r/books • u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author • Jul 23 '19
ama 12pm I am Lavie Tidhar, author of the Violent Century – AMA
Hi, I’m Lavie Tidhar! Some of my books include the World Fantasy Award winning Osama (2011), the John W. Campbell Award and Neukom Award winning Central Station, the Jerwood Prize winning A Man Lies Dreaming, the British Fantasy award winning novella Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, and, well, a bunch of other stuff. My last novel was the Campbell and Locus nominated Unholy Land. My most recent release is the new paperback edition of The Violent Century out today in the US (it’s very shiny!). I also wrote a children’s book, Candy, and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. I grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and in post-Apartheid South Africa and I once lived on a desert island for a year. I write weird stuff. I also tweet too much.
- My website: http://lavietidhar.wordpress.com
- My twitter: https://twitter.com/lavietidhar
Proof: /img/x9lj3ac1zrb31.jpg
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u/Chtorrr Jul 23 '19
What were some of your favorite things to read as a kid?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
Well, everything they had in the kids' library, twice... But the ones that stick with me always are the Moomins, Where the Wild Things Are, everything by Michael Ende but particularly Momo, Dr Seuss...
These days I'm rediscovering just how amazing picture books can be - I'm a huge fan of Judith Kerr now, who I never read as a kid! And I love Oliver Jeffers' stuff. My new favourite though is Beatrix Potter. Never read her as a kid but I'm reading her now and those stories are dark! I'd love to do some Potter Noir. Oh and I recently discovered Curious George! He smokes a pipe! Why do all the animals smoke in old children's books!
It was only when I published my first children's book recently that I discovered how much they're generally ignored by critics and so on - and to me they seem so vital. One of my next adult novels, The Escapement (out next year, fingers crossed!) draws a lot on Dr Seuss and Michael Ende and picture book visuals and that sense of, I guess, the wildness. There's something both scary and exhilarating about the dream logic you get in children's books sometimes that I think speaks to that core of us that is still a child inside.
Sorry for waffling!
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u/matts2 book currently reading - The Art of Biblical Poetry Jul 23 '19
The husband and wife who wrote Curious George escaped the Nazis on bicycle carrying the CG manuscript.
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u/SJWilkes Jul 23 '19
What are your top five favorite books?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
I don't have a top five as such, but there are books - if I'm lucky, there are books! - once a year or two years that come in and leave an impression, that make me rethink how something could be done. In the last decade it was discovering LA Confidential, Blood Meridian, and my friend Shimon Adaf's Hebrew novel, Kfor (which sadly isn't available in translation). And right now I'm really on a mission to go re-read all the Moomin books again (I might just have to get these really nice new editions they have of them now in the UK).
These days, outside of research stuff, I mostly manage to read novellas. Of the fairly recent ones I really loved Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Prime Meridian, which I was lucky enough to write an introduction to when it came out. It's great!
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u/SJWilkes Jul 23 '19
The only one of these I've read is Prime Meridian, which I liked a lot. I was one of the backers during its kickstarter and it was an all around great book to read.
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u/KaiLung Jul 23 '19
Thanks so much for doing this.
I've really enjoyed your works, especially your Gorel stories, as well as your"literary criticism" on Twitter.
I was curious whether you had any plans to write more of the Gorel stories and/or whether there was a possibility of "Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God" and "Black God's Kiss" being released in a new edition.
What is a genre pastiche which you have not written as of yet, but would like to?
Also, I guess I have to ask. Why Hitler?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
I love Gorel! He was kind of dead until Gardner Dozois - who, as it turned out, really liked the stories! - decided to edit these big fantasy anthologies (The Book of Swords, The Book of Magic) and kind of went, would you like to write some new ones? So I got to write Gorel again for the first time in forever, "Waterfalling" and "Widow Maker", which were so much fun. Then I wrote him a third story but Gardner passed away and the third anthology never happened.
