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254 Adrian Tchaikovsky | Science Fiction and Fantasy Author
196 Plays1 day ago
International bestselling SFF author, Adrian Tchaikovsky joins us this week to chat about his many upcoming releases including a novella, a graphic novel, a new Warhammer story and the latest in his Children of Time series. We also go back to his start as a writer, the many years he spent looking for an agent and how the industry has changed over the years.
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am very excited to be joined by an award-winning, critically acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy author, the one and only Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hello.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello, thank you for having me on the show. Thanks so much for coming on.
Re-release of 'Made Things'
00:00:31
Speaker
Let's jump right with the latest publication, which I believe is Made Things, out on December 4th. Am I right in thinking that this is a re-release? It is. It was released, ah published originally in the US since some considerable time ago, um and is now getting a a proper UK release. Basically, I think and almost nobody saw it over here.
00:00:54
Speaker
is it ah It's a novella, right? It's not a full-length novel? It is, yes. It's a novella. It actually... There was a preceding sort of long short story or possibly even novelette, if that is a category people really still use, ah called Precious Little Things um that is kicking around in various in various places. um And then this is a novella and it kind of...
00:01:18
Speaker
unusually for novellas it actually it sets up a world large enough that I feel I may come back to it at some point and write more. Ah okay so there's a there's some potential future in this re-release and expansion of the universe.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yes yeah yeah it's it's it's definitely um there's definitely more legs to the uh to the world of it. Okay, very cool.
Story and Themes of 'Made Things'
00:01:42
Speaker
um Tell us a little bit about the the story itself, what's going on in in the world and the universe.
00:01:46
Speaker
So this is, it's a fantasy world. um It's a world of magic and magicians and also fairly stark class divides. So the city that the book is set in has an aristocracy of magicians.
00:02:03
Speaker
And they are the aristocracy because they're magicians, but also just because they have essentially inherited magical wealth. Everyone else has to scrape by, and most of our cast of characters are kind of thieves and rogues and various shysters living in the barrios, of which are the poor districts.
00:02:22
Speaker
Coppelia is a a thief and also a puppeteer, and she has discovered that into this city have come this little community of tiny artificial people, which are referred to as homunculi. They're made from various things like paper and wax and wood and metal. And she's formed this uneasy alliance with a couple of them who basically run around stealing stuff while she's doing her puppet shows.
00:02:52
Speaker
um And then she and they get involved in a large... ah sort of a grand heist that the thieves guild is running against the aristocracy to steal some sort of priceless magical artifacts that someone spotted on a previous raid and things escalate and she gets to see behind the scenes um and how the other half live and we find out sort of a lot about magical politics and
00:03:23
Speaker
There is a sort of, she gets captured and there the little people then have to make the decision of, well, do we reveal ourselves to the the rest of the human thieves who we kind of are thinking of as potential allies so we can get our human back?
00:03:37
Speaker
And so it's it is a it's a story about class. It's also is a fantasy story about emergent artificial intelligence. um Yes, okay. I mean, weirdly, i was I was recording on a podcast recently talking about um Pratchett's Feet of Clay, and I realized doing that, that year they're the huge amount of Feet of Clay um that inspireds inspired me to go off and write um made things.
00:04:03
Speaker
Okay, that that sounds great. And I can absolutely see just by the little bit that you told us there how that this can be expanded into into more potentially more books, more writing, more stories.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yes. Sounds like a really cool universe. Yes, and certainly with the just working out, because one of the one of the things is that the... these the um the homunculi basically ah a arise within a wizard's tower.
00:04:27
Speaker
And in the original short story, that's basically all they all they know. That's their entire world until humans discover it. um So now in in-m made things, we're seeing them start to explore back into the human world and discover how big the world is for sort of tiny creatures such as them and start to make self-sufficient colonies where where they can get hold of magic.
00:04:52
Speaker
and
'Children of Time' Series
00:04:53
Speaker
sort of pry it out of the hands of these aristocratic wizards they can start making more of themselves right okay very cool and there'll interesting point of view stuff from there as well i'd imagine um very cool looking forward to to seeing if that if you do expand upon that universe you've also got in a few months time 12th of March, 2026, the fourth book in in your critically acclaimed Children of Time series, that one's called Children of Strife. Yes. um
00:05:24
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about that that series. It's chronological, right? So it wouldn't be right to start at the fourth one. should always start at the first one with that series. um I mean, i I think so. It's not. um So the this it's the flavor of series this is is, it is a series of individual stories in a setting.
