Scott Lynch, author of The Gentlemen Bastards sequence, recently sat down with Hypable at New York Comic Con to discuss his creative process, evil Gandalfs, and the intricate depths of his most recent book, The Republic of Thieves.

Can you tell us about the process of writing The Republic of Thieves?

Well, writing The Republic of Thieves was a short and easy process, and I think… okay, that’s a lie. It was the most arduous literary trek of my life, across five and a half difficult years, some of which were just horribly miserable. This book was bisected by the discover that I enjoy a robust case of clinical depression – go me! Oh yeah, then my wife left, and I got divorced. It was awesome.

So there was lots and lots of big fun that happened in the middle of writing this book, so this book took it’s sweet damn time, let me tell you.

I finished writing a version of it several years ago, and frankly that version STANK. Because that version was written by someone who was sick and didn’t know it, and had lost his ability to pay attention to details and didn’t know it, and I had to sort of re-teach myself how to do everything – read, write, and edit – on the other side.

The only consolation for the fact that it took five and half years to finish is that I think it’s a much stronger book for it. ANd of course I’m gonna say that sort of thing, it’s my job to say that sort of thing – “Oh yes, I think that blah-blah-blah flaws are actually features!” But I really think it’s true in this case. I don’t think the book I would have written before is something I would have been proud of, and I don’t think it’s something that would have pleased as many readers as the book already has.

How was writing The Republic of Thieves different from writing the first two books in the sequence?

It’s a different sort of tension, it’s a different sort of anxiety, but there’s none of that elemental fear that, “Oh my God, I can’t do this, I don’t know how people can possibly do this.” I knew that I could structure and complete a novel, and that it would simply happen, it would eventually be a thing – and that removes a lot of worry. In spite of everything that remained, at least I had that to cling to.

The other thing is that on the other side of the divorce and everything else, when I sort of came out of it and reapplied myself to The Republic of Thieves, it was a more careful writing process. I’m proud of The Lies of Locke Lamora and I’m proud of Red Seas Under Red Skies, but I can spot artifacts of sloppy thinking and construction and wording that I wouldn’t use, and choices that I wouldn’t make these days.

And some of this is just the fact that you naturally age away from your own work – it’s an artifact of who you were and what you were when you wrote it, you can’t escape that. But on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph level, I think it’s a tighter book, and I think that comes of paying a great deal more attention to it. I didn’t really have a choice because paying that painful attention to it was essential to the process of learning how to do this again. So it benefited from the circumstances, again, of me having apply myself, shall we say, extra hard.

We meet Sabetha for the first time in this book. What was it like to finally write her into the story?

It was so much fun! I’ve had so much fun keeping her off the stage, I really have. I’ve enjoyed the tortured response of everybody who has been screaming and begging and saying “Oh my God, what’s the matter with you??”

I’m surprised we got to see her this early!

Well, two books is about what I can push it for a character who really is so important! I’d originally tried to fit her into the first book, to fit her into the prologue, and it was simply imbalancing to have her show up once and then not show up again for two books. I decided I would rather not show her at all than show her for a split second and then take her away.

So we had time to evolve. I hope readers – astute readers that is, of course, you’re all astute readers, I love you all equally! – I hope readers have had the chance to sort of wonder whether or not they’re getting an objective picture of Sabetha. Because the only people we’ve heard about her from are Locke, Jean, Calo, Galdo, individuals who are not removed from the situation and who may have relatively biased points of view. So the Sabetha we’re hearing about before we meet her may not actually be her – or it may, it’s up to you to decide!

But it was good to finally unleash her, it was great to finally have her on the page doing her thing. There were several things I was aching, aching, aching to do in The Republic of Thieves and have her strut her stuff is definitely at the top of that heap.

The magi of Karthain make their first grand-scale appearance as well; what was it like to build up that mysterious part of the world?