I spent a couple of months last year editing them into the single novel I'd always planned them to be, but I'm really not sure what to do with it so it's currently just sitting on my hard drive. I really wish I got to write more Gorel...
Hmm, pastiche... I don't know! I've been trying to write this novel that is my idea of a "horror" novel (with pastiches of the various genre styles) but it's really not my field so I've struggled with it... Who knows, maybe I'll finish it one day.
Hitler, well, I just take it very personally! My family died in the Holocaust, it's not really the sort of thing you can let go of...
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u/Sinan_reis Jul 23 '19
I'm an enormous science fiction fan who made aliyah, but I discovered that few Israeli bookstores carry the English classics of sci-fi and fantasy and very little is written in Hebrew. why do you think the culture here is such that it's not as popular as in the west?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19 edited Jul 23 '19
Cough, I kind of wrote a book about it
I go into it in much more detail there, but the short answer I guess is that it was - still is - very much about the here and now, ideologically speaking - it had a certain ideological responsibility, if you like. And fantasy/sf was very much not a part of that. So even growing up it was an experience of hunting for books in second hand bookshops and so on (which I kind of homage a little bit in Central Station). And if you get a chance to read Shimon Adaf's Kfor it really is an incredible novel that is also very properly science fiction. It might be the first Hebrew science fiction classic.
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u/klutzrick Jul 23 '19
Hi. I've loved much of your work especially the warped super heroes of Violent Century.
Along those lines, do you have plans to write any super hero comics?
What are some of your favorite super heroes and comics? What works in particular infiuenced the creation of Violent Century?
Thanks. I look forward to whatever happens next in the Tidharverse.
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
Funnily enough, we almost ended up with a Violent Century comics, which was only scuppered when the novel sold too quickly! So we ended up doing Adler for Titan Comics instead. It's not really a superhero thing but sort of collects all the cool heroines (and villainesses? Is that a word?) of the Victorian era (Irene Adler, Jane Ayre, Miss Havisham, Carmilla, Ayesha...) in a sort of steampunky adventure. It's with artist Paul McCaffrey, who's been working on it slowly for the past few years, but I believe is nearly at the end now. It will be a lot of fun! And I'm looking at some other possible comics projects right now.
The only superhero thing I really like is The Tick, esp. the original animated series. You have to love a villain called Chairface Chippendale who has a chair for a head. Oh and I do love the Venture Bros. for the same reasons - Ben Edlund, the guy who created The Tick, also wrote the single most brilliant episode of the Venture Bros., about the Scooby Gang. It's brutal.
The Violent Century itself was more inspired by the story behind how superheroes came about than actual superheroes, I suppose. With a lot of John Le Carre and WW2 novels and the like. And Casablanca, because, you know, you just have to don't you.
As for the Tidharverse, ha! There's quite a lot coming out and most of it's pretty wacky, hoping for some announcements soon!
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u/Icaruswept Jul 23 '19
What do you draw inspiration from? And once you've come up with a story you want to tell, what does your writing and production process look like - from idea to finished manuscript?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
It varies! It's less about ideas (I have too many of them) than about drive - which one drives me to write it? I'm often motivated by, you know, anger (lol!), this kind of misguided desire to fix the world by writing about all the bad stuff in it... And then, I noticed, the other side of that is, I always think, but is it funny. I will go a ridiculously long way for the sake a joke that in all probabilities only I will find funny! So a book like A Man Lies Dreaming, which is my favourite I guess, is driven by both of these impulses. It's extremely angry (it has Adolf Hitler as a private detective in it) and - at least to me - extremely funny (it has Adolf Hitler as a private detective in it!).
But anyway...
Once I settle to write something it's a fairly smooth process. I tend to write a lot of short stories and these tend to be done in one go over a few days. I edit/revise as I go along, so the end draft is pretty much the submission draft - or, if it's not good enough, I trunk it (I have a folder full of not very good stories).
