Three Questions With…
Tom Schecter is another one of those AMAZING fiction writers I met via Substack. He describes himself as a “history nerd writing magic-free dark literary fantasy based on the collapse of the last Classical civilizations.” You can find his writing here – shieldbreakersaga.substack.com. There you will find a “grounded, magic-free dark fantasy based on the collapse of the last Ancient civilizations”.
This is the “Three Questions with…” interview I had with him.
1) If something is “magic free” what makes it fantasy? That’s a really good question. I’m not entirely sure that what I have written IS fantasy. I think that’s the closest I can come to assigning it a genre, if only because it’s based in a version of our world that I invented. It’s not historical fiction, even though it’s based on the end of the Ancient/Classical period of history—and even though I have taken great pains to make it feel real and believable. Comes right down to it, I’m going with fantasy because I don’t like the idea of saying “hyperrealistic alternative-reality speculative fiction” out loud, or even writing those words in that order ever again starting right now.
2) What made you decide to go against fantasy tropes? I don’t know if I made a conscious decision, necessarily, to completely avoid or subvert tropes so much as I just had a different story I wanted to tell. I want to talk about family dynamics and loyalty and grief and guilt and the blurry line between religious fundamentalism and mental illness… And within that collection of themes, I don’t really have time for a chosen one. Frankly, after Kung-Pow! Enter the Fist, I don’t think anybody should even bother attempting a chosen one anymore. How are you going to top that?
Put another way, a lot of where I come from in a literary sense has nothing to do with fantasy. The first novel that kept my attention permanently was Puzo’s The Godfather. I have re-watched the HBO series Deadwood roughly 48,000 times in the past 20 years. I am more curious about flawed, conflicted human beings trying to make a life for themselves than I am about Good and Evil. I don’t think it’s an accident that the fantasy series I identify with most is the Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. His magic system is based in chaos, and every faction in his larger conflict is led by power hungry, manipulative people willing to do what it takes to create their version of a ‘good’ world. The saga asks questions and doesn’t give any reassurances that there are any right answers. It’s not escapist. I think that’s my biggest priority when it comes to writing this story the right way. No escapism. Which I guess ties back into whether Shieldbreaker is even fantasy?
3) Many writers find a genre concept they like and stick with it. Do you think you’ll write in other genres? Well, since I’m kind of already borrowing from every single genre I can think of in the first place, and since I have no confidence at all that I can come up with another story worth telling after I’m done with this one, I’m going to say “no.” But with an asterisk or ten, I guess.
I urge you to go read his work!
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