They’re fun! They’re ominous. They show up in their usual asshole fashion and they have a lot to say, relative to what they’ve said before. And once again, when all is said and done, it’s going to be left to the reader to decide how much of it was truth and how much of it was bullshit.

Some of it in undeniably truth. I tell you this as the voice of the author – some of what Locke’s told is true, maybe all of it is true, maybe some of it is liiiies. It’s your own ride, you make your own decision.

It’s fun to have these sorts of ominous buttheads popping into scenes to be jerks to people, to really have the evil Gandalf figure who knows all, tells nothing, and shows up to basically just tweak a character’s nose and say “Mwahahaha! Now your life is more difficult!”

It’s also a little easy to get carried away with these characters, so I try to keep them off the stage as often as possible…

[The magi] explain themselves and they get a chance to say, “Hey, look at this from our perspective, and ponder some things you’ve never pondered before.” But once again, there are so many things they’re not talking about, there are so many mysteries still on the table. I got to have it both ways – I got to keep them mysterious, and I got to explain a little bit, and I think it’s a good combination. I think it’s a heady combination.

Worldbuilding obviously is a huge part of your job as a writer. Has it changed now that you’re on book four from writing The Lies of Locke Lamora?

Oh, most definitely. [For] The Lies of Locke Lamora, I built so much scaffolding, I did so much research. The professional term for what you’re supposed to build is the “story bible” or the “concordance,” which is a really fancy way of saying a big fucking pile of paper stuffed into a corner of your desk, covered with post-it notes and mouse droppings and cat scratches. And I did that. I’ve got thousands of pages of research and photocopies – hey, remember photocopies? I’m old! – from books at the library – back in my day, libraries were for books!

The thing is is that I’ve reached a point now where I’ve been in this world for so long that I trust myself not to be, not sloppy, but not need to sit down and research for a day in order to write for a day. You reach a point in worldbuilding that you should be familiar enough with the world and its characters that further research and further worldbuilding essentially becomes a way for you to postpone writing.

And at some point you just have to stop faffing around with the background and get on with the story. And I think it’s safe to say that after the five-year gap before The Republic of Thieves, most readers are probably going to be really, really eager for me to get on with the story.

I think that’s true! So how much of the main story in the present, and the history do you have planned out already?

Ninty-five percent of it. I know where they’re going, I know what happens to them, I know what happens in the end, I know how they feel about it, and I know how it all wraps up.

The thing is, I typically discover that maybe thirty or fourty percent of the way into any big project – I think this is just natural to any writing project, and construction like this… opportunities that you did not previously realize existed will become apparent to you. New paths will open up. New character interactions will be possible. You can’t see all the details at the beginning. So there’s always room in the middle for different paths to be taken and different options to be sorted out, but as for where we end up, I always keep a very firm hand on that and I don’t stray very far from where I intended to.

“What follows will be spoilery.
You have been warned.” ->

Okay, so the last chapter of the book is ominous… I felt so bad for [the Falconer’s caretaker] Eganis.

Poor Eganis! He might have been a bit of a jerk, but he was really just doing his job.

So is this a direct lead-in to The Thorn of Emberlain?

Spoilers for The Republic of Thieves and The Thorn of Emberlain! I’m dead serious, you have only yourselves to blame if you keep [reading] and you don’t want to! Because I’m gonna tell you some things!

The Falconer does not return in book four. The Thorn of Emberlain is about the war in the north – the Falconer does not lead directly into it. Something is going to be happening to the magi quietly in the background. Make no mistake, the Falconer is off on a roaring rampage of revenge. He’s gonna get some – but it is not going to be front-and-center for the next book. The Falconer will return in Thunderbolt – I mean, book five – which is when we will really start to see the consequences of what he’s going to do.

