Ian Irvine was born in Bathurst, Australia in 1950. He attended Chevalier College and the University of Sydney earning a Ph.D. in marine science in 1981. He spend time working as an environmental project manager, as well as diving on filthy harbor bottoms investigating pollution. In 1986 Irvine set up his own consulting firm, carrying out environmental studies for clients in Australia and overseas. He has worked in many countries acrosee the Asia-Pacific region. Ian Irvine is considered an expert in marine pollution, he has developed some of Australia's national environmental guidelines. In the early 1980s he led several disastrous expeditions to Sumatra, which is where he got most of his story ideas.

What writer has influenced you the most?

This is a difficult question for me to answer, because I try my hardest not to be influenced by other writers (though I'm sure I am). For example, I've deliberately not re-read Tolkien in the last 20 years because he's such a giant of the genre and it's so easily to be influenced by him. In fact I don't read a lot of fantasy when I'm writing, to avoid influences, but also because a writer in any genre should really read widely outside the genre. Essentially, though, I guess I've been influenced most by writers who are great storytellers.

My aim is to write popular fiction, not literary fiction, and I've always had a love of epic, and fantasy, so it's natural that I should write epic fantasy. My books are really great big adventures, but I never wanted to retread the well-worn path that most modern fantasy follows.

So, my books aren't sent in any analogue of medieval Europe, real or imaginary, or for that matter in any other medieval society that's ever occurred on Earth. In technology level they're more like 17th century, but without the guns.

My tales aren't about the struggle of good vs evil, either. Many writers have done that well, but it's such a predominant theme in fantasy these days, it's become a cliche that makes a book predictable. The View from the Mirror Quartet is really about the struggle between four different human species (I use the word species deliberately, rather than race, because they are different kinds of humans) each of which believes that what they want is right. Santhenar isn't big enough for all their competing aims. In a sense, The View from the Mirror is a Darwinian struggle of survival versus extinction.

Another feature of my books is that women are as free as men are. I've never understood why practically every fantasy ever written has had to re-create worlds where women are oppressed and marginalised, as they were/are for much of our own history. My female characters go out and have adventures of their own, and they don't rely on some hairy-chested man to get them out of trouble. But at the same time they're real women, not women acting just like men.

My characters are also a bit different to a lot of stock fantasy characters: wizard, prince, hero etc. I've never wanted to write about people like that, at least not as main characters. I want to write about characters who live real lives, make difficult choices, get things wrong and sometimes are just plain stupid.

And finally, my world is different. Why does nearly every fantasy ever written have to be set in a recreation of Europe a thousand years ago, with the same vast oak forests, arctic tundras etc. There are so many other interesting environments for our doughty adventurers to struggle through.

Like the Dry Sea, for example. [It's more like a dried up ocean and presently there's no place on Earth remotely like it, though there was a few million years ago, when the Mediterranean Sea evaporated, leaving a salt crusted, lifeless hell about eight thousand feet deep}. I want to take my readers to places they've never been before, like the tar pits of Snizort in my new series.

I guess I've meandered off the question a bit here, but the only answer I have is that I don't really know who I've been influenced by, but I really try hard not to be influenced by anyone.

Favorite book? Favorite Author?

I have lots of those. Among fantasy writers I like the work of Tad Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn), Ursula le Guin (Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness), Wurts & Feist (The Empire Trilogy), Michael Scott Rohan (Winter of the World), Pullman (His Dark Materials) etc. I love Jack Vance's work for his writing style and his exotic characters, cultures and worlds. Outside fantasy, I've recently enjoyed Cryptonomicon and American Gods. I also love Patrick O'Brian's historical books set in the British Navy in Napoleonic times. But I read widely, in every genre, and a lot of non-fiction too. Some titles I've read recently that stand out are Michio Kaku's Hyperspace and Matt Ridley's Genome, which ranks among the most interesting popular science books I've ever read.

How did you get from a scientific background to writing science fiction books? And has your writing been influenced by your scientific background?

Since I'd been a kid I'd loved science fiction, but I always wanted to be a scientist. I had no interest in being a writer, I suppose, until I was at university, but the writing I did in my early twenties was mostly rubbish because I didn't know enough about life. At that time I read Tolkien's work, which I loved with a passion, then virtually every other fantasy ever written. Subsequently I became interested in world-building (a natural interest for someone who was studying geology and then the environmental sciences) and created vast maps of my own fantasy world, with lengthy histories, societies, trade routes, ecology etc, and the beginnings of stories. This was the late '70's. I never went on with that because I was finishing my doctorate, then beginning my career, having a family, renovating a decrepit old house, and so forth.

However by the late '80's, a frustrated creative urge broke free and I began to work on The View from the Mirror, which became a novel in four large volumes. By the time I'd finished the umpteenth draft of it, and finally sold it to Penguin Books in Australia, I knew that I wanted to be a writer and nothing else.

