Fiction Fans

Author Interview: The Judas Blossom by Stephen Aryan

• Episode 187

Share episode

Your hosts are joined by Stephen Aryan to discuss The Judas Blossom, the first book in his soon to be completed trilogy. They talk about the balance of historical accuracy in a historical-fantasy novel, his inspiration from 13th century Persia, and improbable tomatoes.


Find more from Stephen:

https://stephen-aryan.com/

https://bsky.app/profile/stephenaryan.bsky.social

https://www.instagram.com/stephenaryan_writer/



Find us on Discord / Support us on Patreon


Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License


Lilly:

And welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.

Sara:

And I'm Sarah, and I'm so pleased that today we're joined by Stephen Aryan to talk about the Judas Blossom, which is book one in his trilogy the Nightingale and the Falcon.

Stephen:

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Sara:

Yeah. Thank you for coming on.

Stephen:

My pleasure.

Lilly:

we jump into our conversation, we have a couple of questions. First, for our quick five minute intro, a five-ish minute intro,

Stephen:

Okay.

Lilly:

what's something great that happened recently?

Stephen:

Well this week I got to watch the last episode of Current Season of Del without anybody spoiling anything. On it for me, either online or one of my friends. Did you see the moment? No. No, I didn't da. So normally it's a kind of a race through the house or through social media or through my friend circle to watch something without it being spoiled. And I managed to watch the whole thing. The phone didn't go, there wasn't a knock at the door. And I got to the last episode in peace and quiet, no spoilers, and it was great. And I'm like, ah, okay. That was good. I enjoyed that very much. And then next week we roll into season two of and or so. It's, it's a good month. I'm I'm enjoying Disney Plus this month. Not, not sponsored by Disney plus of course

Lilly:

That is a mighty fe. I feel like if you're not watching something, the second it drops, like something is gonna go horribly wrong and someone will accidentally let something slip or on purpose if they're a jerk.

Sara:

I'm still mad about the time that I was watching Dr. Who it was a couple of seasons ago, and the official BBC Twitter account spoiled something major before the episode had aired in the US and I was so mad.

Stephen:

Yeah, yeah. It's getting worse and worse. Something like that. They say, oh, what do you think? Tonight's dramatic thing when so and so happened, like, I didn't watch it the minute it came out, so now you spoiled it for me.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Stephen:

for that twist. Mm-hmm.

Lilly:

Sarah, do you have something great that happened recently?

Sara:

Yes, so my good thing is that I put up cages around my apple trees in my front yard. So hopefully Bambi does not get to eat them.

Lilly:

Mm. Technology. Very good.

Stephen:

You have deer in your front yard?

Sara:

yes. So I do live in a very urban neighborhood, but for some reason we have deer who come around and eat all of my, you know, young trees and my roses and just make a pest of themselves.

Lilly:

Well, good luck.

Stephen:

But, but destructive.

Sara:

Yes, so I'm, I'm hoping that, that these these tree cages, which is basically just, you know, some boards of netting around them, I hope that they protect them.

Lilly:

fingers crossed.

Stephen:

Yeah.

Lilly:

I had a good thing prepared, but then this morning. When my cat puked, she leaned over the side of the bed and only got it on the wood floor. Did not hit the blankets at all. I was so proud of her. It was very

Stephen:

thing.

Lilly:

Well, it made my life much easier when cleaning it up. Yeah. So I was like, you know, we'll do something timely.

Stephen:

Okay. That's, that's,

Lilly:

what is everyone drinking this afternoon?

Sara:

I have tea, which is more topical to the book than it sometimes is. So that's a delight.

Lilly:

I also chose tea. It's the box calls it market spice and often our characters are drinking spiced tea. Although I could not find a single word on the box to tell me what spices are in it. So it's a mystery. Yeah.

Stephen:

Hmm. Well, I, I'm only drinking water now, but I was drinking beer earlier. So from a local brewery, went to a food fair that I'll go to occasionally that comes around in the summer and there's a a brewery from, this is a great name, Bishop's itching to, which sounds like a disease of the clergy, but is in fact a little town, not far away, about an hour's drive. And the brewery was from there. And I tried one of their beers and that was very nice. So that was quite refreshing on a summer day. So, but I'm, I'm now, now sober for the podcast on water, so

Lilly:

Not, not expected or necessary, but

Sara:

Yeah.

Stephen:

not required, but I'm, I'm trying to make a certain level of professionalism and so yeah, beer. Sorry, water Now.

Lilly:

Yes. And has anyone read anything good lately? The only book I have read recently is the Judas Blossom, which we're about to discuss at length, so.

