An Interview with Nicholas Kotar
An Interview with Nicholas Kotar
Tell us about yourself!
Can I tell you about my family instead? What would I be without them? I come from a family of Russian low-ranking nobility that had to escape their lands and their country after the revolution of 1917. They took a wealth of history and stories with them, both of which have been intensely influential on me as a person and a storyteller. Quick fun fact: I’m directly descended both from a Russian Tsar (Ivan III) and Genghis Khan.
What does NobleBright fantasy mean to you? Why is it important?
I’m a firm believer that fantasy is the best genre with which to tell difficult and important truths to the world. I think storytellers, in an age where no one wants to believe in objective truth anymore, where everyone prefers his own comfortable ignorance to difficult realities, are more indispensable than ever before. And there are certain kinds of stories that we must try to tell especially well. Stories of heroism amid great labors and trials. Stories that don’t give the high ground to moral relativism and nihilism. Stories that don’t white-wash the hardships of real life, but allow for the possibility of redemption, of eucatastrophe (as Tolkien would have put it), at the end of the long night.
How did you start writing?
I’ve been writing stories since I could write. Literally. My mother recently found an old Russian fairy tale book that I loved as a child. Even at age five, I couldn’t help adding my own ending to it. In a blue crayon, the last page has the sentence “and he got a blessing from the priest and went to pray” (what can I say? I’m a priest kid). Then came the obligatory Star Wars rip-off (I was around ten), complete with ninja warriors riding bears. I seriously started writing after a long trip over a summer when I travelled to Egypt, Israel, Romania, and Russia all in one summer. When I wanted to write down my experiences, I found that I could only make sense of them as a fairy tale retold, with a version of myself as the main character. But then that story ran away from me, started to tell itself, and became the Raven Son series, which I’m just about finishing right now.
What are some of your favorite books/authors? Why?
Tolkien, obviously. But not only because of The Lord of the Rings. His ideas on how to write fantasy in On Fairy Stories have influenced me greatly. I also love the Russian classics, especially Dostoyevsky, because he was so visceral and so good at getting to the heart of the human condition. And he was just a fascinating human being. As for more recent writers, I’m a huge fan of Gene Wolfe, especially his older books. There’s something so appealing about his unreliable narrators and densely rich far-future worlds on the verge of collapse—you never really know what he’s going to do as an author until you read him. The experience is thrilling, especially when so much fiction these days is formulaic and dry.
Please tell us about your world and your characters.
My fantasy series is inspired by Russian fairy tales, by medieval Russian history, and by the experience of growing up in a family of two cultures—Russian and American. Basically, the world of my novels is similar to 9-10th century Russia, but all of the mythical creatures from folklore are actually real in the world of the novels. I’m fascinated by seeing what happens when I take flawed, realistic characters, apply terrible pressures to them, give them a choice between redemption and annihilation, and see what they do. Some of them make the right choice, but some of them don’t. I’m never entirely sure what they’ll do, which I hope keeps my readers guessing!
Do you have any works in progress? Tell us about them!
I’m working on book 5 of the Raven Son series, which will tie all the many story strands into a final confrontation with the villain of this series, and will also widen the world and offer the possibility of a new, even worse villain, as well as new heroes and vistas for those heroes to explore. I’m curious to see if a fictional Byzantium might fit into my largely Slavic-inspired world. That could be fun.
I’m also planning on delving into short fiction in both science fiction and fantasy. Something like “variations of popular Russian fairy tale themes,” but in many different styles and genres. I’m excited to get started and to work on my writer’s toolbox!
Where can we find you online?
My author website is http://nicholaskotar.com, where you’ll find my author blog and my books. I’m also on facebook (http://facebook.com/nicholas.kotar ), where I host author interviews once a month, I have a youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_gx0SqerSv7p5QEm8_6RZQ) where I post book reviews and rants on culture, and recently I started a Patreon page, where I have a book club in session already with an enthusiastic group of lovers of imaginative fiction (http://patreon.com/nicholaskotar )
An Interview with Thea van Diepen
Tell us about yourself!
I’m a Canadian author, living in a city where the old Icelandic calendar would be entirely a propos (it had only two seasons: summer and winter). Along with The Illuminated Heart, I have a fantasy series called the White Changeling series, and several shorter works, many of which pull from fairy tales and folklore in some way, and nearly all of which have trees as a major landscape feature. (Iceland has only a handful of forests, but I managed to stick the protagonist in one in The Illuminated Heart nevertheless.)
I blame the trees on living on an acreage for the first ten years of my life, happily assuming what surrounded me was forest instead of what I now know are basically rather extensive windbreaks in the middle of the prairies*. And I blame the fairy tales and folklore on an imagination fed by extensive reading, especially of fantasy.
