Interviewing Annabel Campbell

Hellooo!

A few weeks ago I was hugely impressed by The Outcast Mage by Annabel Campbell where a tale about a mage that cannot perform magic is actually revealed to be part of a much bigger epic tale with fine character work, many surprises and I’m very much looking forward to where things go next. It was a pleasure to invite Annabel to the blog to talk about the book and a few other things.

Hi there!

How do you like to book The Outcast Mage?

For me, The Outcast Mage is that classic epic fantasy story brought up to date. I want it to have that transportive, adventure feel to it, but also with themes and characters that resonate with readers now. The book is set mainly in the magical glass city of Amoria, where people with magic live alongside people without magic. The city is on the brink of civil war between these two groups and the main protagonist, Naila, is a young woman who should have the ability to use magic but can’t control it at all. The heart of the book centres on Naila and her teacher, Haelius, who is in a race against time to teach her to use her magic, but there is a multi POV cast, with one of the city’s senior politicians, a priest who believes magic is evil, and a mysterious stranger who’s hunting something terrible. So it starts a bit magical academia and then opens up to a conflict that could threaten the whole continent.

What drew you to the idea of a mage with no magical ability? How did this factor in building Naila’s personality and how she is treated?

I think we love reading stories about the outsider, the person who desperately wants to be a part of something and can’t. It’s such a universal experience. We’ve all had moments in our lives where we’ve found ourselves not quite fitting in, or struggling to figure out our place in the world. It’s a classic coming of age story. I’ve had periods of time in my life where I’ve struggled with depression and isolation, and when you’re in that situation, it’s very easy to hone in on something and think ‘if I just had this one thing, everything would be okay.’ And, you know, slight spoilers, but really that isn’t true. (sorry Naila)

Mentors to heroes are as old as Merlin and Arthur but with Haelius we have a different kind of relationship between the two of them. How did they evolve as characters?

I think the relationship between Haelius and Naila is absolutely my favourite part of the book. I LOVE the traditional wizard mentor character and the way we see that character return in all kinds of fantasy and mythology. I think often that character is a little mysterious; we don’t necessarily get to see inside their head. They seem to have all the answers, but they’re also a little apart from everyone else, maybe a little lonely. With Haelius, I wanted to have a character who was the classic wizard mentor with all the power that pertains, but he’s also just a guy. He’s only in his thirties, so not that old (I mean, depending on your POV, I guess!), and he’s really struggling with what he’s supposed to do with all his power. He’s not got all the answers, his father thinks he’s a screwup. He’s lonely and in love and has definitely been messing that up too. He just wants to be able to do something to help. And with Naila, he’s found that with a young person right in front of him that needed his help. Their relationship is a lot of fun, because Naila doesn’t trust him at all initially, and there’s a degree of deference that comes with Haelius’s position and power, but Naila is stubborn and headstrong, and they end up looking out for each other (and also getting each other into a lot of trouble). I also really wanted to explore this kind of mentorship-come-family idea without it becoming at all romantic between them.

There is a theme of the dangers of populists in this story was that something you wan t to explore in this series?

You know, it wasn’t really a deliberate decision. I think the world around us always bleeds into what we’re writing. Writing the first draft, the UK was voting for Brexit, Trump was in power in the US, and we seemed to be heading down this really dark road where the politics just didn’t make sense to me anymore. Oriven and Amoria definitely grew out of that time, where we have someone born into immense privilege and power telling his followers that if they work hard (and oppose the “outsiders”), they can have a life just like his. And of course, it’s all become depressingly relevant again.

I think too that when I started writing The Outcast Mage, I was thinking a lot about how often villains in fantasy look villainous, and the line from The Lord of the Rings where Frodo says, ‘I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer and feel fouler.’ It really feels to me that the most dangerous enemies present themselves as our friends.

I think probably the bigger themes of the series overall are not just about populists, but about different types of power – what does power look like, who has it, how it can be used, and what happens if you use the wrong type of power in the wrong situation. If you take someone like Haelius, he is immensely powerful and yet so often finds himself powerless. Oriven envies Haelius’s magical ability, but yet is arguably the most powerful man in Amoria.

As a debut author what lessons has your first novel taught you?

I wish I could say it has taught me patience, but it’s probably just taught me that I’m impatient and that’s a hard thing to be in publishing! Honestly, my first novel taught me how to write a novel. I know that sounds stupid, but through drafting and redrafting, I’ve learnt the shape of a book, I’ve learnt how to push through the hard bits – and that at the end, people can’t tell which bits fell out of your head onto the page and which bits you tore your hair out trying to pull together. It’s taught me that you can’t write a book if you don’t make the time for it, which can mean scraping out time before work, or scribbling notes on your phone, or pulling apart plot tangles on your commute. Someone said to me that they would have written a book ‘if they had the time.’ No one has the time! Not unless you make it.

What three words can describe the next book?

Dragons, catastrophe, reunion.

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?

So the only confirmed thing right now is more of The Shattered Lands, which I hope will just keep getting bigger, more epic, and more disastrous. But I am also really excited about a book I’m writing involving Scottish mythology, a creature that can steal you out of memory, and a woman fighting to get her sister back (plus there be may a dark broody romance in there too).

Social media – my handle is AnnabelCWrites pretty much everywhere. Find me on Bluesky and Instagram (I have abandoned Musktopia). I have a newsletter  - https://disasterwizardsanonymous.substack.com/ and a website https://annabelcampbell.com/

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

There are so many that this is a mean question. (Thank you!) So I’m just going to have to pick a different one every time I have to answer one of these. This time I will say Limelight by Lyndsey Croal. It’s such a tour de force of short story writing, dark science fiction both near and far future. She’s this absolute master of the disturbing ‘what if’ questions and of building a subtle tension. Every time I read one of the stories I was like ‘no, this one is my favourite.’ Short story collections deserve more attention in general, and this one is absolutely worth a read!