Triumff
Dan Abnett is a writer I’ve followed for years mostly through his work in comics. When I heard he had a novel coming out next month, I contacted him for an interview. The novel is Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero, the first installment in a three-book deal with Angry Robot Books. Set to go on sale on October 1, the book is described as: “Sir Rupert Triumff. Adventurer. Fighter. Drinker. Saviour? Pratchett goes swashbuckling in the hotly anticipated original fiction debut of the multi-million selling Warhammer star. Triumff is a ribald historical fantasy set in a warped clockwork-powered version of our present day ! a new Elizabethan age, not of Elizabeth II but in the style of the original Virgin Queen. Throughout its rollicking pages, Sir Rupert Triumff drinks, dines and duels his way into a new Brass Age of Exploration and Adventure.” My thanks to Abnett for his time and thoughts.
Tim O’Shea: How challenging was it to write this novel while also meeting your monthly writing commitments at Marvel and elsewhere?
Dan Abnett: “Triumff” has been in production for a long time, and this slow burn means that it’s fitted very nicely behind more pressing and urgent day-to-day jobs. Having said that, I do break my working day down into prose and comics: a chunk of the latest novel before lunch, and a batch of the next comic after. Obviously, sometimes really pressing deadlines throw that careful plan out of the window, but it worked well here.
O’Shea: Angry Robot seems to be generating buzz about the book in interesting ways, such as posting excerpts online. As a writer with his own blog, facebook page and YouTube clips, how much do you think your online presence has helped in marketing your work?
Abnett: I think that’s impossible to evaluate even in this media savvy era. It can’t hurt, though: I really relish the immediacy of getting an idea or a bit of news out via the blog or twitter or facebook, and I love the feedback, which often comes quickly enough for it to be of some material use. Besides, it’s fun to post a few ramblings on YouTube, or to read an extract. It all breaks up a day that is otherwise just me sitting in front of a computer.
O’Shea: What’s the biggest challenge to writing a novel in an Elizabethan voice/mindset with modern trappings?
Abnett: I wouldn’t say there’s a challenge, especially: I’m very interested in the period, and I chose to write it, after all. For me the trick to getting it feeling the way I wanted it to was to research and use a great deal of contemporary vocabulary, but not be precious about that. I’d like to think that some of the humour comes from the way the archaic terminology gets slung around in a casual manner.
O’Shea: What was the appeal to you of framing a story around a new Elizabethan era?
Abnett: As I said, I’ve always liked the era. I honestly think the trick with a lot of fantasy and SF is to research the background as if it’s an historical novel. You find the closest historical or cultural analogue to the world that you’re creating, research that, and then adjust the result with your fiction-writer’s hat on. With “Triumff”, the Elizabethan setting had a much more directly historical frame of reference than many of my books, which allowed me to go even deeper under the surface with some confidence. It’s a very interesting place to go and I always fancied I’d look good in a rough.
O’Shea: This is the first book of a three-book deal with Angry Robot Books, how did the deal come together in the first place–did they seek you out or vice versa?
Abnett: They came looking for me. I have a very long and productive relationship with the Angriest of the Robots, and my track record with the Black Library novels lubricated things nicely.
O’Shea: You’re a writer who clearly is appreciated for his world-building skills–not all writers have that skillset with such success. To what do you attribute this particular strength?
Abnett: I read all the time, I spent a great deal of my teenage years inventing worlds on the fly for role-playing games, and I studied English Literature at Oxford, so I guess those factors combined to give me the skill-set I have as a writer. Details of life, from the everyday to the exotic, have always interested me, so it’s not a great burden to translate that into my work. It’s stuff I’m interested in, anyway.
O’Shea: You like to inject humor in your novels, where it fits, of course. How do you go about deciding where a dramatic scene needs the levity of humor. Are there ever instances where you remove humor, because it strikes the wrong chord for the moment, when you reread what you’ve written?
Abnett: I find the humour tends to happen organically, and is usually born out of character, so it’s pretty self-policing. I might crack a joke at an inappropriate moment, but one of my characters, caught in that moment, is far less likely to. Of course I go around tidying up, just to be on the safe side. There’s nothing worse than a joke too far, unless it’s too far between jokes.
O’Shea: Who is your editor on this book and in what ways were they able to help you improve the book?
Abnett: My wife is always my first editor and reader, and a great deal of stuff gets sorted out between us before anyone else sees anything. The main help she gave me on this particular book was laughing in the right places. Angry Robot’s in-house editor was also incredibly thorough and gave the whole manuscript a good valetting.
O’Shea: The cover lists you as Mr. Dan Abnett (a formality that I assume is a nod to the Elizabethan aspect of the book)–was that your idea or someone else’s ingenuity?
Abnett: That actually came from the publisher, Mark Gascoigne. We were trying to think of ways of making the very particular mood and era as obvious as possible from the cover. Mark decided to style the cover copy in an appropriate typeface and with reference to the tone of the novel’s frontispiece. It seemed entirely in keeping with the whole. I might insist on “Mr” for all my books from now on.
O’Shea: Is there anything about the book you’d like to discuss that I did not ask you about?
Abnett: I love this book. It’s very personal to me in a very particular way, and I’m hugely grateful to Angry Robot for giving me the opportunity to put it out there. I hope the readers like it.