Stephen:

so I've, I recently finished the Wastelands, which, which is my first reading of the Dark Tower of Stephen King. I started reading it 20 years ago and then fell off and read a bunch of other things and never quite got back to it. So now I'm going through again from the beginning. So I've read that and I just read an advanced reading copy of The Devils by Joe Abercrombie, which is also in May. So I've read that too. Yeah. Both good books.

Lilly:

Awesome. We've read The Gun Slinger, which I believe is the first book in the Dark Tower series. It didn't. I have problems with Stephen King, but of all of his books, that's the one that I'd be most interested in continuing.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Lilly:

Well, we're here to talk about book one in your series, and first we're not gonna spoil anything. Can you start off by giving us just a, a quick elevator pitch for the series as a whole?

Stephen:

Yes. So I always want to challenge myself when I'm doing a new series. I never wanna do the same thing twice, and I'm usually planning a series. Years ahead of the next one. There's always like background research and stuff and I'd been watching a bunch of things and reading a bunch of things to do with history and I started building up like a world bible of of stuff in the background. And then I realized that nobody had done an adult fancy novel set. In Persia in this era, perhaps ever. Maybe, no, not not just this era. And so it, it ties into my Persian heritage and so that kind of fed me to do some more research and I thought it would be a really interesting challenge to mix history. With fiction together. So the story takes place in the 13th century, 1260, and this is the era of the grandsons of Genghis Khan. So Genghis Khan has already conquered a huge portion of the world, and his dream was to unite the world under one flag, one empire, the Mongol Empire. And this continued down through the generations to the 1260s when. A huge portion of the world is now covered by the Mongol Empire, much bigger than Genghis Khan ever achieved. And because it's so big, it's kind of fractured into four parts, and each one of them is ruled by either a grandson of his or a a, a relative of some kind. And a lot of people in this, there have been other stories told in this period, a lot of them will focus on Kla Khan and Marco Polo, because that's over in kind of in modern day China and Tibet and you know that the Far East and that kind of thing. But in the same period, the same era, I. There was all of this story that set around the Incarnate, which is today's Middle East, north Africa, creeping into Europe, parts of Asia, and no one has done any kind of stories about this. So this allowed me to blend, fact and fiction together, bring characters that I've made up from whole cloth, but also blend them with some that we don't know much about from history. Make it a story about conquest and, the politics and communication and rebellion. And it was only after I'd written the book and I started talking about it, that I realized I'd, I'd done something. I thought a huge empire. And there's a plucky group of rebels fighting back from within. Sounds awfully familiar from something that came out in 1977. I, I can't place it, but yeah, I'll see if anyone else can fill in the gaps, but it, it never occurred to me for a minute. That's what I'd done.

Lilly:

Well that's a, a hugely influential story and, and one that resonates for a reason, right? Yeah,

Stephen:

not the first rebellion. Technically, this was a lot earlier in the 1260s, but there were certain echoes that I suddenly thought, yeah, I can see why I've done this and why I've done that. Even though a lot of the machine parts is different, it's not a galactic empire. It's the Mongol Empire. So it's fine. It's fine. Yeah.

Sara:

So it

Stephen:

Calls from George Lucas. It's okay.

Sara:

it sounds like your research process was pretty thorough then and comprehensive. Can you talk a a little bit more about that?

Stephen:

Yeah, so a lot of the time when I'm researching things, I'll fall down rabbit holes. I'll sort of. Dig into something and then five hours later I look up and realize I've just been watching YouTube videos about stuff to find like a tiny detail that ends up in the book being like one sentence. I'm like, why did I do this? But I do it in the background whilst I'm writing something else. So the, the background research took two to three years, but it wasn't me just sitting down and constantly doing stuff. It would be, I've got half an hour, an hour, let's go and look into this, or let's go and read a book about that. I have a stack of books that in the garage now that I kind of, I read up on a lot of stuff. But then I purposely forgot a bunch of things because I didn't want to write a book that was 800 pages and 500 pages of that is research that because I've done it, you are now gonna have to read about it and learn about it. And my fear was of creating a book that wasn't exciting, wasn't energetic, that didn't give the characters agency if I lent too far into the historical side. So. All of the main events in the Judas Blossom happened who was there, and the timing has been manipulated a little bit because otherwise there'd be a start of a battle and two years later it finishes. And the rest of the characters who aren't involved in the battle, we're in the parts of the book. We just kind of have to stand around and like do nothing for two years. So I've kind of fiddled with the timeline a little bit. As the trilogy goes on, it's like one of those oil tankers when you're out at sea. They move really slowly, can't really see it. So in the second book, I'm a bit further off course from history in the third book, and historians will have a hissy fit, but it does say historical fantasy. So they need to read the back of the book again and take a chill pill, really. So.

