Charles Soule’s debut novel is The Oracle Year. From his Q&A with Ross Johnson at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:There’s a lot going on in the book (in a good way). You’ve got presidential politics, you’ve got televangelists, you’ve got like assassins. They’re going all over the world. I’m curious about the inception of the story. Did the story start out with scope, or is that something that built over the process of writing? Was it always that big?--Marshal Zeringue
It was always that big. The genesis behind the novel was really…it was partly that when I started writing it, I was still working as the lawyer and comics hadn’t blown up the way they subsequently have for me. It hadn’t become apparent that I could make a career, but I was working on it and trying really hard and, and fitting it around the edges like I do, like we spoke about earlier. And, so, I would have given a lot to be able to ask the question. Will this work out? Will this turn into something? Will I have the life that I want to have? And I figured that while that was my question at the time, everybody in the world has a question like. Whether it’s: Will I ever see her again? Will I ever achieve this goal that I’ve been working for? Will he get better? Whatever the question is, everybody has one.
And so I thought the appearance of a prophet in the world, Somebody who could hypothetically answer those questions would have massive ramifications all over the world in all kinds of societal structures: from politics, economics, to pop culture, to everything. And I wanted to write a book that explored that in as much detail and on as many levels as I could. I wrote about...[read on]