The Wild Drive-by: Elspeth Cooper

Songs of the Earth is the first book of the Wild Hunt series and is also Elspeth Cooper‘s debut novel. T’is being compared with The Name of Wind and that cannot be a bad thing. US rights have been picked up by Tor and the second and third books, Trinity Moon and The Dragon House will be along momentarily. Here she opts for being inscrutable all day and siding with pecan maple danishes.

A rather lovely book trailer is here:

1. You get to be your favourite fictional character for a day, going anywhere and anywhen – where do you go, what do you do and who’s your companion?
Oh, good question. Never been asked that before. I quite fancy being Harry Dresden’s cat, Mister. I’d just be inscrutable all day; maybe stare meaningfully at things nobody else can see until it was time to chase something squeaky. I’d love to know what cats really think about humans. A companion? Dude, cats like Mister walk alone ;o)

2. Where did the idea for The Wild Hunt series spring from?
It sprang from a single scene: Gair alone in the dark, wrestling with the magic and slowly losing control. I’d been tinkering around with some themes, not sure what to do with them, and then he sprang out of my head and onto the page and suddenly it became his story. The more I wrote the more those big themes started crystallising around him. It was like finding that vital corner piece of the jigsaw, and suddenly all the fragments started to make sense.

3. If I wasn’t a writer, I would …
. . . probably be unemployed! I had no idea what I would be when I left school, and sort of fell into a job at a financial software house. I ended up staying there for 21 years and got too comfortable to leave, until I had to quit due to ill-health, which rather limits my career options.

In an ideal world, with no disability, I think I’d like to be an archaeologist.

4. What makes a character irresistible?
Frailty. Something that makes you think “That could be me . . .” It’s the flaws that make them real.

5. Donuts or danishes?
I have to choose?! Danish, almond ones. Or maple pecan.

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