An Interview with David Butler,
author of the Witchy War series, and much more
Please tell me a little about your current
work in progress.
I am
currently writing Serpent Daughter,
which is the fourth book in the Witchy War, and commences its second trilogy.
Sarah Elytharias Penn fights a two-front war even as her body is wrecked and
dying due to her overuse of magic. Her brother Nathaniel and sister Margaret
try to reconcile with their estranged uncle, and the giants of the north arise
from their ancient quiet to bring their founding myths to life.
Where did you get the idea for this book or
series?
The
Witchy War is a fairy tale about my own three children, wrapped inside American
folklore and organized as an epic fantasy. It’s also in part inspired by the
Thirty Years War, and by the classic work of historical anthropology, Albion’s Seed.
Do you write in more than one genre?
Yes. I
also have a middle grade series published with Knopf (The Kidnap Plot and sequels), and YA dystopian novels (Crecheling and sequels), The Cunning Man, which is occult
detective, or, as I prefer to think of it, the urban fantasy of the old, weird
America, City of the Saints, which is
steampunk, and the forthcoming novels In
the Palace of Shadow and Joy (which is sword and planet adventure, or a
pseudofantasy noir tale) and The Wilding
Probate (which is a thriller).
Tell me about something that you believe
makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.
I incorporate actual songs, with genuine melodies and chord structures, into nearly all of my books. My fantasy writing tends to build on genuine real-world folk magic, or real-world anthropological thinking about magic—I think that so-called ‘hard magic’ is a betrayal of the fantasy genre, nonsense on stilts, and a spent force. I love indirect world-building by the inclusion of artifacts and in-world documents rather than by exposition.
Is there anything about your personal history
or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?
I suspect
there are many, many things. Lawyers and bankers and entrepreneurs are maybe
unusually prominent in my writing, as they have been prominent in my various
careers. My interest in languages shines through, especially in an epic like
the Witchy War, in which numerous real-world languages poke through, not to mention
some imaginary language. I’ve got a mystical bent, and I tend to believe that
mortality is a constant experience of taking action despite uncertainty and
unreliable information, and I think that all manifests in my stories.
What else would be helpful for readers to
know about you?
To
paraphrase something Greil Marcus wrote of Bob Dylan, you can’t understand my
serious writing unless you realize that it always contains at least a little
bit of humor, and you can’t understand my jokes unless you realize that they’re
always dead serious.
Excluding your own work, what underrated
author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?
My
favorite living writers are Tim Powers, for his secret histories, with their
madcap fantasy reimaginings of real-life figures, and Neal Stephenson, for his
ambition tackling of serious, big ideas. I also highly recommend a number of
current indie writers, including space opera adventure writer L.J. Hachmeister
and pulp novelist David J. West. I love people with idiosyncratic visions, and
I should throw in one more, in that vein: Steven Peck writes cerebral,
grotesque semi-fantasies deeply rooted in his native small-town eastern Utah,
such as The Scholar of Moab and Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats.
Which of your books do you most highly
recommend? Why?
I expect
different readers will prefer different books of mine, depending on their age,
genre preferences, and other factors. I myself have no favorites. I’m happy for
people to buy and like them all.
Which break, event, decision, or fortuitous
circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?
Getting
published by Toni Wesskopf.
What question do you wish you would get asked
more often?
Q. “Dave,
is that a Dukes of Hazzard reference?”
A. “Yes.”
Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that you
like? What is it? And why do you choose it?
I
recently bought the posthumous Leonard Cohen album. Like all posthumous albums,
it’s a mixed bag that should probably only be bought by completists and real
fans, but it opens with a great couplet:
I was always working steady, I never called it art
I got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx
I like
that refusal to specialize, and the demurral to the artist’s claim to be a
chosen or blessed person. The game belongs to those who do the work.
Is there anything you wish you had known about the writing
and publishing business before you got into it? If so, what?
I wish I had really clearly understood
that, as a writer, I'm the CEO and shareholder. Agents and editors are joint venture partners, but if you as a writer treat them like your bosses, you will
not get what you want out of your writing career.
Can you tell me something you have discovered to be extremely
important about the writing/publishing business?
There's way more luck involved than any
successful writer or publisher really wants to admit. After luck, persistence
is the most important thing. Skill's not even third, it's somewhere farther
down the line.
What advice would you give to writers who are struggling to
get book sales?
Keep going. Damn straight, it's hard.
No one can defeat you but you.
Is there anything you miss about leaving the law/banking
business?
Well, I'm still involved in some of
that. In fact, in 2020 I'm starting a new consulting business in the field. One
thing I enjoy about my work as a lawyer / trainer / consultant is that there
are times when I know I've made a difference for someone, whether that means I
helped a startup raise capital, or I taught someone to understand their
financial statements, or I helped close a big acquisition -- those things have
real-world effects that are often immediate.
I see that you do a tremendous amount of traveling, do you
feel that's necessary to help your book sales, or do you do it for other
reasons?
I do it for my day job(s); I travel to
train, and meet clients, etc. But given that I must travel, I make good use of
that time -- as of this writing, I believe I've visited 43.9% of Barnes &
Noble stores in existence, to sign stock and give a book to a staff member. In
that same travel, I also arrange more formal signing events, and I have lunch
with readers, and I go to conventions. If you want your book to be read, you
must sell somehow, and it's efficient to use synergies with your day job and
other activities to do so.
Do you know if anyone has ever compared your writing to that
of Orson Scott Card? And what would you say to anyone attempting to make such a
comparison?
That comparison has been made, and
there are at least two aspects in which it's an apt comparison (maybe more than
two). First, his Seventh Son and sequels are an important inspiration
for the Witchy War series, both in terms of being set in a frontier America kind
of setting, but also in terms of the kind of fantasy world-building they
contain. The Witchy War is not conventional alternate history, instead it's a
kind of funhouse mirror reimagining of North America, and that's true of Seventh
Son, also. And secondly, Card more or less openly brought Mormon history
and themes into speculative fiction, in Seventh Son, but also in his
Homecoming Saga. Without those predecessors, it's tough to imagine that I could
have gotten, for instance, The Cunning Man (which is a fantasy novel set
in 1935 about a Mormon wizard battling the demons of the Great Depression)
published.
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