00:05:44
Speaker
But each one does build on the previous one. Because obviously, yeah, when when things change, when when events happen, they have knock-on effects. You can't just sort of unwrite for the next book.
00:05:55
Speaker
So you I think you probably do need to read the books in order. I think you'll certainly get a more satisfactory reading experience by doing so. I've certainly i've come across people who've taken like the second or third book and picked it up and somehow...
00:06:12
Speaker
gotten on with it despite lacking that original context and one of the things we certainly do even just because you know if people have read the previous ones it might be a some time ago there is a little section at the beginning which takes you through everything that has happened in the setting in brief so that you are at least brought up to speed which I think in this day and age because people have so much on is is pretty much a necessity with a long series.
00:06:40
Speaker
yeahy Yeah, it's become very popular from just different people I've spoken to in publishing to have um your series be, what do they call it? ah Like adjacent connected and things, all different stories within the same universe and you can read them in any order. Yes.
00:06:54
Speaker
um Okay, that's very cool. Very exciting.
Creating 'Salvation's Child'
00:06:57
Speaker
And that's obviously, ah you know, that's a big, big series that that's everyone's going to be hearing about that closer to March. Also, i saw, because you seem to be keeping yourself very busy, you have your your your debut graphic novel is coming out. Yes. we so I mean, I've actually, I've just been at um the Thought Bubble Comics convention this long this weekend, just gone, where the the ah the publisher, Cosmic Lighthouse, was promoting it.
00:07:23
Speaker
ah Yes, this is tremendously exciting. I've been wanting to get into writing um comics for a long time, and I've sort of bounced off the, um the medium for a while, mostly because as is traditional for a prose writer going to go into comics, i I tend to massively overwrite and yeah it's a very different art form and it's down it's down to making things as sparse as possible. So you give the artist room um to kind of breathe on the page. But yes, we finally got there. So this is Salvation's Child. This is an independent story in the universe of the final architecture.
00:08:01
Speaker
um which yeah um is, is it you know, from looking at things, seems to be a series that people are still quite quite keen on. um We've got a and there's a lot of fun stuff in this one. It is it takes place earlier, considerably earlier, at the beginning of the original sort of architect's incursion.
00:08:21
Speaker
um We get, there is a, the Mike Collins is doing some phenomenal projects on the interior, the ex the the cover of the book is going to be in the same style as the novels.
00:08:33
Speaker
And it's absolutely beautiful. it it is If you look for it, it is it has been released. It's out there. And also, um so we have ah Sophie Aldred, the actor, um among other things, former Doctor Who companion.
00:08:50
Speaker
who does the audio narration of the audiobooks for the series, um has lent us her likeness for the Parthenie characters, the sort of the the cloned sort of female space marines in the setting.
00:09:04
Speaker
um So that we've we've got sort of all these different versions of of of her um all the way through the graphic the graphic novel, which I think is absolutely wonderful. Oh, that's so interesting. I didn't realize that you would base, you know, get base of likeness on on on ah on a real person. You would just sort of try to create, fabricate ah a person. Well, it's it's not, certainly it's not normal it's not normally done, but it was just because we had her as the audio narrator and because she ah she is a quite well-known face and um some of the ah people involved in the book are kind of in Doctor Who fandom. It just seemed a really fun, know, if we could get it, we thought it would be a really fun thing.
00:09:43
Speaker
yeah um okay that's really cool then yeah if you listen to the audiobook and then you move over and see the actors that's a cool connection i do really like that um how did you find first you've done a graphic novel how did you find that you you you mentioned it a little bit but how did you find that kind of working with an illustrator and having to be very like um sparse with what you write and what you kind of leave out um it's i mean like as i said i've been i've been going at it for some years and so i've been and practicing and and and thankfully also um paul cornell who is a very experienced um comics writer among many ah many other the things uh is part of the cosmic lighthouse team and this was kind of coaching me so that when i you know i delivered the first script and then he went through saying well you know you
00:10:32
Speaker
ah with various suggestions about um the the but the panel organization and the the wordiness and all of that sort of thing. so But I'm hoping by now I'm kind of in the flow in the flow of working to the the different demand
Writing Process and World-Building
00:10:46
Speaker
of the medium.
