs)
MG: Considering the series ends on book six with almost everything important unresolved – Newcomb, you tempted fate and got bit hard, and I can’t help but laugh a little! Also, see previous comments about retcons.
Although the characters face terrible situations -- and even torture, in some cases -- and some of the plot twists have a horror element to them, the tone of the books overall is uplifting and optimistic. Do you consider yourself an optimist? What methods have you used to get you over the difficult times in life?
Yes, my books are graphic. From the very beginning, I wanted them that way. The story I am telling can be very brutal, and I want the readers emotionally involved. But I also try to balance the darkness with beauty -- such as with the Fliers of the Fields, the Caves of the Paragon, the various chambers of the Redoubt, etc. Good triumphs, but it has to go through hell to do so. Those who practice the Vagaries mean to see it rule the world, and they will do anything to make that happen. I guess the various challenges in my life have been overcome in largely the same way as my characters have done -- with lots of perseverance, and some luck thrown in for good measure.
MG: So, this is something I’ve alluded to at various points across the sporking, and that is Newcomb’s stated desire to balance horror and beauty in his works. And I respect that, in theory, and think it’s an important thing to do and can be very powerful if done well. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Newcomb isn’t someone who has much personal experience with either moments of great power and beauty or of great trauma and horror in real life, and it shows in how badly and more importantly shallowly he handles both topics. His depictions of evil and horror mostly just end up being lavish descriptions of depravity, relying on gore and sexual violence to shock the audience while the actual implications of all of this (including trauma for the characters who survive it) goes unexplored at best or are outright handwaved away at worst. His depictions of goodness and beauty are equally shallow – pretty butterflies and beautiful caves and fancy buildings that have no more depth and meaning beyond “look at this shiny thing that exists!” The former is gross and shlocky, the latter is superficial and twee, and having them both in the same story feels jarring and dissonant. Again, mixing beauty and horror and using them to counterbalance one another is entirely possible to do – but crucially, looking at an author like Tolkien who I think did a very good job with it, he actually had a well of experiences of both to draw upon, and was very well-read in other literary depictions. I suspect Newcomb can say neither of those things, and isn’t a good enough writer to fake it, and his work suffers badly as a result.
What is the greatest challenge you faced in writing The Scrolls of the Ancients, the third book in the series? What is the greatest challenge in writing this series?
The greatest challenge in writing Scrolls was that in this volume I had such a big story to tell.
MG: I mean, looking back on it, this actually is kind of true – for much of the middle portion of the story, we’re following four distinct narrative strands (Tristan at sea, Wulfgar and Serena at the Citadel, Celeste, Shailiha and the wizards in Tammerland and Marcus and Becca with the Scroll) that all weave together into the overall story. But it still feels small, and I think, again, that’s because Newcomb isn’t very good at making all of this feel like necessary elements of the story or tying them into the broader setting.
I wanted the reader to become acquainted with partial blood signatures, and herbmastery and blaze-gazing -- not to mention the significance of the Isle of Sanctuary and the Fortress of the Citadel. Each of these "new" locales has a significant place in the history of the craft, and their stories will be more fully revealed as the books go along.
MG: The Citadel, yes. Sanctuary… I double checked, and I’m not sure it actually gets mentioned in any significant way again in the second trilogy? So, uh, whoops?
I also wanted to make this book nautical, with sea battles, pirates, etc, and that was a bit of a challenge in itself.
MG: *flatly* I can tell, considering you can remove the whole “pirates” subplot without impacting the book much at all (seriously, I’ll go into this more in my final thoughts, but if you had the Minions rescue Tyranny’s fleet from the Screechlings instead of the pirates and cut out the whole detour to Sanctuary, the story plays out the exact same, it’s just shorter).
Tristan's love interest is Celeste, a beautiful and intelligent woman who has endured horrific circumstances for a very long time. How do you approach writing love scenes? Are they easier or harder for you to write than an action sequence?
MG: *snorts* Well, isn’t that appropriate – we start off the question talking about Celeste’s trauma, and then suddenly swerve into asking about writing sex scenes instead of addressing it. Did Newcomb himself ghostwrite these questions, by any chance?
I don't really find writing love scenes to be any more difficult than the others.
MG: Well, they’re certainly not of any different quality than the rest of the story (which is to say, they’re very bad, but so is everything else).
But when I approach one, I have to make sure that I slow down and make the moment count in a different way. The characters' motivations must be well examined beforehand -- falling in love at first sight doesn't work as well in print as it does on the screen, for example. Every scene an author writes is in some way about exposing the heart. The only difference between them is which part of the heart you wish to illuminate, and why.
MG: And am I the only one who notices that, despite all that rambling, not only does Newcomb not really say anything of substance, but he also manages to do it without Celeste herself actually coming up again?
I understand that when you sat down to write The Fifth Sorceress you didn't even know how to turn on a computer. Now you have an extensive website, your own people to run a message board. How do you feel about the Internet now? Can you live without it? Have you become a technophile? Have you succumbed to the lure of owning lots of tech devices: laptops, PDA's, cell phones etc.?
I have certainly not become a technophile, nor do I own many such devices. I know my way around a computer, but to this day my typing remains atrocious! I think that the internet is a wonderful advancement. The sharing of useful information on such a grand, worldwide scale is truly mind-boggling. But like other brilliant technological breakthroughs, it easily lends itself to some serious crazies -- not to mention unscrupulous business practices. To this day I still know people who think that simply because something appears on the Internet, it must therefore be true. That's scary, to say the least.
