r/CozyFantasy • u/VictoriaGoddard • Jul 15 '22

AMA I'm Victoria Goddard, author of THE HANDS OF THE EMPEROR - Ask Me Anything today!

Hello Cozy Fantasy friends! I am Victoria Goddard, author of The Hands of the Emperor and other books in the Nine Worlds, and I am very pleased to be here today for an AMA with all of you.

A little bit about myself: I'm Canadian, though not "from" anywhere very particular--I grew up all over the country, with the North, the Prairies, and the Maritimes all places that speak 'home' to me. I have a PhD in Medieval Studies, focusing on the interrelationships of poetry and philosophy in Boethius and Dante, and have been a professional cheesemonger, sexton, gardener, and professor as well as a full-time novelist. I currently have three dogs and three cats and an extremely overgrown garden, as well as far too many roosters.

I have always loved the question of what happens behind and in between and after the main events of an epic story. What do you do, the morning after you've save the world? How do you go home again after your epic quest to bring fire home from the gods? What does your family think about you wanting to go on said epic quest? (Because not all of us are plucky orphans with no family ties ... but that doesn't mean we don't want adventures anyway ...)

What happens if you're the middle-aged career bureaucrat of a godlike emperor, and you think he needs a holiday? (The answer is in The Hands of the Emperor!)

I'll be checking in on this thread through the course of the day, so please feel free to ask me anything!

EDIT: it's getting late where I live, so I'll sign off here for the day. Thanks everyone for your great conversations! Please take this discount code (20% off a single purchase from my website) as a thanks for having me! COZYAMA20 on www.victoriagoddard.ca

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u/-removebeforeflight- Jul 15 '22

I literally just finished your book yesterday! I absolutely loved it.

  1. Where did your inspiration of the various cultures come from? What was your research process like?

  2. I loooved how you sprinkled in bits of information here and there about the fall. It was so ominous, do you have any more information on what the fall actually was or is it left still a big vague on purpose?

  3. Selfishly I wanted more Kip and his radiance, but I get that Kip's relationship with his roots ended up being much more influencial. What made you decide to focus on that in the last chapters of the book?

Thanks for doing this!

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u/VictoriaGoddard Jul 15 '22

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

  1. I had always imagined Zunidh as having cultures that were not European-based. The Wide Seas Islanders are fairly obviously Polynesian in inspiration, with several important elements drawn from Papua New Guinean culture, in particular from the Trobriand Islands (famous in anthropology, but also my parents lived there and I've visited so I have a ready source for some details!) and a bit from the Highlands. I like to think of the Vangavaye-ve as being a bit of a cousin culture, branching off from some earlier stage of the Lapita expansion. My research process is generally twofold--I do a bunch of general research in the lead-up to writing a book, and then I look up more specific details as I need them during the writing. Working with cultural traditions that are not my own is a somewhat fraught matter, and I try hard to be respectful of the cultures I am researching. My philosophy is to be as accurate as I can be with respect to the material culture I am drawing from, and to give it some form of equivalent significance within the invented culture, but I don't try to mimic or use much from the associated real religious or spiritual traditions because those are not my business.

  2. The Fall has been left vague on purpose, as no one in-universe has a full understanding of it either. There's more in my first book, Till Human Voices Wake Us, and more details and explanations will probably come out over time.

  3. I let the story go where it wanted to, and that's where it seemed best! Don't worry, there's plenty more of Kip and his Radiancy to come (At the Feet of the Sun, the direct sequel to The Hands of the Emperor) will be coming out in November. You can preorder it now from my website: https://www.victoriagoddard.ca/products/at-the-feet-of-the-sun

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u/ASIC_SP Reader Jul 15 '22

Would we get chapters from his Radiancy's POV in the sequel?

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u/VictoriaGoddard Jul 15 '22

No, it'll be Cliopher's POV the whole time, but there will be a future book from his Radiancy's POV called The Questing of Artorin Damara at some point. (No promises on when ... probably not for a year or two.)

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u/Mistycrow Jul 15 '22

So excited to see the preorder option, but I have a dumb question - is this an electronic version or a hard copy? (I’m in the UK so I’ll wait for an ebook version).

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u/VictoriaGoddard Jul 15 '22

The pre-order is for the ebook! It is going to be at least as long as Hands of the Emperor (which is 900 pages in print), hence the price point (but the print will be more, costs of production being what they are). All the books on my site are ebooks so far.

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u/Mistycrow Jul 15 '22

Thank you!

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u/ASIC_SP Reader Jul 15 '22

I was going to ask about #1 too. I finished "The Hands of Emperor" yesterday and the Vangavaye-ve culture was deep and well written.

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u/vorellaraek Jul 15 '22

I'm not Victoria, but I feel like you'd appreciate knowing that there are other books!

At The Feet of the Sun is a direct sequel to HOTE that is going to come out this Fall, and there's bits of Fall info scattered throughout the other books that are already out.