The Book of Lies
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I get
more emails about The Book of Lies
than any other of my titles. Perhaps
it's because fantasy is such a popular genre these days. I have
my own theories about why and one of them is because the traditional
adventure story went out of vogue in children's books about
thirty years ago. Stories became more serious and tended to examine
topical social issues. God knows, I have written a few novels
like that myself. But my point is that lots of readers still wanted simply
to identify with a courageous hero as he fought off
the villains (and yes, the hero can be female too) and generally had
a swashbucking adventure. The place to find that kind of fun was in
fantasy. So when I felt myself growing stale after so many serious
novels, fantasy was one of the ways I could let myself loosen
up a bit. It seemed like a good opportunity to write
spine-tingling scenes of suspense and mystery in darkened places
unlike anything I had experienced. I once heard Isobelle Carmody
speaking about writing her books and smiled when she said that
while her body seemed to be sitting at a computer, in her own mind
she had a sword in her hand as she fought dragons and
rescued the vulnerable from certain
death. The story of
The Book of Lies probably started when I was
thinking about the OJ Simpson court case years ago and the use of
Lie Detectors. Unfortunately, Lie Detectors aren't accurate enough to
be much use in a case like that, but the media frenzy about the case
set me wondering - and thinking - and jotting down ideas and before
I knew it, I had come up with the idea of an infallable lie detector
that used magic to read a person's mind and therefore, never make
mistakes. Of course, that wasn't much use until I realised that my
lie detector would have to become faulty, somehow, to create the
drama for the story. That's when the book took on its present
form. I am not the first person to come up with a flying
horse. The Greeks thought of that millenia ago. And I am probably
not even the first person to come up with a beast like Termagant.
They were great to work with, though. I just about gave myself
nightmares when I first wrote about Termagant. The editor suggested
I move the scene until later in the book to increase the fear and
anticipation and she was right. I first
planned The Book of Lies as a one-off
story. However, when I realised what Fergus would do at the end of
the story, I decided there was more to tell and so
Master of the Books
was
created. The third book will be out in 2009, although I don't have a
title for it yet. I don't have
a FAQ section for The Book of Lies yet. Maybe
you could prompt me with a few
questions. My email address is jamesmo@bigpond.net.au Click here to see the other Fantasy books I have written.
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