But no. The thing about the series that I hope people realize is that I’m structuring it and playing it as a very long game. And that means there are some pieces that get set aside for a book or two and then brought back into play with some force – as the Falconer has in his return at the end of book three. So book four is definitely not, ‘The Falconer strolls onto the stage and starts kicking ass.’ The Falconer needs some time to recover himself, among other things, and it’s still four hundred to one against Team Falconer, so he’s gotta even those odds.

And meanwhile, Locke and Jean get on with their lives, and they get mixed up in the war of session happening in the Kingdom of the Marrows. This book is all about the war.

Ancillary question: Will we see the Navigator again?

The Navigator will return.

Awesome! Will we see Sabetha again?

Oh, hell yes.

Will we learn more about Locke’s first history, the Lamor Acanthus story?

That’s a really good question! In the immortal words of Yoda, “Already know you that which you need.” I don’t know if I’m ever going to layer on any more. The thing is, this stuff exists to be a question. And I don’t know exactly what I might or might not be telling you any further, because as we all know – those of us who have read the third book – the person who was either telling the truth or fucking with [Locke] has been pecked to death by ravens [laughs] and will not be providing any more testimony in the case of Lamore Acanthus.

Part of it is just the practicality of that fact, Locke’s source for this information has been savagely cut off. But there are survivors, and some of them are very close to Patience – ahem, Navigator – and may be able to provide nuggets of further information as to what may have been going on.

So I hope that that is simultaneously spoilery and not-spoilery!

Locke has a very interesting vision when he’s being de-poisoned, of his dead protégé Bug speaking to him in the afterlife. Will we be learning any more about the theology behind the theology?

Well… we are going to learn more. Locke and Jean and other characters are always going to be discussing it, and discussing what they’ve learned, and we’re going to see a little bit more of Locke’s grounding in theology and the theology of the Thirteen – and how it contrasts with the religion of the Vadrans.

The thing with that horrible, horrible scene is that it’s inherently suspect because Locke was dying. Locke was in excruciating pain, under the influence of magic and drugs and poison and his own exhaustion. And so it is not unlikely that in extremis, he may have seen weird shit. People do that all the time.

Speaking as somebody who is not religious… I don’t find it very weird that we have transportive experiences, that we see lights at the end of tunnels, that strange things happen to us when we’re hovering between life and death. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this is actual evidence of greater cosmic mechanisms in place, or whether Locke is just dreaming.

And that’s how I handle the religion in this entire book, in this entire sequence, actually. I’m never going to provide objective evidence for or against the presence of the gods. It’s simply up to the readers to decide – is it all in everybody’s head? Or is their existence self-evident?

Patience says something very interesting about magic possibly summoning something that scared the Eldren away, and it was more of a direct reference to the Eldren than I was expecting. Will we see more of that history in future books?

It is exactly the sort of really spooky idea I love. It hearkens back to a lot of work by people like Ray Feist and Lovecraft that I really, really like and enjoy. I like that kind of spooky shit, I really, really do! So I think there are going to be more hints dropped and more discussion of just what might have happened to this species, or this race, or this culture that vanished twenty or thirty thousand years before Locke’s people walked the earth. Or I should say, before Locke’s people began their history, we don’t even know where they came from yet.

Mwahaha.

But it’s something I enjoy playing with so much, I’m certain I am going to twist it around a little bit and dangle some more awfulness in front of the characters and in front of the readers.

Would you rather be a book, or a computer?

If you’ve ever seen Inspector Gadget, you will remember that Penny had a computer-book, so I don’t think it needs to be a binary question. I would be a computer-book.

About Scott Lynch

At one point or another, Scott Lynch has been (and may still be) a dish-washer, web-designer, office manager and a volunteer firefighter. Scott now lives near Minneapolis with several cats, and frequently visits Boston, another cold city on the east coast which is the home of his partner, fantasy author Elizabeth Bear. You can find out more about Scott and his writing at his website, keep up with his exploits on his blog and follow him on Twitter as @ScottLynch78.

The first three books in the Gentlemen Bastards sequence are available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers.