Thursday, August 14, 2014

TALKING WITH - AUTHOR - GED MAYBURY

"For me, writing is about chopping up the millions of experiences I've had, and gluing thousands of them back together into a unique and bizarre beast."
This was the response from Ged Maybury, Steampunk Author and Cosplayer, when I asked him if he would like to participate in an interview. Over the last year I've had some pretty great talks with Ged and am always impressed with his knowledge of Japan. His book, Into the Storm's Domain, is available now through Satalyte Publishing (www.satalyte.com.au) and your local book store.

1. Into the Storm's Domain is Book 1 of the Across the Stonewind Sky Series but I've heard it wasn't always. Where was this part of the story originally and what led to the moving around?

In 2008/2009 I wrote two entire books and was well into book-3 when I looked back and realised that book-1 just wasn’t good enough. Book-3 was full of much better ideas! So I went back and stitched the original opening sequence onto the middle of book-3 (before it was even finished). That worked so much better as an opening book. There was far more action and adventure, and more importantly character development.
Then of course I was forced to look at all the body parts now lying around my operating room. Book-2 no longer made any sense, so it was designated ‘book-3’ and I set about grafting a new head and legs onto the remains of my original book-1. That is now Book II – “Into the Heart Of Varste” (coming out late-2014!).
I’ve never done such a dramatic re-write. Doctor Frankenstein would’ve been proud of me!


2. To give readers an idea of each character or if your series is ever made into a movie or tv show, who would be your dream cast?

Well first of all I’d love to see it as an anime. Studio Gonzo, of course. (But I’d have to make my main characters a lot younger! Isn’t everyone a teenager in anime?)
Otherwise I’d want to hand it over to the team that did the Sherlock Holmes movies: Racy action and epic special effects. Everything huge and mindboggling! Dream actors? My lead characters are Rodney Hoverrim (played by Jude Law with muttonchops!), and Romarny Skijypzee (played by Noomi Rapace).  Oh – there are too many! I’ll stop there.


3. You have quite a lot of experience as a writer. How has your Path evolved over the years from children's books to now, on regards to finding inspiration and the individual journey of each book?

There has been no change, except in scale. I still write the way I did from the very beginning – from instinct, without a perfect plan, and with nothing more than a ‘pirate’s map’ with the vaguest of clues sketched upon it; just a hint of where, and how, it will end.
Without that – well: let’s just say I have a few unfinished books in my computer.
As to characters: well I have to let my crew come aboard whenever and however they want, and with whatever they have to offer. It requires a willingness to trust them. After all, they’re lurching out of the swamps of my unconscious, sometimes with extra bits of the map in hand. I cannot deny them life! And when I do let them in – remarkable things happen!
And sometimes this thing called Story just demands that something has to happen. A twist. I can’t argue with it! (Well, I try, but it always wins.) It means that I never control my books. They control me.
However these day I make a lot more notes. I try and map out more of their past, or how they are going to pull my plans about in the future. I create machines and creatures that might come later. For example I’ve got extensive notes for a huge adventure they all have much later in the series, but I still do not know every detail. I won’t until I start writing scene one.


4. Do you have a ritual, a routine, for writing?

Nope. I’m terrible. No discipline at all. It’s totally random. The only pattern is that when I’m full of ideas I write like there’s no tomorrow. i.e. – I write with a passion when I can see the way forward.
But when I’m stuck, I’ll keep going back to it, again and again, sometimes leaving it for months, forever seeking the way through the maze, or a way to rewrite the maze itself. Call me pig-headed.


5. There is a music video of Storm's Domain. How did that come about?

The idea developed during 2010. I had created the ‘theme song’ years earlier and so I set about finding a composer, then a vocalist – just by word-of-mouth.  The song went public that December at a Steampunk meet-up. It went well, but I wanted a bigger better way to promote my epic.
At that stage I still did not have a publisher for the book, but on a leap of faith I raised money via Pozible and began contacting film-makers and Steampunks in Brisbane. None of us had ever done anything as complex.  It was shot in September 2011, and belatedly released in March 2012 because the VFX took so long!
Oh, and I’m claiming a world first here: It is the world's first custom-written theme song to a book. I did search the internet at the time, and found no other reference to such a concept.
(Curiously and by chance, our Director of Photography (DoP) was awarded the Australian Student Cinematographer of the Year Award 2011 for her previous work. I got the best!)


6. You've explained to me in the past the connection between Japanese movies/anime and steampunk. Can you tell the readers a little about that?

My first encounter with Steampunk was not via western literature (I hardly ever read books), it was via anime. “Laputa” by Hayao Miyazaki, to be exact. It caught my interest, but it was not until I came across the word ‘steampunk’ that I realized what that particular style was, and quickly fell in love with it.


7. For the Martial Artists out there, what weapons and methods of combat do you have in your books and how do you go about creating these while keeping the authenticity you have?

My world is very European, but in keeping with one of the realities of Victorian England, I’ve included a character from ‘Japan’ – Goro Karakuri – who travels to the ’west’ and, among other things, becomes a martial arts instructor at a secret finishing school for young ladies. Thus my principal female Romarny Skijypzee is well-trained in a number of martial arts before my story begins.
As to weapons and combat – well I keep it rather fuzzy and let my readers fill in the choreography. My fight scenes are often chaotic, between wildly mismatched combatants. (And of course my main character is always wearing ‘plot-armour’!) If any weapons do appear they’re usually western weapons common at the time, plus a few science-fiction weapons.


8. Considering you have certain training/fighting sequences done so well, did you yourself swing a sword or take any lessons to get the feel?

I’ve handled and fired a few guns in my time, but as far as martial arts go – I’ve only ever taken a little instruction in Tai-Chi. (Therefore there is at least *one* convincing scene!!)
To write a fight scene, I try to imagine myself in the fight myself and how things might swing; the forces and the physics; the pain and panic; the misses and hits. I’ve been in a few scrappy schoolyard fights so at least that stuff is familiar! But also – a big fight scene is generally shown from Rodney’s point of view, so a lot goes on that he simply doesn’t see. He’s always too busy!
If readers want perfectly researched fight scenes, they’d better go elsewhere. My story is a light-hearted steampunk adventure with a touch of romance, not a martial arts classic!

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