March 10, 2024 • 51 mins
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books Undone. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today we have another Spotlight. Alongside Varsha from ReadingByTheRainyMountain, we interview author Susana Imaginario about her slipstream mythological series Timelessness.
Full disclosure: there are spoilers in this podcast, but more importantly, they only cover Timelessness, and NOT her upcoming book Oublié.
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FIND SUSANA:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/chronodendron
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Chronodendron
- Get Wyrd Gods: https://www.amazon.com/Wyrd-Gods-Timelessness-Book-1-ebook/dp/B07WTD28HM
- Get Oublie: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CSF3HGH2?geniuslink=true
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Books Undone.
(00:12):
I'm your host, Livia J. Eliot, and today we have another spotlight episode.
So let me welcome Susana Imaginario, author of a mythological slip-slim series titled
Timelessness.
Susana, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me.
Hello, Livia.
Thank you so much for having me here.
My name is Susana Imaginario.
(00:33):
I am the author of Timelessness, a few other things, but we are here to talk about timelessness.
This is also a special episode because Varsha, book tour and podcaster, is joining me to interview
Susana.
Varsha, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you so much for having me.
I've been looking for an opportunity to pick Susana's brain about some of the things in
(00:54):
the Timelessness series.
So, yeah, I'm really excited to be here.
Thank you.
Awesome.
So before we start, let me know the usual disclaimers.
First, there are spoilers in this podcast.
We will tackle the first five books of Susana's serious timelessness.
That is Wyrd Gods, The Darkhan, Nephilim's Heads, Anachrony, and Anamnesis.
(01:16):
But just to be on the safe side, we will not spoil her upcoming book only.
So you can listen safely in that regard.
Second, many of what you will hear is our subjective interpretation of the themes within
the story.
You are allowed to disagree.
That said, I will send it over to Varsha to start with the questions.
I think one of the things that I found really interesting in timelessness was this sort of
(01:42):
what I called reverse magical realism in one of the forum threads where technology is presented
as if it is magic, but then it starts to become recognizable technology.
If I'm not wrong, I think that teleportation devices are elevators and there are androids
and I guess maybe some genetic cloning stuff too.
(02:04):
So I was curious about just how you went about building that aspect of the world.
Well, I started with magic because we are most of the characters are gods and they
have their own, I call it talents, their powers and their talents.
So they can bend the laws of nature at their will to some degree depending on what are
(02:26):
their talents.
For example, if Apollo has a affinity with stars, Zeus is a tricky one with lightning
as opposed to that sort of thing.
And then there's the Nephilim, which are this society and they are pantheon, let's put it
this way.
They try to imitate the gods powers to technology and reverse engineer everything they can do
(02:51):
through technology.
Jumping off from that a little bit, I also I am not remotely familiar with the mythology
to the levels that I need to be.
I have some stories, some names are familiar to me, but mostly I read all of them as characters
that I would in any other book.
So two questions there.
(03:11):
One, when writing, how did you think about try to, I found it immensely readable even
though I wasn't familiar with the mythology.
So did you have to think about how to present this for someone who is not familiar with
the mythology?
And also I'm pretty sure there are several laying Easter eggs for those who are familiar
with the mythology.
And then like the second stuff, the talents and stuff that you mentioned, was it how much
(03:34):
of that did you make up and how much of it is based in actual myth?
Okay, so separating the questions, I tried to write timelessness so everyone could understand
to some degree what was going on.
Looking back, I think I've made it quite hard.
If you don't know enough about Greek and Norse mythology, you're going to be quite lost.
(03:57):
So since then I've added, what's the name, the matters personally on my website.
I intended to insert it in the book.
And it's going to be maybe in a special edition later on.
And I think weird gods would have benefited from it because lots of readers, even if they
only know the names and don't know what are they the god of or some bits of their mythology,
(04:21):
they're going to be very lost because I built upon that.
It's timelessness.
It's a sort of continuation of the myth.
If you do enjoy mythology and you know all their stories or have an idea of their interactions,
then you're going to have a lot of fun reading it.
It's not 100% faithful to the original mythology.
I had, for plot reasons, I had to take some liberties, especially with the centaur Chiron.
(04:48):
There's reasons for that.
But if you know the mythology, you catch little aside in conversations during the banter.
You probably can see what's going to happen next beforehand in the ending.
It's a different experience, I guess.
As the book progressed, because I wrote it all as one book, weird gods used to be what
(05:08):
is now timelessness.
And as I split it in four books, every time I would revise, I tried to simplify it or
do not realize so much in the original mythology.
The Nephilim, they are completely made up.
I mean, I borrowed the name and that was that.
They have nothing to do with the Nephilim in mythology.
I just thought it was cool.
(05:30):
I don't want to include any aspect of Christian or pre-Christian mythology.
It was a decision I've made early on.
Sometimes I think I mentioned Jehovah or I made some obscure references to Jesus here
and there.
So I'm not excluding exactly, but I'm not going to go into that because people get offended
(05:53):
very easily.
But I borrowed the name and created this whole pantheon of artificial intelligence.
One thing that I wanted to ask you is that how did you choose?
Because I found it very interesting that you were mixing pantheons.
You had the Greeks mostly, you have Norse mythology, you have Kali as well.
(06:14):
And at the start, I was expecting to find Thanatos as a god of death, but then it was
Kali.
And I think it was quite suitable for the story, especially because how Kali is presented
to be far more violent than Sanatos if you compare the stories.
But there are in many cases that you choose one pantheon rather than the other.
(06:35):
And in some cases, both coexist like hell and Hades, which are not quite the same.
So my question is how did you choose and how did you weave in the different stories to
make it coherent?
So I started with Greek mythology.
That's the foundation.
But Greek cosmology, it's the Mediterranean.
(06:58):
There's not a lot going on.
So I borrowed the cosmology from Norse mythology and then added a few gods from that pantheon.
Kali was first because I needed a female aspect to balance Kronos.
And I don't know anything about the mythology.
I know a little bit more now, thanks to Lord of Light.
(07:19):
Thank you.
But at the time, I just knew names.
And I did a quick search.
This is true.
It's my process for gods of time.
And I don't know if the page was reliable or not, but I read that Kali was the goddess
of death and the end of time, or death has the end of time.
So that's the one that I'm going to pick.
(07:39):
Because even the name was more familiar than Thanatos.
And there's another reason.
There's a whole subplot involving the Titans, the primordial gods of each mythology that
I just started to get into in Oublie.
There are reasons why the original gods are not part of the cast, apart from Prometheus
(08:02):
and Chiron who are Titans.
I thought it was a great choice as well, especially given what happens at the end when Kali, when
Psyche gives Kali to Gaia, we end up having a goddess that is a voice of life and death,
like the entire cycle.
I found that fascinating, so if you can tell us a bit more of the why that was a choice,
(08:25):
Psyche makes an explanation within the story, but I would like to know more the writer side
what led you to decide mixing them.
Now here we're going to get into a psychological aspect of timelessness.
Psyche is the main character.
Again, it's kind of a very obvious fun in the whole thing.
I rely a lot on psychology and why it means to be human and the workings of the mind,
(08:50):
and especially cognitive dissonance.
Notice that's why almost everyone has two names, two aspects, etc.
They are in conflict with each other.
And Cronus is the same, so basically Gaia came about so Kali had something to kill,
if that makes sense.
And it was Cronus' weakness after their fight and whatever that slivered off.
(09:14):
The soul that stayed in him to balance everything that Gaia was doing, which was another aspect
of the original goddess.
Without spoiling too much of what comes next, that's what I could do, but I needed the way
to balance and then Psyche, the goddess of the soul, managed to unite as much as she
could of the original soul and put the responsibility of death in life, not in time, if that makes
(09:42):
sense.
So she thought that she was doing the opposite of what Cronus wanted, but maybe not, maybe
just wanted to be rid of that responsibility.
When Gaia uses her power, we see that she can give life, but it's costly to her.
She's often described as a clone, like looking very old, especially towards the end when
(10:04):
she uses a lot of her power.
I found it very interesting that giving life actually seems to take the life out of her
or in some way, that is why it affects her.
I love what he said about death being the responsibility of life, because at the end
of the day, that's where we are all going.
(10:25):
Yeah, well, keep in mind that Gaia is in the cast, they are a bit of a drama queen.
We can't trust everything that they tell your show, but the idea is not so much the giving
life aspect of it is the giving away part of her soul.
Every life, especially a life that has a soul or is able to host a soul, she has to kind
(10:48):
of split her own soul more and more.
That's why I think I mentioned this in time, so that's one of the infodumps to make sense,
that when she started with the primordial gods, she was giving away too much of her
soul and then with the gods, it was still too much and that's why she started creating
(11:11):
mortals because they took little effort.
She wasn't losing herself too much.
Yeah, no, I found that aspect very interesting too.
I think one of my favorite bits in the series was this mythology around the origin of time
and his battle with Nix and also slightly unrelated, his commentary around the fact that gravity
(11:39):
hasn't affected him this way when he comes to the planet, which I thought is immensely
interesting because we talked about this a little bit on the forum, but to repeat for
our listeners, that seems to be heading towards an origin story for time being gravity, for
some relativity origin story.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Whatever you can without spoiling anything that's coming later.
(12:02):
I find origin stories like that immensely fascinating.
If you write timelessness, you realize that it starts at the end and goes full circle.
Everything, even not all chapters, but every bit of story that I write, I try to make it
go full circle.
I'm working my way backwards to the beginning of time.
(12:23):
As we peel the layers, that's why later on we'll learn a bit more about the primordial
gods, we'll learn a bit more about the creation of the underworlds, we'll learn a bit more
about the souls and then working on it.
You were the first person who noticed that time and gravity.
