Extrait :
Plus de détails et la suite de l'interview ici- Now that THE HEROES has been out for a while on both sides of the Atlantic, are you pleased with the way the book has been received thus far?
I’m never pleased. I always want more. Like Sauron.
- With THE HEROES making noise on the Sunday Times' bestseller list, do you think there will now be added pressure as far as your future novels are concerned? Readers will likely have higher expectations with each new work you publish. Do you ever think about that, or about the fact that publishers now expect you to move a certain amount of units every time something with your name on it hits the shelves?
There’s always pressure. To produce a new book in good time. To make it better than the last from your own point of view, from that of the readers, the critics, the publisher. To sell more copies. But obviously one would much rather have the pressure of, “your last book did great, with this one we need to do even better,” than, “your last book was a disaster, if the next one doesn’t do better we’re going to drop you and you’ll have to get a real job.” You’re always conscious that only a small minority of published writers are able to earn their living out of it, and even if you’ve earned a place among those lucky few it doesn’t have to be forever. A couple of bad books and you’re out of favour again. It can be a tough way to make a living, in that sense. Not road-crew tough, but there’s always pressure.
- Several maps in THE HEROES. What made you and Simon Spanton change your minds? The lack of maps had sort of become a running gag of sorts with you and your publisher.
I’m not sure that I have changed my mind in particular, I’ve always had mixed feelings about maps. I love a good map – one that’s useful, and appropriate, and with artistic quality that adds to the whole feel of the book. I hate a bad one – a careless scrawl adding nothing of style or content and thrown in there just because there’s a feeling a fantasy book should have one. With the First Law books we felt a map wasn’t totally necessary. The Heroes is the story of a single battle, tightly focused on one small area of ground and with the terrain and relative positions of the units being important and otherwise pretty hard to follow. I also felt there was the opportunity to use maps in a different way from just sitting mute on the fly leaf, with new ones showing the state of the battlefield at the start of each day. So they serve an important purpose in The Heroes, I think, and add to that feeling of it being an invented piece of military history, if you will...
