Jenna: Hi!
Fable of the Swan is a YA urban fantasy.
It’s about ... hm. Three things!
It's about objectification. If you know how, you can pull out somebody’s soul and turn their flesh into a reconfigurable weapon.
It’s about the source of value. A long time ago, one of the Jotun stole “being good” from Death’s dominion. As a species, they never quite managed to take advantage of that themselves, but at least the world itself was worth something after that.
It’s about a girl growing up in a kind of broken town surrounded by the multicolored void and how she makes and loses friends, achieves enlightenment, and eventually turns into a brass cephalopodan war machine and wrestles Death.
Trigger warnings: depersonalization and objectification, both self- and other-caused; abbreviated but graphic depiction of self-harm; emotional abuse within a relationship; realistic but tangential depiction of OCD; isolation and loss of family; non-consensual and physical-interaction grounded alteration of people's souls/minds; mild use of weightist language by characters; occasional references to "mad science" and similar uses of language by author and characters.
Ana: What themes does your book explore and what do you hope the reader will take away from the experience? Is there a particular feeling or experience that you hope to evoke in the reader? Essentially, do you hope your book will mean to a reader?
Jenna: Oh, man!
I feel so pompous when I try to talk about possible lessons or messages or themes, and then I feel like I’m dodging your question if I don’t.
I mean---mostly, it’s a book. It’s for reading. For fun!
I’d like to think that it might stir up the reader’s thoughts on being an embodied mind, or on what it means to be good or bad, but I didn’t even feel comfortable pushing non-controversial stuff like “acceptance is better than denial” all-out, much less any of the book's subtler messages.
I'd like to imagine that some of my thoughts on the persistence of personhood and the need for care with one's moral authorities will be useful to someone at some point? Except that that would imply that they're in the situation where that could be useful, and I don't really want anyone to be in a situation to need anything I might have said there, so I don't actually like to imagine that at all! Sorry for the false information at the start of this paragraph. ^_^
Mostly it is for fun.
Ana: What prompted you to write this book and did you have a specific inspiration in mind? Were you influenced by a certain author or work that inspired you to add your voice to this genre? Besides the boatloads of money and rockstar fame, what motivated you to write this book?
Jenna: I’m writing a variant setting for my RPG, Nobilis, and wanted to kick it off with a novel. Mostly!
Ana: If you could compare your book to any other existing works, which ones would it be and why? If the one thing you could say to a prospective reader was, "If you like X, you'll love my book!", which work would be invoked so that a reader could judge whether or not your book is their cup of tea?
Jenna: Hm!
There’s a lot of Zelazny in this, a little bit of Barker, a bit of Vance, and some Revolutionary Girl Utena.
If you love those things then you might like Fable of the Swan.
Ana: Is this your first or only published work, or have you published other books? If you have published other books, how do they compare to this one? Do you have any more books planned, either as a follow-up to this one, or as a completely different book or genre?
Jenna: Most of my previous work was in RPGs---Nobilis, the Weapons of the Gods RPG, some stuff for Exalted. Most of that was under the name R. or Rebecca Sean Borgstrom. (Names are a trouble!)
I have a currently disorganized fiction blog, Hitherby Dragons, and another couple of books out there on Amazon/Smashwords: An Unclean Legacy, which is about family drama and redemption in Ye Standarde Faux-Medieval fantasy world* and Invasion, which is a picture book with illustrations by Elizabeth Sherry.
An Unclean Legacy is more chaotic, so there’s more jewels and a bit more fun in it but it’s also a little more demanding---I think? I don’t know! I can’t read them through someone else’s eyes!
Elizabeth Sherry’s work on Invasion is simply astounding; I think it deserves to be a modern classic, and I don’t mean because of my contribution but because of hers. The art. The ART!
On the other hand, I can see why not everyone would want to read a picture book that handles extremely innocuous content (Puppy, Kitten, and Lamb vs. ordinary things like lamps and blankets) under horror genre rules, so there is that.
I absolutely have more books planned!
I have one in my back pocket to cover me if health gets in the way of a steady release schedule, two in progress, and will be continuing the series that this particular book is in . . . hopefully, this year. ^_^
* unashamedly so.
Ana: Where can readers obtain a copy of your book for them to enjoy? How can they contact you with any thoughts or questions? And do you have a means by which they can "sign up" to be notified when your next book comes available?
Jenna: My books are available at Amazon, Smashwords, and DriveThruFiction/Comics/RPG.
I’m available on gplus as Jenna Katerin Moran (here), and people can generally catch my attention by commenting on my blog. That’s probably also the best place to check to find out when my next book will appear.
To find the book, hm! Here’s a Smashwords link, since it’s a nice simple link and Smashwords has practically all possible ePub formats: Fable of the Swan, at Smashwords.
^_^
Ana: Thank you. I understand you have the first chapter of your book available as an excerpt for interested readers? Is there anything else you wish to add for our readers?
Jenna: No, thank you! I appreciate your offering this opportunity.
