I have been positively dying to ask author A.M. Justice interview questions ever since I read her book, Blade of Amber. Finally, one day, A.M. Justice asked me if I could possibly do an interview. I was beyond thrilled! So now, without further ado, my interview with author A.M. Justice.
The Literary Connoisseur: Hello, Ms Justice! Thank you so much for joining us over at The Literary Connoisseur and answering a few questions about your writing, your books, and your career as an author. If you're ready, let's begin. How did the story of Blade of Amber first come to you?
A.M. Justice: When I
was in high school I wrote a science fiction adventure in which a group of
space Nazis kidnap a teenage girl from Earth. That B-movie premise evolved into
Blade of Amber. A lot of elements went into it to make it the alloy it
is. First, it’s an adventure story about a girl who is very much like me; Vic
carries both my strengths and my flaws. She doesn’t suffer fools but she’s
easily intimidated by really charismatic people. Second, it’s scifi-fantasy
premise is modeled after similar blends such as Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series,
which I read and reread when Blade was gestating. I like when fantasies explain
how the humans came to live in whichever strange world they occupy—whenever I
read pure fantasies, I always wonder, is this supposed to be on Earth? When?
Where? If not on Earth, how did the people get to this place? For my book, I
wanted to give readers a backstory to explain how the people came to live on a
world with giant insects and people with extraordinary powers. Third, in
college I became fascinated with the vengeance culture of the ancient Norse, so
I wanted to explore the idea of revenge and the damage it does. Finally, I have
always loved fairy tales, and I wanted to do a take on Rapunzel, which is a
favorite. All those things were smelted together and thrown on the forge to
become Blade of Amber and its sequel, A Wizard’s Lot.
The Literary Connoisseur: Who would you say is the target audience for the Woern
Chronicles books?
A.M. Justice:The
primary target is young women who enjoy stories that challenge the norms of
fantasy and romance. It’s also targeted at the outcasts, women who might have
led the debate team or played for the chess club but were snickered at by the
cheerleaders and prom queens. It’s a story for the young woman who sits alone
while her friends are slow dancing with their boyfriends while she wishes the
cutest guy in school or at work would fall for her because she’s smart and
interesting and complex. It’s also a story for any woman who likes female
protagonists to solve their own problems.
It
turns out, I’ve gotten great feedback from women of all ages and backgrounds,
and it’s always a pleasure to hear nice things. But I’ve also received good
reviews from men, and that means the world to me. I worked really hard on the
action sequences as well as the chapters from the male characters’ points of
view, and it’s nice to know I succeeded in writing believable men as well as
women.
The Literary Connoisseur: Your stories all recently came out in paperback. How
exciting! How does it feel to hold your work in your hands and see your name
under the title?
A.M. Justice: I’m a
huge fan of digital books, so I didn’t expect to be excited when I saw the
proof copies of the physical books. However, my heartbeat sped up and I was
blinking back tears when I opened the package for the first time. Seeing a
printed book, whether you released it yourself or it’s published by someone
else, is spectacular.
The
print versions of Blade of Amber and A Wizard’s Lot are not yet publicly
available. I worked in publishing for many years, and I want the interior
design of the physical books to look as professional as I can make it. (This
was true of the digital versions as well!) I should be able to finish up the
layout tweaks this week and then I’ll issue the announcement!
The Literary Connoisseur: What is your absolute favorite thing about being an author?
A.M. Justice: I love
escaping into other worlds and playing with the people who live only in my
head. I love how the subconscious takes over and surprises you with unexpected
plot twists, or even helps you out by giving the character an apple to eat on
page 10, when on page 210 the seeds from that apple will sprouted into a gorgeous
tree, laden with blossoms and fragrant with new possibilities. Many times as
authors we work backward and will hand our main character that necessary apple
in the second or third draft, but sometimes the subconscious has run on ahead, all
the way down the road, and it knows what you need.
I also
love it when it gets hard and you’ve written your characters into a box canyon
and you are despairing of the whole thing because it’s a nightmare and you’ll
never fix it, and then your mind suddenly finds the key and you suddenly know
how to turn your mistakes into assets. That’s one of the most rewarding
feelings in the world.
The Literary Connoisseur: Vic is an incredibly strong and independent female
character... How important do you think it is to have such a strong female lead
in literature nowadays?
