Q: Tell us a bit about your new book “To Ride Hell’s Chasm”, and how it fits in or contrasts with your other books.
A: This book began with a relatively simple premise – a princess fails to show up for her betrothal banquet, and no one knows why. Two of the king’s men are asked to find her and secure her safety, both from different backgrounds and cultural settings. The result became a mystery, a court intrigue, a hard action adventure, a thriller packed with magic – and most of all, a deep exploration of the ethics of the warrior. The book takes place in a very tiny kingdom, runs its full course in a time span of five and a half days, and has six horses who are as heroic as any of the human characters.
Typical of my other books, part of the plot and suspense turns upon gaining insights into the characters, and viewpoints of right and wrong, good and bad, will shift as the story progresses. I like to credit my readers’ intelligence and let them determine their opinions themselves, rather than carve situations in black and white, and put tags of “baddie” and “goodie” on the characters at the outset. I like a book that doesn’t follow the predictable path, can’t be second guessed, and that has a well worked out world, society, and magic system.
The non typical aspect of this story: it is a stand-alone novel.
Q: How long have you been working on “To Ride Hell’s Chasm”? Tell us about its development.
A: I finished this story in a wild rush of inspiration – it always bolted ahead of me, and it was as though I was racing to keep up just to get it down. The entire book was written in eight months. I don’t think I have ever had a roll that long before; it was pretty incredible. I can hope readers have as much fun reading this as I did writing it, because it always kept me guessing.
Q: What was the seed of inspiration for this particular story involving Princess Anja and Captain Mykkael?
A: I started the idea with two things in mind: a missing princess who has not disappeared for the “usual” reason – she isn’t running away from a lousy match. She has, in fact, vanished in the face of the perfect prince – so what could possibly be wrong? The second thing – I wanted to incorporate the tremendous courage of the horse, and styled this after the endurance ride called the Tevas Cup, wherein contestants ride for 24 hours, 100 miles, over very rugged mountain terrain. The story quickly centered around the two men at arms who are sent to search for the princess – and that became the meat of the tale.
One is a trueborn aristocrat with a prickly, upright sense of fairness, whom everybody loves and trusts. The other is a total outsider, an unknown, whose cultural background engenders distrust, and whose worldly experience is far outside of what the tiny kingdom can accept or understand.
Q: Do you find it easier to start developing the characters first or building the setting or background? Or is it a combination of things?
A: I usually start with the bone of contention – one little seed – a missing princess, and the concept of horses and their courage and endurance doing the impossible to spare a kingdom – then that became a pretty solid outline. The two men at arms, Mykkael and Taskin, quickly stepped into their role and the conflict between their values shaped up at the outline stage.
Additionally, I knew what the threat to the kingdom was going to be – and the unexpected twists and turns that exposed which characters became the villains.
In order to hold this story to one volume, I set the backdrop against a tiny mountain kingdom, isolated and quaint – think Switzerland, but tinier – a place so well protected by its terrain that it has never truly had to face any sort of threat on the grand scale.
Where the fun really started was when I began to write, and the characters just leapt off the page – Mykkael’s background became a suspenseful impetus – who was he, before he became captain of Sessalie’s garrison? The fact he was a war-scarred veteran, of course, suggested that he had a very colorful past. And that emerged as the book progressed, in almost as fascinating a development. One of the finest surprises was the way he developed himself, and in how the cast of other characters stepped up to contrast, or to enrich the story. Not one of them doesn’t play a vital role – and often they surprised me.
None of them are indispensable to the saving of the kingdom – even the court busybody who’s a pain on everybody’s nerves.
Q: As an artist, do you find visualizing scenes, action or settings, and translating those to the written word an easy or convoluted process?
A: Thinking in words, and thinking visually are diametrically different processes.
I visualize everything that I write – in great depth and detail – but the way I produce a “visualized” scene in words, and the way I paint are not one bit the same. My usual way to describe the difference: if you are writing, you’d call note paper ‘lined paper.’ If you are painting, you’d describe the same notepad as being ’striped paper.’ One is symbolic – the other, straight visual. The two processes don’t blend easily, as they require a totally different mode of thought. So if I am writing, I write all at once, and if I’m painting, I do that in chunks. Switching back and forth too fast is not efficient, so I work in long blocks.
Q: What is a typical day like for Janny Wurts? Tell us a little about your writing and painting processes and how they relate to each other.
A: Typical day: I am writing or painting – usually not both. I spend most of my time involved in my work, which is what makes me happy. I have horses, and love the outdoors, so I try to spend some part of each day outside. It helps the ideas not to be too engrossed at the desk or easel, but it’s hard to tear myself away if things are really smoking and the muse is coming in like gangbusters. It is quite usual for me to be working late hours at night, and the nice thing about having horses outside is that you need to get up in the morning to feed them.
So the night owl hours are not going to override being up early each day.