*But it’s still definitely forest, no matter what the facts say.
What does NobleBright fantasy mean to you? Why is it important?
This definitely required some reading- I’ve only been vaguely aware of the term noblebright until recently, and I had no idea anything I’d written could be classed as such. From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like the ultimate crux of noblebright is the affirmation of the existence of goodness and evil as different, discernible things, and that goodness is not only worth pursuing, but that it is possible to do the right thing such that the world is a better place as a result.
Specifically in The Illuminated Heart, this resonates perfectly with my reason why I wanted to do a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon: the moment in the fairy tale where the polar bear has been taken by the troll queen and his castle disappears, leaving the protagonist alone in the forest. She owes the bear absolutely nothing- you could argue that her part in all that’s happened in the story so far is ended, and she can go home and tell her family a story that ended in supernatural forces deciding the bear’s fate.
But she doesn’t go home. I think this is because she recognizes that the right thing to do (also the most dangerous, considering the situation!) is to go find the bear and correct the mistake she made that now has him trapped. And so she takes on impossible forces in order to do what is good.
The importance of that kind of bravery and integrity can’t be understated. We all have so many times in our lives where it’s easy to say “oh, it doesn’t really matter if I do this thing here that my conscience is pretty not okay with. This is small. It’s possible. That other choice that I could make? Nah.” And it makes sense! We’re chronically busy, tired, overwhelmed. And sometimes the right thing is so counterintuitive even though our hearts know exactly what it is with perfect clarity.
For the protagonist of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, the right thing was to accept the situation as it was, and her role in it, and to go make it right. And she does.
That kind of stuff changes the world.
How did you start writing?
I’ve been telling stories in some form or another since I was small (often with LEGO characters), but the first story I ever wrote was for school in grade one. I liked it so much that I never really stopped!
What are some of your favorite books/authors? Why?
A Wrinkle in Time remains, hands down, my favourite book ever since I first encountered it at the age of ten. I love the characters, the planets they visit, the references and allusions. Most of all, though, my heart was totally caught in Meg’s struggle to be at peace with herself, to see the good in all that she was. That she wasn’t broken. And that love was not only enough, but was (in all seriousness) the most powerful thing in existence.
I’ve heard people be disparaging of stories where the power of love/family/friendship saves the day, but I’ll never forget reading the scene where Meg realizes what she has that IT does not, and where IT could not stand in the face of her love. Love is not off in some rainbow fantasy land. It is here, aware, vital, and powerful beyond measure.
Please tell us about your world and your characters.
The Illuminated Heart takes place in a vaguely 17th century Iceland, but an Iceland where there are things like actual draugur (Nordic undead which are intelligent and have supernatural abilities including blighting crops, control of the weather, and causing people and animals to go mad) and a talking polar bear who offers to free a family from a draug that torments them.
The main character, Dagný, has lost her brother before the book begins, and she blames God for his death.
Finnr, a talking polar bear, comes to Dagný’s family, asking for her in exchange for ending the reign of terror of her now undead brother.
Other characters include members of Dagný’s family, the four winds, and some spoilery characters 😉
I based Dagný’s emotional arc very closely off my own struggles with the depression I experienced a preteen, including yelling at God, although in nowhere so dramatic as an Icelandic hillscape. My research into things like the history of religion in Iceland, Icelandic flora and fauna, and draugur as they appear in Icelandic sagas gave the setting an anchor and a logic, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon gave me a plot to follow and the characters that lived it. But it’s Dagný’s struggles in the face of overpowering grief that bring all those pieces together.
How do you trust the one you’ve always been told is good when everything you can see and hear is telling you the opposite?
Do you have any works in progress? Tell us about them!
The third book in the White Changeling series, Hunter and Prey, is currently in editing limbo. It’s missing a character, definitely needs more werewolf, and is in need of some tonal fixes, but the in-my-head part of editing is definitely coming together. Slowly, but surely!
I’ve also got a very hard to explain novel I’m about halfway through- it blends a whole bunch of stuff that I’d previously considered too different to include in the same book, like awe-filled moments of epicness followed right after by extremely mundane moments of hilarity, and it involves the constant interweaving of two different, er, dimensions, I guess? But I think I can safely call it fantasy so far.
Those are the two top-of-mind works in progress. There’s a whole bunch of others that surface on a rotational basis, including several in the a universe where there’s our world and another world that’s taking some pretty intense worldbuilding to put together. Language creation, making up my own folklore and creatures for it, you know. Stuff that I’m sure no one who knows me is surprised by xD
Where can we find you online?
My website is theavandiepen.com, and my Twitter handle is @theavandiepen! I mostly retweet cute animals, pretty things, and stuff I think is funny/interesting, so if you need some (more) wholesome in your life, my Twitter has got you covered.