When you were writing this, or before you wrote it, how much research did you do on magic and spirits and the like? Because I find when you research magic and spirits, most things revert back to religious demons or angels.


Your character Jormundur, sorry if I spelled it wrong, my book is not handy at the moment, is spelled similar to the demon Jormungand, and sounds like his brother Fenrir a bit. I found it here if you want to take a look. But It seems odd that most things involving magic seem to be deeply researched. So if you did research, why did you do it? It is your book, so you could have made up any rules or laws you wanted to concerning it.


Kenny.

Hello Kenny,

Interesting question. The magic and spirits in the book are a mix of stuff that I invented and things that I pinched from folklore, myth and legend. I suppose it could be possible to invent an entirely new magical system, but it would be astonishingly hard. For instance, Tolkien, who is revered for the completeness and originality of his world, nicked masses himself from Northern myths and legends especially. In practise any writer of fantasy is going to use certain concepts that have been handed down, firstly from oral tradition and then more recent literary works. The key is: is he/she going to be able to infuse them with something original? If not, it will seem at best a bit hackneyed. So a writer must walk a fine line - borrow things where appropriate, but give it something new as well. So in answer to your question I have read a lot about these subjects over the years, and I had reference books about when I was writing, but I was careful not to over-research - the danger there is that you lose all spontenaity. If you look at the magic in my book there isn't much detail about the mechanics of it, because that's not the interesting thing to me. I'm interested in the characters and the implications of the master/servant relationship.

But it's vitally important in any fantasy that the magic you employ MAKES INTERNAL SENSE, otherwise the reader quickly realises you're pulling a fast one. You're right that you need rules and laws and you need to stick to them.

Now, what's this about Jormundur? Who's that? Do you mean Jabor? Jabor, with his jackal head is influenced by the Egyptian god Anubis. I've read a fair bit of the Northern myths, but not too much of that got into this trilogy, because Bart's past is very much middle-Eastern. The book I'm writing now is much more northern in its flavour...

Bye for now,

Jonathan