If you haven’t read ‘Shadow And Bone’ Book One in the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, I don’t know what to say. Okay, maybe I do. Actually, I know a few things. One, go directly to your local bookseller…pick it up, read it and rock it. HARD. While you are there, go ahead and preorder number two in the series, ‘Siege And Storm’ as it drops in a weeks time (June 4th). Thank me later. While ‘Shadow and Bone’ was the introduction of a magical new kingdom, of an eclectic villain with ambiguous motivations, of old honor and new power, balances of allegiances and disorder, all mashed up together with a delicate, soothing serenity…then ‘Siege and Storm’ is the outcome.
 
I was fortunate enough to talk with Leigh about ‘Siege And Storm’ and as a BONUS for you dear reader, I have removed any and ALL spoilers. Except for maybe one or two fancy Jell-O desserts.

Tell me a little about yourself personally and creatively?
 
I was a copywriter for a long time and when my Dad passed away, I changed careers. I went into makeup and special effects because I needed to get away from computer screens. Being a copywriter, I used to write movie trailers, It was really fun but isolated…any kind of writing is. I wanted to be doing something that got me around people and out of my head. I honestly think that transition was probably part of why ‘Shadow And Bone’ got written. I had always wanted to be a writer. I had always wanted to write a book. I just hadn’t to manage to finish anything. I’d come home after a day of copy writing and I just want to…you know, watch ‘Law And Order’ and go to sleep. Where as I’d come from a day on set, being on my feet for twelve hours and I’d still have all of these ideas and stuff and be ready to write. I think in some ways it has relaxed the writing muscle and I think that helped me get a book done.
 
What first got you interested in ‘writing’?
 
You know, I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I was an only child and I used to talk to myself a lot. But, I didn’t ever really write the stories down. I just mostly walked around muttering. I think when I was in Junior High, that’s when things got really rough for me in school and things weren’t particularly good at home either. And it’s when I started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy and it’s also where I started writing. I think it was very…It was sort of a survival mechanism, to be creating these worlds that were if not better than the one I was living in, were different then the one I was living in.
 
What are some of your favorite Books/Novels? What type of books are you drawn to?
 
I am really fickle; I like all kinds of things. I think it was Claudia Gray at the last conference I was at that said something along the lines of being asked what your favorite book is…is like being asked what your favorite kind of oxygen is.
 
Ok. My follow up to that is…Were there any hidden gems in terms of stories or authors that you don’t think people remember much today but should?
 
I definitely think Diana Wynne Jones. Whenever people are like ‘What’s the next Harry Potter’ I’m like read Diana Wynn Jones. That might not be the NEXT Harry Potter but the same kind of spectacular world building and there’s a very grounded sense of whimsy in her work and there’s such a spectacular level of imagination. She’s a huge influence on me and her books are books that I read again and again. That are tremendous comfort reads for me as well. In terms of other favorites. I’m a huge fan of ‘Song Of Ice And Fire’ George R. R. Martin series. Obviously, that’s not a hidden gem. I love ‘Carter Beats The Devil’ by Glen David Gold that’s one of my very favorite books. That’s not YA or Fantasy but It’s historical fiction which I adore. I think it’s pretty much a perfect book. I mean, it’s perfectly plotted and just brilliant.
 
How would you describe your ‘writing’ education?
 
Well, I was an English major and I’ve taken some writing workshops. I think my best education in writing came from reading and from reading widely. I think it’s really important for writers to read outside of their genre. I’m in the very weird position now of being asked for advice for some writers which is always very strange to me and I always feel like a bit of a fraud giving it but one of the best things I can recommend is reading broadly outside of your genre. I think it made me a better writer because I’m forced to read outside of my comfort zone and because it gives you an appreciation of language and narrative. A different perspective.
 
How would you describe your writing process? What are your writing habits like? How do you create?
 
When I’m drafting I like to be in noisy places. I will meet up with some of my friends and make ‘writing dates’. And we do what’s called…what we call ‘friendly surveillance’. Where we keep each other off of the Internet and we’ll take each other’s cells phone away so that we have to work. That for me is the drafting phase. Then when it’s really time to turn the rough draft into a book I go into the bunker and I don’t come out. I basically don’t see anybody for a month or two and just work…steadily. You know it’s funny; I’m sort of just learning to trust in the process because I’m still fairly new to this but now that I’ve written the whole trilogy…
 
…Wait, what? Is the third one is done?
 
Oh yeah, the third one is done. It still needs to go through revisions but I finished it up a couple of months ago. It’s been very weird to be finished with it and not be able to talk about it. I keep having this feeling that I’m going to accidentally blurt something out and give the whole game away.
 
Is there a title for that officially?
 
‘Ruin And Rising’.
 
