Interview: “Pinion” Author, Jay Lake

Jay Lake is the award-winning author of more than a dozen novels and hundreds of works of speculative short fiction.  His newest novel, Pinion, continues the saga begun with Escapement and Mainspring, all set in an alternate world with a distinctly clockwork/steampunk flavor.

Jay lives and works here in Portland, and you can catch him reading from the new book at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing this Thursday night (Apr 1) at 7 pm.  Meanwhile, we caught up with him and asked him a few questions about writing, publishing, and, yes, orbital mechanics.

Q: Hi! Your newest book, Pinion, has a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which calls it a “splendidly baroque whirl of geomancy and Victorian clockwork.” It’s a follow-up to Escapement, and follows a character from that book through an alternate world in which China and Britain are the superpowers. How much world-building did you do for the books in this series? How do you tackle the work of building a new world for yourself and your readers? Are there parts of that work that are particularly tricky, or particularly enjoyable?

A: Any work of fiction set in a recognizable version of the primary world is either secret history or alternate history, by definition. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fiction. The Mainspring series is definitely set in a secondary world, but the world is close enough to the primary world (ie, Victorian England, Imperial China, etc.) that I had to work to reader expectations for the sake of comprehensibility. Which is to say, I got to make a lot of things up, but not everything.

A great deal of worldbuilding went into the original book, Mainspring. I wanted the idea of a clockwork Earth orbiting the sun on a brass track. And I wanted the reality and theology of that to be internally consistent. Of course, everything from plate tectonics to evolution goes out the window in such a scenario, so it required a Young Earth Creation to make any sense at all. (This is me, writing directly contra to my own personal beliefs, not to mention the empirical facts of reality – ah, the joys of fiction.)

So I had a fair amount of nuts-and-bolts world-building to sort out, everything from calculating the height of the Wall to sorting out how the Moon would orbit the Earth under such circumstances. Errors were made. After the first book came out, David Levine pointed out a significant slip in my orbital mechanics, for example, specifically, that 365.25 rotations of the Earth does not in fact make up the diameter of Earth’s orbit. In the second book I had to work in a reference to the spin and torsion of the orbital ring to make up for that.

By the same token, the political and social world-building took a lot of work. I was very deliberately working with steampunk tropes, given the era and the technology, so I wasn’t crafting everything ab initio in the same way I was with the physicality and theology of the world. Still, it all had to make sense and hang together. So yes, a great deal of work, indeed. Tricky? All of it. Enjoyable? Likewise. If I’m not having fun, what’s the point of writing books? If you’re not having fun, what’s the point of reading them?

Q: On your blog, you’ve mentioned that you’re a staunch liberal who decries the USA-PATRIOT Act and other incursions on freedom of speech and thought. Both Pinion and Escapement, as well as some of your short fiction, take up the theme of the talented, inventive citizen persecuted by a repressive government. Do you consciously write with political themes in mind? Or do they emerge as you go? And do you consider politics an idee fixe for your work overall?

A: I despise didacticism in fiction, especially my own. It’s probably fair to say that politics is an idee fixe for me, but more down in the thematic layers than at the plot layer. I tend to think of my work as often emphasizing both the power and the responsibility of the individual. Which is how I look at it in real life.

A simple example that challenges many people: If you own a firearm, you have the power to take a human life. Tens of thousands of lives are taken every year by firearms. If you don’t acknowledge that connection between widely available weapons and widespread weapons deaths, you’re being morally and intellectually disingenuous at best. Likewise for driving an automobile. Do I write about gun control or traffic deaths? No. Then I’d be annoyingly political and turn off most of my audience. What I dowrite about is the role of the individual in the choices of society.

But even that isn’t what’s going on in mind as I write. I’m telling a story. Themes appear. Often the themes are contrary to my own worldviews, but that’s my way of exploring them. Mainspring has been criticized as both Christian apologia and as an anti-Christian screed.  In my mind, it’s neither, but the story always belongs to the reader. That my politics informs my books I hope enriches them. But I’m not out to convert anyone to my viewpoints. I’m out to tell stories, and hopefully stories that make people think about themselves and their world. After all, isn’t that what fiction is for?

Q: You’re an (incredibly!) prolific author, with over two hundred stories and many novels to your name, most published in the last decade. How do you maintain such a high level of output? Looking back ten years, what have you learned along the way–about writing, editing, publishing, and the book business?

A: This question is hilarious. What have I learned? Keep writing. Write more. Don’t stop. Two bouts of cancer haven’t stopped me from writing. Raising a child hasn’t stopped me from writing. A decade of living hasn’t stopped me from writing.

As for my output, it’s pretty simple. I gave up broadcast and cable television in 1994. (Still watch DVDs occasionally.) Gave up computer gaming in 2000. It’s amazing how much time you have to write if you don’t sit down in front of the tube every day for TV and gaming.

When I’m not sick (currently undergoing chemo for metastatic colon cancer) after working my day job, exercising and blogging, I have about seven discretionary hours per day for parenting, housework, writing, whatnot. Easy enough to fit 1-2 hours per day into that schedule. Anyone can write at least a novel a year at that pace, more if you’re a fast drafter, as I am. Lately it’s been much tougher, but I’ve hung on to the hour-per-day writing schedule even in the face of chemo.

As for editing, publishing and the book business, every time I think I understand it, the business changes. These days I’m only surprised about half the time when stuff happens. That’s a huge improvement over my 95% error rate ten years ago. What do I know that doesn’t change? Read your contracts, make your deadlines, don’t pick fights (at least not in public), get to know the people involved.

Q: You also write regularly about your ongoing recovery from metastatic colon cancer. Has dealing with cancer (and with the healthcare industry) fed your writing in any ways? Are there any particular experiences that you wouldn’t give back, or that you want to share with readers who are also struggling with illness?

A: Well, cancer made its way into Pinion, something I didn’t even see in the book until after I was finished writing it. And I have a single-title novella forthcoming from Fairwood Press entitled The Specific Gravity of Grief, which is very much about the internal emotional experience of cancer. Not quite a roman-a-clef, but close.

I think cancer has forced me to introspection I might not otherwise have reached on my own. I’m tempted to say I’d give the whole thing back in a heartbeat, because it’s a brutal, ugly, draining, terrifying experience, but this is my journey. The best thing I can say to anyone who is struggling with such an illness is to keep moving, keep talking, and let the people who love you do what they can for you. That’s a tepid cliche, I know, but so much of this process is utterly internal.

And I do write about it in part to reach people who are having trouble with their own voice of illness. These days I get more fan mail off my cancer writing than off my fiction writing. Some of it is deeply heartbreaking, some of it is joyful. I treasure them all, and I am proud to lend my words to others.

Q: What are you reading right now? What novel can you not wait to start, or finish? Are you reading any poetry these days? If your next book had to be a re-read, what would it be?

A: Nothing, sadly. One of the side effects of my chemo combo (probably due to the steroidal anti-nausea agents) is a real loss right brain function. I’ve discovered that I can either read or write, but not both. Elizabeth Bear’s Bone and Jewel Creatures is next up on my to-read pile.

If I were going to do a re-read right now, if that were possible, likely it would be Terry Pratchett’s The Wee, Free Men, because that is one of the deepest, funniest books I know of, and I sure could use a thinking laugh right now.