Ficlets

1. Quick! Tell us a little bit about yourself and Acacia.

To the best of my knowledge everything I’m about to say is true…

The first story I wrote was about giant turtle warriors; I was thirteen.

When I was eighteen I spent four days alone, naked and fasting in the Arizona dessert. I got a full-body tan.

After grad school I went to Scotland with the primary intention of hanging out with people with cool accents and drinking a lot; I ended up married.

I’m still married. We’ve got two lovely kids, a girl (8) and a boy (6). They just did a hike with us that took them up to 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevadas, where we camped. They both did great, except they also woke up in the middle of the night and hurled. Altitude, you see.

I live in Fresno, CA now, but before that I lived in Maryland, Arizona, Scotland, Oregon, France, Massachusetts, and Colorado, to name a few. In all likelihood, I’m not done moving yet.

I’m an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Cal State, and I’ve published three historical novels.

Acacia is my first fantasy novel, but it’s a story I’d lived with and thought about for a while. It takes place in an alternative world, but one that looks a lot like ours in terms of ethnic diversity. The protagonists, the Akaran children, were modeled after my wife’s family in terms of number, age, gender distribution. There’s also something about my wife and her siblings that sparked characteristics in each of the Akarans. (My wife, if you’re curious, would be the Mena character. She’s nice, but boy does she have a temper! Fortunately, I’ve managed to keep the swords away from her.)

I wrote Acacia partially as a tribute to the fact that it was fantasy that taught me to love reading as an adolescent. It’s not a YA novel, though. It’s shaped by my approach to historical fiction and built on a complex framework of political maneuvering and economic exploitation. It’s a novel in which the bad guys have valid complaints and the good guys carry a lot of compromising baggage. It’s a serious novel in many ways, although I’m also happy to say it’s got its quests, sorcerers, giant beasts, battles and high seas adventure moments.

2. Acacia is your debut into the world of fantasy, but before this you wrote well-received historical novels, including Pride of Carthage. What advantages did writing historical novels provide you when it came time to create your own world, with its own history? What things did you have to unlearn?

I think I would’ve struggled with the world building a lot more if I hadn’t already done it a few times in my historical novels. Each of them required that I portray a realistic and detailed world that is very different than our modern one. Gabriel’s Story was set in the American West of the 1870’s. Writing it I had to research cowboy lifestyle, the lives of African-Americans on the Plains, cattle markets, horseshoeing, sod house construction, rifle mechanics – not to mention relearning the geography of the Western States. With Walk Through Darkness I had to become a temporary expert on fugitive slaves, plantation practices, Annapolis history, the Scottish Highland Clearances, Yellow Fever. And writing Pride of Carthage – in addition to requiring research into ancient warfare, Carthage, Rome, mythology, Mediterranean geography – was also a lesson in the convoluted intricacies that plague grand endeavors. It was bloody complicated, and nothing ever proceeded entirely to plan.

It was great to have had those experiences to use when approaching a fantasy world. I loved having the freedom to make things up, but I still had a framework of things I knew I needed to deal with because I’d dealt with them in those earlier books. It’s part – I hope – of what makes the Known World feel real. The intricacies of the economy, the mythology the nations use to explain themselves to themselves, the difficulties in communicating across cultural barriers, the unfortunate tendency to turn idealism toward self-interest: all these things and more emerged in my fantasy world just as strongly as they had in my historical fiction. I think that’s a good thing.

I don’t think I had to unlearn anything, except I had to get more and more comfortable with letting my imagination roam, with letting the fantastic in. That was a great pleasure.

3. One of the strengths of Acacia is the moral complexity of the story, not only in the overall backstory of the Acacian empire, with its own “peculiar institution” of slavery, but regarding the decisions and struggles of the characters themselves. As an author, where do you place the balance between dealing realistically with moral issues, and telling a “ripping good yarn” that keeps the pages turning? Does knowing you are writing a series (this is book one) give you more flexibility?