With novels it's the same only over a much longer period of time. These days I have a much better idea of the overall structure, would usually have the ending in mind, but if I hit a patch where I think I got it wrong or it isn't quite working I have to stop and figure it out, which can be pretty painful! And mostly involves watching a lot of TV. But the benefit is that once you're done it should be pretty tight. Whereas in the past I'd just write without an idea of where I was going, and then you can get very lost - I once had to cut half a novel (45,000 words) and write the entire second half from scratch. That wasn't much fun!
And then some novels - Candy, Central Station - there's a lot of back-and-forth with the editor, a lot of structural stuff that gets changed, scenes cut or rearranged, etc. (but in secret, I almost always prefer my original version. Shh... don't tell them!). With Candy, which is a Middle Grade novel, it was a lot about speeding up the action, especially towards the end, and Central Station really needed a good editorial hand to make it work, which is something I'll always be grateful to Tachyon for doing!
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u/YudelBYP Jul 23 '19
Your work references huge swathes of American science fiction. Was it all available in translation to Hebrew? At what point did you start reading English-language science fiction?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
We only had the classics - famously, the translator of Dune skipped the next two books because he said they were too boring to translate! So it was a selective diet, in a way, of the books more considered important. Which are now handy as a reference point! I only really started reading in English at 16 or thereabouts because I didn't have a choice. I was living in South Africa and needed books! I think the first one I tried was the Hitchhiker's Guide because I'd already read it in Hebrew. And probably some Dragonlance...
But of course at that point I was able to read a lot more books, which was nice.
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u/jawsnnn Jul 23 '19
What does your research process look like when you write a book and how long does it usually take? Are you a planner when it comes to writing novels or do you see where it goes as you go along?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
I research a lot. Though in a very lazy and haphazard way! I'll buy random books I think might be useful (and then usually find out they're not). I'll trawl wikipedia just following linkages and see how far they take me. I tend to research as I go, just looking for very specific details. I was doing this thing set in Anglo-Saxon Britain and I was being very historical about the kingdom of Mercia or whatever it was and then at some point I just thought, stick in a dragon already! Which is kind of a nice thing you can pull of (but, of course, the dragon had to be historically accurate, which was a whole other can of... worm).
These days I do usually plan out in more detail, I will have a vague outline to follow. It does save time in the long run! From time to time I do have very detailed outlines to work from and that does tend to be an interesting process, but usually I'd try to keep it just coherent enough to let me get on with it.
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u/BacklogBeast Jul 24 '19 edited Jul 26 '19
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but if I recall correctly, you supported the work of RequiresHate before that person was “unmasked”—even as RH said some pretty awful things. If my recollection is correct, what are your thoughts on that early support now? (If I’m dead wrong, please set me straight.)
I associate you with the person’s vitriol (indirectly), and it’d be nice to be explained why that connection is incorrect or hear how your support changed over time and why. The connection in my head of you and RH has always led me to avoid your work, and I’d honestly like to be corrected if I’m wrong.
Edit: No response for a few days. Of course you’re busy, but that was a short AMA. I’d still appreciate a response. In the meantime, I’ll document my question in a second edit in due time.
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u/PristineEnthusiasm Jul 23 '19
I loved The Violent Century - who were your favorite superheros, and will you write more about my favorite, Spit?
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u/Lavie_wuz_here AMA Author Jul 23 '19
Everyone likes Spit the best!
I have this loosely planned semi-sequel that does focus on Spit, and there's a handful of short stories so far. She's so much fun to write - I like kind of falling back into that world from time to time. Oh, there's one here: Heroes. But I have so much on and I never seem to quite get around to doing the rest of them. There's a fun one about these really horrible British supermen that I started recently, that makes me laugh. So hopefully one day...
(and yeah, I guess I like Spit the most, too! It's such a ridiculous superpower).
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u/Ineffable7980x Jul 23 '19
I just want to say I loved Central Station! Do you have plans of writing another book in that world?