When I wrote it, I was like, you pointed out, this is not quite right, but I wanted to plant
(12:49):
that little, we call it the flea behind the ear, kind of questions.
No, this doesn't make sense.
Every time you read timelessness and there's something that, no, this doesn't make sense.
You're pretty sure that you stumble upon something.
I will mention more and more gravity.
Even at the very beginning, Psyche wakes up in the Lennon's body and she fails.
(13:09):
She makes a comment that gravity, reminding us just how little we are, how insignificant
we are, how powerless, yes, that's what she said.
So you expect a showdown.
It was originally, it was nine books and it'll be at the last book, but now that I split
it in so many books and I'm doing standalone, it might happen sooner than it was plotted.
(13:31):
I'm really looking forward to that.
That bit was actually quite interesting and I wanted to pick up on what you say that you
are always going full circle with time.
The story of Anne in Anachrony is exactly that.
I thought it was mind blowing because we go back at the start of Anachrony to another
period of time and then it ends exactly at the same moment that Nephilim's ex ends and
(13:56):
it adds so much to it.
So can you share a bit more about how you tied up that idea of Anne as a new character
within the story and the clues that you were mentioning throughout her esteem in a different
timeline?
Well, she was not planned, nothing in Anachrony was planned.
(14:17):
The whole scene was supposed to happen in an interludes kind of just an infodum, just
a couple of paragraphs.
Ariane, even her name, so it's a nanogram for Reinha, which means Queen in Portuguese.
She was the most two dimensional character I had, but originally she was just supposed
to be a placeholder character and just looking pretty in the book and she was going to be
(14:42):
killed very quickly and then we would find out later on in an interlude who she really
was, etc.
But it was one of those cases, it's a serious case of the more I wrote about her, the more
I wanted to explore this character, tell more.
The interlude was supposed to be just a couple of paragraphs and just kept growing and before
(15:03):
I knew I had over.
And like 15,000 words in another one, like I can't just, this is too long of an interlude,
this is going to break the flow of the book, what am I going to do?
And then I wrote a novella, so the series, interlude, but that was not planned.
There was a complete derail from the plot, but I think in the end it helped.
I think that it was a bit more impactful than just finding out, oh by the way, that character
(15:28):
that no one cared about, she was at.
I planted hits at the beginning, the whole thing about the marriage and this, I hope
that would be enough for people paying attention that even when she's talking with Elena,
I try to make it seem like they had the same minorisms in the way.
But yeah, I am glad that I delve deeper into that aspect because she's a great character.
(15:49):
She is and it's quite interesting how she changes because when you start the story,
she's very young and it feels young, you know, like I want to agree, you know, one
of the things, and one that some wishes that are sometimes a bit too flat, not because
the character is flat, but because she's young and she sees everything in a very simplistic
way.
And then when she goes back in time or future to that timeline, she grows so quickly.
(16:14):
The novella is very short and we can see how everything changes here and how she starts
regretting some of the choices and seeing herself as a, I was this very young, naive
person and when she arrives back at the current timeline and in the last book, it's a completely
different character.
Everything she went through changed her so much.
(16:38):
I found it fascinating, honestly.
Thank you.
She did became my favorite.
I was not expecting, but I just went with it.
Question myself, oh, should I do it?
No, this is going to break the story.
This is not what I intended.
But sometimes, you know, just try, just go with it and see what happens.
I'm very proud of that little side.
(16:58):
If I may touch on Anna a bit more and perhaps go into the rest of the series, there is an
ongoing theme that wishing is dangerous, right?
And we quite often see how wishes are twisted, especially with Anne.
However, Saiki, which is a main character, she wants to take control of her life of the
future.
(17:19):
She has ideas and goals, but she never referred to them as wishes.
And it's very precise.
Throughout the five books, the world in one side is very precise in that regard.
What were your ideas regarding wishing and wishing as a dangerous thing?
Well, if you read the Anamnesis, you read the Anamnesis interludes, which are two trick-or-trick
(17:42):
stir.
You know, she made one wish that was enough to, she learned a lesson with her wish.
But yes, it is deliberate that she never wishes for anything.
And even when Loki teases her, when she does what she wants, she always says, as you will,
because she's all about will, not wishes.
She's a goddess of willpower.
(18:02):
But yeah, but she did make one wish that changed everything.
And that was that.
She went the way she wishes again.
Yeah, but sometimes it feels that it goes a bit beyond her.
With Anne, it's very clear, but also Elena, it's the opposite.
Elena is all the time wishing, wishing, wishing, wishing and doing nothing about it.
(18:24):
She expects the things to come in.
And interesting because Elena was, gave her body to Psyche, basically coastal Psyche.
Nevertheless, they are such different characters.
Yeah, that's why I had to put them together.
I was playing with the idea because we see a lot of possession.
The person changes when she is possessed by something.
(18:47):
And this I tried to reverse again, see how the soul would change with being inside the
mind of having to work with the mind of a host that is completely different to what
they are.
And it's to work the conflict in person.
They are very different.
And I don't know if I succeeded.
I would have done better, at least different now, the conflict between their personalities.
(19:13):
But I think in the end, they both, or at least Psyche, benefited a little bit because at
the beginning she's just too much of, she's too pragmatic, too much of a cynic.
She doesn't wish for anything.
She doesn't even want anything.
She just wants to be left alone.
Having to work with the mind that is so prone to, oh, this is so pretty.
(19:33):
Oh, I want this.
I want that.
You know, she kind of got a little bit of her humanity back, I think, even though it
was not too human to put it this way.
Well, Elena, I think she got the worst part of the deal because it made her bitter.
When we see her later on, she went straight from little naive, petulent girl to just
(19:55):
being very entitled, demanding and bitter and spiteful.
She kind of inherited all the dark side of Psyche in a way because Psyche can be very
spiteful and bitter as well.
She doesn't act on it, she always thinks about it.
I'm like, the things I could do to you, but I'm not.
I always thought that she had some parallelisms to Glokta from Enronbi.
(20:22):
She has a lot of opinions all the time.
She may not act on it, but she has so many opinions.
It's always, it felt interesting throughout the book, but on the last one, on enamnesis,
when we get to find out everything that it has to her, it's like it ties up a cycle.
Now you finally see why she's so sour, so bitter, why she thinks the coro-cote advice
(20:49):
she gives to Aidan, it's very clear at that point, everything ties up.
So all of those opinions, I don't want to call her opinionator because I don't think
she is.
All of those opinions and her vision of the world ties beautifully with what happened
in the past.
You also have this theme going on of the consequences of reactions throughout the entire series.
(21:11):
In her, we see that it made her that way.
So were you thinking of a particular theme or aspect of the consequences of the actions?
Yes.
First, let me say, Psyche, she is opinionated and she's very judgmental.
That was very deliberate.
The thing about causing consequence, so I think I say in Enamnesis as well that Kronos
(21:34):
is not so much the God of time, but it's the cause of the God of cause and consequence.
Because that's my interpretation or in the books of the era of time, of things just going
one direction unless you have to apply some magic into it and the Krono d'Andron is in
all that.
And that was the thing that changed everything even for the gods because they were used to
live in the, to never having to deal with the actions of their consequences or unless
(21:59):
ages passed and then suddenly there was time, they just had to think things through.
But yeah, every, it's the cause and effect.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I use all these aphorisms time and again, just to know.
It's inspired in mythology, so it is at its heart a cautionary tale.
(22:21):
It kind of, hopefully, would make you think through your own actions and your own biases
and prejudices and opinions and how they might play out in the universe that is not constrained
by the laws of society as we know it, just focusing on the mind.
It's a very thin line throughout the book that I play with between self-preservation
(22:46):
and selfishness.
And what can you do to walk that line with the minimal consequence?
At the end of the day, you need to be a bit selfish in order to ensure self-preservation.
Speaking of psyche, I thought it was hilarious that the first thing she did after she became
a goddess was go to sleep for several thousand years.
(23:07):
I could definitely relate to that.
But on a more gender note about the character, yeah, I was curious about your choice for
the main character and jumping off of that a little bit also.
What your background in mythology is why you were interested in this specific character?
Did you start from the character and build a story around her, like this goddess and
(23:28):
build the story around her?
Or did you want to start, or did you start with, like you said, you wanted to play with
aspects of the soul and psychology and so you picked this goddess?
Yes, so the whole thing started with to trick a trickster, which is something I wrote.
The very first draft I was in my twenties was again one of those exercises that would
write dialogues between gods.
The myths of psyche and heroes always made me angry because I think it's so wrong on
(23:55):
so many levels.
And when I learned about Loki, I figured, you know, this would be the sort of saying
that trickster god would definitely try to take advantage of the whole saying of heroes
only coming at night and never let himself be seen.
So the original thing was a bit more, it was a little bit more spicy, but then it evolved
(24:17):
from there and it took years and I was always at the back of my mind.
And there was basically three reasons when I finally decided to use psyche.
One was because I've learned to love the character that I created over the years and it was supposed
to be a psychological tale, so why not?
No one was doing retellings as far as I know.
(24:40):
There were no retellings of psyche and heroes, at least no famous ones, which was great because
it was at the time where everyone was doing retellings.
In the forums, when someone asked, what's your favorite god, what's this?
And psyche was never mentioned.
He's like, well, I need to do something about this.
And I was going to focus a lot on souls, on what makes us human.
(25:06):
And my magic system was willpower of the soul.
So of course, I would have to have the goddess of the soul involved.
There was only one that there's no other goddess of the soul that I know of, please correct,
in any pantheon.
So it had to be psyche.
Yeah, it's really interesting to read books that have gods as characters.
I think I'm a huge fan of Malazan.
(25:28):
I've hopped on about that endlessly.
But also The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K.