Oh, that’s a tricky question. I think a lot about striking that balance and I do the best I can. On one hand, it’s very important to me that my fiction be about more than just a good story. I guess I think that part of what makes something a good story is when it’s got complexity and depth beyond the surface events. So Acacia does have plotlines that include slavery, state-sponsored drug addiction, out-sourcing of the military, global trade monopolies, official rewriting of the national historical record… And in personal terms it’s about characters that struggle to wear the skins of the destinies they’ve been born to, about people that are vulnerable, scarred, conflicted, and in positions of power at the same time… To me weaving such things into a grand story is exactly what I most enjoy reading.

But it takes time to develop these situations and to flesh out these characters with all their intricacies. That, of course, can slow the plot. And I don’t want to slow the plot! I do want readers to feel like they’re getting “ripping good yarn”. I decided some time ago – about the time my writing finally started getting published – that I was going to do the best I could to honor and reward readers for the time they spend with my words. Nobody should be expected to read my work or anybody else’s just because it’s good for them. I might have thought that in grad school, but then I met the real world and had to adjust a lot of my opinions. Every novel I’ve written since has tried to balance thematic substance with drama, action, entertainment, with chase scenes or battles or twists and turns of fate.

Do I get the balance right? For some, thankfully I do. But I know some readers express wanting the story to move faster. Some others think too much happens and I could’ve taken even more time. It’s not perfect for everyone, but it can’t be.

Knowing I’m writing a series does affect the big-picture notions I have for how the story develops, but the novels come out one at a time – and the slowness of it is as hard on me as on any fan. Acacia has to sink or swim on its own, at least for a couple of years. I’m painfully aware of many things that are going to come that readers can’t know of yet. Some things just need time, and books, to develop.

Magic, for example, is rediscovered in this book, but it plays a relatively small part. In the books to come, though, it plays a major part. Some readers may at the moment think I don’t do enough magic or don’t do it well, but I believe they’ll feel differently when the series is done – if they keep reading it. And it’s later – when magic is back at play in the world – that the significance of it having been absent for so long will truly sink in.

I hope so, at least. All I’m saying is that as the creator of this world viewing it as a series gives great flexibility, but as the author watching people read this first piece of it I can’t help but wish I could deliver the entirety of it immediately.

4. Share a piece of writing advice you’ve been given.

Do you mean share a good piece of writing advice I’ve been given? Those are difficult to come by at best, or so obvious as to seem elementary on the other hand. Oh, here’s something that comes to mind…

Steve Yarbrough, a great writer that hails from Mississippi but teaches here at Fresno with me, once gave me this gem. It was rather late and we were into the drink a bit and I was sharing my unholy ambitions for reaching bestsellerdom. He listened to it all, shook his head and said in his leisurely Southern cadence, “You know, David, if you want to sell that many books you’re going have to stop writing so well.”

At the time I laughed it off, but nothing I’ve seen since has proved him wrong about that. (I haven’t, for the record, taken this advice yet. I’m still hoping I won’t have to. I also haven’t sold nearly as many books as I’d like to, though. So you never know…)

5. You teach writing. So: What can you teach about writing? What can’t you?

I know. It’s a strange profession.

I can coach students, trying to find ways to bring out their talents, or challenge them in ways they need to be challenged, or query them when I think they’re making mistakes or wearing blinders to certain things. I can edit their work as harshly as my own gets edited. I can give perspective on the business side of publishing. I can encourage them to read authors that may have something to teach them.

What I can’t do is give them talent that’s not there within them already. I can’t really teach them how to accept rejection, shrug off ill-intentioned criticism or truly prepare them for what’s invariably a long, winding and ever-uncertain path toward publication and on from there. (I know I can’t teach them this stuff because I haven’t managed to learn it myself.)

Still, I can stand before them and holler about it all. Every now and then one of them hears something that makes sense to them. They make it their own and move forward. That’s about all I can hope for, and it’s not a little thing.

6. There was a recent article in the Boston Globe about writers of color finding their way in the largely white genres of science fiction and fantasy. You noted: “In epic fantasy, there is a lot of racism and sexism I don’t think the good people who are writing it are aware of.” Expand on this a bit, if you would. Do you think this racism and sexism is correctable? Does the market work to keep them in place?