My fantasy books are somewhat influenced by my scientific background ‹ a different way of looking at the world, perhaps. I try very hard to get all the details right, whether it be Karan trekking through a swamp forest infested by leaches, or climbing the great tower of Katazza. For example, where she has to throw a small grappling iron vertically a long way to climb that tower, I did experiments to be sure that what she was trying to do was at least possible. I synchronise the tides with the moon, I carefully calculate the distances people can travel over different terrain, I imagine what it's like when a gate opens from one place to another (differences in air pressure etc).

I also write near-future eco-thrillers (The Last Albatross, available on Amazon.com) which draw much more on my scientific background, but that's another story.

Your writing style is quite refreshing and definitely keeps the reader wanting more. So, where do you get your story ideas from?

I make them up as I go along. I don't usually start with much of a story idea at all, as it happens. I begin with a character in some kind of trouble, in a particular setting, and then write them out of that situation and straight into deeper trouble. Writing the first draft is a voyage of exploration for me, because I usually have no idea what's going to happen next.

Some of your readers may find such work practices offensively chaotic, but in my defence I should add that I have a logical mind and I do many drafts of a work, adding layers, deleting bits that don't work, and developing the characters, the setting and the story as new ideas occur to me. I've also spent twenty years doing technical editing of vast environmental reports, which helps a lot with structure and editing. My problem, in reality, is not getting new story ideas. Rather, it's restraining the ideas, because I tend to have too many of them and want to put them all in, which can make the story more complex than it needs to be.

We are only up to the third book in the View from the Mirror quartet here in the USA. Will the next "3 Worlds" trilogy be about Karan and Llian's adventures, as well?

The View from the Mirror quartet ends with The Way between the Worlds, which I believe is an October 2002 release in the US. That's all there is about Karan and Llian for the time being, but see my comment at the end of this section. My next series, called The Well of Echoes, is also a quartet. It was supposed to be a trilogy but the story grew so large in the third volume that I had to make two of it. It's also set in Santhenar, but some two hundred years after the Mirror Quartet, when the world is greatly changed as a result of what happened at the end of The Way Between the Worlds. After 12 years writing the Mirror Quartet, I needed to get away from the old characters and settings to something different.

The Well of Echoes has a new set of characters, though several of the long-lived ones from the Mirror quartet do make an appearance. The series is up to No. 2 here in Australia, and UK publication begins in September 2002. I've no news on US publication at this stage.

The Well of Echoes
1. Geomancer
2. Tetrarch
3. Scrutator
4. Chimaera

Geomancer Blurb
Two hundred years after the Forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war with the lyrinx - intelligent, winged predators from the void who will do anything to gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and mastery of the crystals that power them, humanity is losing. The enemy is destroying their nodes of power, one by one.

Tiaan, a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, is experimenting with an entirely new kind of crystal when she begins to have extraordinary visions. The crystal has woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful of all the Secret Arts, and the most perilous. Geomancy is likely to kill her before she masters it. It is a talent that allies and enemies alike are desperate to control.

Falsely accused of sabotage by her rival, Irisis, Tiaan flees for her life. She is also hunted by the lyrinx, Ryll, who plans to use her in his dreadful flesh-forming experiments. Only geomancy can save her. Struggling to control her talent, Tiaan follows her visions all the way to Tirthrax, greatest peak on all the Three Worlds, where a nightmare awaits her ...

There will also be three books after that:

The Song of the Tears Couplet

This series follows on from Chimaera, with many of the characters from the Well quartet, but beginning ten years later.

1: The Disequalisation
2: Requiem for a Martyr

The Fate of the Children
This book follows on from a question raised at the end of The Way between the Worlds, and has a number of the characters from the first series, but I won't say any more about it so as not to spoil the ending of The Way between the Worlds.

So, what I'm now calling the Three Worlds series consists of eleven books, of which six are published here and another two in revision. The Mirror quartet and the single novel are closely linked, as are the Well quartet and the pair of novels.

How long did it take for you to write the quartet?

I began it in September 1987 and finished the last edits in April 1999, so it took twelve years, and I worked on it continuously during that time. A long writing apprenticeship, one could say, with upwards of twenty drafts of the first book. Fortunately I learned a bit over that time and these days, writing full time, I write a fantasy novel in about 7-8 months.

The cover art on the View from the Mirror books are simply beautiful. Did you have any input on it?

Quite a lot, as it happens, and we're all exceptionally proud of the covers as they are being used on editions published in eight countries. There were problems with the initial artist and design, so my wife Anne, a designer friend (Barrie Collins) and myself put together a cover design around our kitchen table. Penguin liked it so much they asked the new artist, Mark Sofilas, to use it as the basis of the art for A Shadow on the Glass. I did the design for the symbol on the Mirror, and an initial concept for the glyphs around the border of the Mirror, though these were greatly improved by Penguin's designer, Cathy Larsen. Incidentally, some of these glyphs have been rearranged on the UK and US editions so, unfortunately, they no longer
match up with the puzzle that has to be deciphered in The Way between the Worlds. I didn't discover this until too late.

The cover for the Tower on the Rift is based on pencil sketches that I did (not very good ones, alas, which is why it's the weakest of the four covers). The cover for Dark is the Moon is closely based on Bryce 3D artwork my son Simon did while he was at high school, and the cover for The Way between the Worlds is partly based on Bryce artwork by Simon and my second son, Angus.

What is your writing regimen like? Do you write daily or when the mood hits you?

Both ‹ I love writing so much that I'm always in the mood for it, so I write as many hours as I have available. My normal regimen is to write daily, starting at about 8.30 am and working, with a few breaks, through to about 6 pm. I sometimes do an hour or two in the evening if the family is watching something on TV that I'm not interested in. I write on the weekends, too, though not as much. I guess I put in about a 50-hour week, as a rule.

When doing the first draft of a novel, however, I work much harder than that. I like to write this draft as fast as I possibly can, without ever looking back (turns off the left-brain critic and allows the creative juices to flow unfettered). I will do the first draft of a fantasy novel in about four weeks, writing about 80 hours a week. Sometimes I'll start at 6 am and work through, with breaks, to about 10 or 11 pm. It's incredibly hard work, especially for the first third of a book, but immensely satisfying once it starts to come together.

What do you do when you have writer's block?

I've never had writer's block, if by that you mean a complete inability to write. If I'm having problems with a particular section of a book, I skip it and go on to something else, then come back to the problem area and write myself a series of questions about it. In answering them, I usually find a way around the problem. If not, I do draft after draft of that particular section, printing it out, scribbling comments and changes all over it, typing all the corrections in and doing all that again until I'm satisfied. That usually fixes the problem, but not always. Occasionally I might need to go through this process two or three times with a particularly difficult section or a character I can't get right.

What advice would you give an aspiring writer?

Be prepared to work as hard at it, and as long, as you would to become a concert pianist, a professional footballer, or a lawyer. It takes years and years of hard work to become an accomplished writer.

Lots of people tell me they want to write, but don't have the time right now. But if you only write one page a day, that's a book in a year. If you can't write a single page a day, do you really want to be a writer?

If you want to write,  don't read books on writing, or go to courses, yet ‹ they probably won't be much use to you until you've done a fair bit of writing on your own. Besides, you don't need to learn how to write beautiful, correct prose at the moment. That's not what editors are looking for unless you're writing 'literary', in which case read no further. I'm talking about popular fiction: the stuff that people buy. Write a wonderful story and editors will probably want to buy it even if it's got bad grammar and no punctuation. Poor writing can be fixed, but if there's a lousy story beneath your scintillating prose, no editor will touch it.

Writing, like painting or any other art, can only be learned by doing it, a lot. A painter who has been painting for a year or two is an amateur, and so is a writer. It takes years to learn the craft so you need to get started right away. Think up a character or two, work out where the story is going to take place, and then get stuck into it. Put your characters in an interesting, difficult or dangerous situation and write them out of it, then have them land in an even worse one. Write a bit every day. Don't look back over what you've written, because the editor that lurks inside every writer will find so much to hate that it'll put you off writing. Keep going as fast as you can to the end, then don't look at it for a couple of months. (Don't stop working; write something else).

After the break, start from the beginning and read your story all the way through. You'll find a lot you don't like, but also a fair bit that you do, so then you can start on the real part of writing, which is revising over and over again until you're happy with what you're written. Once you've written that first draft, and revised it a few times, you'll need some help. Editors will probably buy a wonderful story in spite of its other faults, but there's a lot of competition out there and the way to get published is to be more professional than everyone else. Brilliant writers often don't get published; professional ones do ‹ particularly those that never, ever give up.

There are a lot of good books on writing. I've found these to be among the best and they cover just about everything you need to know:

€   On the art of storytelling, Story by Robert McKee.
€   The rules of grammar, punctuation, spelling etc, The Elements of Style by William Strunk & EB White.
€   For advice on editing, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne & Dave King.

Once you've done all that, take the writing course, if you're so inclined, though bear in mind that YOU have to learn your trade, and the more time and effort you put into it, the better your chances.

It takes me (and most writers), the best part of a year to produce a finished book. The first draft of a 600 page book takes me a month or more, but by the time I send it to my editor I will have done another five or six drafts, starting at the beginning and working word by word to the end. And then, working with the editor, I'll do another two or three drafts. It's the rewriting that produces the quality.

As most editors of publishing houses will tell you ‹ don't even bother to show it to them till you've done at least half a dozen drafts, because it's in the redrafting, not the original writing, that you really learn to become a writer. And it takes just as long to become a good writer as it does to become a good brain surgeon, so you need all the practice you can get.

Good luck with it.

© 2002 - 2008 Nevermore Magazine
All rights reserved.