#1 New York Times bestselling authors, the husband-and-wife team writing under the name Ilona Andrews, have kept us entertained and thoroughly invested in their stories for many, many years. Now that their latest book,
Magic Binds, has hit the shelves, they kindly stopped by to answer a few questions.
Dear
Ilona and Gordon, welcome to The Nocturnal Library. Thank you so much for
agreeing to this interview. I solemnly swear never to ask you about writing
together.
The
world of Kate Daniels is built on an interesting premise of magic and
technology coexisting and constantly trying to balance each other out. Plenty
of urban fantasy series had their rules changed along the way, but you’ve never
done that. Kate’s worldbuilding has been rock solid from the start. Did you
ever wish to have done something differently or needed something (for the plot)
that the world just couldn’t provide?
A)
Thank you. We’ve tried to be consistent. In the beginning I don’t know that we really
had all the rules worked out. Once we
did, probably by the second or third book, I think it actually made it easier
for us. We knew what was possible, what
we could get away with and what was impossible in that setting. One thing we have to watch is the magic
waves, sometimes when writing a scene, we have to figure out if the magic is up
or down. The closest we’ve come to
bending or breaking the rules was Magic Slays where we introduced a technology
capable of permanently removing magic from the land. We had to decide if such a thing were
possible and how it would affect magical beings living in the area.
Your
books leave no doubt about the amount of research you put into them. World
mythologies seem to be your playground and you always introduce at least one
obscure mythological creature for Kate to fight. How do you choose them? Can
you explain the process and the criteria?
A)
We started with what we were
already familiar with. That’s why it’s
Slavic myths in Magic Bites and Celtic in Magic Burns. Ilona being Russian knows all the old fairy
tales and we’d never seen an Upir in contemporary English fiction so we thought
it might be interesting to have one.
Being giant fans of both the comic character Slaine and David
Gemmell’sRigante series we wanted to play a bit with Celtic legends. For Magic Strikes, Rakshasas seemed like a
good choice of villains, they’re shapeshifters but not like ours who are
infected by a strain of lycanthropy.
What few people know though is that an early version of Magic Bites had
a dwarf in it. Like a full out D&D,
Tolkien type dwarf. Or that one of our
first books, one that will never, ever be published, had hobbit ninjas. We just thought it was cool. I wish I could say there was more to it than
that but most of the time we put in things we would like to read about that we
don’t see a lot of.
What’s
the weirdest thing you’ve ever googled during research?
A)
Lord, so much. Now we have to look at our search
history. Ummm, poisoning, kidnapping,
evil names, a lot of Fallout 4 settlement stuff. Here’s the weirdest, probably “Governors
who’ve been assassinated?” That was for
the Hidden Legacy series.
You
are known for your strong online presence and for being extremely good to your
fans? Is that a double-edged sword sometimes? It’s impossible to keep everyone
happy and people can be rather vocal. How do you handle complaints and/or
various requests? Were there any weird interactions you’d be willing to share?
A)
Let me preface this by saying
that 99.9 percent of our fans are great.
They’ve supported us from the beginning of the series and stuck by us
through it all. However, as you’ve
stated, you can’t please everybody. All
we can do is write the book we want to read and hope people like it. The most common complaints we hear are about
the covers, which personally, I’ve almost always liked, or the price of the
books. In both cases, we can honestly
say we have little to no control over those things. We don’t sell them, we just write them.
Let’s
talk about Magic Binds. First of all, I can tell you that I’ve already read it
twice and that it surpassed my wildest expectations. It’s an amazing book and
perhaps my favorite thus far. Which of the nine was the hardest to write? And
do you have a favorite?
A) Thank you so much, we’re glad you liked
it. Maybe Magic Burns because we didn’t
really expect there to be a second book.
What if we were afflicted by the sophomore slump curse and it sucked and
they didn’t want a third? I think the
conversation went along the lines of they’re publishing the first but they want
a second. Oh man, what are we going to
do? It has to be better than Magic Bites
and the final battle has to be bigger.