Lilly:

Okay, so you're telling me that the magic that we see in this book was not part of the historical fact?

Stephen:

Well did certain clues you would think, and yet I still get complaints about some of the most mundane things. Someone came up to me at Worldcon in Glasgow during my signing, not to get a book signed, but to mention that one of the small details in the book was not historically accurate.

Sara:

But, but you say at the beginning that you play fast and loose with, with.

Stephen:

History. Sometimes readers aren't very good at reading. I found they, they just miss some of the most obvious details like clues and, and facts and texts and authors notes and things like that. But

Lilly:

Do you recall what they were complaining about?

Stephen:

yes I do. It stuck in my brain. He said the tomato wouldn't have been in Persia in that era.

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

I said, okay. And I walked off, I just, I didn't want to have an argument. I didn't wanna point out about the magic. I didn't wanna point out the fact that it's fantasy and it's fiction. But sure, the tomato is what broke the book for him.

Sara:

I feel like I've heard a lot of people complain about tomatoes in fantasy books that shouldn't have tomatoes, and I'm like, yeah, what's, why? Why do you care about, why do you care about whether or not a tomato was here?

Stephen:

I mean, there's a, I think he's Irish author called Con Golden who's done fiction books. The as close as you can get to retelling parts of Mongol Empire's story. But this is very clearly not that. It's, it's a story about other things and the fact that it's told from the perspective of the conquered people, which has not been done before as far as I'm aware, and definitely not in a historical fantasy setting. So. It, it's historically accurate, up to a point. As you, as I said, in the, in the kind of forward, I'm saying I'm, I'm moving things around after necessity, but also sometimes because it's just more interesting that way.

Sara:

Yeah, sometimes it just makes for a better story.

Stephen:

Basically, yeah. I find that and there's lots of gaps in history too. We, we think we know, but then we weren't actually there, so we're not completely sure. And the sources are quite thin on some things, so I've just gone, there's a big question mark there, right? I can now tell a story and, and I won't get complaints about from the Tomato Man about things like this because he doesn't know and nobody else does, because we don't know. We just don't know. One of the main characters is real. Her story is really thin about what happened to her. So I made up a lot of stuff about Princess Coco Chin because I could,

Lilly:

Yeah, you did extensive research for this series. Can I assume that that also means there's quite a bit of planning happening for these books?

Stephen:

yeah, so I plan all my books. This one was really difficult because. I was kind of like a downhill slalom skier. I had to hit the flags at a certain point, but how I got between them, I was constantly zigging and sagging. So when my editor said, oh, can we change this bit and can we change that bit? I was kind of wincing going, yes, but you realize the knock on effect. Normally you can just move things around and it doesn't have too much of an impact. But with this, because the first book is quite tightly. Tied to his story. In certain events it was more difficult. So yeah, a lot of planning for this one. A lot of thinking about stuff and manipulating stuff. And then it's like the domino things. You constantly have to change things. If I move one small thing, some of it I could do and I can just take out, but other things if like, oh, can we change this? Like, yes, but it'll take me longer than normal to, to fix it or change it. So.

Sara:

So, one of the characters in the book Hula Gu is essentially what modern audiences would understand as, as a polygamous relationship. How did you approach writing this 13th century version of polygamy for modern readers?

Stephen:

Yeah. There's a lot of things in the book that modern readers. Especially women would find difficult, I think. But if I'm trying to be faithful to the era, then it was a case of he had many, many wives, many, many concubines, and they didn't have much power in the empire, except that isn't actually true from a modern standpoint. You look at, they don't have equal voting rights. They're no of equal power. They're not viewed the same way as women are today. But in doing the research, I found out some other things that were factually true about women during that era. The truth was armies that they would put together, the Mongols were so big and they had so many moving parts, and so many horses and so many men, and so many things. It's, you know, it's like a city on the move, and in order for that to function, it has to have. All of the food and all of the equipment and everything else has to do that, which requires a huge amount of money. In order for that to work, the empire has to be running in their absence. So in all the men and all the warriors and everybody and all the engineers go off to war, the empire has to keep running. And it was the women that did it. It was the wives and the concubines and others took control and kept. The empire running so that money would still pre-produced so that men could still make war. So I kind of delved into some of that too, and played around with it and developed other things. So there's, it's not a spoiler. There's a, a scene in one of the books where I. This woman goes to speak to some businessmen, and they understand that her husband runs the business and she just come to check on things, but in truth, they know she's actually the boss and he's just the public face of the company essentially. He sits around drinking and doing drugs all day, and he's a huge fat waste drill, but she's the one that's actually got the business acumen. So behind closed doors, they're like, yes, mom. Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. Because they understand that if she's not happy. Then things will change. So there's, there's a bit of kind of cloak and dagger with, with the way that women were, were seen in the empire and especially compared to modern day. So there, there's some uncomfortable moments for sure, I would think with women reading this when they have a lack of power compared to what it was back then. But it's not black and white. It's really complicated. And the more I delved into it, the more I realized that history's just a huge mess and, it's really hard to know what was going on.

