Legendary fantasy writer Raymond E Feist spoke to Sarah Lotz about Magician’s End, George RR Martin, killing off his characters and what he’s working on next.
“Raymond E Feist. The legend,” Lotz said. “I just want to say, thank you for making my childhood so brilliant. I was reading you as a child, and my daughter is now reading you. So thank you very much.”
“That’s lovely,” Feist said.
Feist’s big breakthrough was Magician, published in 1982. He revealed that when his agent called him, he said “Magician is a really big book”.
“I thought, okay he’s going to ask me to cut stuff. But he said, ‘But I think it could be bigger.’
“So he said, ‘We need this’, and we did a shopping list, and about a week later I sent him a thing and said ‘This is what I’m going to do’. In the original draft there was no Murmandamus. He said, ‘I want a character in disguise’. There was no Squire Roland. He said, ‘Pug needs a foil where Carline’s concerned.”
“So that was all your editor?” Lotz asked, incredulous.
“Yeah. Well he told me what he wanted, I had to figure out how to do it,” Feist said. “And that’s when Jimmy said, ‘I’m not getting off the stage. I’m here, I’m digging in, and you can’t get me out with nukes!’
“And of course he became easily one of my most popular characters ever. The big three, okay, there’s Thomas and a couple of others, but my heavy-hitters are Pug, Arutha and Jimmy. I could have written a complete Jimmy the Hand franchise. I could have written 20 books on that guy.
“So, anyway, I spent about three months writing all the stuff my agent wanted in Magician, and then my phone rang and he said ‘Great! Exactly the book I want! Now cut 50 000 words.”
Feist is currently working on a new trilogy, and says it’s causing him some headaches.
“I’ve got a book that’s really biting me on the butt. I’m fighting with this thing because it’s so many years since I’ve done the first book in a new world? Anyway, it’s called King of Ashes, and it’s a three-act play so there’s going to be three, King of Ashes, then King of Embers and King of Fire. And I didn’t realise until I put that title on that everyone goes: ‘Oh, it’s like Game of Thrones!’. Yeah. It’s just like Game of Thrones, but with show tunes.
“But you were killing off characters long before George RR Martin,” Lotz interrupted.
“People think that because George went off and did TV for a number of years. But I think George’s first novel Fevre Dream [Martin’s first is actually 1977’s Dying of the Light – ed.] came out about the same time mine did. I met George back in 1984 and he’s a really terrific guy. Very bright and a very gifted writer. But he went off and did TV, he was the headliner on Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. And then he got tired of Hollywood and decided to go back to writing novels. And then he wrote A Song of Ice and Fire. And the world shuddered.
“I mean, I’ve killed a lot of characters too, but not like that maniac!”
An audience member took the opportunity to ask Feist if he enjoyed killing off his characters:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Our editor Jennifer Malec covered the gig:
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Book details
- Magician’s End by Raymond E Feist
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EAN: 9780007264797
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- The Three by Sarah Lotz
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EAN: 9781444770360
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