MG: Huh. Newcomb’s thoughts on the internet… actually seem kind of sensible, even prophetic reading this interview twenty years after the fact? *shrugs* Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.
I'd like to talk about the actual process of writing. Would you walk us through a typical writing day for you?
I sit down to begin writing between 10:00 and 11:00 AM, Monday through Friday. I normally work for about four hours, then quit. That usually produces five or six pages a day; or 100-120 pages per month.
MG: …word count’s a better measure of length and productivity than page count. Just throwing that out there.
During the evenings my wife critiques the current day's work.
MG: To be a fly on the wall for those conversations…
Saturdays and Sundays are typically used to plan the next week's upcoming scenes.
Do you outline before you begin your books, or did you let the story evolve on its own? Whether you outline, or not, does the story end up the way you planned?
I don't use an outline -- I find them to be too unforgiving. I know where the story is going, and I just write it. In each case the result has ended up the way I planned. Or in some cases it may have actually turned out better, I think, because I was free to chase various new ideas as they came along. That's where the real fun comes into play. For me, the not knowing is better than the knowing.
MG: Eh, using outlines or not is a personal preference (I don’t usually do a “hard” outline myself, though I do try to work out where I want to go and how I want to get there in some detail before I start writing). OTOH, I think maybe it would’ve helped some of Newcomb’s weird pacing issues if he could’ve looked at outlines of Gates of Dawn and Scrolls of the Ancients in particular and said to himself “do we really need all these scenes of Tristan and the wizards sitting around telling each other things?” or “does the detour to Sanctuary actually add anything to the plot?”
I'd like to talk about the editing process. How much input does your editor have on your work? Do you let anyone else, such as your wife, read your work in progress?
My editor has a huge role in the process. She line edits my work, and in so doing she always comes up with an entire host of questions about the characters, the magic, etc. She then sends the questions to me, and I answer them directly in the manuscript. The only other folks who read the raw manuscripts are other family members, and the fellow who is the webmaster for my official site.
MG: Funny, from reading these books, I find it kind of surprising they were edited at all… And does your editor do anything other than ask questions about the magic system, by chance?
I’m snipping the next couple of questions, which deal with Newcomb’s personal life – mostly about his study of the martial arts and family car dealership – and don’t really have anything to do with the books and aren’t very interesting.
Can you give us a sneak peek into the next book, Savage Messiah?
It's difficult to talk very much about Savage Messiah without also saying too much about The Scrolls of the Ancients, because the two stories are so closely linked.
MG: That’s true, which is why the decision to split the trilogies there is particularly jarring (notably, I don’t think Newcomb has referred to either trilogy by name – or to either of them as trilogies - in this whole interview, he’s just referred to “the series” which makes me all the more convinced he only ever conceived of it as one big series and it was Del Rey who split it up).
For now, suffice it so say that some more major aspects of the magic system will come to light, and the Heretics of the Guild will begin to take a more active role in what is happening on earth.
MG: I suppose that’s true, in that it will be revealed that the Heretics have been “on earth” and not in the Afterlife this whole time…
New characters will emerge,
MG: …that phrasing makes it sound like they’re going to come crawling up out of holes in the ground, doesn’t it?
and some characters who you might have thought the saga couldn't do without shall die.
MG: *nasty grin* Why, yes they will. Can you guess who?
All in all, I think you'll find it to be an exciting read.
MG: I mean, the second trilogy probably is an improvement over the first, as low a bar to clear as that may be…
Anyway, that’s it for the interview! What are my takeaways? Mostly that either Newcomb is the most obliviously self-congratulatory man alive, or that he’s desperately trying to present a better image of himself than the reputation his books had already earned for him (or maybe a bit of both). I can’t help but wonder if having a woman be the one to interview him and write this article was a deliberate choice on someone’s part to try and counteract his reputation for misogyny (and certainly the questions all seem phrased deliberately in a way to kiss his butt, to a degree that’s frankly embarrassing to read knowing what his books are actually like and how his literary career seemingly ended) but I don’t think he can help himself even so. Sure, you have him praising all the women in his life and his (shallow and unconvincing) explanation for why Fifth Sorceress totally isn’t sexist, guys, but it all rings hollow, especially when you notice that outside of the sorceresses, the interview only discusses Shailiha as a sort of afterthought to Tristan’s story, and Celeste only as Tristan’s love interest (and it’s the interviewer who brings her up in the first place!). Tells you something about where his priorities lie, doesn’t it? Beyond that, it mostly confirms my suspicions that Newcomb’s understanding of fantasy as a genre is pretty shallow (and that he was a new reader of the genre before he started writing in it) and that’s why his attempt at epic fantasy feels so flat, and not nearly as clever or daring as he seems to think it is. And, for that matter, it really can’t help but seem like Newcomb has a much deeper and more complex version of this story in his head (assuming he’s not just talking himself up, which is a distinct possibility) that he utterly failed to convey on paper… which doesn’t speak well of him as a writer.
But, now, with the interview at last out of the way, we’ll be ready to move on to my final thoughts for Scrolls of the Ancients and the Chronicles of Blood and Stone overall next time, and finally bring this project to a close! We’ll se you then!
