I was tagged by the lovely Marie O’Regan to take part in The Next Big Thing blog hop (at least, I think it’s a blog hop. I don’t have my Advanced Current Internet Terminology badge yet). Anyway, Next Big Thing is right, it appears to be consuming much of the interwebs at this point. So here goes…
1. What is the title of your book?
Dangerous Gifts
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
It’s a sequel to Babylon Steel, which came out this year. I wanted to have more fun with Babylon, because I enjoy writing her, but also to deal with subjects like prejudice and the assumptions we make about both other people and ourselves, and the difference between tough choices and utterly amoral ones.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
Fantasy. If it was set in contemporary London I suppose it might be classed as urban fantasy; I would also say it has elements of crime and high fantasy.
4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Ooh, I love this part. Michelle Rodriguez as Babylon, Cameron Diaz as Laney, maybe Daniel Craig as Chief Bitternut, John Cusak or Johnny Depp as the sleek but dangerous Darask Fain, Alan Rickman as the mad sorcerer Mokraine…oh, and Jason Statham, with a bit of CGI, as Flower. There are a whole bunch of other characters I’d enjoy casting, but I’ve already spent far too much time on IMDB.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Babylon Steel, brothel-owning ex-avatar of sex and war is employed as a bodyguard to a prime assassination target in a country on the verge of civil war.
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Dangerous Gifts, like Babylon Steel, is published by Solaris. My agent is John Jarrold.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I wrote a first draft in about fifteen months. Longer than I’d like, partly because I was also working on another project, since I didn’t know for a while whether I would be contracted for another Babylon book. I then took it to my writers’ group for critique, winced, asked for a deadline extension, ripped out and almost completely rewrote the last two thirds…I think it probably took about 18 months to get to something I could bear to send out.
8. What other books would you compare this book to within your genre?
I always find this a difficult question to respond to without sounding rampantly egotistical – also, I don’t think any writer is quite like any other writer unless you are very specifically writing within a strict format, and even then…right, I should stop avoiding the question. A bit like Scott Lynch, maybe. And sort of slightly like Terry Pratchett, I hope. Only with more sex. And a touch of Angela Carter, if I’m pushing.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I was really eager to spend more time with Babylon and the rest of her crew, to discover more about the world and the characters. I intended the first book to work as a stand-alone novel, but I had always hoped to do more than one.
10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
It involves sex, death, the clash of idealism and realpolitik, and futures trading. With swords.
Now it’s time to tag five other authors, who will answer the same questions on their blogs next Wednesday.
They are:
The dangerously charming Helen Callaghan:
The calmly mysterious Andrew Goodman:
The futuristically splendid Dave Gullen:
The gloriously eccentric David Wake:
and…er…to follow! (Because I am the Perennially Underorganised Gaie Sebold).