Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Sebastien de Castell (Spellslinger)!
Meet the Author: Sebastien de Castell
Sebastien de Castell is the author of the acclaimed swashbuckling fantasy series The Greatcoats, along with the YA fantasy Spellslinger series, which has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal and published in more than a dozen languages. He had just finished a degree in archaeology when he started work on his first dig — and four hours later realized how much he actually hated archaeology. He left to pursue a wildly unfocused career as a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, fight choreographer, teacher, project manager, actor, and product strategist. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his lovely wife and two belligerent cats.
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About the Book: Spellslinger
A would-be mage with no magic of his own must face his powerful enemies with only cunning and deception in the first book of the acclaimed adventure fantasy series from Sebastien de Castell.
Kellen is moments away from facing his first duel and proving his worth as a spellcaster. There’s just one problem: his magic is fading.
Facing exile unless he can pass the mage trials, Kellen is willing to risk everything — even his own life — in search of a way to restore his magic. But when the enigmatic Ferius Parfax arrives in town, she challenges him to take a different path.
One of the elusive Argosi, Ferius is a traveller who lives by her wits and the cards she carries. Daring, unpredictable, and wielding magic Kellen has never seen before, she may be his only hope.
The first novel in a compelling six-book series, bursting with tricks, humor, and a whole new way to look at magic.
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~Author Chat~
YABC: What inspired you to write this book?
It came from a feeling I remembered very clearly when I was a teenager in high school — that creeping dread of suspecting you might not be good at the one thing everyone has decided will define you. Kellen lives in a society where your magical ability is literally your social worth, and he’s running out of time to prove he has any. I wanted to write about the kid who doesn’t fit the system he was raised to revere, and ask whether cleverness, nerve, and sheer stubbornness might count for more than raw power. That felt like a question worth four hundred pages.
YABC: What research did you do to write this book?
While Kellen’s world has cultures influenced by the magical traditions of Ancient Egypt, Rome and Persia, most of the hard research was internal: going back to what it felt like to be sixteen and staring out at a world in which it seemed I was destined never to fit in. There’s a danger when writing young adult fiction that one writes as if looking backwards when, in fact, teenagers are very much looking ahead. YA fiction has to be written with that sense of discovery, of intensity, and above all, the authenticity that what teenagers feel and experience is meaningful, not just part of a passing phase.
YABC: What came first, the concept, landscape, characters, or something else?
Ideas always come in fragments at first, which is why I wait until I have a central core around which to built the story. In the case of Spellslinger, it was when I had the trio of Kellen, Ferius and Reichis. The three of them are so different that they create a ton of narrative energy in the spaces between them, which makes writing the novel vastly easier. Once I had that core, everything else grew out of what would put him under the most pressure: a rigid magical aristocracy, a mentor who’d challenge every belief Kellen was raised with, and a squirrel cat who’d insult him at every opportunity. The magic system actually came last, because I designed it specifically so its rules could be questioned and subverted rather than just admired.
YABC: If you could only write one genre for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Though I’m mostly categorized as a fantasy writer, what drives me narratively is the spirit of swashbuckling that infuses books like The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche and The Princess Bride. Even when I write a mystery novel, there’s always a thread of swashbuckling spirit that runs through it, so I suppose that’s what’s going to be with me throughout my writing life.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
Characters who are in over their heads, know it, and keep going anyway. A great deal of banter. Friendships and loyalties that are earned rather than handed out. And magic and adventure that’s never about the spectacle — there’s always something at stake underneath the action that matters emotionally. I want readers to laugh, to cry, and, most of all, to once in a while leap up from their seat on a bus or in a park and cheer.
YABC: If you could time-travel, what would you want to see?
I’d love to watch a real classical fencing master at work — seventeenth or eighteenth century, when the art was at its most refined and the stakes were genuinely mortal.
YABC: What other age group would you consider writing for?
I already cross back and forth — my Greatcoats and Malevolent Seven books are very much for adult readers, while the Spellslinger and Argosi books are YA. Those two audiences often overlap, of course. I don’t think I’d want to write for young children, mostly because I don’t have much to say that I think would be useful for them.
YABC: Is there an organization or cause that is close to your heart?
Literacy and library access, without question. So much of who I became came directly from having free, unsupervised access to books as a kid — being allowed to read far above and far below my “level,” following my curiosity wherever it went. Public libraries make that possible for children who’d otherwise never have it, and I think they’re one of the few genuinely civic institutions we have left.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
Quite a lot, happily. I’ve got new books in the Court of Shadows series which is set in the world of the Greatcoats, and more dark-but-funny mayhem in the Malevolent Seven trilogy. I’m never happier than when I’m deep inside a story that’s giving me trouble in interesting ways — which, fortunately for me, seems to be a more or less permanent condition.
Title: Spellslinger
Author: Sebastien de Castell
Release Date: July 17, 2018 (North American edition)
Publisher: Orbit Books
Genre: YA Fantasy / Adventure
Age Range: 12 and up
