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 made 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. Even
then, the characters were still alive in my imagination, so I have
written a third adventure, The Book from Baden
Dark . Click here to see the other Fantasy books in this series.
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