Lilly:

and my understanding too is that a lot of these aspects of women having more power than perhaps modern audiences realized was because history was rewritten several times over the course of the centuries. And at one point historians were like, that can't be true. And just like took it out.

Stephen:

Yeah, it's the Tiffany Effect, which I only learned the name of recently. I, I knew what it was, but I didn't understand that was the name that Tiffany people assume is a very modern name for, for women. But if you go back in history, it's been around for hundreds of years apparently. So I was just like, oh, is that what it's called? The kind of weird juxtaposition of things. And you go, oh, right, that, that, that's a thing. And then you look back and go, no, it was around a hundred years ago. so another thing I found out is the speed of communication. Like right now I'm talking to you from the other side of the world instantaneously, but back then in the Mongol Empire, communication was actually really fast compared to the rest of the world, which I didn't realize. It wasn't like instantaneously, but it was really, really fast. And it was to do with messengers would carry this. Solid Golds tablet that was covered in text. It was basically a get out jail free card that said if you touch this and the person carry this and the text that's in it, you're effectively offending the can and that's the end of you. So nobody would touch them. And so they would ride a horse for 20 miles or something down the road and they'd go to anniversary caravan anniversaries, which is where the kind of people would stop over for the night and they'd just. Take a horse, they could say, I don't look messenger. I need the horse. And they take someone's horse and they'd ride another 20, 30 miles into the horse is dead or, or, you know, tied. And they just keep doing that. So news could fat travel really, really fast. And the Kane sent letters to the Pope in Rome and I'm thinking, that can't be real. And they looked into it and five hours later, no, it was real. He sent a letter to the Pope saying, we're coming your way. You need to surrender or else you've seen what's happened to other countries. Come, come here and get on your knees to the Pope. It's like, oh my God, that was shocking. History's so weird. So weird.

Lilly:

so when I started reading this, I was under the impression that some of the place names had been modernized. Although we did a little bit of research before this, and I, maybe I was wrong. I guess it was actually referred to as Georgia. That does not sound like an ancient name, but that's my bias. I was surprised how many of the place names I recognized. Do I just play enough Sid Meyers Civilization that I do know all of these places?

Stephen:

Yeah, I think so. If you go back far and if you start looking into it, you're like, I do recognize the name. Where's that city name come from? Yeah. But it, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that has changed, but some of the names have been around for, you know, centuries at this point.

Lilly:

I was shocked. I would've thought that. The places that I, the names that I'm familiar with, I assumed would've been through changes years, over years. But

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Lilly:

it's cool. History's neat.

Stephen:

It's fascinating.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Sara:

So one thing that I appreciated in the book were the scenes with the Secret Society of like the 12, which is the kind of inner circle of the House of Grace. And we're going off of history. Now, this is this, I'm assuming this is not historically accurate necessarily

Stephen:

The house of strength is real.

Sara:

Yes.

Stephen:

so this was something that I just kinda logically thought about and thought this, the, the will given, the, the way that women were treated in this society and they were doing things behind closed doors. Surely there's an opposite, surely. And it just grew from that. What if, and it's the same with the magic system as well, actually. But,

Sara:

I mean, we don't know that they were not real, so. For all we know.

Stephen:

maybe, maybe.

Sara:

But I really appreciated the, the scenes where they were kind of like discussing events in the book because they helped me as a reader to like orient myself and, and keep track of all of the different plot lines. Can you talk a little bit about how you chose where to put those in?

Stephen:

Yeah. That sometimes it was talking to my editor. Sometimes it was useful to bring. The different threads together just so that not just the reader, but also me in my head and thinking about it. Like when I'm planning the story, you know, what's next? How does it work, how does it fit? And it allowed me to sometimes shortcut certain information. I don't need to kind of go through everything again. I can weave some of the storylines together because I know readers. Often want things to intersect all the time. And sometimes if characters at two opposite sides of the world, they won't. And I, you know, geographically it makes sense, but from a story point of view, sometimes it's not as satisfying. They kind of want to have that kind of meet cute moment or, or whatever it might be. And this allowed me to bring. Stories together, but also talk about the speed of, of information again, of how fast we can get messages across the world. So it was pulling on things that were real and trying to combine'em into something else. And outta this grew the House of Grace and and the 12 who were all quite distinct and different women.

Sara:

And I look forward to learning more about them in, following books. We get little hints of them in this one, but.