Jemisin.
I think what I loved about both of those series is that the gods, the way they are written,
like there's this, they seem human when they are taking on aspects that interact with humans.
But when they are gods, they blow your mind.
(25:50):
Like I especially love that in A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, because one of the gods makes a joke
in one of the novellas that, oh, you might think that a black hole is like a baby, nah,
nah, and like, but it'll poke you, it'll hurt you.
These are gods, they're playing with black holes.
So yeah, I found some of that in this book as well.
Like when Loki takes on his true form to intimidate, I forget which character, but, and I love
(26:15):
that scene where he, and it also reminded me a bit of like this thing in Hindu mythology.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but gods take on what we call Vishwarupam to show
like this true form and to say like, I might seem human to you, but I am a god here.
So I really look like, you'll go crazy if you see me all the time.
(26:38):
Yeah, so I guess my question for you is after all that rambling is what, how, what was it
like to write about gods?
Like how did you figure out how to balance the writing of like that god and balance it
out to be characters that we can relate to and actually like not just reading about gods,
(26:58):
but also have these people that we can relate to follow like, you know, judge these off
as we read.
Funny you mentioned 100,000 kingdoms and this, I have a video about it buried in my YouTube
channel.
When I first started with gods, I stumbled into that problem because even though I was
basing myself in great mythology where the gods are very human, like, or relatable, they
(27:19):
were coming across diminished kind of as it happens in American gods.
It's one of my complaints about the book and it's set in America and another that the gods
appear very diminished in that environment.
I was stuck there thinking that I would be doomed to write an urban fantasy until I read
100,000 kingdoms and then I knew exactly what I had to do.
So I have a lot to say for that book because it's a joke.
(27:43):
I had, I really had to go into the fantasy aspect of it to just not care because I was
still to attach, especially the feeling in this to attach to the science fiction to try
to create something that made sense and I had to realize that gods don't make sense.
That's the whole point.
Their motivations, their aspects, their whole relationship in reality does not make sense
(28:04):
from our point of view.
So they told me now to deal with the murder characters but once in a while we have to
show the reader that we are dealing with gods.
When I read that book, I got that sense of it was not just the danger but the unknown,
that sense of restrained power.
Throughout the story you also make a lot of scenes in which we can clearly see that the
(28:29):
gods don't have the same ethics.
They don't see the world in the same way that a mortal will do it.
For example, Hel always struck me in that sense when she's discussing that she created
the dark hand.
Her approach is, I created this thing, yeah, while the rest of the, can you see the venture
on the thing that you created?
And the humans and the rest of the races, they see it as something extremely dangerous
(28:54):
that shouldn't be there, that is a predator and for the dark hand we can see all the point
of view but Hel's own point of view is the one that feels the most foreign to us as a
reader.
You did that quite a lot in different parts of a series?
Yeah, there's a reason why the whole thing is written from very, very limited, very
(29:14):
limited points of view.
It's like I have 12 in weird gods, there's a lot of points of view and they are all very
focused on that point of view characters and I even have some scenes that were the hardest
thing to write and the same scene and then from the point of view of different characters
in that scene and how different it plays out perceive what's happening and what they're
thinking about it.
(29:35):
And it's all about that because we don't know, we live inside our heads, we only have
to work with our senses, we don't know what everyone's thinking.
Whether the gods know to some degree if the others let them know but we are very biased
in every action.
Hel sees the dark hand as, yeah, look, you know, under goddess of the dead but I can
(29:59):
also create, take that guy and as a means to kind of fight back just to reassert herself
in the pantheon while everyone else especially if they are in the life side of things, they
are like, no, this is not a good idea.
And now the question is, did she know what she was doing when she is Loki's daughter?
(30:20):
So there's that to be explored.
I have a plan slash follow up question to what you just talked about the rewinding that
we do for each scene.
Like we never start where we left off, you always rewind a little bit and then start
and I also see that you played with, I don't know if played as a writer but you change
tense a lot in writing the course of the book.
(30:44):
And of course that's interesting because the series, a big theme is about time.
There's a lot of like time based themes in the series.
So I was curious how your choice of tense played with also like what you were doing
with time.
I needed a way to tell the readers to differentiate in what was happening and what happened before
(31:09):
let's put it this way or what was happening backstage.
So I needed an anchor point in Weird Gods that psyches the view that that is the anchor
point.
Everything else is kind of happening around her.
And then I kind of flip with the dark and same thing, but it's almost like everything
kind of happened.
It is what happened.
And again, psyche and they that are just going through like a river going through the events.
(31:36):
But I had to separate it to because I thought that otherwise everyone will be really, really
lost.
I didn't want to write something that people need a notebook in the chart.
And even just for my sake, I needed that structure.
And I, you know, at the time it was an exercise to kind of learn how to write in English.
(31:59):
It was just brought to my attention.
I am writing novella now.
It's my first retelling, I swear I would never do it, but I am writing a retelling of the
minotaur made from the minotaur point of view.
And I just realized that it's the first story that I'm writing in first person past.
It blew my mind as a wow, you just after all these years, you're finally doing something
(32:23):
normal.
I had to play with that.
And luckily I was going with first person present.
But then I read, I can't remember the book, I think I finished it, that it was second
person present.
It was the first time I read something in second person present.
And I felt it just gave me such an anxious state.
And it's like, no, I'm going to have to play with this.
(32:44):
So I think that's where the, that was all conscious.
There was a lot of, that's where the literary aspect of sleepstream comes in.
That's why it's more than mixing fantasy with science fiction.
You have that literary aspect where you play with the, with the prose itself to get the
story across.
(33:04):
But Sehshad has a moment of crisis.
In the third book, I think, was that, at first, I love that scene, but second, were you writing
about yourself in that scene?
I was, I was for the sake of my sanity and because writing has to be enjoyable for me,
you know, first and foremost, even if the book doesn't sell, if I had fun writing it,
(33:25):
they see something.
I knew I was going to have to have a goddess of right.
Now, she's not a Mary Sue.
I made perfectly clear I'm the chronodendron.
And there's another goddess that is not psyche that has a lot more of my personality in it.
And I always have to kind of refrain myself from getting into that, explore those demons
that it's not Sehshad.
(33:46):
But Sehshad is where I pour in all my frustrations while writing.
And it's very cathartic.
And it really helps building her character.
She's a character.
Then again, she started to be just a chronicler.
You know, she would just be there on the side, just making little comments here and there.
I wanted to make her, you know, mysterious and someone that always had all the answers
(34:09):
but wouldn't give it away.
But again, she just evolved and became a lot more approachable and comical sometimes because
when I'm stuck, something or things that happen when you write, and I just feed her
of these bits and it works so well.
Even if she was a relief, many of the things she says, I found them quite applicable to
(34:32):
history, you know, especially when Sehshad makes so many remarks regarding how history
is remembered based on what is written and that she had to get the story right so she
could all people who learn about it in the future.
So even in order to prevent something else similar, something similar from happening
in the future, and she keeps making these comments and trying to get all the facts,
(34:56):
but even as she tries, she still fails to get all the facts.
I thought it was quite interesting.
If you look at it from the point of view of a historian, we can't say that something
happened in the past.
We know that there are clues that indicate that something happened, especially if we
go into ancient times, but we are still missing details.
(35:17):
We know that we are missing more details and Sehshad has that idea through a litgome
base, that idea.
And I think it's in the third work and she has a lot of inspiration, you know, that
she's missing bits and she can't document everything and tries to make up on the last
work on the fifth one.
Because that's why she's desperately looking for Nemozini.
(35:39):
She needs to find the goddess of memory.
So she's sure about what she's writing.
That's kind of her arc and that's going to be the center plots of Oblié.
In that case, I won't ask for the map.
The more Sehshad in Oblié though?
Yes.
A lot of Sehshad in Oblié.
And she really grew on me over the course of the series.
(36:02):
I think the first book, I didn't honestly get attached to a lot of characters in the
first book, but many of them grew on me throughout.
Like Sehshad was one of them.
Yeah, I found her struggles interesting, but also just her role in the story and her interesting
relationship with Hermes.
Yeah.
And that she glows and lets him back.
(36:23):
Yeah, I love their relationship and I will expand on this.
I don't know if anyone, at least no one ever mentioned, Hermes is Anubis in the sense that
in the, is the Anubis equivalent in Greek mythology.
So I play with that a lot and that's why we'll see you later on.
(36:45):
They have this unexplained affinity and kind of, I call it a bromance because there's
actually nothing very romantic there, but it's just kind of a brother and sister kind
of situation.
And I wish I had explored it more.
I have many, many, many words written on the subject and I might revisit it, but it was
(37:07):
more because of that, even without them, they don't know exactly why, but what she doesn't
know exactly why, why she puts up with this character.
And in my head, that is why, because it's the reincarnation of the movies in the real
mythology and she has a connection with the movies.
Yeah, I'm definitely eager for more Sehshad.
Maybe I'll go read up a little bit on my Egyptian mythology.
(37:29):
Yeah, I think time travel stories I have found are in general difficult in that, like, if
you think about it hard enough, you'll find something that is a paradox or something that
doesn't fit together or something unexplained.
And I guess it also brings up all other kinds of demons like questions of free will and determinism
and whatnot.
So what, what were some things that you did while plotting to try and make it as waterproof
(37:54):
as you can?
I have, I have the last two hours of the audio book to go yet.
So far it seems pretty tight to me.
It's more of a plotting question.
How, how did you go about planning it so you don't have holes from your perspective?
Oh, yeah, like I said, there's always holes.
If you think about what I did was I started at the end, if you know exactly where it's
gonna end, you can, you can do the full circle thing.
(38:19):
And that, and that closes a lot of holes.
