Life is as always very busy, and what’s the best thing to do when you’re busy? Add in something new to work on. With that in mind, I decided to change things up from my normal routine and conduct an interview with an author whose work I admire. This will be the first interview I’ve done on my blog, and I’m happy with how it turned out.
For the first interview, I reached out to author Ed McDonald through his publisher, Tor Books. Mr. McDonald is currently writing the Redwinter Chronicles, which I’m enjoying. The first book in the series, Daughter of Redwinter, was an excellent opening, and the followup, Traitor of Redwinter, deepened and enriched the world in fun ways. I was interested in Mr. McDonald’s thoughts on his books and writing in general. He was very generous with his answers. I hope you enjoy the following interview as much as I did.
Introduction to the Author
The bio from Ed’s website:
Ed has been writing stories since he was a child, and studied history for his BA and MA degrees. He is a practitioner of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), and his love of history has helped to inspire the books that he writes.
Interview
PrimmLife: The Redwinter Chronicles is your second series. The Raven’s Mark was your first. Do you have a preferred reading order for new readers? Or start with either?
Ed McDonald: New readers can start with either trilogy, and though there are definitely some themes and my writing style is similar across both series they’re quite different in pace. The Redwinter Chronicles is a slower burn, though with explosive moments and endings, and deals with themes of loneliness, trauma and coming of age. The Raven’s Mark features an older protagonist and deals with themes of regret, loss of pride, and revolution. There are Easter Eggs throughout Redwinter that a Raven’s Mark reader may spot but neither is required reading for the other.
PL: Are they set in the same universe?
EM: They are indeed (The Ediverse? The McDona-realm?), and there’s even some characters who cross over – but we won’t see them in The Redwinter Chronicles until the third book. I think it’s important not to rely on a past series to be able to enjoy the new one so the references are typically brief one liners to raise a smile.
PL: What similarities or differences did you find between the two series?
EM: The books I write are very much of a place and time for me. When I was writing The Raven’s Mark, I was going through some difficult relationship issues in my personal life, and the books reflect that in the isolation the character feels. It’s one of the reasons that Galharrow, the protagonist of Blackwing, is so reflective of his mistakes, but also striving towards a better future. In The Redwinter Chronicles, Raine is discovering things for the first time and that makes a huge difference to the way the character interacts with the world. Both are told in first person narration, but Galharrow is a 40-50 year old man, 6’6 and weighs 350lbs. Raine is a malnourished 17 year old at the start of Redwinter, and those existences cannot help but influence the type of experiences they have in their battles. Galharrow has done it all before, Raine is seeing and doing it all for the first time.
PL: What did you learn as a writer between the two series?
EM: Most of what I’ve learned is about publishing, the market, the audience and the way the industry works but that’s all quite boring. In terms of writing process, I didn’t learn anything. I don’t have any structure or process (or planning, usually), I just sit down and write.
PL: The Redwinter Chronicles is filled with history, magic, and creatures. (I love the snatterkin, or at least what we see of them.) How much lore creation do you put into your writing? Do you do it beforehand or write as you go?
EM: I don’t do any planning before I start, and the only lore documents I have are just lists of details that I jot down as I go along. It would be very easy to spend a lot of time writing up a world codex but I’d never look at it again, and I’d just make up something new as I wrote. I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, and that’s a great place to do freeform lore development, but everything else I invent as I write it, and even ideas I have before I’m at the computer won’t typically make it to the page. Monsters, magic, most of it is created mid-sentence because that’s when the best ideas hit me, and that’s when I know what they’re for. The Snatterkin, for instance, came about because I wanted to make the path up to Redwinter feel more interesting, but I didn’t know we’d need them, or even that there’d be a scene where Raine is on that path. After that initial creation, the Snatterkin reappear later and the idea expands from there.
There is one exception to this, and that’s the magic system in The Redwinter Chronicles. The system in The Raven’s Mark formed as the story necessitated it to, but in Redwinter it’s so complex that I couldn’t have started writing it without knowing the complexities.
PL: For readers that love this world, will we get stories that explore some of that lore? For example, I loved the dream sequence that began The Traitor of Redwinter and am fascinated by the Riven Queen’s story. (I know this is a greedy question as you haven’t finished the series yet.)
EM: Actually I finished it last week! The third book in the series, Witch Queen of Redwinter (2025) reveals much more of the lore around the dark queens of the past. Everything that happens in the first two books is setting up the finale. Readers of the Raven’s Mark will also recognize the return of a particularly miserable and unnatural location in Witch Queen.
PL: The world from your Redwinter Chronicles is harsh. A brutal death is a very real threat to all your characters. Each cope in their own ways. At the beginning of Traitor of Redwinter, Raine is working on a rose-thistle addiction. Castus attempts to drink the book dry. Yet, not everyone dives into self-medicating. Sanvaunt writes, and he and Liara work on a play. It seems like art provides them an outlet that Raine and Castus don’t have. Do you believe that art and the creative process are a coping mechanism? And do you think they’re as effective as self-medicating?
EM: Art is definitely therapy for me, but people need to cope in whatever way they can. Addiction was definitely a theme I was exploring in Traitor, but these are also characters in their late teens and early 20s. That’s a time of major experimentation in life, and experimentation doesn’t always lead to good choices. Some people get their therapy in the gym, some by work or art, some talk it out, and if all else fails, sometimes the bottom of a whisky glass can get you through a night. I by no way endorse substance abuse, but then, these characters are also dealing with some extreme trauma. Raine is somewhat self-destructive at times, and I think that speaks to people too. We’re often our own worst enemies, and frequently make choices we know aren’t good for us.
PL: Is there an aspect of writing/crafting your stories that you prefer? Character creation? Plotting?
EM: I love writing the drafts, and every part of writing is included in that for me. I enjoy the developmental editing process as well.
PL: Is there an aspect that you dread?
EM: When you’ve finalized the developmental edit, the line edit, and the copy edit, you then get Pass Pages. Copy editing isn’t fun – somebody has checked all your grammar and spelling, and you get to accept, reject or alter what they’ve flagged up. Sometimes a copy editor will unconsciously try to apply their own style which is awkward and leads to rejecting most of their suggestions, so essentially it’s like writing your book back to how it’s supposed to be, but it’s still an essential part of the process. Pass pages are a real drag – that’s the finalized text and you have to read it yet again, searching for typos. That means reading the same book for the seventh or eighth time. I always dread it but then I usually end up enjoying it because ultimately, I like my own books.
PL: What do you hope your readers get out of your books?
EM: My books are essentially character studies with a bunch of action. At the book’s core, beyond magic, world lore and all that cool stuff these are books about people. I hope they feel real. I write because I want readers to feel as I did when I was 16 reading Robin Hobb’s books, staying up until 3am on a school night to finish because the emotional engagement was so strong. That’s the real magic of books to me.
PL: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
EM: A collection of my books makes a fine holiday or birthday gift for friends and family!
But seriously, these books all mean a lot to me and I put a lot of myself into them. I hope readers enjoy Raine’s journey to Redwinter and beyond.
Thanks!
I loved that interview, and I hope you did as well. A huge thanks to Ed McDonald for taking time out of his schedule to answer my questions, and another huge thank you to Jocelyn Bright of Tor Books for making this possible.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.