As for the excerpt, you can find that on Smashwords too (in HTML or ePub; I’ve set it to make the first 40% of it readable for free).
As for adding something for our readers---thanks for your interest! I hope that if you buy my book it brings you some happiness. ^_^ I guess I also hope that you find happiness even if you don't buy my book, but that seems a little stingy of you in your magical castle of happiness. Think of . . . of . . . um, me!
Best wishes,
Jenna
If you are an indie author interested in being interviewed, please read the interview policy here.
17 comments:
Ooh. That looks like a lot of fun.
^_^ I hope you find it so!
The story looks interesting, but holy crap that girl's face on the cover is freaking me out. I think it's mostly the all-black eyes, but the creepy smile is definitely contributing.
Haha!
The eyes are sometimes kind of mean to artists, I think, although after a while of working with artists on similar things I'm starting to get a sense of how they should best be handled. They're actually not quite all black---
“Your eyes are gone,” she said. I tried to freak out but I wasn’t awake enough. I tried to flail my arms but they weren’t really responding. My self-awareness sickened but I couldn’t even get my heart to race. I managed a bit of a blink. “There’s just night and stars,” she said. “May I?”
She was reaching out a finger. She was going to poke me in the eye. I wiggled my head vigorously in negation. She sighed.
“It’s just an interesting perceptual effect,” she said. “I’d like to know if it’s an optical illusion or some sort of portal, and whether they’re a flat plane or a rounded object.”
“Some things,” I said hopefully, “should be a mystery.”
--and in the full-definition cover, which, admittedly, there's no real way to see until one day I do a print version, you can kind of see interesting galaxy formations in there.
In the bigger picture, I can reassure you that if you ever meet her in a dark alley, the fact that you're meeting fictional characters in dark alleys is your biggest problem and the fact that you're in her company is a much smaller one. ^_^
Hmmm...
My interest in Exalted and Nobilis (and Jenna Moran's work thereof) suggest to me that at least an attitude behind or within this would be of interest to me.
I wonder if it's wrong to define interest in an author by what may be only tangentially related work?
Well, either way, I'll be keeping an eye out for it.
Hm.
Is it a bad thing that I skimmed past the cover image with the vague thought of "oh, she has pretty eyes?"
Now that I go back and look at it, sure enough.
“Some things,” I said hopefully, “should be a mystery.”
Ahahaha! Now I really want to read this! XD
> I wonder if it's wrong to define interest in an
> author by what may be only tangentially related
> work?
There are some that whisper that that was the real sin of Susan Pevensie; but there are others who say that the only real path to Heaven is to define interest in an author by what may or may not be only tangentially related work. "When ye think of that bit with the duck that also walketh on water," said the LORD, "then thinketh thee also of me."
In this particular case, though, this book is directly tied into what will hopefully be a forthcoming low-powered (~9 CP) Nobilis setting, so...
> Is it a bad thing that I skimmed past the cover image with
> the vague thought of "oh, she has pretty eyes?"
Absolutely not! There is nothing wrong with somebody having eyes that are just windows onto night and stars, as long as they don't leave them open and let the bugs in.(*)
(*) I don't think they can actually do that. At least, I hope not.(**)
(**) because if there's one thing worse than mosquitoes,(***) it's extracosmic alien mosquitoes flying into your bedroom at night out through somebody else's eyes.
(***) there are actually 1,423,247 things that are worse than mosquitoes. I counted. But that's not important right now!
There may be things worse than mosquitoes, but I rather doubt there are things worse than extracosmic alien mosquitoes. *shiver*
I'll admit, I made my comment without really reading the interview, mostly on the basis of the name Jenna Moran.
When I actually looked at some of the stuff you said was [i]in[/i] the novel, I realized that it was the kind of thing that would have piqued my interest all on its own, even if I hadn't been familiar with the author.
So yes, pushing all the good buttons is more important than past familiarity with the author.
Although, I suppose technically the whole reason such familiarity should be relevant is because that writer already has the talent for things that catch my interest, and...
Arrrgghh, it's some kind of horrible mind loop! I'm just going to get the book.
> There may be things worse than mosquitoes, but I rather
> doubt there are things worse than extracosmic alien
> mosquitoes. *shiver*
What are your feelings on extracosmic alien mosquitoes wearing tiny hats?
> Although, I suppose technically the whole reason such
> familiarity should be relevant is because that writer
> already has the talent for things that catch my interest, and...
>
> Arrrgghh, it's some kind of horrible mind loop! I'm just going
> to get the book.
Yay! The writer thanks you for your interest. ^_^
... dang. Now I'll be going around speaking in third person "The author says this" and "The author dramatically unfurls . . . her umbrella!" all day.(*)
Best wishes,
Jenna
(*) it's a clear plastic umbrella, mostly, so the reader might not realize what I'm doing, otherwise. But it does really exist! It's not like, an invisible umbrella that only people of wisdom can see or anything. You can't buy those in Taiwan. I've only ever seen them on sale in Death Valley, and I'd already spent all my money on a rod and a staff to comfort me.
Post a Comment