00:10:47
Speaker
So when you do your draft, do you actually kind of shape out where you think the panels will be? um i so I do, um yeah, i storyboard.
00:11:00
Speaker
um So I'll work out what's on each page and then I will basically have a sketchbook and just break it up and storyboard it. But the important thing there is that is not the storyboard doesn't go to the artist.
00:11:11
Speaker
ah That's purely so I can see there is a possible way that this works on the page. um When Mike then draws the page, he's frequently gone for a very different alignment of panels and on, know, because he is a, he is an artist, he's got a much better idea of what is possible and often has ways of doing things that I wouldn't have imagined. um And I'm very happy that we you know we've got someone with his his sort of superior visual flair coming to the page. But just I just kind of need to know that there it is possible to do
00:11:44
Speaker
any given page i'm writing so i sketched it out as well this is this is an orientation that at least seems to work oh okay okay it must have been an exciting moment when you kind of saw his interpretation of everything kind of fleshed out it's but it's been amazing and and also we've had quite a lot of a collaboration about things like know how do the various alien species look because we've got a number of the species from the books turning up in uh in salvation's child and obviously they have a description on the page and i have an idea of them in my head so i've been i've done some sketches and he's he's worked from those but uh you know again he's but he's bringing his own flair yeah yeah yeah so like i said you're you're very very busy you've actually got more things going on than this i'll get onto this a sec but i wanted to ask while we're here in terms of writing process do you have to keep yourself on like a kind of
00:12:35
Speaker
rigid routine or like regime regiment to make sure that you can get all of the different things that you're working on done by their deadlines um i've got to say this year has been quite tight because i have over committed even beyond my usual levels of over commitment um yeah i'm very much in a habit of writing every day and all And for sort of various structural reasons, I tend to deliver a very clean first draft so that that becomes my submission draft after a sort of a pass to cut out egg sort of extraneous stuff.
00:13:11
Speaker
um So in general, I'm pretty good with deadlines um to date. Like I say, it's been a bit tight this year. I've had to really sort of start putting in extra shifts. Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
in in In brief, I decided I would claw myself a book's worth of space in the year to commit to extra sort of additional projects. And then I managed to commit to three different projects, each of which is the size of a book, to fit in that one book's worth of space. So that got a bit tight.
00:13:40
Speaker
I'm mostly out of that sort of crunch period now, which is good. um But yeah, I mean, I think I don't have i don't have a rigid routine. It left to my own devices at the moment. I tend to write in the mornings and then edit or admin or whatever else needs doing in the afternoons. But if I'm traveling, I can work on trains. I can work in airports. I can work in hotels. um In general, I'm very flexible.
00:14:06
Speaker
um And i i' ten I tend to be quite good at just retreating into my own head. Okay. And that stands me in very good stead, I think. Okay, that's good. And in terms of writing process, you're obviously writing a lot of things, putting them out at the same time.
00:14:23
Speaker
Are you the kind of writer that plans things out before you start actually getting into the prose? Yes, at at sort of two different levels. So I always do a lot of planning on the world. um And honestly, i am the world is the focus of my writing. I'm writing usually to show people the world I created. And the world will suggest to me the characters and the situations that will best do that. and's And so I let the world sort of suggest the plot. Normally, I will then go ahead and make a quite i detailed sort of chapter to chapter
00:14:59
Speaker
beat by beat breakdown of the book. And most of my writing has worked like that. In the current fantasy series I'm working on, The Tyrant Force, I'm trying something rather different where I'll do the same work on the world or possibly a bit more, but then I will just let it go.
00:15:15
Speaker
And the inherent sort of stresses and pressures that I've set up will then create the plot organically and it gives a very an interesting sort of mosaic structure where you're flitting from character to character a lot as different things happen around the uh wherever the the book is based ah okay so a planner and a pantser you like to sort of well this is i don't i don't feel it's pantsing because of the world stuff really it's um I mean, it's it's it's its it seems a bit egotistical to suggest I found like a third way that that is like a third point of the triangle, but it feels to me it's like it's basically it's chronicling.
00:15:52
Speaker
Right. Okay. So if i if you set the world up well enough, it has it has these it's a bit like pulling back an elastic band.
00:16:03
Speaker
um You have given characters motivations and you've given ah needs and wants and um clashes within the within the setting And so if you let it go, those will play out.
