While comic conventions are associated with comic creators, and celebrity guests out of Hollywood, Comic Con Africa has been broadening its scope of attractions, acknowledging that pop culture has many facets. Celebrating that fact, the event has in the past two years provided a stage for local and international writers working in the genres of fantasy and beyond.
In 2024, that meant best-selling British author and BookTok sensation Samantha Shannon made a surprise appearance at CCA. The creator of supernatural dystopian hit series The Bone Season, and high fantasy The Roots of Chaos (currently comprising The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night), Samantha flew into South Africa by way of a book fair in Hungary, landing on the Saturday morning of Comic Con and proceeded to conduct two days of stage interviews and book signings at the show, before participating at separate events in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.
In the midst of that packed schedule, we were fortunate to sit down with Samantha and talk about various topics, including her favourite storytellers, the difference between writing young adult versus adult literature (or not!), her upcoming projects (one of which she accidentally revealed ahead of schedule), advice for aspiring writers, and even cosplay.
Thank you to the Comic Con Africa organisers, Jonathan Ball Publishers, publicist Mpumi Mgidlana and Samantha herself for making this interview possible.
Tracy (Pfangirl.com): An opening salvo to start off with – Who are the authors that inspire you?
Samantha Shannon: I’ve read very widely since I was a kid. Some of the earliest authors I remember inspiring me are Margaret Atwood, who introduced me to the dystopian genre along with Malorie Blackman, who is a British author who writes a mixture of dystopian and contemporary fiction. Tolkien was quite an early inspiration.
I really love Garth Nix, who’s an Australian author who wrote a book called Sabriel. That got me out of a slump I was in for a few years where I was struggling to read fantasy because felt like there weren’t enough women in it and Sabriel is a really amazing female protagonist. And I love the way that Garth wrote her.
There’s so many! Cornelia Funke was one of my early inspirations to write about dragons. And then a lot of the books I studied at University have fed into my work in various ways.
I know that you studied the principles of film criticism; are there any other storytellers in other mediums that inspire you?
Samantha Shannon: That’s a great question. I think a very underrated form of storytelling is actually video games. I mean, I love film. I really enjoyed studying film criticism at Oxford. I did the Golden Age of Hollywood, which was great fun. There were a lot of stories about mothers and daughters, which I think probably fed into my interest in that subject later, as an author. I really like the films of Pedro Almodóvar, who’s a Spanish director. But yeah, video gaming!
I feel that gaming is often criticised and video gaming is not seen as a great hobby to have, either because people think it promotes violence or it’s a waste of time. For me, gaming is a great form of storytelling, often it’s extremely interactive, and any form of narrative that you’re consuming is great. Games are a big part of that.
Earlier you mentioned that there aren’t enough women in the genre. Traditionally fantasy, especially on the high fantasy side, is very male dominated. But that has changed and obviously we’re seeing a lot more female authors in the spotlight. So, our question is, what do you feel that women writers are bringing to the table that’s potentially different?
Samantha Shannon: I feel like we’re in such a Golden Age of Fantasy at the moment where the genre is diversifying so much, both in terms of gender but also race and sexuality. There’s so much more representation than there used to be and there’s so many more mythologies being represented in fantasy as well. I think the great thing about female authors is that they add such depth into the female perspective. It’s not all, but I’ve read some fantasy books by men where I feel like the female character gets flattened into a stereotype or is sexualized unnecessarily, whereas I think women are, obviously because it’s a lived experience we’ve had, we’re more likely to write flawed and nuanced and complicated female characters. And there’s so many at the moment. So, it feels like a great time to be writing fantasy as a woman.
I’m also really glad I chose to write under my own name. At the time I was published in 2013, I do remember having this conversation with my publisher. We talked about whether or not I was going to use a masculine pseudonym or whether I was going to use something more androgynous, as opposed to Samantha, which is a very obviously feminine name. I did think about it, and sometimes I have wondered if my career would have been different, because I think that a lot of men can be reluctant to pick up work by women because they think it won’t be relevant to them. But I’m actually really glad that I use my own name because I think it’s a way of saying we do belong in this genre.
Women helped create the speculative fiction genre, with authors like Mary Shelley and even Margaret Cavendish, who was one of the very first speculative fiction authors. So I’m glad that I use my own name because I think that helps normalise women writing fantasy.
To chat about your The Roots of Chaos series, those books have been described as having a very different or “challenging” structure. Readers are just dropped it into the story, and there’s various interweaving storylines and viewpoints. How did that creative choice come about for you?
