THE FANTASY AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK INTERVIEWS III: PAUL S. KEMP

As part of the process of writing The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, I interviewed a few key players in the SF/fantasy community. Their wisdom and generosity is liberally sprinkled throughout the book, but I couldn’t use every word–and wanted to do some follow-ups. What follows is an expanded interview with Paul S. Kemp, The New York Times best-selling novelist and creator of Erevis Cale.

I first encountered Paul Kemp about ten years ago. At that time we had an open submission policy at Wizards of the Coast, and as the “slush pile” started to take over our workspace we started hiring out to editors in other parts of the company to help us read through the submissions and recommend any that showed promise. Then D&D editor Keith Strohm (yes, that’s Keith Francis Strohm, author of Bladesinger and The Tomb of Horrors) spotted a sample chapter he thought we should take a look at.
Keith has a good eye, so I added this as-yet-unpublished young author-in-waiting to a blind call for proposals for the Sembia series. I got back several submissions and read them not knowing who wrote which, and the one I liked best, and not just best for that character, was by this Kemp guy.
So he starts with a short story, published in The Halls of Stormweather, which was so good, I thought, hey, wouldn’t it be cool to launch the novel series with the new guy? It was cool. We did that, and the rest is history.

Athans: What was the first fantasy novel you remember reading? Was that the novel that made you want to be a fantasy author yourself? If not, what was the novel that made you want to write fantasy?
Kemp: The first fantasy novel I read was Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I still consider it an exemplar of fantasy storytelling. The Hobbit breaks no new ground at all–in fact it relies on more or less standard tropes throughout–and yet it works, and works well, because the execution is so skillful.
But it was not The Hobbit that made me want to write fantasy. For that, I plead Michael Moorcock, particularly his Elric work. Those stories expanded my conception of fantasy, showed me that it could be more than warm, mostly light-hearted fare, and could, in fact, grapple with profound moral questions through the lens of a story well-told. Ultimately that is what made me want to write, and I think fantasy’s ability to serve as a perfect venue for moral questions is (among a few other things) what gives the genre its enduring strength.
Athans: Do you read your own reviews? If not, why not? And if so, have you ever read a review of your work that you thought made you a better writer? Have you ever read a review of your work that shook your confidence or even made you reconsider your choice of careers?
Kemp: I do. You know, I think most writers are a strange brew of unusually high confidence and extraordinary insecurity. Reading reviews touches both those poles. Too, it gives me a sense of how a particular novel is being received by the readers.
I’ve never read a review that I thought made me a better writer, no. And that’s not to say that the writer of a negative review didn’t have a point. It’s just that my writing process is so internal that external factors play little role. In general, I write what I’m on fire to write and write it in the way I’m on fire to write it. That doesn’t leave much space for the opinions of others to influence the process.
And no, I’ve never read a review that shook my confidence or made me consider giving up writing. If I let a manuscript out of my hands, that’s because, at that moment, it’s the best story I can tell and the best way I can tell it. Once that manuscript becomes a book and gets into the hands of readers, it’s theirs, and they should and do feel free to offer their views of it. But whatever their views (good or bad), it doesn’t change the fact that it was the best book I could write at the moment I wrote it. I’m content with that, irrespective of reviewer sentiment.
Athans: Is there a particular source for ideas you find yourself going back to? Mythology, current events, history, your own life, etc.?
Kemp: I draw from all over. Sometimes the lyrics of a song might inspire a character or even a whole character arc. History provides me with lots of fodder, as do the classics of the sword and sorcery genre. I get asked this question a lot and I’ve never been able to give a satisfactory answer other than to say that inspiration can originate in just about anything. And does.
Read the full interview at Fantasy Author’s Handbook!
And follow Philip Athans on Twitter: @PhilAthans