If you just keep it contained, of course, in this case, beginning and then it's the whole
history of the universe.
So I don't know, I probably screw up at some point, but I managed to keep timelessness
contained.
And another thing is because I'm approaching the story from a metaphorical and a metaphysical
point of view and time travel stories, I keep saying this and put it in the t-shirt.
(38:44):
They are not about physics.
They are not about, you know, actual time travel.
They are stories of redemption.
So when I keep that in mind in every character's arc, it kind of, I think it kind of smooths
over any, any little plot holes or the, the, the consistency that might happen because
we are perceived time in a linear fashion.
(39:06):
That's always my first perspective is from the point of view of the character.
Are they redeeming themselves?
Does that make sense within their actions?
If you go full circle, does it make sense?
I found it impressive when I read the final book and especially in the last two hours,
everything dies up.
I honestly, there are some things from the first book and this is, I think that I remember
(39:30):
them also because I read them quite back to Ak.
There are some things that you are tying up on the Facebook from the first book and on
the second one as well.
And everything converges and yeah, I thought it was a masterpiece.
Thank you.
That really makes, there was like three months of banging my head against the screen because
like I said, it was supposed to be nine books.
(39:51):
That was all just one book.
So it, most of the things started up, but not all because I was, you know, counting on
sequels and in this big story arc.
And when I decided to finish there, Nana Mises, I was like, oh, shit, how am I going to do
this?
Because I did not plan for this.
I only, only like halfway in the film sex, I realized I'm going to have to just stop.
(40:12):
Once I'd realized I had to write an acronym and then I still had another book and I have
to stop because otherwise I'm going to be writing timelessness book 20 in my fifties.
And then no one's going to buy it at that point.
So it was three months of literally trying to tie everything together.
And I, it should have been like six months because if there's one saying that I'm kind
(40:34):
of, we're not happy without work, but I think the pros suffer from that because I was so
intent of just getting the story properly finished in terms of storyline that I select
my pros a bit.
It might be just me, but it was, it was three very intense months that I thought I couldn't
(40:54):
do it.
And it is sloppy.
That's why I have those little moments in time.
I had to call them moments in time because if I call them epilogues, no one's on the
ring.
I have like four or five epilogues to kind of tie everything together.
There were epilogues, but it was like, it happened and that was the only thing that
mattered, that it happened.
That is how I read it at least, but yeah, I thought it was ingenious.
(41:18):
Thank you.
That makes it all worth it.
Thank you so much.
I also thought it was really interesting.
I can't remember other stories that do this.
I'm sure there are, but the fact that you go to the future to change things, usually
go to the past and change things around to make things go differently than they would
have.
But in the story, the few characters go to the future to try and change things, which
(41:39):
I thought was immensely interesting.
But also, did you have any like reasons for that or did it just happen as you were plotting?
Yes, because again, I'm working in this circle that time is a flat disk and we're all stuck
in it.
So if you look at time from a higher dimension, it's flat.
It's just a flat disk.
(42:00):
I'm really working with that.
So things do influence each other and I went to the future to change the past because someone
had used that point in the future to influence other aspects.
So everything is connected and I thought at least from a narrative point of view, we would
probably get the reader's attention a little bit more this idea of going to the future
(42:23):
to change the past.
But it is all so connected.
So I have another question and I think this one ties up to one of the key points of the
story that we list the main enabler of the gods abilities.
And we have this on the last book.
We have this, I think, gorgeous scene in which psyche is actually faltering and because of
(42:45):
what is happening and she's losing her power and suddenly she regains her will and becomes
even more powerful than before.
Beyond that, even when the gods teleport, they do so because they will it, because they will
to be in a different place.
And it ties up.
I thought it was one of my theories actually as a reader when I was reading it is that perhaps
(43:07):
you chose it because in all of the mythologies, the gods are always so focused on imposing
their will on everybody else.
The magic system, it's exactly as you described.
I knew that was going to have to be based on willpower, on the gods will exactly.
And I created these gods as these entities that have an influence in the universe, in
(43:28):
reality, according to that they can exert their will in reality to some degree, depending
on their talents.
Not all gods act at certain things.
For example, Seixate and Anubis, they don't translocate teleporties for the Nuffillian
very well.
For example, it doesn't interact very well with life.
(43:48):
There's little, little aside to kind of build their personality.
But yes, it was definitely that idea to work.
Imagine the universe where everyone's will would be conflicting because that's the thing
whenever one god wants one thing is going to affect the other one because it's not what
the other one wants.
And that's why they're always in conflict.
(44:10):
And sometimes I wonder if there's something there, just conflicting wills and we're just
stuck in the middle of it, like in a little tug of war.
But it's a bit more complicated.
So there's one, really much, it's not an Easter egg.
It's one of the greatest clue.
I'm going to spoil it here because it is part of the magic system.
If anyone noticed, it's an insight that Edith has.
(44:34):
So Edith, her point of view, she understands the gods pretty well and now she went into
this magic.
I slowly introduced magic, real magic into the story.
And then she has this inside something like, could reality be just realms connected by
veils of cause and consequence?
(44:55):
Everything, every action you do, everything where you impose your will to go a certain
way, it builds upon our reality.
And we just have to then navigate those realms, those interlocked realms that are created
by this global, this universal will, so to speak.
And it's kind of what I'm working with.
I just wanted to ask a question on that, that how is Hecate, she's actually a goddess,
(45:20):
but she uses magic.
She doesn't use willpower.
So what is that difference between Hec or why Hecate is a goddess and doesn't use willpower?
She uses willpower, but true magic or her willpower expresses itself through magic or
what appears to others as magic.
So every god whose talents is connected to magic or sorcery or witchcraft, it's a bit.
(45:47):
They're like the misfits, the outcasts of the other gods because I don't quite understand
your talents because it's kind of a wild card.
And they have to work, they can just impose their will, they have to work with the aspects
of reality to make their will work and being to herbs or the moon, moons are very important.
That's why there's no moons in Niflheim, you know, with matter, actual real things that
(46:11):
exist to make their real work.
They can just wish it.
They are more powerful in a way if things really align, but most of the time they are
just, you know, dismissed.
She makes a very interesting comment that of course you are going to sign magic to women
like the outcasts.
And I found it interesting because she has three faces of a girl in the middle and the
(46:33):
one in the middle, but like you also tied up that myth.
What happens with Ines?
Ines, she's one of the points that we were not, no, she was supposed to be this wild
card.
Her story will continue in another book, not on the internet.
She is not a goddess, she's a giant.
I did not lie about that, but I think you know enough now to understand why she has an affinity
(46:58):
with magic.
Yeah, there is something there.
There's another reason, but there's that as well.
The Norse mythology dwarfs, not the fantasy.
What I'm going to say is that they can't be, she's not fate.
No, her faces, they are all the same face.
They don't change in age.
They kind of reflect her moods, her mind.
(47:20):
So she literally can't keep a straight face because there's always, she can, but when
she loses control, you like the same way that we are thinking several things or feeling
different things about the same problem.
That's when she further, and it's also a way to tell that she's always aware.
She's in a completely different plane, reality for her.
(47:42):
It's not the same as the other gods, but she's not at all related to fate.
So there were a lot of like, quote-able quotes throughout the book and yeah, like single
liners that I like to highlight throughout as I went, at least as long as I was reading
from the Kindle of the audiobook.
But yeah, I was curious, like did you sort of, did they just come as you were writing
(48:03):
or did you sort of plan to insert them?
Because a lot of them I think are tied to the themes that I think you are exploring.
So did you sort of have these interesting things to say that you then inserted some
characters?
I didn't think it just happened as you went.
And similar question about humour because I think I enjoyed the humour in the book quite
a bit.
(48:24):
Once again, like did you plan to insert the jokes or did you sort of come in the writing
process?
The jokes pretty much came as I was writing.
It just, it was like, well, this is great because I do like humour in stories and we've
talked a lot, I think.
Sometimes not everything I say is funny, but sometimes my mind goes places.
(48:47):
They can be funny.
The most quote-able, that is part of the plot.
I always start with dialogue.
If I want to get a point across, I start with an aphorism.
I always build on that.
So my first drafts are pretty much dialogues.
And then once they are polished, sometimes nice quotes come out of them.
(49:09):
I always start with the idea in mind and how it's going to be discussed.
And then I fill in the rest of the dialogues.
This was an amazing, thorough discussion for one of the most unique plot-twisting and well-written
series that I have read in a while.
If you haven't read it, just give it a try.
It is definitely worth it.
(49:30):
Before we do the outros, I want to thank Lili, a subscriber in my newsletter, who sent one
of the questions that I asked today.
What said, Varsha, thank you so much for joining me to interview Susanna.
Thank you so much for letting me get crushed this party.
I really enjoyed the discussion.
Thank you, Susanna, for being patient with all of my questions.
Yeah, and you can find me on my YouTube channel, Reading by the Rainy Mountain.
(49:54):
And the About page has links to some SFF discussion podcasts, if you're interested.
Susanna, thank you so much for coming to my podcast and for writing such a unique series.
I'm really looking forward to a next release.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
I would happily talk about Timelessness all day long.
(50:14):
So thank you so much.
It's been delightful.
You can, for those who are listening, if you are interested in Timelessness, it's available
everywhere.
The first book is called Weird Cods.
And I have a new one called Oblié, which was originally written as a sequel to Timelessness,
but it's now a standalone.
So you don't need to have read Timelessness to read Oblié, but if you do, there's an
(50:38):
epigraph at the beginning of this chapter that would help you understand Timelessness.
So, so now, and it will be out next month, the 21st, and it's right now available for
pre-order on Amazon.
Thank you, everyone.
You will find the links to their channel, Sunspaces, in the episode description, alongside
with all of the Amazon links to that Susanna's book.