Maybe also Magic Rises because we took Kate and the gang out of our
usual setting. We had to decide who
would go, what the world outside of Atlanta or even the US was like, and most
importantly we decided to kill off Aunt Bea.
That was a hard conversation to have.
As I recall, we were loading the dishwasher and as the debate raged,
things were loaded with increasing force.
It was probably the closest we’ve come to having a fight over the
books. Well, a disagreement, not a knock
down drag out row.
For
me, Magic Binds was about characterization, or more specifically, the shades of
gray in Kate’s family. We finally understand a bit more about the worldview of
someone who’s been around for millennia. But even Kate undergoes major changes.
Was it hard to put her through that? Change some parts of her character that
we’ve started taking for granted?
A)
Yes, but we felt it was
necessary. Even as recently as Magic
Breaks, she wasn’t ready to fight Roland head on. She knew that. To even begin to rival him in power she
needed to stop holding back and embrace her magic. The risk with that of course is the
temptation to become like him. She had
to find her own way to deal with it. She
also needed some training, which is a part we really enjoyed putting into the
book. I guess we had to decide how dark she
would get or far we could let her go before we pulled her back from the edge.
It’s
so hard to understand Roland, and even harder to figure out his endgame. Magic
Binds clears out some of the fog, but there are still so many questions. Did
you ever change your mind about his intentions and motivations or was he clear
to you from the start? How do you think he sees Kate?
A)
I think he evolved over time
from an idea to a fully realized character.
For the first few books, all we know of Roland is what Kate was told of
him. That he killed her mother and
wanted to kill her. All of which is
true. What we didn’t know was how very
much he loved them both. More than the
he has loved anyone or anything. From
the beginning we knew who he was, historically, but not much else. I think the image of the long suffering
father of a rebellious daughter, which of course is how he seems himself, came
later. He is proud of her, of all that
she’s accomplished on her own, but in his mind she’s had her fun and now it’s
time to come home and take her place in the family business. If he has to kill every single man, woman and
child in Atlanta to make her understand this, he will.
By
far the most interesting and morally challenging part of Magic Binds are the
sahanu. What can you tell us about them (and what inspired them) without it
being spoilerish?
A)
Well, Roland is a paranoid megalomaniac with
god-like power, it makes sense that he would have his own cult of killers. We watched a lot of Ancient Assassins and we
both thought, wow, that seems like something he would want. We should put some of that in the book. I don’t think that’s too spoilery.
The
mystery of Christopher is finally unraveled in Magic Binds. I don’t think
anyone could have guessed his origins. Without actually revealing it, did you
know when you put him in that cage and on Kate’s path? Or did he develop along
the way?
A)
We didn’t know who he was, or even what he had
done to anger Roland. We only knew that
he had once been immensely powerful and now he was broken. The old saying is that if you have a gun in
the first act, it has to go off in the third, so that’s what we did. We knew that he could fly, just that he had
forgotten how. I don’t know if anyone got it but it’s also a nod to the late
Douglas Addams who in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy said "There
is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw
yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the
missing, that presents the difficulties."
With
nine books behind you and only one more to go, what are your thoughts on the
series? Did you accomplish everything you set out to do?
A)
A mix of sadness and relief. I hope so because we have no idea what to do
in the next one. We have to give it a
satisfying ending but leave the door open for a spin off series. What I can say is that it will be a proper
ending, no cliffhangers, no ambiguity.
Kate and Curran will get their happily ever after. They’ve earned it.
Finally,
I have to ask: is there any chance for more Kate books or is book 10 definitely
the last we’ll see of Kate and Curran?
A)
Oops, may have answered too
much of this in the one above. Book 10
will be the last Kate book but if there is a spin off series they will
appear. It won’t be their book but they
will be in it. We want to do a Hugh book
and of course we’ve talked about continuing the series with an older Derek and
Julie.
Thank
you once more! Thank you for having us.
Every little blogger dreams about interviewing his or her favorite author. For me, that was always Ilona Andrews, and my day has finally arrived. I'm pretty much done now, I can retire and read the 1852938593 books on my tbr list in peace.
Author: Chloe Neill
