Interviewing JL Worrad

Hellooo!

I recently reviewed the great fantasy novel Pennyblade by JL Worrad set in the same world as the equally great The Keep Within set within the same world but with a different cast. Inventive, deliciously bawdy and fresh  but also fun. It was a pleasure to invite James to the blog to talk about the books and more.

Why hello there!

How do you like to booktempt Pennyblade?

Elven disaster lesbian runs from her past in absurd, violent and sordid ways. But her past has other plans for her…

Did Kyra pose a writing challenge as someone who clearly has a different biology, sense of ethics and social attitudes to her human characters but also can pass in voice and humour as one? How did you approach showing the differences?

Yes, but that’s why I took it on. Challenges overcome create art you never knew you had in you. All artists should seek out difficult positions, even if that means climbing into the trunk of a Mini Cooper.

One of the great advantages of fantasy and sf is you can create situations and phenomena that don’t exist, that can’t exist, and then apply them to the human condition. What if people had a breeding season? What if we weren’t sexually dimorphic like our primate kin but monomorphic like birds? All of that’s going to shape a culture and the culture will shape the individual. People are still going to love and hate and tell jokes, just in different ways. I loved exploring that. I loved looking through those eyes.

A further challenge is the two versions we meet of Kyra in the past and present. Did you know the story immediately as to where Kyra was ending up or was it a more organic development?

I knew Kyra in the past narrative would become Kyra in the later narrative, so I had an end goal there: I had to turn the eighteen year old Kyra into the twenty-four year old version. That was fun because twenty-four-year-old Kyra is pretty messed up, so the lack of plot freedom wasn’t constraining. The present narrative was decidedly more organic. But the most organic thing of all was the world building. I’d make that up on the fly as Kyra travelled about. If you’re writing a character focussed novel I think you can get away with that. It might even help.

Your lead characters like Kyra and Harry from The Keep Within are characters who are less heroes and also not your grimdark moody brooders but more people who live in the moment and follow their hearts (and other parts of their anatomy). What attracts you to these types of characters who I don’t see often in fantasy?

I just like people like that in real life. The screw-ups, the hot messes. The problem with heroes and grimdark anti-hero types is they already have the world figured out. I couldn’t chat over a gin and tonic with that kind of person for very long and so it makes sense I can’t write them. I love reading a character whose faults are obvious to all but themselves. It’s endearing, such wrongheadedness, and when they rise above their luminous faults it’s inspiring.

Does fantasy need more bawdiness?

There’s a deluge of good taste in modern fantasy and frankly it’s disgusting. Bawdiness is our birth right, it’s in every pre-industrial culture’s make-up so any fantasy author airbrushing over the existence of bums and willies is dereliction of duty as far as I’m concerned. I mean, the whole Tolkienian tradition, the very core of published fantasy, attempts to evoke medieval Britain to one degree or another but somehow entirely ignores Chaucer. Weird!

A friend once told me fantasy readers are—paradoxically—quite conservative and I didn’t believe her until Pennyblade came out. Like, there’s this weird assumption that if an author writes a sex scene then what it depicts is what they’re turned on by and now they’re trying to pass the kink on. Now, Pennyblade has its sexy scenes, absolutely, but they’re not the scenes with the sex in. The scenes with the sex in are either funny or satirical or disturbing. The readers who really dig Pennyblade and Keep Within grasp that, that filth can be many things, and I love them for that.

With Kyra swordplay is a huge part of the tale. How do you approach your fight scenes?

A fight scene that doesn’t push the story forward, either revealing character or progressing plot, is a hundred times worse than a sex scene that doesn’t. A struggle should reward, even if that reward is a tragic lesson. So that’s the first rule. The second is it should be different and interesting in some way, a joust but on unicycles or whatever.

But with Pennyblade I had to learn about swords because that’s Kyra’s job. Luckily there’s a lot of great channels these days on YouTube (I’d particularly recommend Scholia Gladiatoria, the guy really know his stuff) and I soon found out, for instance, that a rapier is the same weight as a regular one-handed sword, it’s just the blade is stretched out. I learned heaps of sword facts, as I did Shakespearean theatre facts when researching The Keep Within, all of which I’ve mostly forgotten. I also went to a couple of open days at local HEMA groups, enough that I could hold swords properly and get a feel for the physicality. I owed Kyra that much.

Do you think you could return to these worlds again?

I hope so. I’ve a hankering to write a book from the viewpoint of Sister Benadetta, the magical nun in Pennyblade. Very much a medieval spy novel, with her running an espionage operation like George Smiley in a wimple. Seen from outside, Sister B seems to have her shit together, but she’s issues deep inside and, naturally, that’s like crack to this here writer. Plus, she and Kyra have unfinished business. It gnaws at me that I’ve left that hanging…

What else can we look forward to from you in the future and where can we find out more in this weird world of social media?

I’ve submitted a new book, Dreamsilver, to my agent. It’s a different world to the other stuff, less bawdy and exceedingly trippier. I wanted to challenge myself and write something different and more ambitious in scale. It’s a world where the gods sleep on the high plateaus but their dreams seep out and bother humanity who are struggling in the river valleys below. Hopefully it’ll see the light of day.

As for socials, well I’m @worrad.bsky.social over on Bluesky. That’s my happy place. I’m at the other place too…

If there was one book, not your own, that you wish you could everyone to read what would it be and why?

Anything by Graham Joyce. Maybe Smoking Poppy or The Tooth Fairy. There’s something in his work for everyone, from the deep daily reader to the only-when-on-holiday reader. He was a genius. I miss him.