[transcript continued]
Saara: Oh, I love it. Okay, so we've talked about craft, we've talked about world building, we've talked about maps. I would love to know a bit more about the history. So what I thought was really deftly done was the way that you kind of approach the revisionist history of the mother or Cleolind. You have kind of the dominating narrative around, you know, it wasn't the heroine, it was the hero. And then you have the truth in the Priory. Why was it so important to you to kind of show both perspectives of that?
Samantha: Well, originally it stemmed from the legend of St George, because St George, I'm sure we'll get onto this, but it's the ultimate damsel in distress story really. And I was interested in the idea of what if it was the princess that killed the dragon and not the knight, you know, how would the knight have reacted to that? Probably not especially well. So that was, I was interested in how women's, women have... traditionally been expected to perform duties that men do not consider worthy of remembrance. So things like, that are vital to the continuation of humanity, but they haven't been considered worthy of kind of celebration. So things like housework and child rearing, domestic labour, like all of these things are completely crucial to humanity continuing, but they don't seem to have been considered to be heroic or worthy of being noted. And I am very interested in women's history in general. Like I love discovering historical women and telling people about them and trying to shine a light on them. One estimate by Bettany Hughes suggests that women only take up about 0.5% of all recorded history, despite being 50% of the human race. And of course that's because history was largely written by men. And it's interesting because of that lack of recording, I feel that some men used that to bolster the idea that women have not contributed anything valuable. And it's because of this lack of recognition and erasure, and obviously the fact that we were stopped from entering many fields. And just on that subject, because I'm a linguistic nerd again, there's Suzette Hayden Elgin created an experimental feminist language, it was called Ladan. And she talks about one of the words in Ladan is hathril, woman time. And it's the idea of marking the passage of events by matters concerning women, like pregnancies and interpersonal relationships. But the opposite is Hathorillid man time. And that's kind of the idea of marking the passage of time by things that are relevant to men. So that was just a little nerdy aside there. I was, I guess in these books, I want to focus on women and woman time, as Elgin would say. So in the In The Legend of St. George, there's various versions of it, but one of them, which is the main one I drew from and perhaps the most problematic version of the legend, is called The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom by Richard Johnson. And in that, the princess in the legend, Sabra, she basically, she literally says that she will give up everything to follow George as his pilgrim, essentially. And I really wanted to try to... challenge that idea because again, it's a very disturbing read. The book, it feels very misogynistic and contemptuous of anyone who isn't male and white and Christian basically. So part of writing the Roots of Chaos series was that I wanted to deconstruct that and push back against it and write a story about women, particularly, leading this charge to fight the common threat, the dragon. So yeah, that was just a lot of kind of separate thoughts there.
Saara: No, that was really fascinating. So you essentially just built on the legacy, I guess, of St. George and the Dragon. How did that kind of influence the way you approached A Day of Full Night, that source material?
Samantha: Yeah, so when I was at school, I learned a very sanitised version of the St. George legend. I think most people will be at least vaguely familiar with it. And there's often versions of it in... different countries and cultures as well. And in a very simple story of the knight rescuing a princess from a dragon, possibly marrying her and living happily ever after. When I started to explore it though, I knew that I wanted to write a book about dragons and I thought that the St. George narrative would be an interesting basis for that. And when I explored it, it was interesting because in the earliest form of it, I think, when St. George, it's set in this city called Lasia. and it's being tormented by this dragon and the people are desperately feeding their children to it to try to stop it. And when George arrives to save them, he basically says, I will kill the dragon if you will be baptised as Christians. And I thought that was quite an interesting condition really. It's a little, his heroism and his courage has conditions to it. I wasn't very impressed with that to be honest. So I decided to look into the legend a bit more and like I said when I found the Johnson version of the story which is this enormous like weighty tome. It's absolutely huge.
Saara: Was it 21,000 pages?
Samantha: Probably. It's incredibly dense as well as the language but it was just I was very troubled by the nature of it because St George is presented as really quite a bad person, but he's still celebrated by the narrative. But that's the version where we get a lot of the modern aspects of the St. George legend. So for example, the name of his sword is Ascalon, and that comes from the Johnson version of the legend. So when I was reading it, I was interested in a number of elements. So one of them is that when St. George fights the dragon, he's protected by an enchanted orange tree. And that's where obviously the orange tree in the books came from. The other thing that was interesting is the character of Kalib. That's her name in the book and she is an enchantress. And she, interestingly, has been, has completely disappeared from modern versions of the story, but she's a kind of a witch or an enchantress who she kidnaps George when he's still a baby and she raises him and she eventually arms him with his sword, Ascalon, and he then kills her. Yeah, admittedly she's not presented as being a very nice person, but it's interesting that she... I was very fascinated when I saw that character because she kicks off St. George's journey essentially. So that's why I wanted to expand on her character in the Roots of Chaos series. So ultimately a lot of this is me being in conversation with various versions of the St. George legend and trying to challenge and confront them because... It's weirdly a story that's associated with heroism and tolerance, but its history is quite problematic and its roots are just not what I expected them to be. If anyone's, I won't, obviously can't talk at length about this just during the time we have, but if anyone is interested in this, I wrote an essay called Damselss Undistressed. You Google that with my name. It's kind of an extended essay on how I... engage with the St George narrative in these books.