A.M. Justice: In
December the Mary Sue published excerpts from a BBC radio interview with Neil
Gaiman in which
he talked about Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gaiman pointed
out that Buffy wasn’t strong because she kicked butt, but because she acted
independently, without waiting for rescue, or approval, from a man. Moreover,
Buffy was only one of many strong women on that show (or all of Whedon’s work;
I’m not sure he’s ever written a weak
female character). The strong, independent woman may seem like a new phenomenon
in literature, but I grew up reading books written decades or even centuries
ago featuring women who held their own with men, from The Witch of Blackbird Pond (the first novel I ever read) to Island of the Blue Dolphins, to Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch. When I was young, Little Women was a favorite; one thing I
admired about it was that each March daughter exhibits her own version of
strength. There’s Beth’s selfless courage, Amy’s sassiness, Meg’s forbearance,
and of course Jo’s ambition to rise above the limitations society puts on her.
To
answer your question directly, I think it’s vitally important to reinforce the
expectations and ambitions of young women by writing stories in which women are
the heroes, not the heroines. By this I mean female characters need to be the
drivers of their own stories; they need to get themselves out of jams, whether
it’s hand to hand combat with the villain or saving an ailing corporation from
financial doom. I have nothing against traditional heroines—one of my favorite
characters in literature is Rebecca from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.
Rebecca is a courageous woman with a strong sense of honor, but she is the
quintessential damsel in distress. She sits in a tower, waiting for the hero to
show up and rescue her. The resistance she offers the villain is passive and
ladylike: she fends off Brian’s advances not by grabbing his sword and
attacking but by threatening to kill herself by jumping out a castle
window.
Lisbeth
Salander, in contrast, is a traditional hero (or antihero, in her case) as she
rides around her motorcycle, exacting revenge and rescuing middle aged
journalists. Hermione Granger is a hero because she’s an equal partner to Harry
and she makes vital contributions in the war against Voldemort. But
Cannie Shapiro is a hero too, because she deals with the challenges in her life
on her own, without waiting for a man to show up and make it all better.
I think
women become more attractive to the genuine Prince Charmings of the world, when
the women can stand on their own and solve their own problems. Early in Blade of Amber, Vic has her wallflower
moments, but the men in the book are drawn to her because she’s clever and
courageous. In the end, Vic discovers she needs someone to help her heal from
the emotional damage she’s suffered, but that need doesn’t make her weak, it
makes her human.
The Literary Connoisseur: Are you currently working on any new projects?
A.M. Justice: Scion of Sovereigns, Book Three of The Woern Chronicles, is in the hands of
some beta readers while I work on line editing it; I hope to release it before
the end of the year. I’ve started Book Four of The Woern Chronicles, but I don’t have a clear sense of where that
one is going, so I’ve put it on the back burner to simmer while I finish a
historical novel I began a while back. The working title is Galileo’s Doctor, and it’s about a young
woman who passes as a man in late Renaissance Italy so she can go to university
and study medicine.
The Literary Connoisseur: What is your opinion on Indie publishing?
A.M. Justice: The
indie route was the right choice for The
Woern Chronicles, but I plan to seek a traditional publishing contract for Galileo’s Doctor. I originally followed
the traditional route for Blade of Amber, but the book is long and the
story unusual, which together made it a hard sell. There are a thousand tales
of authors whose rejections spurred them to try harder; it didn’t work out that
way for me. I had resigned myself to writing “just for me,” but then a friend
convinced me the indie route was feasible. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I
went for it, and I’m so glad I did. I’ve loved having total control over the
production and the process. I’ve loved learning from all the mistakes I’ve
made, and planning how I’ll do better next time. It’s exciting when something
positive happens, and those little bread crumbs have been enough to keep me
going toward the next challenge. Those are my favorite aspects of being an
indie author.
However,
like so many writers, I find the marketing to be a real challenge. Screaming “look
at my book!” as loud as you can, you’re still one voice among hundreds of
thousands. I’m still looking for the golden compass that will open the gateways
to all the worlds where my potential readers live. However, everything written
about traditional publishing these days suggests that the traditionally
published authors aren’t getting a lot more support than I am, especially if
they’re new authors. I know one person whose first novel was published by a
major house and, while they did send her on a book tour to half a dozen cities,
they provided no promotional support for the tour and she read excerpts to
empty rooms. It would be easy to shrug off her experience as that of someone
who wasn’t really worthy of fame and fortune, but her book blew my mind, it was
so good (and I’m a harsh critic; the title is A Thrall’s Tale, by Judith Lindberg). In any case, Judith and her
publisher never found the audience for that book, and it didn’t do well.
