An Interview With G.S. Valiant

Not a review for this Thursday Book Reviews, but rather an interview with the author of the book I reviewed last time. The interview was done via email, and I have edited slightly for formatting. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you give the book a read. It was fun and thoughtful.

1. The novel has a wealth of ideas and parallels to our modern day world, everything from the pervasive sexism, especially in tech, to the power of monopolies, to AI, to resource depletion, to the place of violence and non-violence in protest movements. Your world is also very close to ours -- modern seeming technology, modern economic systems, modern business structures. Why, then, did you choose to create a second world fantasy rather than place the story within our world?

One of the great things about secondary world fantasy is the ability to take a question from our world and explore it in a new setting. In my case, the question was: what if magic was a commodity controlled by a monopolistic capitalist entity? Trying to cover all the real-world history and issues behind our modern form of capitalism in one narrative wouldn’t have done it justice, so choosing a secondary world was really a way to control the scope of the story.

At the same time, the flip side of choosing a secondary world is it creates a gap between the reader and the story. I wanted readers to feel like these were real people and real events, which was why I went with a lot of familiar concepts.

Also, one of the things I learned while writing this book is that a lot of what we consider “modern” technology and ideas were invented a long time ago—the Dutch East India Company, a precursor to modern public companies and one of the first monopolies, was founded in 1602. Yet, no one minds if your fantasy setting is inspired by 1600s Europe!

2. Given the number of ideas, how many of those ideas were central to your concept of the story and how many fell out of the world building, feeling necessary to the world? The sexism seems load bearing for example, while the quasi-AI console alchemy versus hand-crafted alchemy feels like a grace note. Is that an accurate assessment, or did you choose to all of the ideas that populate the books specifically to highlight themes, etc?

One of the seeds that inspired Alchemists of Dawn was a conversation I had with my mother not long before she retired. My mom and I are both women in STEM who work in male-dominated fields, and what struck me was how she was still encountering a lot of the same problems and attitudes I was, even though she was coming to the end of an unquestionably successful career. That was the story I really wanted to tell, so yes, the depiction of sexism in the workplace was crucial.

Most of the other ideas were more or less extrapolated from the concept of magic as a commoditized resource. The comparisons between console alchemy and AI are perhaps unavoidable today, but a lot of those debates go back to the Industrial Revolution and the decline of artisan craftsmanship.

Ultimately, my goal was to write a good story, not a nonfiction book. The narrative was built around a couple of important ideas, and everything else was just there to support the story.

3. There is a running discussion between the leadership of the Dawnbreakers and Arjan about the value and danger of violence in resistance/protest movements. The mechanics of the the story make violence required at some points. That could be read as supporting the necessity of violence to spur change. Was the intentional? How do you see the argument between violence and non-violence?

The mechanics of the story do make violence required at some points, but I also wanted to explore the idea of characters who were uncomfortable with said violence. There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years about the necessity of violence in enacting change in both academic and cultural circles, which I encourage readers to look up. However, one thing that’s always bothered me about these debates, especially on social media—famously not a place where nuance thrives—was how violence is often talked about in an idealized way by people who are unlikely to see its effects first-hand. It was important to me to have characters who thought deeply about these topics and resisted the impulse to inflict violence, and to show the consequences—both good and bad—of those decisions.

4. The book includes a romance between older characters, something not that common in modern media. Why did you choose to add that romance to your work?

I think there is a growing appetite for older protagonists in fantasy, which as an aging millennial I’m thrilled to see! Adventures shouldn’t end when you hit 25. I’m lucky to have a wide circle of friends, and I know plenty of people in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s who are still trying new things, learning new skills, and yes, falling in love! I will say I did not envision that romance arc in the beginning, but as I was writing the story, it sort of came naturally. It was one of those instances where my characters surprised me, but in hindsight I should probably have seen it coming.

5. The novel is largely through the viewpoint of two participants in the system, two beneficiaries (at least to a certain extent) of the existing structure. And while other experiences are present, there is no point of view form someone more directly affected by the worst of the system. Why were your drawn to the at least partially (their gender obviously separates them to some degree from the power structure) insider perspective in your world? What were you hoping to explore and what were you hoping, if anything, the readers would see in that perspective?

