Big 4 with Cels: Ben Chandler
Ben lives mostly in worlds of his own creation but occasionally misses the real world and comes home to Adelaide. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Flinders University, where he occasionally teaches Creative Writing and English Literature, and has published academic work on popular culture, video game narrative theory, Japanese heroism, anime & manga, and creative writing pedagogy. In 2010 he was awarded the Colin Thiele Creative Writing Scholarship from Carclew Youth Arts Board and was a finalist in the Channel 9 SA Young Achiever Awards. Ben loves heroes, villains, comic books, and video games, and believes you can learn more from watching cartoons than you can from the news. Like all fantasy writers, Ben has a cat. His cat is named Loki. It’s possible Loki is the reincarnation of the Norse God of Mischief, but Ben hopes this is just a flight of his fancy
1.”Quillblade” and “Beastchild” are set in a high stakes world that has a steampunk feel as well as containing a quest of epic proportions. What was it about dragons that piqued your imagination to the point of creating a whole new world surrounding them?
I have always loved dragons. Always. They come in so many shapes, sizes, forms, and from so many different places. They symbolise, for me, the unlimited scope of human imagination. Just about every society in the world has some form of dragon lore, and this is what drew me to base my world around dragons. The idea is that you can have a particular type of dragon, such as a dragon who brings rain or storms, or anything like that, and there will be a corresponding dragon or god in another culture. Raikō is a good example of that. There are Thunder or Lightning Birds in many different religions and cultures all over the world. Even Raikō’s name has an obscure link to a Japanese deity who brings thunder and lightning. Then there is the Roc, and, well, I don’t want to explain it to death, but I’m really looking at the connections we share as people, in our imaginative headspace, even though we’re all so vastly different. That’s a large part of the world in which Quillblade and Beast Child are set – the idea that you could have this small group of dragon gods, who are the real gods, and people just worship them differently in different places, giving rise to many different religions and cultures.
2. You have a PhD in Creative Writing and apart from teaching and your own fiction work; you have also had work published in a variety of topics
surrounding popular culture. How important has your academic background been in developing you career as an author?
The connection is very important, for me. All writers research, I believe, at least to some extent. I sort of take that a step further and produce formal research papers and book chapters on the subjects that interest me. It allows me to really get to know the things that support and inform my work. I truly believe the best writers all do this anyway, but they may not necessarily take the time to write their research up into a formal essay. In a way, my creative writing is an expression of that research, but it’s a chicken / egg relationship. Neither comes first, and both are tasty in their own unique ways.
Academic work has also helped me become a better writer. Academic writing is vastly different to creative writing, but they each share a necessity for clarity and, to a certain extent, brevity. It’s all about communicating your ‘message’, by which I mean argument (for academic writing) or story (for creative writing) to the reader in the best possible way. Writing formal academic work gets you thinking about the logic behind writing, and that feeds into my creative work. I always say you need to take fantasy seriously. If there are logic holes in your story, or the world you’re building, or the magic system, or anything like that, you won’t convince your reader that the world is real. In a way, my academic writing has trained me to build better worlds.
3. Which authors have been your biggest influences?
Gosh, so many. Tolkien, of course. All fantasy writers need to list him as an influence. They’re either learning from him or deliberately trying not to. No one can ignore him. David Eddings, who is one of the best storytellers of the past hundred years. Robin Hobb. I’ve said this before, but her Farseer books are the best first person fantasy books ever written. Anne Rice, for doing such a wonderful job of putting the demon in the protagonist’s role. Michael Ende, for The Neverending Story. Holly Black and Scott Westerfeld, for really teaching me what YA was before I really knew it existed. Michael Pryor, for some of my favourite twists on the fantasy genre. I should add Poe, and Wodehouse, and Stevenson, and . . . I could go on, and on, and on . . . I read a lot. All writers should. All great writers do.
4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind, and why?
Tough question! I’m told you should never ask a parent which is their favourite child, because they probably have one but it would be rude to make them admit it! Having said that, I have a special place in my heart for Abe, whom you haven’t met yet. He’s the protagonist of a new book I’m working on, but from my published work?
Hmmm . . . okay, if you promise not to tell any of the others, it would have to be Yami. It’s a bit ironic that the character who burns brightest for me is the one who lives mostly in the dark. Each of my characters has a rich history, particularly those aboard the Hiryū. As much as I love them all, Yami’s story is the one I’ve given the most thought to actually telling outside of the Voyages books. I love the twins, and these books belong to them, but I know that, one day, I will tell Yami’s story in full, whether as a graphic novel, novella, full-blown novel, or even a video game – I haven’t decided which yet. There’s a lot of pain in his past. There’s loss, and tragedy, but there’s also a bit of comedy, and love, and as much trust as there is betrayal. He’s a broken man, a divided man, but it took a lot to actually get him to that point. He also has to literally share his body with a ghost from the past, and a foreign one at that. To me, he represents the duality in all of us. Light and dark. Duty and desire. He’s also seeking redemption for something he can never atone for, and he has a long way to go, a long way, before he can find any sort of peace. But, ultimately, what makes him burn brightest for me is that he is there for the twins, and Lenis in particular.
The captain shares a special bond with the twins too, everyone on the crew does to a certain extent, but Yami’s different. The others all have conflicting motivations, different things that drive them, but Yami’s sole responsibility is to protect the twins. He becomes Lenis’s shadow, in a sense, always there for him, and he sees a chance at redemption in keeping Lenis safe. I do some interesting things with that in book three, where we’ll be seeing much more of that other soul inhabiting Yami’s body, but I don’t want to give anything away just yet! Also, Yami is a kick-ass swordsman whose blade takes on the attributes of its wielder, which in Yami’s case means it can sever the chi in your body without even scratching your skin, and he’s almost as good at remaining unseen as Atrum. How cool is that?
