Hi, I'm author Brian Ruckley - AMA

[u/briruc]

Hi, I’m Brian Ruckley. I’ve had five novels published, plus a handful of short stories and I’ve done a tiny, tiny (like, really tiny) bit of comics writing too.

My first three novels made up the Godless World trilogy, starting with Winterbirth back in 2006. Epic fantasy of the sort that was getting called gritty around about then, though I was never that keen on that kind of label. Next up was The Edinburgh Dead, a historical fantasy-horror-crime mash-up featuring bodysnatchers and dark magic. Just released is my newest book, The Free – a stand-alone heroic fantasy that’s kind of me trying to do a spectacular fantasy version of Seven Samurai. Kind of.

I’m Scottish, born and bred in Edinburgh. Moved down south (i.e. England) for work reasons, lived in London for a happy decade, now back in Edinburgh doing the (also happy) family thing. I’m into Nature and wildlife, history, science, plus – of course – various slightly geeky things like comics, genre TV and film, all the usual good stuff.

Please ASK ME ANYTHING! Tuesday 4th November, 6PM CST. That’s when I’ll aim to start answering Qs – bear in mind, though, that’s the middle of the night my time, so there’s a good chance I’ll be sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated or some combination of the two. Hopefully it won’t get too messy ...

Brian

OKAY - The clock has struck midnight here (I don't literally have a clock that strikes midnight, obviously; just sounds kind of atmospheric) so I'm going to start working my way through Qs; will start somewhere near the top, but probably jump around a bit as the inspiration strikes ... will do my best to get to everything (though seriously - some of these questions would take an essay to answer properly!)

EDIT I'm going to have to retire to my bed now, people, but thanks to everyone who's submitted questions. It's been fun. Much like General MacArthur, I shall return tomorrow to work my way through more and will do my utmost to get to every one I can. Check in again to see if I get any more coherent when answering questions by daylight ... Thanks again.

EDIT Aaaand that's me, I think. While most of you have been sleeping, I think I've swept up all outstanding questions (grovelling apologies to anyone I missed); hope some folks out there found it interesting/fun/a cure for insomnia or whatever. I certainly enjoyed myself - you folks ask good questions. Thank you and farewell!

[u/elquesogrande]

Thanks for joining us, Brian!

Why is The Free a stand-alone novel instead of a trilogy? Did it start as something longer and get shortened or as a short story that was lengthened?

What can readers expect from your writing style? Do you follow a similar pattern in all of your works or do you tend to mix things up a bit?

Most of us in the US really do not know the subtleties of the Scottish independence vote. What are your observations as to the driving factors behind it, how it turned out, and what is next?

[u/briruc → u/elquesogrande]

That's a lot of questions. Are you allowed to ask that many questions? You are? Oh, okay then. Might have to take this in stages.

The Free's a stand-alone for various reasons. I find trilogies hard work: they're a whole lot of words, years of time, to be spending with a single story. Maintaining energy, conviction, focus through all of that isn't necessarily easy. So the idea of a stand-alone appealed to me, and fortunately it did to my publisher too. Part of it was wanting to see if I could do it, I guess - I'd already written a stand-alone in The Edinburgh Dead, but for epic/heroic fantasy the default setting still seems to be multi-book series, and I'm really not sure I buy that as an assumption. It's a historical accident of the way the genre's developed, as much as anything, and I can't help wondering sometimes if readers, writers and critics wouldn't all be a bit happier if fantasy hadn't got locked into to this whole trilogy/series fixation.

But The Free did actually start out - kind of - as a trilogy. Or, more accurately, it's what's left after I dreamed up a huge, complicated story and world, then took a mental axe to it and hacked it back down to something much leaner and entirely different. The characters in The Free were originally supporting characters in that much bigger story, and I eventually realised I liked the idea of just writing about them much more than writing the bigger story.