Stephen:

Oh, there's more, there's more in the next two books. Yeah.

Lilly:

So, as we mentioned, there's quite a bit of tea in this book, going to tea houses and having conversations and meetings. If you could have tea with one of the characters in this book, who would it be?

Stephen:

Oh, oh, that's a good question. it, it probably would be hilar gu algos. Wife Docus, the war wife because that's that's true. That's a true thing. She actually went with him to all of those. So she would've seen all of these battles and seen so many things. And she'd have some great stories to tell, I think about some of the stuff she'd seen behind the scenes. She, or one of the 12, probably probably one of the lady who's number one, she's kind of in charge, not really, but kind of. And she's been around a while, so her, yeah. Or, or Docus.

Lilly:

I am really excited. We don't see them interact much on the page, but I feel like there would be a very interesting relationship between DACA's and Guo, the, the first Empress and the war wife. I don't know what their relationship is, but. I feel like, yeah, I

Stephen:

I'd say uncomfortable because they're both very, very powerful women in their own right, in very different ways. So yeah, I think it's like two porcupines getting in the same room. It's just kind of like, don't get too close, a bit awkward. Well, it's not gonna end well. So yeah.

Lilly:

Well, I think we're about ready to move on to our spoiler conversation, but before we do, I actually have a question for Sarah.

Stephen:

Oh,

Lilly:

Sarah, who should read this book?

Sara:

You should read this book if you don't care about tomatoes in the wrong places. No, but, but, but also if you like historical fiction with a dash of fantasy. And if you want something that's not just the, you know, tired, old medieval Europe setting, you should absolutely read this book. This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by Fiction Fans.

Lilly:

That's us! We really appreciate our patrons, because otherwise we fund this podcast entirely ourselves.

Sara:

Patrons can find weekly bonus content, monthly exclusive episodes, and they have free access to our biannual zine, Solstitia.

Lilly:

You can find all of that and more at patreon. com slash fictionfanspod. Thank you for all of your support.

Sara:

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers.

Lilly:

So we, we've danced around the fantasy aspects of this book a little bit, and although they are hinted at pretty early on, we don't really see that fantasy aspect until pretty late in this book.

Stephen:

Yes,

Lilly:

How is that handled in the rest of the series?

Stephen:

so there's a lot more in two and three. I I wanted to make clear to people that this was predominantly historical fantasy. But not in the way that they would think with dragons and trolls and things mixed in with, you know, the 13th century. I wanted it to feel very much of the time and the era, so I kept as much as I could. I. Loyal to that period, and I, I've, I've done a dash of magic. It's part of a story. It's not the whole story. And I've done six books with the word major in the title. So, you know, I've done the heavy magic books. I'm not, I'm no, not kidding, Lexi, I've done, you know, I've done a lot of magic books, so I didn't wanna repeat myself again. So it was more a case of magic is in the shadows within this world, but there is more of it in the story as temo. Understands more of what he's become and what he's growing into and the world that he finds himself in. Because at the end of the book,'cause we're, we're in the spoiler

Sara:

We are in the spoiler section.

Stephen:

okay. So he meets some other people who are like him, but have been doing it for a lot longer and can teach him and show him the ropes of what it actually means to be one of the coza and what. What that entails as well.'cause it's not just you've got powers off, you go, go and have some fun. It comes with responsibilities and it comes with a certain weight because they're very limited in number. So there's, there are larger forces at play and there's balance in this world too. So for everything there's an equal and opposite. That's all I'll say.'cause I wanna spoil books two and three, but there's more stuff. So this, this first book is very close to history. Up to a 0.2 and three via more away. And there's more magic in, so it becomes an aspect of the story, but the still, the kind of the rebellion is the main story.

Sara:

one of the things that I found really fascinating about the magic aspect was like, you say that there's this balance and, and equal and opposite reaction, but temo. I believe he's the seventh koan right now in this world, so he's kind of upsetting the balance unless there's an eighth one who shows up in books, two or three.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm. Who can say, yeah, he's upsetting the balance. So then that's a case of he has to choose a side, and in doing so, there's a lot of ramifications and, and repercussions for that. And it puts a target on his back, depending on who he sides with. But also he's basically a bumbling amateur. They've been doing it in some cases for centuries. he's just learned what it is. He doesn't, he is, he knows what the power is, but he doesn't know how to use it. And it's just, it's like someone trying to compete in swimming against Olympic swimmer who's been doing in training for 20 years. You can have a go at swimming, but you're not gonna touch any of their times, you know? It's just gonna be embarrassing. So he doesn't pose a threat, but he could, and that's the problem. So it's a case of what do they do with him? Do they try and recruit him or do they just wipe him off the board and make things easier?