00:16:20
Speaker
um And you can just sort of follow the characters around and record what they do. And then that will have knock-on effects as they run into each other and cross paths that then show you what happens next. And at some point, um at some level in the background, your subconscious is kind of shaping this into the sort of shape a book needs to be. It's a thing I would not have had the courage to do, I think, a say, what, five, six years ago.
00:16:51
Speaker
i think you need to have a certain confidence in your ability to get yourself out of stuff, to go... It's sort of writing without a net. Right, yes. I don't think I could ever truly pant.
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, certainly that... I mean, that still seems incredibly... um
00:17:08
Speaker
intimidating ah prospect just to go and you know, hang a book off off the idea of a character or the idea of, you know, maybe a couple of key scenes or something like that. I definitely need the solid foundation of a world.
00:17:23
Speaker
And I think that that's that's very much key to my to all of my writing process. Okay, that's interesting, yeah. So the the world building is so thorough that it's essentially creating the guide for you to just write and then you kind of know what things are going to happen because that you said, you've you've set up all of the blocks and you've knocked one over and they're all just going to start falling.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yes, yeah. And like said, I mean, when I was first doing it for City of Last Chances, I did not know whether this was going to work and whether I'd i'd still be going strong at like 500,000 words or something ridiculous. But it turned out really rather well.
00:17:58
Speaker
And as as it goes on, you start to see further and further ahead into the future, really, as to, well, this is obviously now going to happen, this is going to happen, and that links with that and that kind of thing. So everything sort of, construct it's it's basically you're like you're walking across a chasm and the the bridge is building itself just in front of your toes.
00:18:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like you say, it does sound like the kind of thing you need to have had a lot of experience writing before you probably will have the confidence to to just go for it like that.
00:18:27
Speaker
um Well, oh it may be something that comes much more naturally to other people. All I can say is for me, I don't think I would have been able, I don't think I would have been confident enough to do it. Mm-hmm.
00:18:40
Speaker
that long ago i think it's definitely something that's come with with with experience for me okay cool well always great to hear about a new approach to to writing whether it's planning panting or anywhere in between um i want to get through a couple more things before we drop you off at the cabin um the first one was you have a new warhammer model Model?
Writing for Warhammer
00:19:07
Speaker
Novel? Novel. A model would be lovely. That would be cool, wouldn't it? I've yet to get models of any of my Warhammer characters. Oh, that's a shame. It's very much sort of bucket list life goal sort of thing. So you have a new novel coming out, Starter's Ruined, but you have written Warhammer novels previously.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I wrote a Warhammer 40k novella, which seems to have been very well received overall, which is called Day of Ascension. um And a few other of fewer of short pieces in their science fiction setting. But actually, I kind of moved over to their their high fantasy setting, the Age of Sigmar.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yes. ah Mortal Realms business, which I really like. um Mostly because I think the there's a lot to be said for the original Warhammer setting, which was this kind of grim grim ah sort of...
00:20:02
Speaker
old sort of fantasy historical 1600s middle Europe. um But the the Mortal Realm, the Age of Sigmar stuff they're currently working with is just completely bonkers. There's lots of really fun magic stuff um just inherent in the setting. And I quite like playing at that kind of level.
00:20:21
Speaker
um There's a lot of really fun um factions and creatures and because it's a war game where each of these is something you can collect and sort fight battles within the game they're all kind of the protagonists and some of them get a lot more focused than others the you know the human one the human side of things tends to get a lot more focus in the black library books so it's a lot of fun going to a faction like the seraphon they're kind of celestial lizard men uh sort of um
00:20:54
Speaker
army and writing from their point of view and exploring that kind of that very, very non-human perspective in a way that they're not, you know, they're not in any way the bad guys. In fact, arguably, they are absolutely the good guys.
00:21:10
Speaker
But they are very, very weird and what they think of as good is not necessarily what the humans they run into think of as good. And the but a lot of the book is like that, yeah is about that complete difference of perspective because they are working at a timescale that humans just can't really appreciate.
00:21:30
Speaker
Oh, okay. That's cool. I love like, yeah, a point of view where it's just so um literally alien um to to to like a human being. So how did you first get into writing for the Black Library, which is Warhammer's publishing arm? Was it something, did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you?
00:21:48
Speaker
um I reached out to them, actually. So what it was, i was just kind of, I just started sort of collecting and building. And then this would have been what, 2019, 2018, thereabouts. And in fact, I mean, painting figures was something that kept me sane during lockdown um as it happened. But...