I was really interested in exploring the conflict inherent in characters who have overcome real challenges to advance in a system that wasn’t built for them, but also contrasting that against their complicity by participating in the system. In part this came from me thinking about the advances women and minorities have made in STEM. These achievements are worth celebrating and I’d rather live in a world with more diverse representation in STEM fields, not less, but I also personally struggled to reconcile those feelings with how it often ultimately benefits the existing power structures.

6. The world feels very alive, very complete. Can you discuss the process of creating that world? What is, to you, the most important aspects of creating a believable world?

Thank you! Worldbuilding is often a tricky and subjective thing. I’m still figuring out my process, but the way I approach it is I build around a couple of main concepts. In Alchemists of Dawn I focused on two ideas: the existence of a large monopolistic company that controls magic, and magic as a commoditized resource that functions pretty analogously to modern technology. Everything else came out of that: a city with a large and diverse migrant population, the existence of an educated middle class, the tech and supply chains that support the world, etc.

For worldbuilding in general, I subscribe to the “hollow iceberg” approach which I believe is a term coined by Brandon Sanderson. This approach means you build just enough to give the illusion of a fully fleshed-out world. Personally I get more excited about characters and plot than worldbuilding, so I prefer to only do just enough to support the story.

7. Can you talk a little about the process that lead to Alchemists of Dawn being written and then published?

I used to read and write a ton of fantasy as a kid, but like many people I put those dreams away when I went to university and then started my career. During the pandemic, however, I started to read fantasy again and was thrilled to discover how much the genre had changed in the intervening years—instead of the same sword and sorcery and Chosen One tales, we now had a multitude of niches and diverse perspectives.

After a few years of devouring books, I eventually began to toy with the idea of writing my own novel again. I tinkered with a few ideas, but Alchemists of Dawn was really the first one that stuck. When I started writing it in late 2024, I simply wanted to see if I could finish the first draft, which I did in 5 months. I also inhaled a bunch of resources about craft and publishing—anytime I wasn’t at my day job or writing, I was learning. I ended up spending the rest of the year revising the manuscript, which was a painful but ultimately very rewarding learning experience. I think I went through 8 drafts, not including all the additional corrections I caught at the last minute.

In terms of the journey to getting it published, I went back and forth on whether I wanted to try traditional publishing, or if I wanted to publish independently. Ultimately I landed on indie because it was important to me to control whether my books ever saw the light of day, which is something you don’t have control over in trad publishing. It helped that I had enough professional experience to be confident that I could put out a polished, high-quality product that would meet reader expectations.

8. What do you think you gained, and what do you think you lost by having a multi-point of view story as opposed to a single point of view? Do you have a preference, or does the work dictate that choice and if so, how?

I don’t think I lost anything by having multiple POVs, in fact I’m very glad I did it and I think it made the story richer. It did make the storylines MUCH more complicated, and it showed in my word count. All my subsequent projects have been single POV and I can tell you they are a lot simpler and shorter! But in this case, the mother-daughter relationship was important for me to explore, and having both POVs made for a much better story.

9. What is the best and worst craft advice you have ever received?

The best craft advice I’ve received is to just finish the first draft! It’s OK if it sucks, it just has to exist. Most people find editing easier than writing, and you can’t edit words that aren’t there. But also, I’ve noticed that I generally don’t discover a story’s deeper themes until I get quite a ways in, so for me it’s far more important to have a terrible first draft than to spend endless amounts of time perfecting it from the start.

The worst craft advice is probably anything that says you must “always” or “never” do something. I take any black-and-white advice with a huge handful of salt. There is an exception to everything, and a lot of craft advice is highly dependent on a writer’s individual situation.

10. What is the best and worst advice on the publishing industry you have received?

I think the best advice is to write the story you want to tell, not chase trends. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work to improve the marketability of your ideas, but you should be writing something you enjoy—no one will read your book more than you will, and the process of writing a book can take a long time, so don’t write something you hate just because you think it’ll sell better! By the time you’re ready to publish, chances are trends will have shifted anyway.

The worst advice is that beginner authors should spend a lot of money trying to get published. Don’t get me wrong, some things are fine in moderation (except paying for a vanity press which is never a good idea), but you should carefully vet who the advice is coming from and what they stand to gain from you listening to them. At the end of the day, it’s your book and it’s understandable you’d want to give it the best chance possible, but it’s a good idea to check in with more experienced authors, ideally through a reputable community.

Thanks to Ms. Valiant, and, again, the book was quite enjoyable.

Cross posted to Bookstack