Amazon.co.uk:
You have always written about heroes, the varieties of heroism and
the dash and style that go with heroism.
David Gemmell:
It goes back to my mother, who was an outrageous woman, a single
mother in a period when that made you a pariah on the outside of society. She
was a cockney who taught herself Revived Standard Pronunciation and went on the
stage. She told me stories when I was a child; Horatius on the bridge was a
great favourite and she was keen on stressing the importance of style. From her
I got my love of history and myth; she also raised me to be something of a
poser and told me never to rush into a room but to pause in the doorway for
maximum effect. When I was 14, fat and knock-kneed, she called me for an
audience in the bedroom where she was lounging and sent me off to a friend of
hers. He showed me how Yul Brynner, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum walked, and
asked me which walk I wanted to learn as a way of getting rid of the knock
knees. I opted for a combination of Wayne and Brynner.
Growing up in West London, I knew my share of gravel-voiced hard men
and later on, as a journalist, I interviewed mercenaries and members of the
SAS. What they had in common was a sort of focus, a capacity to break a job or
a crisis down into the immediate next thing to take care of with no thought
about long-term risks. They also had in common a refusal ever to bluff. One of
them tossed me a coin once and said to catch it, and I did; he then said to
imagine he had a gun to my mother's head and to catch it, and I said that would
be harder. But it would not have been for him. I used that scene in
Waylander, of course. Jon Shannow, in The Jerusalem Man
, is largely based
on a friend of mine who ended up in jail for armed robbery. When I was a young
journalist, I wrote about a Rachman-style landlord who threatened me; just
round the corner from a café he owned, I was jumped and beaten and
hospitalized. My friend went to his café, which was full of his men,
checked which one of them was him, and then laid into him with a length of
pipe, facing down the others. I knew people like that, so I write about
them. Amazon.co.uk:
You grew up in the city and live in the country; there is a
town/country opposition in your work
Gemmell:
My mother had a friend, a man with waist-length hair in the 1950s,
who used to lie on the grass with his shirt off to absorb the energies of the
Earth. He told me that stone blocks were magic and I suppose that is what I
think.
Amazon.co.uk:
You write about the defence of traditional ways of life...
Gemmell:
I want the work to speak for itself, implicitly. "He that has ears
let him hear." I don't like to talk about the ideas of the work too much...
Gemmell:
You have always written series and have tended to have more than one
on the go at any one time.
Gemmell:
It is all to do with marketing. I did not particularly intend to be
a fantasy writer but after I wrote Legend
, they asked me for another
fantasy novel; and after I wrote King Beyond the Gate
, it narrowed down
further to another Drenai book. If readers and publishers like what I have done
in a single book, then I will do it again. My books are always intended to have
the capacity to stand alone--the Stones of Power
books are only linked
by the stones, the Rigante
books by the Rigante people at various
points.
Amazon.co.uk:
Do you do much research?
Gemmell:
I used to write everything out of my own head and now I hire
researchers to keep track of what I have already said. What I do research for
myself is simple things, like how to steal a bull. I am not someone who does a
year of research before writing--that would bore me to tears.
Amazon.co.uk:
You write very good action sequences--do you visualise them in your
head in advance?
Gemmell:
I used to box and fence and I have a strong sense of fighting as a
series of moves. I collect weapons and I work out action sequences with them in
my back garden, preferably when the neighbours are not watching.
Amazon.co.uk:
Your books have a tremendous sense of the heft of weapons, of their
physical feel.
Gemmell:
That is what is important about them, as often as not. If you want
to know how the Romans conquered the known world, the answer is the gladius,
the short thrusting sword they used. An 18-inch blade that you push forward is
different from a three-foot blade that you slash with--it means that you can
stand shoulder to shoulder in a wall, where a slashing glaive keeps you six
foot apart from your comrades in each direction. No matter how the Celtic
armies outnumbered the Romans, at the point of contact of the lines of battle,
it was three to one in the Romans' favour. You can't learn to drive by being
told about it; you have to get in the seat and have the wheel and the brake to
hand: you have to hold a weapon to know how it felt. Collecting weapons has
another advantage--I have a friendly rivalry with Terry Pratchett about sales
and prestige. He rang me up to say that they were going to name a fossil turtle
after him and asked what I had to say about that. And I could say that I had
just bought a Winchester that Wyatt Earp probably used.
Amazon.co.uk:
Your work has brought you money and a measure of fame...
Gemmell:
Things that can change people for the worse. Since my books started
selling, I have been able to buy an ordinary house in an ordinary
neighbourhood--anything more would be bad for me. I had a taste of the good
life when I was not well-known, and I learned my lesson. When I was editor of
the local paper, I would get to book myself hotel rooms; then, when I was
editor-in- chief, assistants would book me junior suites. Then I got to be
managing editor and would be booked larged suites--and once I got given a
single room and made a terrible fuss and got compensated. I mentioned this to a
friend, who pointed out that I had become the sort of pompous prat I used to
mock. Grace is one of those things you lose if you don't use it. One day my
books will stop selling and I will go out of print and be forgotten; people
will be surprised that I used to be a writer. While it lasts you can enjoy it
but keep your feet on the ground.
Amazon.co.uk:
Do you plot your books in advance?
Gemmell:
I never have much of a clue where my books are going. In the present
one, I have two characters from the Rigante people and one of them is going to
steal that bull, and that is all I know. I need the excitement of not knowing
how a scene works out until I write it. The difference between now and my early
books is that I rewrite and reshape more. I have to work at a craft that used
to be spontaneous.
Amazon.co.uk:
You have an interest in real history.
Gemmell:
The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing. We are
not brighter and better than those who came before us; everything that
Machiavelli said in the early Renaissance is true today. I tend to write about
what ought to have been, rather than what was--alternate histories in which
things worked differently. The Celts gave the Romans a bloody nose early on.
Nit Tjeu were not interested in empire amd were doomed by that.
Amazon.co.uk:
Are there cusp points in history and how do they work? In the Indian
Civil Wars of the early 17th century, a crucial battle between a humane Sufi
prince and his intolerant bigot brother was won because the Sufi fell off his
elephant.
Gemmell:
Machiavelli points out that love is a gift given the prince by the
people and fear is something he can demand from them; and therefore it is
better to be loved than feared. If a ruler who is loved falls off his battle
elephant his people may well panic; if a ruler who is feared falls off he has
probably given them contingency plans and they will be terrified of what he
might do if they do anything wrong. As a journalist, I saw nice guys finishing
last; I like to construct histories in which that is not true, at least for a
while--in most of my worlds, any triumph by good is going to be temporary.
Amazon.co.uk:
You have had some very bad reviews.
Gemmell:
I write about love and honour and courage and the spiritual and I
get dismissed as a hack and slay writer. It would be annoying, if I let it be.
As it is, I prefer to think of the readers who write in and tell me how my
books help them endure life...
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