The Book of Life

Author Q&A

**Warning: Contains some mild spoilers!**

When you first began the All Souls series, you were also writing about wine for your award-winning wine blog and teaching at USC. How did you find the time to write a novel? What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Every novel that has ever been written was written one word at a time, one page at a time. That’s how I wrote A Discovery of Witches—and indeed all of the books in the All Souls Trilogy. As time went on, and my life became a bit more complicated, something had to go. I haven’t blogged about wine in years, though I’d like to get back to it one day. My advice to writers is simply to make writing a daily practice, like breathing. Don’t psych yourself out, and don’t take on a whole novel at once. One word at a time. One sentence at a time. One page at a time. That’s how it’s done.

In The Book of Life you elegantly wrap up all the mysteries you introduced in A Discovery of Witches, including why creatures weren’t allowed to intermarry, what was hidden within Ashmole 782, and who committed London’s “vampire” murders. Did you have the entire arc of your fifteen-hundred-plus page saga sketched out from the very beginning?

Roughly speaking, I did. Some of the characters surprised me here and there, appearing and disappearing when they felt like it, so I had to jiggle some details but I did always know those features of the arc. The hard part was not giving too much away too soon.

You preface each section of The Book of Life with astrological information taken from an “Anonymous English Commonplace Book, c. 1590.” Did you write these yourself, or are they drawn from an actual text?

They are drawn from several early modern astrological texts printed in England in the sixteenth century, including a translation of French astrologer Claude Dariot’s A Briefe and Most Easie Introduction to the Stars (1583). A man like Matthew would have owned such a book, and astrological information was often copied into commonplace books. I was always amazed at how closely the astrological information in these texts related to the plot of the book.

Your field of study, the Elizabethan Era, predates the mapping of the human genome by more than four hundred years. What inspired you to make Matthew a geneticist and to bury the secret of blood rage in the vampire’s noncoding DNA?

I wanted Matthew to be a geneticist because of his theological difficulties. The questions of who Matthew was, and what his purpose was, unified his faith and his science in important ways. In my period of study, science and religion were not oppositional—they were complementary. As for the noncoding DNA, that was simply the best “mysterious” option back in 2008. Since then, noncoding DNA has become more important to geneticists, but I couldn’t have predicted that then.

Was researching genetics more or less difficult than researching alchemical texts?

For me? Much more difficult. I’m a historian of alchemy, so I’ve been researching those texts since 1982. But I’m not a scientist, don’t work in a laboratory, and (until recently) didn’t keep up on the scientific literature on topics near and dear to Matthew’s heart. Now, I read so many scholarly articles on the subject that I get emails with subject lines like “Problems running your agarose gels?”

Your storytelling prowess testifies to your skill as a weaver witch, but if you could choose another identity, would you want to be a vampire, daemon, or another type of witch? What is the one creature power that you wish you could have?

You know, I think I’m happy being human. Witches bear too much responsibility, vampire lives are long and challenging, and daemons are chronically misunderstood. I would like a vampire’s private jet, though. Does that count as a superpower?

Who—besides Matthew and Diana—are your favorite characters from the series? Do you still think about your characters and what they might be up to now?

Philippe is my favorite character. In many ways he is the central character of the entire All Souls Trilogy. But I truly do love all of my characters, with the exception of Benjamin Fox.

J. K. Rowling has famously expressed regret over the fact that Hermione marries Ron instead of Harry. In retrospect, is there any part of the series that you wish you had resolved differently?

Really? I think Hermione and Ron are perfect for each other! I wish Emily didn’t have to die, but there was no other way and I wouldn’t change it now, even if I could.

In the academic realm, a print run of 5,000 is considered substantial. Did you ever dream that you would become a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist with millions of copies in print around the world? How has your success affected your academic career?

Um, no. By the way, I believe my first academic book had a print run of 750. Seriously, who could imagine such a thing? I hoped—hoped, mind you—that someone would publish it so that I would have an excuse to write the rest of the story. But I never imagined that people would read it in Croatia and Japan. The hardest thing to reconcile between my academic career and my career as a novelist are the schedules. Academic schedules are made up well in advance, while publishing schedules change at a very different rate. So the hardest thing for me is saying no to things I would love to do—both academic and in terms of meeting readers—because I can’t be in two places at one time.

How has writing fiction changed the way you approach your academic work?

Absolutely. I’m struck all the time by the ways that the available historical evidence won’t permit me to demonstrate what I believe to be true. I can only argue what I can prove to be true, with the evidence. This is entirely right and proper, but I’m glad that I have fiction so that I can expand the limits of “truth” slightly.

What is the most surprising comment you’ve ever received from a fan?

“Your book made me a reader.” What courage, to take on a book longer than 500 pages when you don’t love reading! But I’m glad that they took the risk.

Do you have any details to share about the planned BBC adaptation?

At the moment, I’m afraid it’s all very much happening behind the wizard’s screen. So much happens in terms of production and development before we get to things like casting and filming: long discussions, frank conversations, planning. As soon as we have anything fit for public consumption, we’ll be sure to let you know!

What are you working on now? Do you plan to continue writing fiction? (Please say yes!)

Yes, I will continue to write fiction. I have lots of stories to tell. No, I’m not going to tell you what I’m working on now—but I am working on something, and I hope that readers will find it exciting.