We caught up with Katherine Arden to ask all about her experience as an author and the inspiration behind The Warm Hands of Ghosts.
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Q: What inspired you to become an author?
A: I didn’t start my first novel with the specific ambition of becoming an author. I had always loved reading, of course, and there were many writers I admired. But I had never connected my enjoyment of fiction to a possible career for myself. I didn’t study creative writing in school; it never occurred to me. When I began my first book, I had just finished college, and I fully expected to go on to grad school. I had focused on foreign languages at uni—I speak French and Russian—and I wanted to become an interpreter. But before applying to grad school I decided to take a year off to move to Hawaii and work on a farm. I was twenty-four, I wanted to live somewhere warm and beautiful, and I was burned out on coursework. I figured if there was ever a time or place to be footloose and broke, it was Hawaii, age 24. So I ended up on Maui, living in a tent, working at a farmstand, harvesting coffee, macadamia nuts, and papayas. I had always been a huge reader, and I decided to try writing a book to entertain myself in my tent during the long evenings, when I had no money and no car to go anywhere. I found that I really enjoyed the process of writing fiction, and decided that I wanted to finish my book project before heading off to grad school. I did finish it, and was shocked when when my tentative attempt to publish it succeeded. Then that novel spawned a three-book series, then I had an idea for another series and honestly it felt like one day I woke up and looked around and realized I had become an author. I never went to grad school. It goes to show that the most important things in your life can be the things that surprise you.
Q: Was there a specific book, genre of music, that helped or inspired you while writing The Warm Hands of Ghosts?
A: For me, every book takes inspiration from so many different things that it’s hard to pin one down specifically. I was inspired by Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno and the Book of Revelation. I read a lot of WWI era memoirs, like Storm of Steel, Some Desperate Glory and the well-known Canadian memoir by Will Bird, Ghosts Have Warm Hands (now published under the title And We Go on) which gave me my title. I took ideas from the history of the twentieth century, and from Greek myth, especially “Orpheus and Eurydice.” I visited battlefields and took notes. I listened to a lot of classical violin music and also bluegrass fiddle while I was writing. The book is an amalgam of a lot of different ideas and experiences.
Q: How would you describe your writing process? Do you have a plan/outline or go with the flow as the story comes to you?
A: I usually start writing without an outline to see how the book feels. I want to know if there’s a strong voice coming through, if the book seems to want to move, if the ideas deepen as I go along. Plenty of my book ideas actually die at this early writing stage, because I can feel that there’s not enough there and it won’t grow into a whole novel. After about 10k or 20k I start sketching brief outlines as I go, not too detailed, just so I can keep track of my ideas as they come. Usually by halfway I write my last outline and then charge the rest of the way, because the book has good momentum by then.
Q: What is the most surprising thing you've learnt while writing this book?
A: I learned a lot of interesting and surprising things, especially about the first world war; its hard to pick a favorite. I suppose one fact that really moved me was how many combat nurses suffered from scarring on their hands after the war, because they were dealing with huge septic wounds without gloves or antibiotics, and their own blisters and paper cuts would go septic too, and then scar. Such a small detail, but one I’d never encountered before and one that really brought the physicality, the frailty, and the courage of medical personnel in the Great War alive for me.
Q: Was there much research involved in writing The Warm Hands of Ghosts, was the writing process different/similar to The Bear in the Nightingale?
A: There was a ton of research involved in writing The Warm Hands of Ghosts; I did a month visiting battlefields in France and Belgium and I read a ton of memoirs, a lot of nonfiction, letters, everything I could get my hands on. Ghosts was a more difficult book to write than Bear, and it took longer, and I had more false starts. I think having so much information available made it harder in a way. The Bear and the Nightingale is set in medieval Muscovy. There are only so many sources available. Whereas WWI has so much information available that it is difficult to find room for your own fiction, amid all the facts. And I wanted to mix fantasy in with the history, but finding a way for fantasy to work with this particular history was very difficult.
Q:Did you have a favourite character to write in this book?
A:I liked writing Penelope Shaw, whose point of view and personality and hidden depths were a challenge to get right, and I also enjoyed writing Faland. Immortal characters are always fun to work on, and his ambiguity appealed to me.
Q: Do you have another book in the pipeline? What can we expect from you next?
A: I wrote a picture book for small children called The Strangest Fish, about a girl who wins a fish in a contest that turns out to be magical. That is coming out in the US in September. After that, I have a new standalone book for adults on the horizon. No title yet, but it is set in the early Renaissance and I am excited about it.
Quick fire fun question to end;
Which fictional characters from Tv/Film/Book would you like to go to dinner with and why?
Can I say which authors? Because I’d rather pick a table of authors. I’d want to have dinner with Shirley Jackson, Edith Wharton, Hilary Mantel and Dorothy Dunnett. It would be sensational. And maybe Oscar Wilde, if we wanted to add an element of instability.
Which fictional world would you most like to visit?
Kind of a classic, but Middle-earth. Every part of that huge world: the Shire, Gondor, Lothlorien, Rivendell would be amazing to see.
