Big 4 with Bec: Foz Meadows

Foz Meadows is a bipedal mammal with delusions of immortality. The Key to Starveldt is her second novel. She currently lives in St Andrews, Scotland, with not enough books and her very own philosopher. Surprisingly, this is a good thing.

1. Congratulations on the release of your second novel, The Key to Starveldt (sequel to the popular Solace and Grief). Your central character, Solace Morgan, is a 17-year-old vampire with some pretty impressive supernatural powers. With the resurgence in vamp fiction, is it difficult to remain true to vamp lore, while also finding a fresh spin on the theme?

Thank you! I’m really excited to see what people think of The Key to Starveldt; it was a hard book to write, but it takes Solace and her friends in some interesting directions. It might seem paradoxical, but I think the popularity of vamp fiction has actually made it easier to write about new and different types of vampire. So many readers now are familiar with folklore and mythology that, rather than having to establish the Default Vampire in order to explain why yours is different, it’s possible to rely on a basic comprehension of all different types of vampire and instead get straight to the meat of a new interpretation. Perhaps more importantly, the style of vampire story has changed along with the lore, too. Not only is it now accepted practice to have vampires who run the gamut from funny to sexy, gothic to modern, sadistic to benevolent, but the habit of writing about them in isolation – as either the only supernatural race, or   as the binary antithesis of werewolves – has given way to a richer kind of magic. Now, vampires are happily rubbing shoulders with angels, faeries, shapeshifters, psychics, ghosts and maenads – and that’s just for starters!

2. I’ve read that you are partial to cheese, geekery, writing, webcomics and general weirdness. What’s a weird story you can share with us about your time writing your first two novels?

When I first started work on Solace and Grief, it took me almost 40,000 words to realise that it was, in fact, a novel rather than a short story. At the time, I’d just finished work on the unpublished epic I wrote throughout high school and university, so the idea of purposefully starting a new project just didn’t occur to me. Solace came about almost by accident, a random ambush idea that pounced in the middle of a slow day at work. But even once I’d realised it was an actual book, I still didn’t think it was any good – so imagine my surprise when, on submitting Solace and the epic simultaneously, it was Solace that people wanted to see! But even though the old version of the epic is now permanently resigned to the top drawer, I’ve been doing some serious worldbuilding for a new, better version – some of the characters remain the same, but otherwise, it’s a whole different plot and concept. Which, to me, is gloriously weird: that despite all the years of working on that one failed project, it was something totally unexpected that eventually earned me a contract – but that all these years later, I’d still find something worth saving in the original.

3. Foz, I read an interesting post from your blog about ‘romance, strength and femininity.’ Clearly these are important themes to you, as they will be for a number of your readers. Can you tell us who some of your favourite fictional female characters are, and why?

As a kid, I loved Jocelyn Osgood from Geoffrey McSkimming’s Cairo Jim and Jocelyn Osgood series. A fully-qualified pilot who worked as a flight attendant only because of the chauvinist policies at Valkyrian Airlines (which – ironically, given the name –  refused to let women pilot), Jocelyn went from being a bit-player in Jim’s stories to having many independent adventures of her own. As a character, she was competent, clever and compassionate, cool in a crisis and always willing to help her friends. And even though she couldn’t fly for Valkyrian, she always flew for herself.

On the TV side of things, there was a cartoon show called Daria that ran from 1996 to 2002, spanning five seasons and two movies. The two protagonists, Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane, were a pair of cynical high school girls, respectively a writer and an artist, whose adventures consisted largely of surviving teenage life until they could get to college. Clever, outspoken, flawed and faithful, Daria and Jane are two of my favourite role models, not only because of how strongly I identified with them at the time, but because they remain two of the best and most believable teenage girls in fiction. Their deadpan humour and sharp observations helped to get me through school, and even now, their politics are still ahead of the curve.

There’s dozens of others I’d love to mention – Princess Nausicaa from Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds, Jill from Katharine Kerr’s Deverry series, September from Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making – but we’d be here forever. I’ll just have to blog about them separately instead!

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Something I really wanted to achieve with The Key to Starveldt was an exploration of Solace’s friends: their relationships, histories and motives, and how those things affect them now. Throughout the writing process, some of their stories changed drastically between drafts, while others remained the same. With the book now written, I feel like I know them all much better than before, but even though it would be impossible to play favourites, I have a special soft spot for Paige and Laine. When they first appeared in Solace and Grief, I’d planned for Paige to be a cheerful, mischievous girl, with Laine in the role of sulky antagonist. But no sooner had I started writing them than my planned personalities warped and bled together: both girls were much more complex than I’d envisaged, and their relationship was anything but simple. Looking back on my original notes, Laine’s projected arc has changed the most out of any character, but Paige has still surprised me utterly. The Key to Starveldt has more than a few twists in store – I only hope they’re as much fun to read about as they were to write.

Check out Foz’s blog here!