Nevertheless,
a traditionally published book conveys status to an author. That someone gave
you an advance for your work, or even just covered the cost of printing and
distribution, means someone else believes in you. In the eyes of readers and
especially other authors, having a traditionally published book turns a writer
from a hobbyist into a professional. I was so excited to open the box full of Four
Doors Open today, because those
glossy covers mean someone thinks my work belonged between them. The publisher,
JaCol Publishing, is a very small press, but size doesn’t matter when you have
that endorsement. This is especially so because the editor of the collection is
a well-regarded author himself and a powerhouse of an editor (I’ve never seen a
better editor).
The Literary Connoisseur: Who is your favorite character in Blade of Amber and why? Do
you favor one book over the other?
A.M. Justice: My
favorite character is and has always been Geram. From the moment he stumbled
into my life, juggling his gear, I’ve looked forward to working with him every
time he takes center stage with a POV chapter. There’s a part of me in all my
characters; Geram embodies my sensible, no-nonsense, pragmatic side, but he
also has a dry and ironic sense of humor that helps him through the worst of
times. He finds a way to draw strength as well as knowledge from regret, which
is something I try to do. (I think he’s better at it than I am.)
Of
course, the series wouldn’t exist without the principals—Vic and Ashel—and this
troubled pair occupy most of my thoughts. As fond as I am of Geram, Ashel is my
beloved. I love the dark anger and doubt he hides from the world with that
glorious smile of his. In A Wizard’s Lot,
he chooses a path he would never have imagined when he was at the pinnacle of
his fame. Sending him down that road was one of the most rewarding experiences
of my writing career.
As for
Vic, she and I grew up together, and she’s changed as I’ve changed over the
years. I originally thought her story would end with A Wizard’s Lot, and
I had no intention of writing another word about Knownearth. Then, when I
decided to go the indie route and was rereading the two books to get them ready
for publication, I started to wonder what Vic would be doing “now.” I set
Galileo’s Doctor on the backburner and started writing Scion of Sovereigns.
At first it was more for fun than anything else. Set two decades after the end
of Wizard, I put Vic in a domestic situation akin to mine. She is no
longer a young warrior; she’s a middle-aged mother juggling work and social and
family commitments, just like me. Of course, one key difference is that Vic is
a wizard.
As for
whether I favor one book over another, like the characters, each book has its
strengths and weaknesses. From a narrative perspective, Blade is a more
straightforward story, but I love the underpinnings: the forge metaphor and the
topsy-turvy mashup of Rapunzel that lies below the surface. Wizard’s metaphorical content is not as
pervasive as Blade’s, but the story
has multiple interwoven plots carried by a half dozen POV characters. Wizard
was a lot harder to write because of those intersecting narrative threads, but
that made it a more satisfying book to write (and I hope a more satisfying one
to read).
The Literary Connoisseur: Earnk is a very complex character...and his complexity is
exactly what I adore about him. Without any spoilers, what will we see from
Earnk in the future?
A.M. Justice: I love
Earnk too, and through him and his relationship with his father, I got to
examine and come to understand some dynamics within my own family. (I’m happy
to report that Lornk is not based on anyone I know. His sociopathic behavior
comes entirely from my imagination.) What does the future hold for Earnk? He
will continue to struggle to find the balance between duty and desire, and that’s
all I can say without entering into spoiler territory.
The Literary Connoisseur: Tell us a bit about your latest piece of work, Four Doors
Open.
A.M. Justice: Four Doors Open is a collection of personal
essays written by four women author. You could think of it as the four of us
opening the doors on our lives and minds and letting readers have a peek
inside. Two of us took an autobiographical approach, and two took a more poetic
and emotional approach, but all of us have insights into love and hate, sorrow
and joy, family, friends, enemies, and everything in between. In my pieces, I
talk a lot about regret and trying to overcome one’s mistakes and do better the
next time. I finish with a piece about my wedding, which took place in New York
the Saturday after the 9/11 attacks, and about how no matter what goes wrong in
your own life, there are always bigger things in the world.
The Literary Connoisseur: Thank you so much for stopping by and doing this interview for
your fans! Have a lovely day, and please continue writing!
A.M. Justice's books
(which I've rated five-stars):
ebooks:
For more on A.M. Justice and her writing-
check out her website here!
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