T. Kingfisher is beloved for her unique blend of fantasy, fairy tales, horror, and humor. We sat down with her to discuss her writing process, the inspiration behind Nettle & Bone, and what's next.
Fans of her World of the White Rat novels can also explore our Sworn Soldier Book Set, featuring What Moves the Dead and What Feasts at Night with exclusive Juniper Books cover designs.
Who are your favorite authors? Who inspires your writing?
I love, love, love Terry Pratchett, but then, who doesn’t? I also have a great love of Robin McKinley, and my writing would not be what it is without Diane Duane.
What role do physical books play in your life now, and is there a particular shelf or part of your collection that means the most to you?
Sadly, because my eyesight is going, my physical book collection is mostly Really Cool Editions that I want to collect and books that I either can’t get in ebook format or are the sort that don’t translate at all, like big art books and gardening guides. I do have a brag shelf where all my own books end up, although since I write way too many books, it’s now multiple shelves and beginning to colonize other bookcases.
You are remarkably prolific, with more than fifty novels published during your career. What does a productive writing day look like for you? Are you someone who needs quiet and ritual, or can you write in short pockets whenever you find them?
I generally have to write a thousand words a day, five days a week, or the system collapses. Most days I get a bit more done, some days I get a lot more done, but those are the marks I try to hit. I don’t really require anything other than a laptop, though. I used to write primarily in a wonderfully weird little coffee shop, but since moving to New Mexico, I don’t have a replacement yet. I often will have a writing date with another local author where we’ll go out for lunch and write words.
I don’t like quiet, though. I like music, but I have a problem where if the music has lyrics, I may start transcribing the words. So I listen to a lot of video game soundtracks, which are great for getting in the mood and also usually wordless.
Many of your stories are reimaginings of classic fairytales, and you’ve said that Bluebeard is one of your favorite fairy tales because of its sense that something very bad is happening just around the corner. What makes a fairy tale irresistible to you as a writer?
As a writer, what makes things irresistible is often a feeling that something doesn’t make any sense. A lot of things in fairy tales don’t make sense, of course, but every now and then something will stand out that really starts to nag at me. It’s usually when people don’t act like anybody I’ve ever met. If the bride’s two older sisters married the same prince and he killed both of them, why is she still so cheerful about going to the altar with him? If there’s an easily offended wicked fairy in the kingdom, why didn’t they invite her to the public christening? If a talking fox warns you not to let Koschei the Deathless out of that barrel, why are you doing it right this minute!?
That sort of thing often acts as a springboard for me—what scenario can I construct where this would make sense? When is marrying the murderous prince the logical thing to do? What motivation will make ignoring the talking fox completely understandable? Things like that.
You write horror, fantasy, romantasy, young adult, and children’s fiction…When you get an idea for a story, or find a myth you want to retell, how do you decide on the right genre for that story?
If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know! Often I don’t really know when I start a novel what it’s going to end up being classified as. I always write horror in first person, but I’ve written fantasy that way too. With romantasy, I’ve usually got at least some notion what the two central characters are going to be like, but the plot shows up along the way. I didn’t even start writing horror until my readers were telling me that there were some major horror elements in my work, and I thought, “Hmm, what if I did this on purpose…?”
Your career has spanned illustration, webcomics, graphic novels, children’s books, and adult fiction. How has thinking like a visual artist shaped the way you write?
The only thing that I can actually nail down as definitely coming from visual arts is that I will frequently talk about lighting. Honestly though, I think it made me appreciate the ease of prose a lot more. If I was doing a comic (and I adore the comic format) and Writer-Me decided to set a scene in a Gothic cathedral, Artist-Me would then have to draw the damn cathedral a dozen times from different angles, and I’d be cursing my own name as I labored over a hot tablet for a week. But in a novel, I can write a paragraph about the sun streaming through stained glass and throwing colored squares across the pews and wham! Done! Then I can take the rest of the day off and play video games.
Your books are full of memorable characters and creatures. Has any one of them inspired a level of reader devotion that genuinely surprised you?
Ohhhh yeah. In my very first paladin romantasy, there’s an assassin who is sort of the dark foil for the paladin character. He’s a bad guy! He stabs people! He’s kind of a jerk! And a lot of readers adored him? But then I went back years later and re-read it and honestly, I can see it now. I kinda feel bad I killed him at the end of the book.
Your dark fantasy novel, Nettle & Bone isn’t based on a specific fairytale… where did the idea for that story come to you? What was the process like for developing that world?
Nettle & Bone wins the award for the weirdest origin story. You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head? I’ll occasionally get that with lines of poetry too. One day I was out grocery shopping and I started to get something like that running through my brain. It went something like “You came to me in your cloak of tatters, with the dog made of bones at your side.” For a good while, I was trying to figure out where I’d read that line, but I hadn’t read it, it was just showing up in my brain like an intrusive thought. So I wrote a very short story that was more of a meditation on fairy godmothers than anything else. But I still wanted to know more about the dog made of bones, and one day I started writing a scene where a woman is building the dog, and just kept going from there. I wanted to have that feel of fairy tales without referencing any specific one.
With your background in visual storytelling, which of your books would you be most curious to see adapted for the screen? And what element would you be pickiest about for an adaptation?
Some of the novellas, particularly horror, would probably translate the best. I can’t imagine most of the fantasy novels working as any less than a season worth of episodes. In terms of pure visuals, I’d love to see something like Thornhedge or Summer in Orcus animated. (Call me, Studio Ghibli!)
The thing I’d be pickiest about is probably whitewashing or straightwashing or something along those lines. For example, there are lots of queer characters in my books and I’d publicly disown anything that tried to change that.
One of the joys of following your work is that we never quite know what to expect next. Can you hint at what readers might see from you in the future?
I am, in fact, working on a science fiction novel! It’s about uplifted naked mole rats in space!