00:22:07
Speaker
I has was at the UK Games Expo and they had just released, I think, the Gene Steeler cults faction book for Warhammer 40k. Now, the Gene Steeler cults are absolutely the bad guys. in ah in ah In a setting where kind of everyone's the bad guys, they are really the bad guys. They are a bunch of kind of deluded cultists who worship things that are actually sort of planet-devouring monsters.
00:22:31
Speaker
um Okay. But in the art for that book... You got to see these cultists basically just absolutely beset by the forces of the human imperium um fighting their ferocious resistance battles, um utterly outmatched, and yet the art gave them this curious sort of courage and heroism that you don't normally get um with this faction.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I was really rather taken about it. I thought, I would like to write the story behind that that piece of art, basically. And so I got in touch with them and said, well, look, I'd i'd quite like to do some Gene Cien Le Cult stuff. And it's not a faction they really had much in Black Library about.
00:23:18
Speaker
um So I did a short story for them about with that general theme. And that seemed to work fairly well. And then, yeah, they let me loose on a novella. And like I say, it seems to have hit the mark for people.
00:23:30
Speaker
Okay, very cool. And now you're doing more, but now you're over in... So you did originally, now it's over-sigma. me, they've got so many interesting sort of species and factions. Yes.
00:23:42
Speaker
um Especially, I mean, in the in the fantasy setting especially. And it's just, it's finding those points where you get the really interesting interactions between those um between those different kinds of creature that aren't just purely about them fighting, but actually the ah the way the the point where they can actually sort of just like touch fingers like God and Adam.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know too much about the universe. a friend of mine works for Games Workshop or I can't remember if they've rebranded or not, which part's rebranded. But the the one that i always thought was funny was the in 4DK, the orcs.
00:24:19
Speaker
The magic of the orcs is that if enough of them believe something, it becomes true. Yes. It's just so ridiculous. And it's it just makes me laugh because it's such a serious universe. And they like, they paint flames on their cars because they believe it makes them faster. So it does make them faster. It's so fun.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yes. I mean, and I mean, I think it's what another of the strengths of the universe. It is. It does have a lot of space for... even even with the very grim darky sort of um 40k universe there's there's still a lot of space for different tones and different takes yeah a lot of silliness um that's cool um the last thing i wanted to ask about that i've actually i've had can't remember it's one i've had a couple of people on who have done work with the black library when you work with a big ip like that
00:25:09
Speaker
Are there lots of sort of guardrails in place? Is there like a sort of restriction of like, here's here's the rules, here's what, you know, the law that you you can kind of have fun with, and here's where you have to very much stay within the bounds?
00:25:22
Speaker
So, yes, they, they i mean, they have to be, they are very, very careful with their IP, but in a slightly different way.
00:25:35
Speaker
to I think what you would get writing for say a Star Wars thing or a Marvel thing or something like that. um where So I think with a lot of large IPs, you're very restricted in how the books right how the books come out. You are given quite a tight structure you have to follow. um You generally have to follow sort of specific named characters. you know They want a book about a Skywalker. They want a book about Captain Kirk, that kind of thing. Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
um And so the the the
00:26:10
Speaker
it's it's very very its it's very, very constrained in a way that writing for the for Black Library and writing for Warhammer isn't in the same way. But what they are they are concerned about is that the logic of the universe you're presenting does not go over any of the lines so that it's clashing with how the game works and what exists in the universe because it's, you the game comes first and the, the fiction is, is definitely subservient to that. Yeah. Um, but it does mean that there are lots of, lots of sort of relatively unexplored corners in that universe. You can just go off and make your own story. And, and because the universe is very big and massive, um, yeah, it doesn't, it means you're not going to be necessarily treading on anyone's toes. Okay. Um, I did, I mean, I do still,
00:27:00
Speaker
have my favorite ever piece of editorial um commentary from writing that original Gene Seeler cult short story. Because the character has gone to an agricultural world and it's kind of raining, it's all mushrooms, it's horrible. And they are,
00:27:17
Speaker
In the original part of the story, they recall, yes, it's not like the sort of agricultural world you would imagine with rolling fields of corn and all of that sort of yeah natural beauty. And the comment is just like, no, there are no nice planets in this in this in this setting. Everywhere is horrible.
00:27:32
Speaker
Okay, good to know. No nice planets. That makes sense. I guess it makes sense if you understand the universe where it's like, if there was a nice planet, it would have been ruined by one of the races. Absolutely. Every single faction would just turn up with a space fleet and bombard it to dust. Yeah, exactly. um It's funny you mentioned the the contrast between different IPs because I had Anna Stevens on a while back and she has written for the Black Library and she's written for Marvel and she she kind of echoed the sentiment that you were was saying. She said it was very, very very different experience writing yeah for Warhammer versus writing for for Marvel. She was a much more, Marvel is much more, they kind of are giving you a loose layout as you go in to what you're writing ahead of you even writing it. And she said with the Black Library, they sort of,
00:28:18
Speaker
pointed her in a direction of the universe and were like, you know, here's here's a book of law, but, you know, do do what you want. we'll We'll kind of look at it when you're done. Yeah. I mean, I think the key thing for them is I think The idea is anything that turned up in a black library book is kind of this is the thing that exists.
00:28:35
Speaker
Right. In the universe. And therefore, if it sort of blatantly contradicts things that, you know, the way the game works or stuff that's but been written elsewhere, that's a problem. And if it if otherwise, you're kind of fine.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah And a very cool universe. And like you said, it's so big. It's hard to turn on people's toes. The one thing
Co-hosting 'Starship Alexandria'
00:28:56
Speaker
I wanted to get to before we go to the cabin is your podcast, Starship Alexandria.
00:29:05
Speaker
What is it? Tell us about it. So this is, yes, this is a podcast I'm doing with Emma Newman, um who people may well know as a kind of a long time and indeed Hugo Award winning podcaster. um It is essentially a book recommendation podcast. There is a framing device where we're kind of we in that we are sort of we have recreated versions of ourselves in the future of making recommendations across a an interstellar space fleet. But really, we are taking turns recommending books that we love too that the other person hasn't read.
00:29:38
Speaker
And then they will go off and read it and go back and say what they think. And also not just books, also um you know films, graphic novels, things like that. um We are... We started early on in this year. we are We've just had our eighth episode out where we were talking about my recommendation of Mythago Wood by Robert Holstock, which I ever very much liked and which I genuinely think is one of the greatest um works of British fantasy ever put on the page. Wow. And yeah, it's been an enormous amount of fun. I mean, Emery is always a joy to work with.
00:30:14
Speaker
And... you know Certainly, I wouldn't be doing this without her because I know i can i have talked a lot on podcasts, but I don't know anything about how you make a podcast. That's very much her um all her all her work. And yes, we're hoping to continue doing it. We've already got a second series a second season planned out of another 10. And yeah if you wanted to join us for December, every day of December, we're doing a little Advent Calendar episode where we talk about a television show that we like.
00:30:45
Speaker
Okay. Oh, that's fun. Like a 25 days of, yeah, I like that. You said that you recommend things that the other person hasn't read or watched or experienced.
00:30:56
Speaker
Do you guys have a list of all the things that the other person, or do you just shoot each other ideas? We set up ahead of time um our through our first 10, which we think of as our first series.
00:31:07
Speaker
um And we also do patron-exclusive episodes where we talk about either things that we do we have both seen or read and enjoyed. So we've talked about like the film Excalibur, and we've talked about recent um aliens and things like that. Or we talk about patron suggestions. So we did this month, it was Arkady Martin's Memory Called Empire.
00:31:34
Speaker
Okay. Okay, cool. do you Do either of you guys play video games or is it movies, books, mainly? um We haven't talked about them yet. We have talked about doing them and it it's one of those, it might make a good...
00:31:48
Speaker
Doing a game a games advent calendar for twenty for the end of 26, if we're still going, might might work rather nicely. Okay, well, my recommendation, if if you guys haven't played it, is Claire Obscure Expedition 33. I have heard a lot of very good things about that. Oh goodness.
00:32:02
Speaker
You're about to hear a lot more. I think it's going to win game of the year, so it would again in a very story in a very very tough year yes well i mean there have been between that one and blueprint and silk song it has been the year of absolutely top-notch um indie games i think absolutely yeah kingdom come deliverance too eve um But we digress.
00:32:24
Speaker
And it is time for me to drop you off, helicopter you in to the cozy woodland cabin where the snow is falling. You are unable to leave. You're in the middle of nowhere.
Book Choice for Cabin Isolation
00:32:34
Speaker
What book do you hope to have with you?
00:32:37
Speaker
Well. this This requires a book that is both very good and pretty meaty in page count, I think. um I am going to go um for an omnibus edition of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series.
00:32:52
Speaker
Okay. Because i love it and because it is it has a level of intricate, poetic um writing that means it very much repays rereading.
00:33:06
Speaker
And know what? It's been a while since I looked at that. And i I should really go and give it another go over. yeah when was have you have you read it multiple times before with this i have yeah i mean i've read it multiple times i've listened to the audiobook actually i came to it first even through um i think it was a bbc radio play version of it um but yes but i mean mervyn peak uh if people don't know he was writing basically at about the same time that tolkien was writing uh they were contemporaries uh they were both they were they were both uh acquaintances of christopher lee apparently um
00:33:44
Speaker
he It is this amazing, bizarre kind of...
00:33:50
Speaker
gothic family drama that plays out over the first two books. It's got one of the best sort of anti-heroes um in all of fiction, as far as I'm concerned, in Steerpike. And then the third book, which is kind of a bit incomplete because he wrote he was very ill when he was writing it and it was published after his death, sort of expands the world and and it turns out to be this sort of mad dystopian science fiction thing.
00:34:19
Speaker
And there is a fourth book written by his wife to his plan. And there are tantalizing suggestions. There might have been a fifth one planned, which I guess we're never going to see. Although, you know what? If anyone, if the estate would like me to write that book, would be so up for that.
00:34:36
Speaker
um He says hubristically. But yes, it is. It's one of the great fantasy classics. And I, it's, ah I, I, it is not it it is not unknown but i think it's still not as well known as it should be here yeah i mean i guess when you're writing as a contemporary of tolkien there's he's taking up a lot of that limelight um well there is that but also it's just one kind of wonders because obviously tolkien became the foundation block of a lot of where fantasy went in the 70s and 80s. Yeah.
00:35:11
Speaker
And it would have been fascinating to see what we'd have got if actually we'd have been following Peake. Yeah, it'd be interesting. Alternate reality. m Well, that's a very cool choice. and I hope should also say Mervyn Peake has met Doctor Who.
00:35:27
Speaker
and There is a big Finnish audio ah audio story with where where ah ah by Elizabeth Miles where Mervyn Peake gets in the TARDIS and has a whole adventure with Doctor Who. It's delightful.
00:35:41
Speaker
That's so bizarre. Well, that's great. Tolkien never met Doctor Who. so I'm willing to bet there is a story where Tolkien Doctor Who. There probably Doctor Who's met everyone. Yeah. Next up, we are going to rewind a bit and chat about when Adrian first started writing, how he found his way into publishing and how the industry has changed over the years. That will all be in the extended episode available at patreon.com forward slash right and wrong.
00:36:11
Speaker
music He goes, he finds a bunch of Vikings. who are having a proper Viking funeral. And it's based on a genuine historical account. But there's just a bit where his kind of his guide is telling him, these are the old ways. You shall not see them again. And that was that's kind of very much how it it felt with that kind of editing style.
00:36:28
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Well, that's cool. So the advice would be, take advice. And also, maybe think about, if just... to
Conclusion and Farewell
00:36:38
Speaker
try it do something by hand if it's like your own drafting or your own edits or something like that could it could uh you could gain something new from it that you didn't know you were missing possibly possibly caveat possibly well thank you so much adrian that brings us to the end of the episode it's been so fun chatting with you and so interesting hearing about um your kind of experiences within within publishing and and your writing and everything it's been it's been great thank you so much it's been a pleasure to be here
00:37:05
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Adrian is doing, you can follow him on Blue Sky at AptShadow, or you can head over to his website, AdrianTchaikovsky.com, or you can check out his podcast, Starship Alexandria.
00:37:21
Speaker
made things is out in the uk on december 4th and later on in march 2026 you'll be able to get the fourth book in the children of times series children of strife to support this podcast like follow and subscribe join the patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts the chosen ones and other tropes thanks again to adrian thanks to everyone listening will catch you on the next episode Shout out time. One of my amazing patrons, Lee Foxton, is querying their debut novel. It's a family drama, commercial fiction along the lines of Jojo Moyes and David Nichols. Fingers crossed. I am rooting for you. Good luck.