(51:00):
So if you like this episode, please subscribe, like the video, and leave a comment.
I always try to answer.
Also, you may be interested in subscribing to my newsletter, where I generally offer
bite-sized bookish discussions and deep dives.
The link will be in the description as well.
That's it.
Thanks for listening and happy reading.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Books Undone.
(00:12):
I'm your host, Livia J. Eliot, and today we have another spotlight episode.
So let me welcome Susana Imaginario, author of a mythological slip-slim series titled
Timelessness.
Susana, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me.
Hello, Livia.
Thank you so much for having me here.
My name is Susana Imaginario.
(00:33):
I am the author of Timelessness, a few other things, but we are here to talk about timelessness.
This is also a special episode because Varsha, book tour and podcaster, is joining me to interview
Susana.
Varsha, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you so much for having me.
I've been looking for an opportunity to pick Susana's brain about some of the things in
(00:54):
the Timelessness series.
So, yeah, I'm really excited to be here.
Thank you.
Awesome.
So before we start, let me know the usual disclaimers.
First, there are spoilers in this podcast.
We will tackle the first five books of Susana's serious timelessness.
That is Wyrd Gods, The Darkhan, Nephilim's Heads, Anachrony, and Anamnesis.
(01:16):
But just to be on the safe side, we will not spoil her upcoming book only.
So you can listen safely in that regard.
Second, many of what you will hear is our subjective interpretation of the themes within
the story.
You are allowed to disagree.
That said, I will send it over to Varsha to start with the questions.
I think one of the things that I found really interesting in timelessness was this sort of
(01:42):
what I called reverse magical realism in one of the forum threads where technology is presented
as if it is magic, but then it starts to become recognizable technology.
If I'm not wrong, I think that teleportation devices are elevators and there are androids
and I guess maybe some genetic cloning stuff too.
(02:04):
So I was curious about just how you went about building that aspect of the world.
Well, I started with magic because we are most of the characters are gods and they
have their own, I call it talents, their powers and their talents.
So they can bend the laws of nature at their will to some degree depending on what are
(02:26):
their talents.
For example, if Apollo has a affinity with stars, Zeus is a tricky one with lightning
as opposed to that sort of thing.
And then there's the Nephilim, which are this society and they are pantheon, let's put it
this way.
They try to imitate the gods powers to technology and reverse engineer everything they can do
(02:51):
through technology.
Jumping off from that a little bit, I also I am not remotely familiar with the mythology
to the levels that I need to be.
I have some stories, some names are familiar to me, but mostly I read all of them as characters
that I would in any other book.
So two questions there.
(03:11):
One, when writing, how did you think about try to, I found it immensely readable even
though I wasn't familiar with the mythology.
So did you have to think about how to present this for someone who is not familiar with
the mythology?
And also I'm pretty sure there are several laying Easter eggs for those who are familiar
with the mythology.
And then like the second stuff, the talents and stuff that you mentioned, was it how much
(03:34):
of that did you make up and how much of it is based in actual myth?
Okay, so separating the questions, I tried to write timelessness so everyone could understand
to some degree what was going on.
Looking back, I think I've made it quite hard.
If you don't know enough about Greek and Norse mythology, you're going to be quite lost.
(03:57):
So since then I've added, what's the name, the matters personally on my website.
I intended to insert it in the book.
And it's going to be maybe in a special edition later on.
And I think weird gods would have benefited from it because lots of readers, even if they
only know the names and don't know what are they the god of or some bits of their mythology,
(04:21):
they're going to be very lost because I built upon that.
It's timelessness.
It's a sort of continuation of the myth.
If you do enjoy mythology and you know all their stories or have an idea of their interactions,
then you're going to have a lot of fun reading it.
It's not 100% faithful to the original mythology.
I had, for plot reasons, I had to take some liberties, especially with the centaur Chiron.
(04:48):
There's reasons for that.
But if you know the mythology, you catch little aside in conversations during the banter.
You probably can see what's going to happen next beforehand in the ending.
It's a different experience, I guess.
As the book progressed, because I wrote it all as one book, weird gods used to be what
(05:08):
is now timelessness.
And as I split it in four books, every time I would revise, I tried to simplify it or
do not realize so much in the original mythology.
The Nephilim, they are completely made up.
I mean, I borrowed the name and that was that.
They have nothing to do with the Nephilim in mythology.
I just thought it was cool.
(05:30):
I don't want to include any aspect of Christian or pre-Christian mythology.
It was a decision I've made early on.
Sometimes I think I mentioned Jehovah or I made some obscure references to Jesus here
and there.
So I'm not excluding exactly, but I'm not going to go into that because people get offended
(05:53):
very easily.
But I borrowed the name and created this whole pantheon of artificial intelligence.
One thing that I wanted to ask you is that how did you choose?
Because I found it very interesting that you were mixing pantheons.
You had the Greeks mostly, you have Norse mythology, you have Kali as well.
(06:14):
And at the start, I was expecting to find Thanatos as a god of death, but then it was
Kali.
And I think it was quite suitable for the story, especially because how Kali is presented
to be far more violent than Sanatos if you compare the stories.
But there are in many cases that you choose one pantheon rather than the other.
(06:35):
And in some cases, both coexist like hell and Hades, which are not quite the same.
So my question is how did you choose and how did you weave in the different stories to
make it coherent?
So I started with Greek mythology.
That's the foundation.
But Greek cosmology, it's the Mediterranean.
(06:58):
There's not a lot going on.
So I borrowed the cosmology from Norse mythology and then added a few gods from that pantheon.
Kali was first because I needed a female aspect to balance Kronos.
And I don't know anything about the mythology.
I know a little bit more now, thanks to Lord of Light.
(07:19):
Thank you.
But at the time, I just knew names.
And I did a quick search.
This is true.
It's my process for gods of time.
And I don't know if the page was reliable or not, but I read that Kali was the goddess
of death and the end of time, or death has the end of time.
So that's the one that I'm going to pick.
(07:39):
Because even the name was more familiar than Thanatos.
And there's another reason.
There's a whole subplot involving the Titans, the primordial gods of each mythology that
I just started to get into in Oublie.
There are reasons why the original gods are not part of the cast, apart from Prometheus
(08:02):
and Chiron who are Titans.
I thought it was a great choice as well, especially given what happens at the end when Kali, when
Psyche gives Kali to Gaia, we end up having a goddess that is a voice of life and death,
like the entire cycle.
I found that fascinating, so if you can tell us a bit more of the why that was a choice,
(08:25):
Psyche makes an explanation within the story, but I would like to know more the writer side
what led you to decide mixing them.
Now here we're going to get into a psychological aspect of timelessness.
Psyche is the main character.
Again, it's kind of a very obvious fun in the whole thing.
I rely a lot on psychology and why it means to be human and the workings of the mind,
(08:50):
and especially cognitive dissonance.
Notice that's why almost everyone has two names, two aspects, etc.
They are in conflict with each other.
And Cronus is the same, so basically Gaia came about so Kali had something to kill,
if that makes sense.
And it was Cronus' weakness after their fight and whatever that slivered off.
(09:14):
The soul that stayed in him to balance everything that Gaia was doing, which was another aspect
of the original goddess.
Without spoiling too much of what comes next, that's what I could do, but I needed the way
to balance and then Psyche, the goddess of the soul, managed to unite as much as she
could of the original soul and put the responsibility of death in life, not in time, if that makes
(09:42):
sense.
So she thought that she was doing the opposite of what Cronus wanted, but maybe not, maybe
just wanted to be rid of that responsibility.
When Gaia uses her power, we see that she can give life, but it's costly to her.
She's often described as a clone, like looking very old, especially towards the end when
(10:04):
she uses a lot of her power.
I found it very interesting that giving life actually seems to take the life out of her
or in some way, that is why it affects her.
I love what he said about death being the responsibility of life, because at the end
of the day, that's where we are all going.
(10:25):
Yeah, well, keep in mind that Gaia is in the cast, they are a bit of a drama queen.
We can't trust everything that they tell your show, but the idea is not so much the giving
life aspect of it is the giving away part of her soul.
Every life, especially a life that has a soul or is able to host a soul, she has to kind
(10:48):
of split her own soul more and more.
That's why I think I mentioned this in time, so that's one of the infodumps to make sense,
that when she started with the primordial gods, she was giving away too much of her
soul and then with the gods, it was still too much and that's why she started creating
(11:11):
mortals because they took little effort.
She wasn't losing herself too much.
Yeah, no, I found that aspect very interesting too.
I think one of my favorite bits in the series was this mythology around the origin of time
and his battle with Nix and also slightly unrelated, his commentary around the fact that gravity
(11:39):
hasn't affected him this way when he comes to the planet, which I thought is immensely
interesting because we talked about this a little bit on the forum, but to repeat for
our listeners, that seems to be heading towards an origin story for time being gravity, for
some relativity origin story.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Whatever you can without spoiling anything that's coming later.
(12:02):
I find origin stories like that immensely fascinating.
If you write timelessness, you realize that it starts at the end and goes full circle.
Everything, even not all chapters, but every bit of story that I write, I try to make it
go full circle.
I'm working my way backwards to the beginning of time.
(12:23):
As we peel the layers, that's why later on we'll learn a bit more about the primordial
gods, we'll learn a bit more about the creation of the underworlds, we'll learn a bit more
about the souls and then working on it.
You were the first person who noticed that time and gravity.
When I wrote it, I was like, you pointed out, this is not quite right, but I wanted to plant
(12:49):
that little, we call it the flea behind the ear, kind of questions.
No, this doesn't make sense.
Every time you read timelessness and there's something that, no, this doesn't make sense.
You're pretty sure that you stumble upon something.
I will mention more and more gravity.