Lilly:

Now. I could be misremembering, but I think earlier you mentioned something about the magic system and your research that you did. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Stephen:

Yes. So just as the House of Grace is a reflection of the house of strength of something that exists in part of my research into ancient religions, there's a defunct splinter sect of tism, an old, religion that's been around for, for centuries doesn't exist anymore. It, came for a bit and then it kind of disappeared and no one really knows what happened to it or what, what they were practitioners of or white was different. And I thought, Hmm, mysterious, eternal flame. Hmm. So, but nobody knows about them and there's nothing written down. And yet they've been creeping around the edges potentially for a long time. Hmm. What if what? So I play the what if game a lot. And based upon that, I then started playing around with the idea of what would the magic system be and how would it work? And how could they remain in the shadows for this long? How could they be around for this long? And then that fed into creating something that was different in terms of structure for the magic that I've done before. Yeah, the research, just every time I do something, it kind of trickles into it. I wasn't just plucking something out of thin air for each of these things. It was always a foundation in some research.

Lilly:

You mentioned our four main characters earlier. And Achin is a real person, although maybe quite expanded on in this series,

Stephen:

Yes.

Lilly:

how many of our other characters are technically historical figures?

Stephen:

Okay.

Lilly:

Obviously, I assume,

Stephen:

Yes, he's real. DOAs. Katoon is real. The Empress Guo, she's real. Kayvon is fictional. He's completely fictional. Temo is fictional. However, Genghis Kahan is what we call him in the West. That wasn't his real name. The actual closest English translation is probably Chin. His actual name was Temo. So Genis or GI, or Gingis wasn't his real name. It was Tein. So I thought the idea of having a son of Largo who is named after the great grandfather, who was this great figure and he expects him to be a great warrior just like granddad, and he's the complete opposite of that. That was quite an interesting twist. And then that fed into feeding his path in the story and what he could end up being. Who else is obviously the, 12 are fictional Esme, fictional who else am I forgetting? I think that's everybody are the main

Sara:

There, there are a couple of more sons the advisor.

Stephen:

They're all

Sara:

advisor. Yeah.

Stephen:

They're all real. This is the, this is the worrying thing. Obviously coup K lies in the story briefly, and he's real. But the, the sons were awful. Absolutely awful people. Well, most of them were, and they did terrible, terrible things. But are there whatever I found I could expand on or, or fiddle around with and, and just create real people? And they'd be like, that wouldn't, that's, you've made this up. And it's like, no, no. I just took what was there and ran with it really.

Sara:

I mean, speaking of awful people like Hhu is, hhu is pretty awful. He is, does some terrible things. He's not really a nice guy. He's got anger issues. But. You do make him more

Lilly:

Palatable.

Sara:

more dimensional than just that, right? Like he's seeing, seeing how much he cares about peace between his brothers and, and things like that makes him much more sympathetic than just like a, a one dimensional warmonger.

Stephen:

Yeah, I, I didn't want to make him just the mustache, twirling villain. And some people have said, you know, why is he a point of view in the character in the book? Why is it not just the rebels? And then it's a case of, because then you only get one side to the story again. And if I'd just done it from the Rebels, I'd be no different in some ways if I just done it from the conquerors. So everything he does has his own justification. The quarrels between his brothers. That's all. That's all true. That's all happened, and the betrayals is all true and the kind of civil wars that erupted, that's all true. But I wanted to make him feel human because at the end of the day, he was a human being who had terrible, terrible drives and did horrendous things, and did turn the rivers red with blood and all these kind of things, and choke the bodies and just awful stuff. But at the same time, he. Loved his wife and protected her and tried to build something for the future. And he had ambitions and aspirations and dreams and all these kind of things. So it was trying to find a balance and let the reader decide if they absolutely hate him, which some of them do, and some of them go, oh, he's awful. But yeah, I kind of get what he's, yeah, I can get it. I don't wanna do it. I don't, I'm not saying he's a great guy. I'm not saying I would do it, but I, I can kind of see why he's trying to do it and. There's a weird juxtaposition as well. So they, they did conquer all of these countries and it was horrible and they slaughtered thousands and, you know, millions. However, in some of the countries afterwards, there was a renaissance happened in terms of religion, flourishing art, culture, literature would flourish after the fact. And you're thinking, well, yeah, that's great, but at, what cost? So there's that thing of. Was it worth it? Well, not really.'cause they slaughtered millions of people and yet if they hadn't have done that, would there have been this cultural awakening? And in one part of the empire, they made it compulsory to be a Muslim, therefore there's no religious freedom. Therefore it restricts communication and it restricts how the world is viewed by people who live there and art. And so it's. It's a really complicated gray subject, and the more I delved into it, the more I realized I, I'm, I'm not gonna present any easy answers in this book because one, it's based on history and two that's not my job. In this case. It's for people to read it and to decide for themselves. But yeah, had a lot of, lot of late nights kind of lying in bed thinking, you know, should I do that? Have I, have I gone too far? Or I'd get comments from my editor going, I can't believe you've done that. And I say. You know, I've toned it down and she was horrified that I've toned down some parts of the book. So from, from history.