And that comes out next summer, next spring?
 
Yeah, June. I assume it will be June of next year. Since we seem the be on that schedule.

How long did it take you to write ‘Siege And Storm’?
 
I think it took about four and a half months. Maybe a little bit longer, for the draft that I turned into my editor. And I added, I tend to write lean. In revisions it’s rare that I’m cutting I’m usually adding so I did end up adding I think almost twenty thousand words when we went into revisions. Well, there were a lot of things that I thought needed and my editor thought needed more fleshing out or needed to be given more time.
 
What do you consider the elements of a good novel? A great one?
 
I think any good novel is one that I want to keep reading. And I am, I really believe that we are sometimes too judgmental about what is good or bad or edifying. I don’t really care if the story is edifying or not, what I care about is whether I want to know what happens on the next page. In terms of a great novel, I think my favorite books are the ones that I’m sorry to leave the world. I finish that last page and it’s with that sense of satisfaction of having reached the end but also with a sense of loss that I’m not immersed in that world anymore. I think the first book that I had that experience with was ‘Dune’. Where I couldn’t get enough of the world.
 
At what age or time in your life did writing cross from a hobby into something more serious?
 
This is what I’ve always wanted. I mean, I literally have a drawing, I think I put it up on my blog at one point, a drawing that a friend did of me when we were fourteen years old, of me at a book signing. But the problem was that. Well, I don’t exactly know what the problem was. But, I had two chapters of very highbrow literary fiction novel in my head for a long time and it just never got written. I would start and never finish. I have the beginnings of a lot of books. So, it was something that I’ve always wanted but I think it was really a question of sitting down and saying ‘I am going to write the book that I would want to read’ and I’m going to finish it. No matter what happens, I’m going to finish this book. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be done. And I think when it comes to first drafts, you really do need to do that. You need shut down that internal editor and this idea of creating something, you know, perfect and clever and original and sparkling and just write crap. And you know, then you go back and the world comes in through the revising. I mean hopefully it does. I think that’s a real necessity. I think you really have to get out of your head. I think for me, that’s what becoming a writer it about. Shutting down that internal editor.
 
Have you heard of ‘Nanowrimo’?
 
I did it this last year actually, the timing had never been right before and I was like I’m going to do it. And I actually did not win…I did not get to the appropriate word count but I was also in final edits for book two at the same time.
 
That would be challenging…
 
It was. It’s very hard to transition sometimes between those two modes. Yeah, I loved Nanowrimo…it was great.

I’ve done it twice and I’ve never met the word count.

I think the good thing about it is that it gets people writing every day and also learning about their own process. I learned a long time ago that there are people who can write 1500 words a day period and they stick with that and it’s like brushing their teeth in the morning, essentially. And I’m not that person. I tend to be very productive for two or three weeks at a time and then I need to crash for about a week and not do anything. And then come back to it.
 
How often does the real world give you something seemingly inexplicable, something weird, that becomes a spark for a story or novel?
 
I would say most of my inspiration comes from reading. I read a lot of alternate history and historical fiction and nonfiction. But yeah, you never know where inspiration is going to come from at all. And what details are going to work their way into a story or a book. I mean, I can tell you that the Small Science (the magic of the Grisha practice) came out of an argument that I had with friends over the movie, ‘Minority Report’. It had been percolating in my head for a very long time. This idea being of what really happens when you wave a magic wand or you mutter a curse or what the physical changes of what’s going on.
 
So what, what was the argument with ‘Minority Report’ then?
 
You know what, I don’t even remember. But I actually have the notes that after having this argument I went home and worked on…you know what I actually do remember. It was, I wanted to know how you would read another persons mind. What it would mean to read another persons mind and be able to put thoughts into another persons mind. Like what the physical element of that would be…would you be using electricity to fire synapses? What physical change that would require. And that’s what got me thinking about…what magic looks like, if it’s not magic.
 
When you started writing books/novels/short stories, did you set out to do a specific thing?
 
Well, ‘Shadow And Bone’ was my first book. Maybe it was just to finish? My attitude was, even if this book is terrible. I will have written a book and the next one will be better. But I had reached a point where I was not particularly happy in my career. I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. So, I was thinking about going into the MFA and I thought I really don’t want to. I really don’t want to get an MFA, what I really want to do is to write a book. And I’m going to do it before my next birthday. And I ended up finishing about three months after my next birthday. That was the really the only thing in my head. Was just finish, just finish, just finish. And again, because I figured it would be easier the second time around. As it turns out that writing the second book is not easier at ALL. But, I didn’t know that at the time. And I wanted that confidence.
 
Is writing the third book easier than the first two?
 
