Readers - Jornal de Letras by Ricardo Duarte (July 2005) - english version

Ricardo Duarte contacted me in July 2005 to ask me if I would do an interview for the Portuguese publication, Jornal de Letras. I agreed and he was courteous enough to provide me with his questions in English. The following are his questions and my answers. The article he produced from these is shown here.

---------------------

RD: How did you become interested in Fantastic Literature?

RP: As a child, fairytales lit up my life, it is a love I have never lost.

RD: By living in Scotland, a country of many legends, have you had any kind of influence that led you to Fantastic Literature (because of the geography, the history. the people)?

RP: I don't think so. Having recently read Jung, I have discovered that my work is filled with what he calls 'archetypes'. It seems to me that my stories as well as legends and fairytales rise out of the subconscious.

RD: And has your close contact with scottish culture been in anyway useful for your writing?

RP: I feel that northern europe is more analytical than the south. Perhaps Scotland has wedded a mental rigour to my Portuguese heart.

RD: And what about your profession, did it contribute to the creation of your fantastic world?

RP: At university I studied mathematics and then went on to spend ten years programming and designing computer games. These two activities brought to my writing a love of architectural structure and a desire for engineering elegance. But it is my lifelong love of history that has put life and passion into my books.

RD: How and when did you create The Stone Dance of the Chameleon? Was it predicted to be a three volume novel? Have you ever felt that you wouldn't be able to finish it?

RP: The first ideas for it came into my mind when I was at University... During one summer I wrote the first version of the finished work. It wasn't very good, but it was something I felt I needed to do. I only started writing the current book ten or more years later. Initially, I imagined that the whole of the Stone Dance was going to be around 600 pages long. It was only during the process of writing it that I discovered that it was going to be over 2000 pages. It was always conceived as being in three parts. A sort of triptych. When it became very long, it had to be broken into volumes... and these three sections were natural places to make the breaks.

From the moment that I began the Stone Dance, I have been determined that, come what may, I would finish it. From the beginning I knew where it was going, and what its final shape would be... what I could not have guessed was that it was going to take more than ten years. Of course, there are times when it is very difficult because of the sheer amount of work that there is to do... I have been depressed along the way, but most of the time I am enthusiastic to do it... I just get my head down, put my shoulder to it and push... and don't worry too much about how long I am going to take to get there.

RD: In a few words, how do you describe your story? (yes, I know, writers hate this question :))

RP: <*grin* I really do hate it...>

It is about the part that one person can play in a great moment of history. It is about how compassion is more powerful than any tyranny. It is about how love can overcome any obstacle.

RD: And how would you describe the main characters of your story, especially Carnelian?

RP: Carnelian and Osidian are like two halves of the same person, loving each other, but also at war with each other. Each has the strengths the other lacks. Fern is the wedge that might break them apart. The other characters are typical of people everywhere. It is their pride, their sense of duty, their anger, but perhaps most of all their love that form the delicate cracks of change which Carnelian will widen to chasms with his compassion.

RD: And the Three Lands?

RP: It is a symbol for the world. Osrakum is a closed land, hidden from all but the rich and powerful who live within its mountain walls. Osrakum is all blind privilege: it is Europe, it is the USA. The Guarded Land is 'civilization', industrialized, subservient to the rich, enslaving nature. The green, Barbarian Lands are the Edens of the rainforests, of the wild places, where people live close to nature, but even they cannot escape the horrific demands of the rich and powerful... the Masters of the Three Lands.

RD: You have created also a new language, Quya. Why?

RP: Partly I did this for the some of the same reasons Tolkien did it... to achieve completeness. Language is consciousness, and a people must have their language or they will forget who they are. In the end, though, whatever my characters might speak among themselves, my reader will hear them best if they speak in my reader's own language... and so, I ended up hardly using Quya at all...

RD: In your life, what's the importance of writing? Is it something that you have been doing all your life? Have you discovered the pleasure of writing with this story?

RP: At the moment, writing is at the centre of my life... at least, my book is. For most of my life I painted and drew far more than I wrote. What is certainly true, is that I learned how to write while writing this story. In the struggle to make it come alive I have had and have to constantly develop my skill. There is also the pressure to improve so that I can finish the third part... which is a much more complicated job than the previous two... in anything like a reasonable time....

RD: What author's have influenced you the most?

RP: Tolkien, of course, for he showed us all that a work of this size and level of invention is possible. Ursula Le Guin for her humanity. Frank Herbert for Dune... as world creation, unsurpassed. Gene Wolfe for richness of detail. Robert Louis Stevenson for his sublime simplicity of storytelling. Oscar Wilde for exotic extremes. Gustav Flaubert for the dark dream that is Salambo... I could go on...

RD: Do you have new projects? Are they all Fantastic Literature?

RP: I have at least 12 other books planned... perhaps 20... some are fantasy, some science fiction, others historial. There is a murder mystery and a few occult...

RD: On your site you say that "many people will not consider The Stone Dance to be a fantasy at all - at least in the genre sense in which it is currently classified". Why?

RP: The Stone Dance has no magic and the people in it have recourse only to the same forces and abilities that real people have. My book is really a historical fiction set in an invented time and place. It is no more fantasy, than a book set in 12th Century Cambodia would be...

RD: What makes a book a (good) book of Fantastic Literature?

RP: In my opinion... truth, though I suppose that is at the root of most good books. The people must be real, and feel real emotions. Beyond that, my tastes run to the invented world having weight and solidity. Without this, the reader's belief in what they are seeing in their mind will falter. When that happens, the reader will wake, and then the dream is lost...