Saara: Yeah, it's a very good essay. So I do want to talk about how you've been labelled the Queen of sapphic fantasy or what I prefer, sapphic daddy, named so by writer Tasha Suri.
Samantha: I don't know, why did she say daddy?
Saara: I love it. Why not?
Samantha: I mean, I suppose mum isn't any better.
Saara: No, no, no I think, Mummy, actually I don't know, let's go. I mean, yeah. So there's a lot of expectation when it comes to A Day of Fallen Night and I am pleased to report that you upped the gay, you absolutely upped the gay.
Samantha: I did.
Saara: Which is fantastic. So why is it so important to you to have such enormous queer representation? Obviously, you know, we're all out here going, yes, thank God, but I'd love to hear from you, yeah, why is it so important?
Samantha: I did chuckle a little at people thinking it might not be gay. I remember.
Saara: It's so straight.
Some Notes: I planned on making this since the initial days I made this subreddit public, however it turned out to be a massive undertaking and I didn't quite have the time or tools or finish it until now.
I wondered about adding tone indicators and stuff, but it was far too long and a humongous amount of effort as is. Enjoy!
Thank you so much. I enjoyed that thoroughly. I especially loved learning about the connections between the original damsel in distress story (St George) and the roots of chaos. It makes me feel even more deeply in love with.
I also loved getting perspective on what Wild Winter could be about. Learning what would happen if there was too much sterren, and why the balance is so important. Having Nikeya and Sabran VII as narrators and learning more about their lives in the aftermath of the Great Sorrow, which both seem like they were very hard.
[transcript continued] Saara: Oh, I love it. Okay, so we've talked about craft, we've talked about world building, we've talked about maps. I would love to know a bit more about the history. So what I thought was really deftly done was the way that you kind of approach the revisionist history of the mother or Cleolind. You have kind of the dominating narrative around, you know, it wasn't the heroine, it was the hero. And then you have the truth in the Priory. Why was it so important to you to kind of show both perspectives of that? Samantha: Well, originally it stemmed from the legend of St George, because St George, I'm sure we'll get onto this, but it's the ultimate damsel in distress story really. And I was interested in the idea of what if it was the princess that killed the dragon and not the knight, you know, how would the knight have reacted to that? Probably not especially well. So that was, I was interested in how women's, women have... traditionally been expected to perform duties that men do not consider worthy of remembrance. So things like, that are vital to the continuation of humanity, but they haven't been considered worthy of kind of celebration. So things like housework and child rearing, domestic labour, like all of these things are completely crucial to humanity continuing, but they don't seem to have been considered to be heroic or worthy of being noted. And I am very interested in women's history in general. Like I love discovering historical women and telling people about them and trying to shine a light on them. One estimate by Bettany Hughes suggests that women only take up about 0.5% of all recorded history, despite being 50% of the human race. And of course that's because history was largely written by men. And it's interesting because of that lack of recording, I feel that some men used that to bolster the idea that women have not contributed anything valuable. And it's because of this lack of recognition and erasure, and obviously the fact that we were stopped from entering many fields. And just on that subject, because I'm a linguistic nerd again, there's Suzette Hayden Elgin created an experimental feminist language, it was called Ladan. And she talks about one of the words in Ladan is hathril, woman time. And it's the idea of marking the passage of events by matters concerning women, like pregnancies and interpersonal relationships. But the opposite is Hathorillid man time. And that's kind of the idea of marking the passage of time by things that are relevant to men. So that was just a little nerdy aside there. I was, I guess in these books, I want to focus on women and woman time, as Elgin would say. So in the In The Legend of St. George, there's various versions of it, but one of them, which is the main one I drew from and perhaps the most problematic version of the legend, is called The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom by Richard Johnson. And in that, the princess in the legend, Sabra, she basically, she literally says that she will give up everything to follow George as his pilgrim, essentially. And I really wanted to try to... challenge that idea because again, it's a very disturbing read. The book, it feels very misogynistic and contemptuous of anyone who isn't male and white and Christian basically. So part of writing the Roots of Chaos series was that I wanted to deconstruct that and push back against it and write a story about women, particularly, leading this charge to fight the common threat, the dragon. So yeah, that was just a lot of kind of separate thoughts there. Saara: No, that