Even at the very beginning, Psyche wakes up in the Lennon's body and she fails.
(13:09):
She makes a comment that gravity, reminding us just how little we are, how insignificant
we are, how powerless, yes, that's what she said.
So you expect a showdown.
It was originally, it was nine books and it'll be at the last book, but now that I split
it in so many books and I'm doing standalone, it might happen sooner than it was plotted.
(13:31):
I'm really looking forward to that.
That bit was actually quite interesting and I wanted to pick up on what you say that you
are always going full circle with time.
The story of Anne in Anachrony is exactly that.
I thought it was mind blowing because we go back at the start of Anachrony to another
period of time and then it ends exactly at the same moment that Nephilim's ex ends and
(13:56):
it adds so much to it.
So can you share a bit more about how you tied up that idea of Anne as a new character
within the story and the clues that you were mentioning throughout her esteem in a different
timeline?
Well, she was not planned, nothing in Anachrony was planned.
(14:17):
The whole scene was supposed to happen in an interludes kind of just an infodum, just
a couple of paragraphs.
Ariane, even her name, so it's a nanogram for Reinha, which means Queen in Portuguese.
She was the most two dimensional character I had, but originally she was just supposed
to be a placeholder character and just looking pretty in the book and she was going to be
(14:42):
killed very quickly and then we would find out later on in an interlude who she really
was, etc.
But it was one of those cases, it's a serious case of the more I wrote about her, the more
I wanted to explore this character, tell more.
The interlude was supposed to be just a couple of paragraphs and just kept growing and before
(15:03):
I knew I had over.
And like 15,000 words in another one, like I can't just, this is too long of an interlude,
this is going to break the flow of the book, what am I going to do?
And then I wrote a novella, so the series, interlude, but that was not planned.
There was a complete derail from the plot, but I think in the end it helped.
I think that it was a bit more impactful than just finding out, oh by the way, that character
(15:28):
that no one cared about, she was at.
I planted hits at the beginning, the whole thing about the marriage and this, I hope
that would be enough for people paying attention that even when she's talking with Elena,
I try to make it seem like they had the same minorisms in the way.
But yeah, I am glad that I delve deeper into that aspect because she's a great character.
(15:49):
She is and it's quite interesting how she changes because when you start the story,
she's very young and it feels young, you know, like I want to agree, you know, one
of the things, and one that some wishes that are sometimes a bit too flat, not because
the character is flat, but because she's young and she sees everything in a very simplistic
way.
And then when she goes back in time or future to that timeline, she grows so quickly.
(16:14):
The novella is very short and we can see how everything changes here and how she starts
regretting some of the choices and seeing herself as a, I was this very young, naive
person and when she arrives back at the current timeline and in the last book, it's a completely
different character.
Everything she went through changed her so much.
(16:38):
I found it fascinating, honestly.
Thank you.
She did became my favorite.
I was not expecting, but I just went with it.
Question myself, oh, should I do it?
No, this is going to break the story.
This is not what I intended.
But sometimes, you know, just try, just go with it and see what happens.
I'm very proud of that little side.
(16:58):
If I may touch on Anna a bit more and perhaps go into the rest of the series, there is an
ongoing theme that wishing is dangerous, right?
And we quite often see how wishes are twisted, especially with Anne.
However, Saiki, which is a main character, she wants to take control of her life of the
future.
(17:19):
She has ideas and goals, but she never referred to them as wishes.
And it's very precise.
Throughout the five books, the world in one side is very precise in that regard.
What were your ideas regarding wishing and wishing as a dangerous thing?
Well, if you read the Anamnesis, you read the Anamnesis interludes, which are two trick-or-trick
(17:42):
stir.
You know, she made one wish that was enough to, she learned a lesson with her wish.
But yes, it is deliberate that she never wishes for anything.
And even when Loki teases her, when she does what she wants, she always says, as you will,
because she's all about will, not wishes.
She's a goddess of willpower.
(18:02):
But yeah, but she did make one wish that changed everything.
And that was that.
She went the way she wishes again.
Yeah, but sometimes it feels that it goes a bit beyond her.
With Anne, it's very clear, but also Elena, it's the opposite.
Elena is all the time wishing, wishing, wishing, wishing and doing nothing about it.
(18:24):
She expects the things to come in.
And interesting because Elena was, gave her body to Psyche, basically coastal Psyche.
Nevertheless, they are such different characters.
Yeah, that's why I had to put them together.
I was playing with the idea because we see a lot of possession.
The person changes when she is possessed by something.
(18:47):
And this I tried to reverse again, see how the soul would change with being inside the
mind of having to work with the mind of a host that is completely different to what
they are.
And it's to work the conflict in person.
They are very different.
And I don't know if I succeeded.
I would have done better, at least different now, the conflict between their personalities.
(19:13):
But I think in the end, they both, or at least Psyche, benefited a little bit because at
the beginning she's just too much of, she's too pragmatic, too much of a cynic.
She doesn't wish for anything.
She doesn't even want anything.
She just wants to be left alone.
Having to work with the mind that is so prone to, oh, this is so pretty.
(19:33):
Oh, I want this.
I want that.
You know, she kind of got a little bit of her humanity back, I think, even though it
was not too human to put it this way.
Well, Elena, I think she got the worst part of the deal because it made her bitter.
When we see her later on, she went straight from little naive, petulent girl to just
(19:55):
being very entitled, demanding and bitter and spiteful.
She kind of inherited all the dark side of Psyche in a way because Psyche can be very
spiteful and bitter as well.
She doesn't act on it, she always thinks about it.
I'm like, the things I could do to you, but I'm not.
I always thought that she had some parallelisms to Glokta from Enronbi.
(20:22):
She has a lot of opinions all the time.
She may not act on it, but she has so many opinions.
It's always, it felt interesting throughout the book, but on the last one, on enamnesis,
when we get to find out everything that it has to her, it's like it ties up a cycle.
Now you finally see why she's so sour, so bitter, why she thinks the coro-cote advice
(20:49):
she gives to Aidan, it's very clear at that point, everything ties up.
So all of those opinions, I don't want to call her opinionator because I don't think
she is.
All of those opinions and her vision of the world ties beautifully with what happened
in the past.
You also have this theme going on of the consequences of reactions throughout the entire series.
(21:11):
In her, we see that it made her that way.
So were you thinking of a particular theme or aspect of the consequences of the actions?
Yes.
First, let me say, Psyche, she is opinionated and she's very judgmental.
That was very deliberate.
The thing about causing consequence, so I think I say in Enamnesis as well that Kronos
(21:34):
is not so much the God of time, but it's the cause of the God of cause and consequence.
Because that's my interpretation or in the books of the era of time, of things just going
one direction unless you have to apply some magic into it and the Krono d'Andron is in
all that.
And that was the thing that changed everything even for the gods because they were used to
live in the, to never having to deal with the actions of their consequences or unless
(21:59):
ages passed and then suddenly there was time, they just had to think things through.
But yeah, every, it's the cause and effect.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I use all these aphorisms time and again, just to know.
It's inspired in mythology, so it is at its heart a cautionary tale.
(22:21):
It kind of, hopefully, would make you think through your own actions and your own biases
and prejudices and opinions and how they might play out in the universe that is not constrained
by the laws of society as we know it, just focusing on the mind.
It's a very thin line throughout the book that I play with between self-preservation
(22:46):
and selfishness.
And what can you do to walk that line with the minimal consequence?
At the end of the day, you need to be a bit selfish in order to ensure self-preservation.
Speaking of psyche, I thought it was hilarious that the first thing she did after she became
a goddess was go to sleep for several thousand years.
(23:07):
I could definitely relate to that.
But on a more gender note about the character, yeah, I was curious about your choice for
the main character and jumping off of that a little bit also.
What your background in mythology is why you were interested in this specific character?
Did you start from the character and build a story around her, like this goddess and
(23:28):
build the story around her?
Or did you want to start, or did you start with, like you said, you wanted to play with
aspects of the soul and psychology and so you picked this goddess?
Yes, so the whole thing started with to trick a trickster, which is something I wrote.
The very first draft I was in my twenties was again one of those exercises that would
write dialogues between gods.
The myths of psyche and heroes always made me angry because I think it's so wrong on
(23:55):
so many levels.
And when I learned about Loki, I figured, you know, this would be the sort of saying
that trickster god would definitely try to take advantage of the whole saying of heroes
only coming at night and never let himself be seen.
So the original thing was a bit more, it was a little bit more spicy, but then it evolved
(24:17):
from there and it took years and I was always at the back of my mind.
And there was basically three reasons when I finally decided to use psyche.
One was because I've learned to love the character that I created over the years and it was supposed
to be a psychological tale, so why not?
No one was doing retellings as far as I know.
(24:40):
There were no retellings of psyche and heroes, at least no famous ones, which was great because
it was at the time where everyone was doing retellings.
In the forums, when someone asked, what's your favorite god, what's this?
And psyche was never mentioned.
He's like, well, I need to do something about this.
And I was going to focus a lot on souls, on what makes us human.
(25:06):
And my magic system was willpower of the soul.
So of course, I would have to have the goddess of the soul involved.
There was only one that there's no other goddess of the soul that I know of, please correct,
in any pantheon.
So it had to be psyche.
Yeah, it's really interesting to read books that have gods as characters.
I think I'm a huge fan of Malazan.
(25:28):
I've hopped on about that endlessly.
But also The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K.
Jemisin.
I think what I loved about both of those series is that the gods, the way they are written,
like there's this, they seem human when they are taking on aspects that interact with humans.
But when they are gods, they blow your mind.
(25:50):
Like I especially love that in A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, because one of the gods makes a joke
in one of the novellas that, oh, you might think that a black hole is like a baby, nah,
nah, and like, but it'll poke you, it'll hurt you.