Sara:

Yeah, I mean, some of the things that happened in the book are quite grizzly and gruesome. There's a lot of nasty shit that goes down.

Stephen:

And I've toned it down. I've toned it down. That's what, people are like. Sounds like a horror book. And I'm like, well, kind of. Yeah.

Lilly:

Welcome to history, but I'm,

Stephen:

Yeah. Basically. Yeah.

Lilly:

I think what really struck me was his, like absolute temper tantrum that he throws after was it Damascus?

Stephen:

Mm,

Lilly:

Just accepts his not peace offering, but they just say, okay, we're not gonna fight back. Yeah. They surrender. That's the word. And to me it's just like, so it's not so much about the conquering, it's, he really does just love the act of war.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Lilly:

That was, I thought, a fascinating insight into his psyche.

Stephen:

Yeah, yeah. There's, there's that thing of he's accepting of everybody to have their own religion, and yet when the offer was we'll surrender, but only to Christians, and we'll just surrender that really upset him. He just couldn't cope with it. He just couldn't. He really wanted to just get in there and chop up people.'cause that's what he loves to do. But war had changed and he was, he had to change too, because everyone talks about the Mongols and how they were so powerful and so quick to move because of their horses and that's why they were able to, to conquer so much territory, but as they moved into other countries war, the war would change and the way they conducted war. And he had to learn that too. They did take on a lot of Chinese and Persian engineers to help them and see, you know, you can't ride your horses into a city when there's huge, giant walls. So war had to change. And of course, he's not very good with change, and he struggles at times and it comes out in his explosive temper. So yeah, it's just adding more wrinkles to him to make him feel more three dimensional.

Sara:

So switching gears from hula just a little bit, and moving on to Cavan. He has such an interesting internal conflict because he has to do a good job working for Hula GU in order to gain hula who's trust, but at the same time.

Stephen:

the same time,

Sara:

He hates it and wants to sabotage everything that he's doing because he's trying to undermine the, the Mongol Empire and, and bring about its demise basically, so that he can, he can help free his country. And just seeing that conflict play out within him and, and in his point of view chapters was just fascinating.

Stephen:

Thank you. Thank you. It, it was a challenge because I thought about if you can't fight back against them because they're so big and you don't have an army, how do you do it? And, and Largo literally says to him, one, one kind of scene. Well, you know, you could. You can go away and just go and do your own thing.'cause saving my life. Or you can come and learn and, and try and make things better. And if there's another way that we can conquer people without killing them every single time, and we get'em to surrender, isn't that much better? Isn't your country thriving? He ask these questions of him, and of course he's right and he's wrong, but he also thinks, well, if I get close to you and I understand you and how you work and how you operate and how you think. Then that gives me better chance to take the empire apart from within whilst building something in the background, potentially a new kind of rebellion. So it wasn't an easy place. He's kind of walking a tightrope the whole time between trying to appear loyal enough that he doesn't get killed. And yet her Lago will also put him in incredibly dangerous situations. To test his loyalty and because that's the job, you're a general go and do a bunch of stuff and kill a bunch of people and that you're not gonna stand around all day. So, it's a very difficult place that he finds himself in by himself as well, because he has no allies that he can actually trust until he meets esmi, who's another prisoner, essentially. Neither of them wear chains. Neither of them is locked in a cell, but they're prisoners of Hilar Khan. Absolutely.

Lilly:

There is a lot of testing of loyalty in this book. The other character that immediately comes to mind is of course, Coco Chin, who eventually sort of joins the House of Grace, although they give her some roadblocks on the way there.

Stephen:

Yes. I don't wanna make it too easy for her either because she is an outsider and they wouldn't, there again, they'd be really reluctant to take someone in who wasn't a member of. The kind of people that they normally deal with, the fact that she's the enemy essentially. And some of the 12 are just like, well kill her. We we're trying to get rid of the Mongols. Why are you trying to recruit one? But because she's in such a unique position, because she knows so much and because she's so useful, she can get to places that they normally couldn't or it would take a lot longer to put someone in place and then find a way to either manipulate them or replace'em with one of their own people. So it's a kind of a, a shortcut and a means to an end. There again, they're testing her because she does step out of line. Someone just get rid of her and it is no loss to them. So she's useful to them as long as she does her job well. And that's the same with Kayvon, really?