Samantha Shannon: I think all fantasy has a learning curve to some degree. I don’t think anyone should expect to go into a fantasy novel understanding everything straight away. I think for me, that’s the joy of it. It’s like you’re going to a different country or an entirely different world and having to learn all of the customs and the culture, and I think that’s part of the fun of it. But yeah, it can be challenging because there are four intersecting narratives and each character is from a different background. So, it’s kind of like you’re having to learn about four different worlds at the same time. For me, it was the only way to write that novel and to cover the amount of scope I wanted to.
The Priory of the Orange Tree is very much about people from different backgrounds coming together to defeat a common enemy. And that meant that each character needed to have a really rich interior life and to have a rich back story. So, it was just a necessary part of writing an epic fancy. I think most epic fantasies are like that.
It was a bit different from writing The Bone Season series, which is just from one perspective, and I think I still have managed to cover a lot of ground with that. But It’s a different kind of story. It’s very much about Paige, the main character and how she is perceiving the world. I think it would be very different if you could see from the other characters perspectives as well.
I hope that the book is still accessible, and I’ve tried to make it as compelling as possible. But I think readers shouldn’t feel bad if they don’t immediately grasp it, because it is just part of the genre.
Specifically on The Priory of the Orange Tree, it’s the kind of epic fantasy that you could envision as a TV series in the vein of House of the Dragon or Game of Thrones. Have you ever thought or fantasised about your ideal casting choices? Who would you want to play those characters?
Samantha Shannon: I always find it really difficult, because I have such a vivid image of the characters in my own head, that trying to compare them to a real-life person has often been very difficult for me. So, I don’t have a specific fan cast for the majority of my characters. But it’s always really interesting to see who readers cast.
You would rather leave it up to the readers to put out their own projections?
Samantha Shannon: I think that’s another risk when you fan cast and even a risk of kind of having official fan art, to some degree, is that you’re imposing an image of the characters onto the reader, and I think it’s quite nice that everyone is free to imagine the character as they choose.
How does it feel to know that The Priory of the Orange Tree consistently appears on the best LGBT+ fantasy lists? And did you ever receive any pushback on it to say, “Hey, this is too feminist; it’s too queer to be commercially viable?”
Samantha Shannon: I was actually expecting more of that. When I pitched the book to my publisher and I sent them the first 20,000 words or something, I was expecting them to either say it was too niche or that they would pigeonhole it as specifically LGBT fiction without thinking it was going to have universal appeal, and I was a little bit worried about that. I was very pleasantly surprised by how little pushback I received.
Bloomsbury, who’s my UK publisher, they never told me to make it any less gay or to gear it more towards men, for example. They just treated it as they would any other fantasy. They put a lot of work into marketing it, and they didn’t assume that it wouldn’t have global appeal, which was, honestly, really lovely and far more than what I expected.
I was very taken aback when it became big on TikTok because, again, I just didn’t think it would appeal to that many people. It was still important to me to write it. It was a real passion project for me. But I think it just shows how much the industry has changed. And there are so many more diverse stories that are reaching more readers now.
Looking at your body of work as a whole, are there any characters you wish you could have spent more time with? That you were really sad to move on from? Or, do you have any favourite moments that never actually made it to print?
Samantha Shannon: Interesting question, because I revised my debut series (The Bone Season) this year, so I went back and rewrote all of them. So, some of the moments I wish could have been in there I did actually put in. It was such a great opportunity because sometimes, it could even be like a really small thing. Like, oh, I wish I’d made that joke there and I got to actually go back and do it, which was great fun and very cathartic.
I think, leaving some of the characters behind, with The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night, they were designed to be standalone. I think I probably will go back to them because my idea about the overarching narrative has changed over time, and I probably will revisit those characters in some way. But it was difficult to know that I wouldn’t be writing from their perspective again, at least for very many years. And there was a bitter sweetness to that, for sure.
I’m writing a novella at the moment, which is going to be looking at one of the secondary characters in Priory. She really became quite popular with readers, and it was nice to have a chance to write from her perspective because she’s not really in The Priory of the Orange Tree that much, but she was a character who really intrigued me. So now I’ve been able to go back and you can see what’s happening through her eyes, which was great fun.
These days it’s generally a bit of a grey area, but how do you approach writing young adult literature differently to writing for adults?
Samantha Shannon: Again, this is an interesting question, because officially I don’t write young adult. I write adult fiction, but sometimes my work has been placed into the young adult category. Sometimes depends on where it’s published. Like, in Spain, I think I’m published as a young adult. It seems to depend on what the publisher thinks it is.