These are gods, they're playing with black holes.
So yeah, I found some of that in this book as well.
Like when Loki takes on his true form to intimidate, I forget which character, but, and I love
(26:15):
that scene where he, and it also reminded me a bit of like this thing in Hindu mythology.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but gods take on what we call Vishwarupam to show
like this true form and to say like, I might seem human to you, but I am a god here.
So I really look like, you'll go crazy if you see me all the time.
(26:38):
Yeah, so I guess my question for you is after all that rambling is what, how, what was it
like to write about gods?
Like how did you figure out how to balance the writing of like that god and balance it
out to be characters that we can relate to and actually like not just reading about gods,
(26:58):
but also have these people that we can relate to follow like, you know, judge these off
as we read.
Funny you mentioned 100,000 kingdoms and this, I have a video about it buried in my YouTube
channel.
When I first started with gods, I stumbled into that problem because even though I was
basing myself in great mythology where the gods are very human, like, or relatable, they
(27:19):
were coming across diminished kind of as it happens in American gods.
It's one of my complaints about the book and it's set in America and another that the gods
appear very diminished in that environment.
I was stuck there thinking that I would be doomed to write an urban fantasy until I read
100,000 kingdoms and then I knew exactly what I had to do.
So I have a lot to say for that book because it's a joke.
(27:43):
I had, I really had to go into the fantasy aspect of it to just not care because I was
still to attach, especially the feeling in this to attach to the science fiction to try
to create something that made sense and I had to realize that gods don't make sense.
That's the whole point.
Their motivations, their aspects, their whole relationship in reality does not make sense
(28:04):
from our point of view.
So they told me now to deal with the murder characters but once in a while we have to
show the reader that we are dealing with gods.
When I read that book, I got that sense of it was not just the danger but the unknown,
that sense of restrained power.
Throughout the story you also make a lot of scenes in which we can clearly see that the
(28:29):
gods don't have the same ethics.
They don't see the world in the same way that a mortal will do it.
For example, Hel always struck me in that sense when she's discussing that she created
the dark hand.
Her approach is, I created this thing, yeah, while the rest of the, can you see the venture
on the thing that you created?
And the humans and the rest of the races, they see it as something extremely dangerous
(28:54):
that shouldn't be there, that is a predator and for the dark hand we can see all the point
of view but Hel's own point of view is the one that feels the most foreign to us as a
reader.
You did that quite a lot in different parts of a series?
Yeah, there's a reason why the whole thing is written from very, very limited, very
(29:14):
limited points of view.
It's like I have 12 in weird gods, there's a lot of points of view and they are all very
focused on that point of view characters and I even have some scenes that were the hardest
thing to write and the same scene and then from the point of view of different characters
in that scene and how different it plays out perceive what's happening and what they're
thinking about it.
(29:35):
And it's all about that because we don't know, we live inside our heads, we only have
to work with our senses, we don't know what everyone's thinking.
Whether the gods know to some degree if the others let them know but we are very biased
in every action.
Hel sees the dark hand as, yeah, look, you know, under goddess of the dead but I can
(29:59):
also create, take that guy and as a means to kind of fight back just to reassert herself
in the pantheon while everyone else especially if they are in the life side of things, they
are like, no, this is not a good idea.
And now the question is, did she know what she was doing when she is Loki's daughter?
(30:20):
So there's that to be explored.
I have a plan slash follow up question to what you just talked about the rewinding that
we do for each scene.
Like we never start where we left off, you always rewind a little bit and then start
and I also see that you played with, I don't know if played as a writer but you change
tense a lot in writing the course of the book.
(30:44):
And of course that's interesting because the series, a big theme is about time.
There's a lot of like time based themes in the series.
So I was curious how your choice of tense played with also like what you were doing
with time.
I needed a way to tell the readers to differentiate in what was happening and what happened before
(31:09):
let's put it this way or what was happening backstage.
So I needed an anchor point in Weird Gods that psyches the view that that is the anchor
point.
Everything else is kind of happening around her.
And then I kind of flip with the dark and same thing, but it's almost like everything
kind of happened.
It is what happened.
And again, psyche and they that are just going through like a river going through the events.
(31:36):
But I had to separate it to because I thought that otherwise everyone will be really, really
lost.
I didn't want to write something that people need a notebook in the chart.
And even just for my sake, I needed that structure.
And I, you know, at the time it was an exercise to kind of learn how to write in English.
(31:59):
It was just brought to my attention.
I am writing novella now.
It's my first retelling, I swear I would never do it, but I am writing a retelling of the
minotaur made from the minotaur point of view.
And I just realized that it's the first story that I'm writing in first person past.
It blew my mind as a wow, you just after all these years, you're finally doing something
(32:23):
normal.
I had to play with that.
And luckily I was going with first person present.
But then I read, I can't remember the book, I think I finished it, that it was second
person present.
It was the first time I read something in second person present.
And I felt it just gave me such an anxious state.
And it's like, no, I'm going to have to play with this.
(32:44):
So I think that's where the, that was all conscious.
There was a lot of, that's where the literary aspect of sleepstream comes in.
That's why it's more than mixing fantasy with science fiction.
You have that literary aspect where you play with the, with the prose itself to get the
story across.
(33:04):
But Sehshad has a moment of crisis.
In the third book, I think, was that, at first, I love that scene, but second, were you writing
about yourself in that scene?
I was, I was for the sake of my sanity and because writing has to be enjoyable for me,
you know, first and foremost, even if the book doesn't sell, if I had fun writing it,
(33:25):
they see something.
I knew I was going to have to have a goddess of right.
Now, she's not a Mary Sue.
I made perfectly clear I'm the chronodendron.
And there's another goddess that is not psyche that has a lot more of my personality in it.
And I always have to kind of refrain myself from getting into that, explore those demons
that it's not Sehshad.
(33:46):
But Sehshad is where I pour in all my frustrations while writing.
And it's very cathartic.
And it really helps building her character.
She's a character.
Then again, she started to be just a chronicler.
You know, she would just be there on the side, just making little comments here and there.
I wanted to make her, you know, mysterious and someone that always had all the answers
(34:09):
but wouldn't give it away.
But again, she just evolved and became a lot more approachable and comical sometimes because
when I'm stuck, something or things that happen when you write, and I just feed her
of these bits and it works so well.
Even if she was a relief, many of the things she says, I found them quite applicable to
(34:32):
history, you know, especially when Sehshad makes so many remarks regarding how history
is remembered based on what is written and that she had to get the story right so she
could all people who learn about it in the future.
So even in order to prevent something else similar, something similar from happening
in the future, and she keeps making these comments and trying to get all the facts,
(34:56):
but even as she tries, she still fails to get all the facts.
I thought it was quite interesting.
If you look at it from the point of view of a historian, we can't say that something
happened in the past.
We know that there are clues that indicate that something happened, especially if we
go into ancient times, but we are still missing details.
(35:17):
We know that we are missing more details and Sehshad has that idea through a litgome
base, that idea.
And I think it's in the third work and she has a lot of inspiration, you know, that
she's missing bits and she can't document everything and tries to make up on the last
work on the fifth one.
Because that's why she's desperately looking for Nemozini.
(35:39):
She needs to find the goddess of memory.
So she's sure about what she's writing.
That's kind of her arc and that's going to be the center plots of Oblié.
In that case, I won't ask for the map.
The more Sehshad in Oblié though?
Yes.
A lot of Sehshad in Oblié.
And she really grew on me over the course of the series.
(36:02):
I think the first book, I didn't honestly get attached to a lot of characters in the
first book, but many of them grew on me throughout.
Like Sehshad was one of them.
Yeah, I found her struggles interesting, but also just her role in the story and her interesting
relationship with Hermes.
Yeah.
And that she glows and lets him back.
(36:23):
Yeah, I love their relationship and I will expand on this.
I don't know if anyone, at least no one ever mentioned, Hermes is Anubis in the sense that
in the, is the Anubis equivalent in Greek mythology.
So I play with that a lot and that's why we'll see you later on.
(36:45):
They have this unexplained affinity and kind of, I call it a bromance because there's
actually nothing very romantic there, but it's just kind of a brother and sister kind
of situation.
And I wish I had explored it more.
I have many, many, many words written on the subject and I might revisit it, but it was
(37:07):
more because of that, even without them, they don't know exactly why, but what she doesn't
know exactly why, why she puts up with this character.
And in my head, that is why, because it's the reincarnation of the movies in the real
mythology and she has a connection with the movies.
Yeah, I'm definitely eager for more Sehshad.
Maybe I'll go read up a little bit on my Egyptian mythology.
(37:29):
Yeah, I think time travel stories I have found are in general difficult in that, like, if
you think about it hard enough, you'll find something that is a paradox or something that
doesn't fit together or something unexplained.
And I guess it also brings up all other kinds of demons like questions of free will and determinism
and whatnot.
So what, what were some things that you did while plotting to try and make it as waterproof
(37:54):
as you can?
I have, I have the last two hours of the audio book to go yet.
So far it seems pretty tight to me.
It's more of a plotting question.
How, how did you go about planning it so you don't have holes from your perspective?
Oh, yeah, like I said, there's always holes.
If you think about what I did was I started at the end, if you know exactly where it's
gonna end, you can, you can do the full circle thing.
(38:19):
And that, and that closes a lot of holes.
If you just keep it contained, of course, in this case, beginning and then it's the whole
history of the universe.
So I don't know, I probably screw up at some point, but I managed to keep timelessness
contained.
And another thing is because I'm approaching the story from a metaphorical and a metaphysical
point of view and time travel stories, I keep saying this and put it in the t-shirt.
(38:44):
They are not about physics.
They are not about, you know, actual time travel.
They are stories of redemption.
So when I keep that in mind in every character's arc, it kind of, I think it kind of smooths
over any, any little plot holes or the, the, the consistency that might happen because
we are perceived time in a linear fashion.
(39:06):
That's always my first perspective is from the point of view of the character.
Are they redeeming themselves?
Does that make sense within their actions?
If you go full circle, does it make sense?
I found it impressive when I read the final book and especially in the last two hours,
everything dies up.
I honestly, there are some things from the first book and this is, I think that I remember
(39:30):
them also because I read them quite back to Ak.
There are some things that you are tying up on the Facebook from the first book and on
the second one as well.
And everything converges and yeah, I thought it was a masterpiece.
Thank you.
That really makes, there was like three months of banging my head against the screen because
like I said, it was supposed to be nine books.
(39:51):
That was all just one book.
So it, most of the things started up, but not all because I was, you know, counting on
sequels and in this big story arc.
And when I decided to finish there, Nana Mises, I was like, oh, shit, how am I going to do
this?
Because I did not plan for this.
I only, only like halfway in the film sex, I realized I'm going to have to just stop.
(40:12):
Once I'd realized I had to write an acronym and then I still had another book and I have
to stop because otherwise I'm going to be writing timelessness book 20 in my fifties.
And then no one's going to buy it at that point.
So it was three months of literally trying to tie everything together.
And I, it should have been like six months because if there's one saying that I'm kind
(40:34):
of, we're not happy without work, but I think the pros suffer from that because I was so
intent of just getting the story properly finished in terms of storyline that I select
my pros a bit.
It might be just me, but it was, it was three very intense months that I thought I couldn't
(40:54):
do it.
And it is sloppy.
That's why I have those little moments in time.
I had to call them moments in time because if I call them epilogues, no one's on the
ring.
I have like four or five epilogues to kind of tie everything together.
There were epilogues, but it was like, it happened and that was the only thing that
mattered, that it happened.
That is how I read it at least, but yeah, I thought it was ingenious.
(41:18):
Thank you.
That makes it all worth it.
Thank you so much.
I also thought it was really interesting.
I can't remember other stories that do this.
I'm sure there are, but the fact that you go to the future to change things, usually
go to the past and change things around to make things go differently than they would
have.
But in the story, the few characters go to the future to try and change things, which
(41:39):
I thought was immensely interesting.
But also, did you have any like reasons for that or did it just happen as you were plotting?
Yes, because again, I'm working in this circle that time is a flat disk and we're all stuck
in it.
So if you look at time from a higher dimension, it's flat.
It's just a flat disk.
(42:00):
I'm really working with that.
So things do influence each other and I went to the future to change the past because someone
had used that point in the future to influence other aspects.
So everything is connected and I thought at least from a narrative point of view, we would
probably get the reader's attention a little bit more this idea of going to the future
(42:23):
to change the past.
But it is all so connected.
So I have another question and I think this one ties up to one of the key points of the
story that we list the main enabler of the gods abilities.
And we have this on the last book.
We have this, I think, gorgeous scene in which psyche is actually faltering and because of
(42:45):
what is happening and she's losing her power and suddenly she regains her will and becomes
even more powerful than before.
Beyond that, even when the gods teleport, they do so because they will it, because they will
to be in a different place.
And it ties up.
I thought it was one of my theories actually as a reader when I was reading it is that perhaps
(43:07):
you chose it because in all of the mythologies, the gods are always so focused on imposing
their will on everybody else.
The magic system, it's exactly as you described.
I knew that was going to have to be based on willpower, on the gods will exactly.
And I created these gods as these entities that have an influence in the universe, in
(43:28):
reality, according to that they can exert their will in reality to some degree, depending
on their talents.
Not all gods act at certain things.
For example, Seixate and Anubis, they don't translocate teleporties for the Nuffillian
very well.
For example, it doesn't interact very well with life.
(43:48):
There's little, little aside to kind of build their personality.
But yes, it was definitely that idea to work.
Imagine the universe where everyone's will would be conflicting because that's the thing
whenever one god wants one thing is going to affect the other one because it's not what
the other one wants.
And that's why they're always in conflict.
(44:10):
And sometimes I wonder if there's something there, just conflicting wills and we're just
stuck in the middle of it, like in a little tug of war.
But it's a bit more complicated.
So there's one, really much, it's not an Easter egg.
It's one of the greatest clue.
I'm going to spoil it here because it is part of the magic system.
If anyone noticed, it's an insight that Edith has.
(44:34):
So Edith, her point of view, she understands the gods pretty well and now she went into
this magic.
I slowly introduced magic, real magic into the story.
And then she has this inside something like, could reality be just realms connected by
veils of cause and consequence?
(44:55):
Everything, every action you do, everything where you impose your will to go a certain
way, it builds upon our reality.
And we just have to then navigate those realms, those interlocked realms that are created
by this global, this universal will, so to speak.
And it's kind of what I'm working with.
I just wanted to ask a question on that, that how is Hecate, she's actually a goddess,
(45:20):
but she uses magic.
She doesn't use willpower.
So what is that difference between Hec or why Hecate is a goddess and doesn't use willpower?
She uses willpower, but true magic or her willpower expresses itself through magic or
what appears to others as magic.
So every god whose talents is connected to magic or sorcery or witchcraft, it's a bit.
(45:47):
They're like the misfits, the outcasts of the other gods because I don't quite understand
your talents because it's kind of a wild card.
And they have to work, they can just impose their will, they have to work with the aspects
of reality to make their will work and being to herbs or the moon, moons are very important.
That's why there's no moons in Niflheim, you know, with matter, actual real things that
(46:11):
exist to make their real work.
They can just wish it.
They are more powerful in a way if things really align, but most of the time they are
just, you know, dismissed.
She makes a very interesting comment that of course you are going to sign magic to women
like the outcasts.
And I found it interesting because she has three faces of a girl in the middle and the
(46:33):
one in the middle, but like you also tied up that myth.
What happens with Ines?
Ines, she's one of the points that we were not, no, she was supposed to be this wild
card.
Her story will continue in another book, not on the internet.
She is not a goddess, she's a giant.
I did not lie about that, but I think you know enough now to understand why she has an affinity
(46:58):
with magic.
Yeah, there is something there.
There's another reason, but there's that as well.
The Norse mythology dwarfs, not the fantasy.
What I'm going to say is that they can't be, she's not fate.
No, her faces, they are all the same face.
They don't change in age.
They kind of reflect her moods, her mind.
(47:20):
So she literally can't keep a straight face because there's always, she can, but when
she loses control, you like the same way that we are thinking several things or feeling
different things about the same problem.
That's when she further, and it's also a way to tell that she's always aware.
She's in a completely different plane, reality for her.
(47:42):
It's not the same as the other gods, but she's not at all related to fate.
So there were a lot of like, quote-able quotes throughout the book and yeah, like single
liners that I like to highlight throughout as I went, at least as long as I was reading
from the Kindle of the audiobook.
But yeah, I was curious, like did you sort of, did they just come as you were writing
(48:03):
or did you sort of plan to insert them?
Because a lot of them I think are tied to the themes that I think you are exploring.
So did you sort of have these interesting things to say that you then inserted some
characters?
I didn't think it just happened as you went.
And similar question about humour because I think I enjoyed the humour in the book quite
a bit.
(48:24):
Once again, like did you plan to insert the jokes or did you sort of come in the writing
process?
The jokes pretty much came as I was writing.
It just, it was like, well, this is great because I do like humour in stories and we've
talked a lot, I think.
Sometimes not everything I say is funny, but sometimes my mind goes places.
(48:47):
They can be funny.
The most quote-able, that is part of the plot.
I always start with dialogue.
If I want to get a point across, I start with an aphorism.
I always build on that.
So my first drafts are pretty much dialogues.
And then once they are polished, sometimes nice quotes come out of them.
(49:09):
I always start with the idea in mind and how it's going to be discussed.
And then I fill in the rest of the dialogues.
This was an amazing, thorough discussion for one of the most unique plot-twisting and well-written
series that I have read in a while.
If you haven't read it, just give it a try.
It is definitely worth it.
(49:30):
Before we do the outros, I want to thank Lili, a subscriber in my newsletter, who sent one
of the questions that I asked today.
What said, Varsha, thank you so much for joining me to interview Susanna.
Thank you so much for letting me get crushed this party.
I really enjoyed the discussion.
Thank you, Susanna, for being patient with all of my questions.
Yeah, and you can find me on my YouTube channel, Reading by the Rainy Mountain.
(49:54):
And the About page has links to some SFF discussion podcasts, if you're interested.
Susanna, thank you so much for coming to my podcast and for writing such a unique series.
I'm really looking forward to a next release.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
I would happily talk about Timelessness all day long.
(50:14):
So thank you so much.
It's been delightful.
You can, for those who are listening, if you are interested in Timelessness, it's available
everywhere.
The first book is called Weird Cods.
And I have a new one called Oblié, which was originally written as a sequel to Timelessness,
but it's now a standalone.
So you don't need to have read Timelessness to read Oblié, but if you do, there's an
(50:38):
epigraph at the beginning of this chapter that would help you understand Timelessness.
So, so now, and it will be out next month, the 21st, and it's right now available for
pre-order on Amazon.
Thank you, everyone.
You will find the links to their channel, Sunspaces, in the episode description, alongside
with all of the Amazon links to that Susanna's book.
(51:00):
So if you like this episode, please subscribe, like the video, and leave a comment.
I always try to answer.
Also, you may be interested in subscribing to my newsletter, where I generally offer
bite-sized bookish discussions and deep dives.
The link will be in the description as well.
That's it.
Thanks for listening and happy reading.
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