Big 4 With Cels: Garth Nix

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he has worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s books include the award-winning fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen; and the cult favourite YA SF novel Shade’s Children. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence, and The Keys to the Kingdom series. More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world, his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian and The Australian, and his work has been translated into 37 languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

1. Thank you for dropping by Burn Bright and congratulations on the release of your latest novel A Confusion of Princes. For readers who haven’t yet entered the Empire, how would you best describe Khemri’s tale and his world?

I don’t think I could do better than to quote the last line from possibly the best book review I’ve ever had from KIRKUS REVIEWS: “Space battles! Political intrigue! Engineered warriors! Techno-wizardry! Assassins! Pirates! Rebels! Duels! Secrets, lies, sex and True Love! What more can anybody ask for? (Science fiction. 14 & up)”

Returning to my own words, A CONFUSION OF PRINCES is a YA space opera, a coming of age and a ‘becoming human’ adventure story set in a vast galactic empire that is ruled by 10 million artificially augmented superhuman princes who are constantly competing with each other in the hope of becoming the next Emperor. Khemri is one of these princes, and the book is told in the first person, in his voice, as he discovers that being a prince isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be, that life is more complicated than he thought, and perhaps being superhuman isn’t always better than being human.

2. You’re also the Co-founder of Creative Enclave and not only can we experience the adventure alongside Khemri, we can try our hand at the princely life ourselves in the beta version of Imperial Galaxy. Are you an avid gamer yourself?

I am avidly interested in games and game design, and I look at lots of them, but I don’t play anywhere near as much as I would like because I simply don’t have time. IMPERIAL GALAXY is, unfortunately, pretty much a stalled beta test, because we ran out of money several years ago and weren’t able to raise more to continue development. So it is only a kind of limited taste of what we hoped to achieve.

3. You are currently working on CLARIEL: THE LOST ABHORSEN which returns readers back to the Old Kingdom and is slated for a 2013 release. Are there any plans to continue with the series after Clariel?

Yes. But if I told you, then I’d have to . . . actually, it has been previously announced that I am going to do another Old Kingdom novel after CLARIEL, one set soon after ABHORSEN. The events in CLARIEL take place several hundred years before SABRIEL when the Old Kingdom is peaceful and settled, at least on the surface, so in some ways it is more of a standalone novel that shares the setting.

4. Which of your characters burns brightest in your mind and why?

They all take turns to burn brightly! I guess they are brightest when they are being written, so whoever is currently mid-story shines the most brilliantly. So at the moment, that would be Clariel. But I’m also working on a few other projects at the same time (not literally at the exact same time, I juggle things around) so that sword and sorcerous duo Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz are also prominent in my mind right now.