From my perspective, I have never intentionally written for young adults, apart from one time when I contributed to an anthology called Because You Love to Hate Me, which was an anthology about villains, which was specifically written for younger teenage readers. I have never really consciously thought about it apart from that, and the only thing I was asked to change in that story was that there was like a secondary character who I envisioned as being in his forties, and they asked me to drop his age to, like, twenties or late teens. I might write young adult fiction one day, but it’s been interesting to see how my work has been categorised beyond what I think of it.
I have noticed that something that happens to female authors quite a lot is that our work is placed into young adult, even if we didn’t intentionally write it that way, which is an interesting phenomenon to observe.
So you’d say it’s more from the publisher’s perspective than anyone else?
Samantha Shannon: My UK publisher published it as adult. But it seems like publishers around the world categorise it differently, and I’m not sure what exactly goes into that thought process. I think most of the time it’s obviously based on the character’s age.
The Bone Season is a bit more of a grey area because the character is 19. Officially young adult, according to the American system, is aimed at 12- to 18-year-olds. So, 19 is sitting on the threshold. But, most of the other characters in The Bone Season are much older than Paige. One of the other main characters is in his late forties, for example. And, then The Priory of the Orange Tree again, one of the characters is 19, but the others are all in their twenties or up. I mean, there’s a protagonist in The Priory of the Orange Tree who’s 64. So, I was very surprised when that was once categorised as YA, but sometimes I just accept there’s certain things about the industry that I can’t control.
Very few people can sit and write fiction all day professionally. So, our question is an advice one for aspiring authors. How do you find time to write when you lead a busy life? How do you fit it all in?
Samantha Shannon: I’ve been very lucky myself that I’ve been able to write full time since I was 21, because I went straight from university into being a full-time author. I was very fortunate that my publisher gave me the financial support to do that, which even when you’re published, that isn’t always the case. The size of authors’ advances and royalties can vary wildly between four figures up to eight figures sometimes.
When I was at university writing The Bone Season, I managed my time very carefully. I would do my university work in the day, and then I would write during the evening, and I was pretty strict about that. Sometimes I would miss out on going out with friends or, you know, doing university clubs and things like that because I was so determined to write this novel. So, I think just managing your time carefully and trying to protect that time as much as possible is a good thing.
I also think it’s worth remembering that you should be kind to yourself in terms of how much writing you can feasibly do. As long as you are writing, you are a writer. You don’t have to write every single day. I don’t write every single day because I’m chronically ill. I get migraines and it really frustrates me when I see other authors or writing professionals who give this very prescriptive writing advice where they say you have to write 1000 words every day, you have to write every single day. You don’t. You 100% don’t. I’m evidence of that. It’s not always possible for everyone to write to the same pattern, just as long as you’re writing sometimes, and you are committed to finishing something, that’s enough.
You mentioned a novella; is there anything else you can tell us about your upcoming work?
Samantha Shannon: I’m not supposed to have mentioned the novella at all! But I’m just chaotic so I can’t say any more about that. I remember, I posted about it on Instagram, and my editor said, you know, we haven’t announced that, right? So, it was just me going rogue.
My upcoming work that I am allowed to talk about… I’m going to be working on the sixth book in The Bone Season series next, the fifth one is called The Dark Mirror and that comes out in February ‘25. So, I’ll be working on the sixth one after that.
Then I’ll be working on a novel inspired by the Greek goddess Iris, who is the goddess of the rainbow and the messenger of the Olympians. I think that’s going to be really fun, because I’ve always been fascinated by Iris, even though she’s a very minor goddess. I’m looking forward to introducing her to more people and writing her a rich story.
Then I’ll be working on Roots of Chaos Three. Again, I can’t say a ton about that, but it’s probably going to be a sequel to A Day of Fallen Night. And then I’ll be working on Bone Season seven. So that’s my next few years.
Our last fun question. You’re at Comic Con Africa, surrounded by cosplayers, being interviewed by cosplayers. If you were going to cosplay any character from any genre, who would it be?
Samantha Shannon: I’ve never done cosplay before. I’ve always thought it’s so cool and people put so much effort into the outfits. I think maybe Arwen from The Lord of the Rings. I always think she’s very elegantly dressed, and I like that she has both her night outfit and her more flowing Anglo Saxon-esque robes. Or maybe Katniss Everdeen, I’ve always thought her Mockingjay outfit was very cool. So maybe that.
