Saturday, January 15, 2011

Jo Walton

Jo Walton's new novel is Among Others.

From her Publishers Weekly Q & A:
Protagonist Mori's background sounds very similar to your own: growing up in Wales, raised by your grandparents, etc. How autobiographical is Mori's story?

I've always been very interested in how stories become mythologized—how things start off as events and become anecdotes and stories and legends and myth. What I did in this book was to mythologize some of my own life experiences.

Was it a difficult story to tell?

Very difficult. It's much easier to research the 1940s than history you have lived through!

You've described yourself as a "feral" writer. How's that different from a "tame" writer?

I don't do a lot of things schools teach people to do and tell them they have to do. For example, I don't write outlines or drafts. And I write things on odd edges of genres.

Although published as adult fantasy, do you think Among Others could also be seen as YA?

I don't think of it as a YA book, even though...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue