Today, I talk to author and artist, M.P. Ness, who recently wrote his novel,
White Leaves. Let's hear what he has to say. (To check out my previous interview with Michael Brookes, click
here).
Please tell us about White Leaves
Well,
Rich, I'd be delighted to. White Leaves originated as a stand-alone, foot-in-the-door
novel, designed specifically to adhere to industry standards and allow
me to glide into the big publishing house world. Fanciful and dreamy
concept, that.
I started with the raw concept being pitched to urban
fantasy authors holding an urban fantasy seminar at the PNWA (Pacific Northwest Writer's Association) summer conference, when I didn't even
write urban fantasy.
Richelle Mead and another young woman whose name
escapes me (as many do) both liked the concept very much, and I was
inspired to put other works on hold and focused solely on E.L.F.
I wrote 120k words in the next 30 days flat.
The story just poured out of me as if I'd been holding it back for years. However,
I never really submitted it anywhere until I stumbled across Juke Pop
Serials, who was taking submissions for their beta launch. After being
accepted, E.L.F. - White Leaves ranked consistently in top 10 and won
most-voted Serial for two consecutive months (jan/feb 2013).
After
being pretty successful there as a free, unedited serial(admittedly with
its problems), I grew determined to publish it myself.
And now I'm here today.
The
idea for White Leaves, originally titled just E.L.F. came to me from a
newspaper stand in Seattle, where the paper's headline and large image
was something to the effect of a housing complex aflame beneath the bold
text "ELF burns down housing complex". Naturally, as a fantasy and elf-loving reader/writer...this struck me into buying the paper and reading the article. E.L.F. the novel was born...and in the course of writing it, I developed an entire series out of it. I'm presently writing book two, Blighted Leaves. Thus,
there was a need for individual titles. White Leaves' title comes from a
set of eight special white leaves grown from the Tree of Life within
the story.
Cool beans. Next question. Your story features the Tree of Life in it. Mine does, too. What are
your thoughts on the Tree of Life and how does it play out in your
story?
For me, the Tree of Life is really just a symbol, like a ring is a symbol of marriage.
For
White Leaves, however, the Tree, named Addl'laen (addle-lane) is a very
real, and very much sentient life-form. Verily, she is the pool from
which all sentient souls are derived. She is our mother, and no gods,
save her own, exist for us to worship. She bears a leaf for every
living person. And as you could imagine, that makes her incredibly huge.
So, how could something so tremendous, especially a singular towering
tree, escape mankind's notice for all the time we've been on earth? Well, to answer that, you'll have to read White Leaves.
Nice. Will do. :) You started a successful Kickstarter campaign for your book. Can you tell us about that?
Oh yes. Kickstarter was a lot of fun. It was a bit of a challenge as well. Getting everything pulled together was a fair amount of work, but I managed to pull it off. I ran the kickstarter for a very simple reason. I'm publishing a book. I want to celebrate. Who doesn't want to celebrate that sort of a life-long goal, you know? But,
I thought, if I can give people books AND a show, and have everyone
come together to enjoy a night on the town in Seattle, that's probably
the coolest thing I could imagine.
So, I gathered friends, bands,
artists, comedians, and spoken word together for one night. It wasn't
just about me accomplishing a goal. And it wasn't just about promoting
E.L.F. It was a party to celebrate ART in its many forms. This is
something patently Seattle, I must say. The artistic community thrives
and breeds an ever-expanding sense of diversity and enriches our culture
here at an almost exponential rate, because people like myself and
those who came to support my efforts by contributing to it are doing
what we did that night.
We share each other's joy and help one
another's work come into the light. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana,
Mudhoney...these sorts of bands are world famous, and all of them come
out of Seattle and its surround. Why is that?
Not just because
they're phenomenal musicians. No. Its because they became amazing
musicians IN this melting pot of support and friendship in the Seattle
area.
The Kickstarter project I ran was set at a very modest goal,
the bare minimum I needed to put together the party, just to ensure it
was easy to hit, could ensure the event happened, and thus pay it
forward, as they say. Kickstarter essentially paid for the venue to hold
the party at, and to bring in a pile of books for people to enjoy. The
rewards for donating were not as well thought out as I should have
considered them, because there are literally so many ways one can reward
people for contribution. But it was a learning experience. Next time, it'll be better.
I bet! How did you go about making the trailer for your book? What was going
through your head when you made it (Especially the musical selection)?
With
the White Leaves book trailer, I signed up for temporary free
memberships to stock-video clip websites, downloaded all kinds of
footage, and found some cinematic scores and the like. I made sure to
download as much as I could within the allotted week long free
membership, just to ensure I had enough footage to put together a good
trailer.
Now, my original idea was to do as much story-telling
with the footage as I could. However, telling a fantasy story with a ton
of unreal, impossible-to-film concepts and locations and events and
characters...is well, impossible. Its not like making a movie trailer
where both music and footage are pre-existing for the story you're
trying to tell.
So, after striking out on the footage aspect, I reinvented my initial concept.
E.L.F.
- White Leaves is at its heart, a contemporary fairy tale. Fairy tales
all have one thing in common. A moral to the story.
But, I noticed
something else. It was in the vagaries of portrayal that rather defines
many fairy tales. Imagery is slim and suggestive, not sharp, clear or
defined well.
Scott McCloud, I believe, wrote a comic book, on how
to write comic books, and in it he had a brilliant suggestion as to how
people/readers identify with comics on a fundamental level.
The more
detailed and realistic a character is, the less or at least, the harder
it is for a reader to identify with that character. This is why
simplistic stylized comic strips in your sunday paper are so readily and
easily consumed by the public.
Simple, stylized characters are us.
We can put ourselves into them more easily than we can put ourselves
into a detailed realistic depiction of say, Superman. Thus, more people
can connect with Jon Arbuckle and Garfield than Superman.
Just an
example. but the point here is this. I retooled the concept of the White
Leaves trailer for a sheer lack of existing footage that could be of
any real use to me. However, in doing so, I created a better, more
successful trailer, in my opinion...because its like those fairy tales.
Its like those simplistic drawings of Smiley Faces
which more people can connect with because it doesn't give you every tiny detail.
When
it came to the music, I decided to go dark and heavy. The E.L.F. world and story are
dystopian in nature, and darkness is thick throughout the story and its
future releases.
I knew exactly what I wanted out of the sound-scape
from the moment I started. I wanted a selection from one of metal band,
Machine Head's, albums...as I've been a fan for more years than I can
count.
But I also wanted that otherworldly cinematic quality to it.
And I had to tell the sheer epic levels of the story itself.
So,
in creating the score for the trailer, I pieced together music that
would let the trailer feel as much like an epic movie trailer as I
could, whilst also adhering to that vague fairy-tale feeling. The sound
was surprisingly easy and quite quick for me (as I've had training in
video/audio software) since I knew what I was going for from the
beginning.
Nice. Your story features a Eco-terrorist from Seattle. Being from Seattle
yourself, how much of your home city did you put in the story?
Initially, I put quite a bit of Seattle
details into the story. Little things, like the union of Westlake and
5th avenue near the cop-shop headquarters downtown, and how it forms
this little triangle at the junction of Belltown and Downtown at the
first of the skyscrapers that make the Seattle Skyline unmistakable
across the country, if not the world... The Westin Towers was in there.
The white arcs that herald the Seattle Science center. The famed Space
Needle, of course. But even more so, I went into the surrounding areas
and put small towns and details about them into the book as locations
the characters pass through. I even hit up the University of Washington
campus, the Japanese Arboretum, and hospitals on Capitol Hill. I went so
far as to include the bobbing clickety ride of the raised southern
portion of Interstate 5 that runs through the city as it USED to be (its
since been smoothed out)
I spared little.
However, during the
editing process, it was decided that not all of the details were that
relevant to the tale. Some of them were smoothed down by Mrs. Torgerson
(editor), but some of them stayed in.
Your story E.L.F. is volume 1. Any ideas of where you are going for volume 2?
Oh yes! Indeed I do.
I'm already approaching half-way through the rough manuscript for volume 2!
White
Leaves is named for these little white leaves on the tree of life, as I
said. Its all pretty and shiny and new. Its book one.
Now, I did
say its dark and dystopian and given the heavy metal I used in the book
trailer, it could be said the story is harsh and unforgiving.
It has bite. But bear in mind its just book one.
In my mind there is only one way to go from a dark dystopian world...and it is not upward.
I cannot give away the setting for book two without spoiling the ultimate outcome of White Leaves. It simply impossible. However, I can say it gets darker, harder, and harsher for the characters. I tend to be a bit merciless to my poor fabricated children. The title is, Blighted Leaves, if that's any indication. My editor already despises one character, Moarjin, so much she would probably be happy if I killed him off. But
Moarjin is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Some of my favorite
characters and most devilish creations have started coming to light
with the writing of book two. I dare say I've fallen in love with this series that was only supposed to be a single book. But that's how it goes sometimes. Worlds can end up building themselves if you give them enough time to breathe.
Great! Is the anything else you would like to talk about or plug?
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