No, not remotely. For me, this has all been a very steep learning curve and each book in the series I think presents a different challenge. Book two is definitely the most intense writing experience because it was the first time I was writing a book on deadline. And because the world had expanded so much. I think ‘Shadow And Bone’ was a much simpler book in some ways than ‘Siege And Storm’. And book three, Book two was surprising because I thought this is going to be the easiest one because I know everything that’s going to happen. I’m a big outliner. I know all the beats, this will just be fun because I just get to do the writing part. But as it turns out, it’s not. You are closing a lot of doors, instead of opening them. And I was also surprised by, you know I had always kind of smirked at depictions of writers in films who cry, I seem to remember Diane Keaton like crying in front of a lap top in some film and being like ‘C’mon, that’s ridiculous’. So yeah, I had to eat a lot of crow when it comes to that experience. It was also different too because now people have read my work. I wrote books one and two when nobody had heard of ‘Shadow And Bone’ or any of these characters.
 
Is there pressure to live up to what you have already done?
 
You know, most of the pressure comes from my own…you know, it’s internal. I’m really glad that book two was written before book one was published. Because I think I wasn’t really prepared for the way that reader response would get in my head, positive and negative. We live in the age of twitter and tumblr and we are all that much more accessible. I really love that but it’s sort of surprising the way that people become quite possessive of characters and they have very clear ideas about where they want the plot to go or what they want to see happen. I think if we listen too much to that you would never be able to take people by surprise. I guess with book three, I really had to sort of shut all of those things out. But again, the outline was already written and I knew where I wanted the series to go and it had always felt right to me. So, I know that there will be people who are upset no matter what I do and so I really can’t let that get into my head.
 
If you were to edit/write your Wiki page. What outlandish thing would you add and why?
 
Oh good gravy. Well, my last name means ‘executioner’.
 
What?
 
My last name, Bardugo means executioner or public hanger. And my best friend, actually the girl who drew that picture her last name is Gyoyte, which means guillotine. Make of that what you will. My life doesn’t seem particularly outlandish to me because I live it.
 
So, how is the ‘Shadow And Bone’ movie coming along?
 
Honestly, I don’t know that much about it. I got to speak to Chris Kyle the writer…I guess a few weeks back and chat about the story. He asked me all kinds of really good questions, actually incredibly reassuring to talk to him. Beyond that I don’t really know very much about the film. My job is pretty much to write the books.
 
How many Jell-O baby deers have you eaten in your lifetime?
 
You know, I have no idea where that came from. You are the second person to mention the baby Jell-O deer.
 
It’s a pretty funny part in the book…It’s out of nowhere. I loved it, it’s great.
 
I don’t know if you have read the short story I wrote for Tor called ‘The Witch Of Duva’ but I really like to write about food. I just think it’s really fun and I think it’s a great way to give texture to the world. I really let myself kind of indulge in that with book two. I have also had some readers come up with recipes based on the books and I thought well, this will give them some fodder. I want to see somebody make a life size Jell-O baby deer.
 
What is Tsarpunk?
 
Tsarpunk started out kind of as a joke. When people would ask me what genre my book was I would say you know, fantasy or contemporary world fantasy but whenever you get into the term people I think they have the tendency instantly go to medieval Europe. That’s just sort of where their heads are at. It’s broadswords, and tunics, and dragons. My world is quite a bit different. Because it’s inspired by Russia. But also Russia of the earlier 1800’s…where it’s more muskets and sabers then it is broadswords and pikes. That seems to throw a lot people for a loop. So we started calling it Tsarpunk kind of as a joke, it’s kind of a fun word and some people picked up on it. I think there actually are quite a few Steampunk elements in book two, but I definitely wouldn’t call my work Steampunk.
 
Will the fierce reads tour be coming to Salt Lake City?
 
We are not going to Utah this year I’m sorry to say. We were in Salt Lake City and Provo last year. I think the closest that were are going to be is Las Vegas. You should take a road trip and come and see us.
 
Now that the Grisha trilogy is wrapped up, what’s next?
 
Well, I can’t actually talk too much about what projects…I have a couple of projects in the works. Hopefully I’ll get to announce them soonish. But I’m probably going to take a little break from fantasy but there are definitely some stories I would like to tell in the same world. Right now, the focus is really on promotion, we have bonus content in the paperback. There is a letter from Mal that I’m really excited about. And there is also going to be some additional bonus alternate POV content for the launch of ‘Siege And Storm’. And the truth is, when I tour, I really don’t get much writing done at all. I need to be in tour mode. Either social butterfly or hermit.

Learn more about the AWESOME Leigh Bardugo at http://www.leighbardugo.com/
Pick up ‘Siege And Storm’ on June 4th! I can’t recommend this book enough.

-Dagobot

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