I recently had the pleasure of reading J. Kathleen Cheney's debut novel, The Golden City, which comes out tomorrow! Not only is the cover gorgeous, but so is the story. I had a hard time putting this book down. Please read on to find out more about Cheney and her lovely novel.
I love your book's setting. Portugal in 1902 is
definitely unique! What led you to choose this time and place? Did you come up
with the setting first and other details next, or did you come up with a story
or characters first, followed by the setting?
The story came first, then the setting. I actually started out putting this
story in Venice, but as I went along, I decided I wanted something different. After studying the coastlines of
Europe, I decided that Portugal's best suited my story's needs…so my place
setting changed there.
As for the time setting, I was looking for a time period
that would have submersibles, yet not so advanced as to have 'modern' police
procedures. So that gave me a
rough idea, and I finally settled on 1902 because…well, nothing big happened
that year to interfere with my story.
Do you speak any Portuguese, and if so, how fluent are
you, and when and where did you learn?
Once I started researching Portugal, I quickly discovered
that a lot of the resources I needed had never been translated into English, so
I started learning Portuguese. I
needed to study European Portuguese,
not Brazilian, which had fewer resources, but I finally found a Pimsleur audio
course and an Oxford audio course.
Unfortunately, you don't learn spelling or declension from audio courses,
so my Portuguese is pretty rough.
(I still get mais and mas mixed up, for example.)
As far as reading Portuguese goes, I do pretty well. I'm aided in this by the fact that I'm
from the border (El Paso) and have spoken Spanish most of my life and there are
a lot of cognates between the two languages.
Speaking
Portuguese is a totally different matter.
My background with Spanish actually makes this harder for me because
many Portuguese words look like Spanish words and my brain automatically opts
for the Spanish pronunciation. So
I lack confidence when speaking Portuguese because I don't want to butcher the
language (whereas with Spanish, I'm very comfortable screwing it up.) All in all, I did fairly well when I
was in Portugal last year, but only because the Portuguese are rather tolerant.
The most alarming aspect of this whole process was
discovering that I wasn't pronouncing some of my character's names correctly
(because I err toward Spanish).
For example, that o on the end of Duilio's name is pronounced oo, as in
zoo. And Oriana's surname? One of the vowels is subvocalized, so
it's more like Par-AYDSH than Par-AY-desh. (I don't know why, but I only found that out when I visited
Portugal and heard that name pronounced there.) Things like that have continually surprised me.
I like how you combined alternate history, romance,
fantasy, and a murder mystery into one novel. How did you come to combine all
of these elements into one novel?
I read pretty broadly, and am just as likely to pick up a
Mystery or Romance as I am a Fantasy novel. So I think for me the elements just come together
organically--a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I don't know that I ever intended to write Alternate History, but
when I think back, I've actually done quite a bit of Historical Fantasy. The moment you add magic to a
historical setting, it forces a deviation from History and becomes Alternate
History.
Oriana is a mermaid unlike any I've encountered before.
Where did you draw your inspiration for her and her people?
When I considered my mermaids--particularly when there's the
possibility of one having a relationship with a human--I decided to think of
them as having been the same species at one time. Either the humans started off like the mermaids and lost
their gills and webbing, or the mermaids started off human and somehow gained
the gills. Either way, I decided
to think of the sereia in terms of evolution. To live in the sea and land they would need both gills and
lungs. Their webbing could serve
the same purpose as a seal's vibrissae.
Air bladders would keep them oriented in the water. Their hands and feet would be large and
flat to improve their swimming (think Michael Phelps and his size 14 feet.)
But the scales never worked for me. The skin is one organ, so I decided
that they would have skin, it would simply look
like scales. And rather than green,
I thought their coloring should be protective. The ocean is full of predators--mainly
sharks--so you'd want to be able to pass as a big predatory fish, like a
tuna. (Yes, you could look like a
dolphin or a sea snake, but since I'd started off with fish characteristics, I
stuck with fish.)
Male merfolk have never figured much in traditional
stories. I figured that they had
to be there, just not a common as the females, so in my world, the male sereia
are sheltered. As the females are
dominant in their world, they'd have a culture quite different than the human
nations that surround them. (This
will come into play more in Book 3, but it's part of Oriana's character, so
it's important for me to think about it now.)
***
J. Kathleen Cheney is nothing if not versatile in her story telling, but weaving through her work is a common thread, that of the improbable heroine. From worlds set in humanity’s distant post-apocalyptic future to alternate worlds of today or of the near past, Kathleen’s heroines include a siren who with help from a gentleman of the city must stop a regicidal plot, the neglected daughter of an absent king coming to terms with her shapeshifting ancestors, a blind teenager who dreams of others’ deaths and who uses her gift of touch to find their killers, and the widow of a trainer who with a most unusual horse must save her farm and way of life. All use their unusual gifts and talents to overcome obstacles and find their place in the world.
In 2005 Kathleen decided to pursue writing as a full-time endeavor and has since enjoyed seeing her stories published in Shimmer, The Sword Review, and Baen’s Universe. Her novella “Iron Shoes” was a 2011 Nebula nominee. Kathleen twice attended the summer Writer’s Workshop at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction under the tutelage of James Gunn. She lists C. J. Cherryh, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Georgette Heyer among the writers who influenced her most–as well as Ansen Dibell, whose ghostly fingerprints can be seen all over her work.
Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Kathleen’s parents actually were rocket scientists (they worked at White Sands Missile Range), which made for interesting dinner-time conversations. After graduating with degrees in English and Marketing she worked as a menswear buyer for retail department store chains before changing careers to become a teacher, where she taught mathematics ranging from 7th Grade Arithmetic up to Calculus. Kathleen also served a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist. She coached the Academic Team and the Robotics Team and was the Chess Club sponsor.
When not writing, Kathleen likes to don a mask and get sweaty fencing, both foil and saber. Quieter hobbies include putting on her Wellingtons and getting her hands dirty in the garden. She also enjoys traveling and taking care of her dogs. Two large, hairy, dogs.
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