Lilly:

Well, and, and she is an example too of while she is, Mongolian coupla had destroyed the entire faction of her people. So that sort of exposes the, the friction between the Mongolians that we, we sort of get hints and pieces of,

Stephen:

yeah. And the the brothers, the four brothers, that's true. That's become part of history. And that kind of erupts as well with one of them saying, you know, you made yourself the great car. You didn't tell me if I'd been there, everyone would've voted for me. It wouldn't have been you. And all that kind of causes more problems. And eventually there's, you know, there's like a civil war starting to happen. But the other problem was because the empire was so big, it already was fracturing to these four groups, which is why you had a person controlling each area because they couldn't do it because it was such a huge portion of the world. Would, even with the speed of information that they have, if something drastic happens, you send a message, it's still gonna take days instead of weeks to get it across. So you couldn't have someone all the way over in Mongolia just controlling everything. It just, it's not feasible, which is why they keep trying to deposit their own people in each place that they go to, to take over and run things in their stead. Yeah.

Sara:

So, although we have been talking about the first book in this trilogy like you mentioned, the third and final book is coming out in May, which actually I think is going to be about two weeks after this episode comes out. So very timely. When you started the series, did you have a really clear idea for how you wanted to continue it in subsequent books or, how, how, if at all, has that changed while writing the series?

Stephen:

I knew that there were certain points in the life of the Mongol Empire and in this era, which is why I decided to do it in this bit, things were happening and I knew that obviously history never ends. It just rolls on and another empire will rise and then fall apart and so on. But I knew I had to kind of talk about this story of rebellion and tie it into historical kind of. Checkpoints within the life of the Mongol Empire. And so by setting, I'm trying not, I'm trying not to spoil things, but as the empire grew, it starts to fracture. And so this rebellion is trying to widen those fractures and cause more problems, and it reaches a certain point that also ties in with stuff to do with history. So I kind of had that in mind that I was always working towards that point, but at the same time, I'm trying to tell my own story with. These characters and to bring in this magical aspect. So it was the biggest pain in the ass, right? In this series that I've ever had. It's the most challenging one that I've ever done. And some people are like, oh, you're gonna do a series after this again? And saying, well, I'm like, I, I really don't know. I really don't know if I wanna do that to myself. And if I do, I need a break because I need to be like. What's the name of that hill? I'll just make it up. I don't care how many miles is a so-and-so a town. I don't know. I'll make it up'cause it's my own fantasy world. Whereas for one of the books, I had to do a couple of hours research to find out if I could get a boat from point A to point B. And after a couple hours research, I found that, yeah, it was possible in the era. And it's like a line, a line in the book, one line in the book two hours to work it out. I'm like, oh God, no one's gonna care. No one's gonna know. I've done that. And it took two hours just to work out if you could do that, you know? But if someone says, this is like the best selling New York Times bestselling thing, you can do another one. My answer will still be, I don't know, maybe one day when I've got some distance from it, perhaps.

Lilly:

Well, thank you very much for joining us for this conversation. Can you leave our listeners with a little bit of a teaser for the rest of the series? What can they get excited for in books two and three?

Stephen:

Okay. So we've learned a little bit about Temo and his powers and what it means to be one of the Coan. There are other characters in that space to meet. Some of them have very long memories and are tied back to actual characters in history, and the rebellion is growing and has new shoots and new arms coming from all sorts of places. So there's more of Lagu trying to still conquer the world. There's more interference from other parts of the world in terms of Egypt and Europe, and there's a lot more. Politicking. There's a lot more of the influence of the 12, and there's a few more chapters from specific characters from the 12. So we learn about more about specific individuals, and they have an important role to play in the story. These women behind the scenes who are patriots, who just want to free their nation from any kind of invader and just be. Living in a free society that they used to have. So there's, there's lots of threads and I hopefully tie them all together fairly well at the end. I have no complaints so far, so I'm taking that as a good sign from from net galley readers. So it was encouraging.

Sara:

Well, I, for one, cannot wait to continue on with the series. Can you tell our listeners where you can be found on the internet?

Stephen:

Yes. Best place to find me is on my website. I'm also on Blue Sky and I'm on Instagram. I'm not in any other social media so I'm usually lurking around there. You'd be able to find out what's going on. My newsletter every month has information on events and then kind of, interviews or stuff I've got coming up too. So that's another good place.

Sara:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. It's, been an absolute delight chatting with you.

Stephen:

My pleasure. Thank you.

Sara:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Lilly:

Come disagree with us! We're on BlueSky and Instagram at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com or leave a comment on YouTube.

Sara:

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly:

We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Sara:

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!