For folks that don’t know it yet, that comment comes from my perspective as a person of color. I’m of fairly mixed ancestry, but it’s fair to say I grew up considering myself – and being considered by others – as African-American. Because of that I do read with an eye influenced by that identity.

There are plenty of examples of racism in fantasy, even when the characters of color aren’t actually human. They often serve as stand-ins for some sort of “other”, and quite often embody and represent the stereotypes of our world. I don’t want to start naming and shaming, but I’m quite confident that if readers think about it for a while – or remember to think about it as they read in the future – it won’t be long before they’ll come across numerous examples of white-only fantasy worlds, or white-mainly future worlds, or note current prejudices appearing in different guises…

Consider if that would ever happen in the work of a black writer. The prejudice part might, but the one race only world likely wouldn’t. As a person of color he/she would have spent a lifetime being aware of race on a day by day, hour by hour basis. If this black writer did create an all-black future or fantasy world white readers (if there were any) would likely find it improbable, limited, some sort of minority wish-fulfillment, or think it suggestive of some deep-seated racial animus – perhaps called racism. ( Am I wrong about that? I think I’m saying it pretty politely.)

That’s a figment of my imagination cause I haven’t read an all-black fantasy novel like that. Thing is, white writers have done the exact same thing for decades and decades, and many still do it! It’s just as racist a proposition when fantasy or sci-fi is all white. Actually, it’s an even sillier notion, because in the one world which we have as an example whites are minorities. As I remember it, about 55% of the world’s population is Asian. Like 13% is African. Whites slide in there around 12% – and that’s with a rather liberal interpretation of “white”. I’m sure these numbers aren’t precise, but the basic point is solid. The world we live in is brown. Likely, the future is brown too.

So what would I call an all white world written by a white writer? Improbable, limited, minority wish-fulfillment with an undercurrent of racial animus. (That’s the polite answer.)

I reckon things are better now than they’ve ever been. More writers include diverse ethnicity in their worlds, but we’ve got a ways to go. I know that Ursula K LeGuin always peopled her fantasy and science fiction with diverse populations. And I’ve recently discovered Tobias Buckell and his Caribbean-influenced sci-fi. It’s wonderful, necessary and important. It is the future.

And it’s part of my work, as well. The Known World of Acacia is a diverse world of people of different races, religions, ethnicities. I modeled it after reality, and then let the fantasy elements creep in to make it more interesting. I’m happy to say readers seem to notice it, and have largely responded well to it. We’ve sold the rights to publish it in five foreign languages and in the United Kingdom so far; so the world appears to be ready for it also.

I doubt the market in general works against diversity out of animus, but I do think that booksellers, publishers and filmmakers often play to our fear and ignorance more than they challenge us. It’s easier that way. Divide and conquer customers instead of trying to unite and sort through the complexity of who we are and what we might want if it was offered to us.

I was complaining to a film producer friend about the completely inaccurate and racially insensitive aspects of the film 300 recently. (I was also gawking at the incredible visual imagery of the film with wild admiration as I did this.) He basically shrugged and said, “Yeah, but that’s nothing new. We’ve always played on people’s fears of ‘the other’.” (That’s not a direct quote, just a version of the substance of his response.) In short – it sells. And by default he was saying that it would likely keep on selling, so why work against it?

I understand the reality of that. And sure I don’t have any desire to make Hollywood into any sort of moral compass. (Fat chance of that.) I’ll tell you this, though. This same producer is very interested in seeing Acacia on the big screen. Just as he knows we’re often entertained by racially insensitive fear he also knows there’s a market for aiming at our increasingly diverse and intermingled populations. He’s sees Acacia as a strong sell because of that.

So maybe, maybe he’ll get Acacia into a Cineplex near you in a few years. And/or maybe someone else will bring other writers’ diverse world to bookshelves and widescreens. If so, we’ll be making progress. Complete corrections? Naw, probably not. But we’ve a lot of room to improve before that, and I’m all for cheering each small step we do make.

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Read David Anthony Durham’s blog here. And visit his forum here.