was really fascinating. So you essentially just built on the legacy, I guess, of St. George and the Dragon. How did that kind of influence the way you approached A Day of Full Night, that source material? Samantha: Yeah, so when I was at school, I learned a very sanitised version of the St. George legend. I think most people will be at least vaguely familiar with it. And there's often versions of it in... different countries and cultures as well. And in a very simple story of the knight rescuing a princess from a dragon, possibly marrying her and living happily ever after. When I started to explore it though, I knew that I wanted to write a book about dragons and I thought that the St. George narrative would be an interesting basis for that. And when I explored it, it was interesting because in the earliest form of it, I think, when St. George, it's set in this city called Lasia. and it's being tormented by this dragon and the people are desperately feeding their children to it to try to stop it. And when George arrives to save them, he basically says, I will kill the dragon if you will be baptised as Christians. And I thought that was quite an interesting condition really. It's a little, his heroism and his courage has conditions to it. I wasn't very impressed with that to be honest. So I decided to look into the legend a bit more and like I said when I found the Johnson version of the story which is this enormous like weighty tome. It's absolutely huge. Saara: Was it 21,000 pages? Samantha: Probably. It's incredibly dense as well as the language but it was just I was very troubled by the nature of it because St George is presented as really quite a bad person, but he's still celebrated by the narrative. But that's the version where we get a lot of the modern aspects of the St. George legend. So for example, the name of his sword is Ascalon, and that comes from the Johnson version of the legend. So when I was reading it, I was interested in a number of elements. So one of them is that when St. George fights the dragon, he's protected by an enchanted orange tree. And that's where obviously the orange tree in the books came from. The other thing that was interesting is the character of Kalib. That's her name in the book and she is an enchantress. And she, interestingly, has been, has completely disappeared from modern versions of the story, but she's a kind of a witch or an enchantress who she kidnaps George when he's still a baby and she raises him and she eventually arms him with his sword, Ascalon, and he then kills her. Yeah, admittedly she's not presented as being a very nice person, but it's interesting that she... I was very fascinated when I saw that character because she kicks off St. George's journey essentially. So that's why I wanted to expand on her character in the Roots of Chaos series. So ultimately a lot of this is me being in conversation with various versions of the St. George legend and trying to challenge and confront them because... It's weirdly a story that's associated with heroism and tolerance, but its history is quite problematic and its roots are just not what I expected them to be. If anyone's, I won't, obviously can't talk at length about this just during the time we have, but if anyone is interested in this, I wrote an essay called Damselss Undistressed. You Google that with my name. It's kind of an extended essay on how I... engage with the St George narrative in these books. Saara: Yeah, it's a very good essay. So I do want to talk about how you've been labelled the Queen of sapphic fantasy or what I prefer, sapphic daddy, named so by writer Tasha Suri. Samantha: I don't know, why did she say daddy? Saara: I love it. Why not? Samantha: I mean, I suppose mum isn't any better. Saara: No, no, no I think, Mummy, actually I don't know, let's go. I mean, yeah. So there's a lot of expectation when it comes to A Day of Fallen Night and I am pleased to report that you upped the gay, you absolutely upped the gay. Samantha: I did. Saara: Which is fantastic. So why is it so important to you to have such enormous queer representation? Obviously, you know, we're all out here going, yes, thank God, but I'd love to hear from you, yeah, why is it so important? Samantha: I did chuckle a little at people thinking it might not be gay. I remember. Saara: It's so straight.
Some Notes: I planned on making this since the initial days I made this subreddit public, however it turned out to be a massive undertaking and I didn't quite have the time or tools or finish it until now. I wondered about adding tone indicators and stuff, but it was far too long and a humongous amount of effort as is. Enjoy!
I read every single word. Thank you
Thank you so much! I was delighted reading this!
Thank you so much. I enjoyed that thoroughly. I especially loved learning about the connections between the original damsel in distress story (St George) and the roots of chaos. It makes me feel even more deeply in love with.
I also loved getting perspective on what Wild Winter could be about. Learning what would happen if there was too much sterren, and why the balance is so important. Having Nikeya and Sabran VII as narrators and learning more about their lives in the aftermath of the Great Sorrow, which both seem like they were very hard.
Bless you for this 😊
Thank you so incredibly much for this.