Hello Everyone!
As a continuation of our celebration of the release of The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, I get to share with you all an interview that I was lucky enough to have with Genevieve herself. Enjoy!
Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or is the story all from your imagination?
I can’t think of any real life experiences, so I think I can say that the story is definitely from my imagination. (Though London and the British Library do definitely exist.)
Is there a character that you love a little more than all the others? Or was there a character that you particularly liked to write for/about?
I wouldn’t say that I love him, but I do enjoy writing Silver. He’s stereotypical and melodramatic and he likes it that way.
Is there something about yourself that your readers would be surprised to discover? (For instance a trait that you share with one of the characters or a hidden skill/passion).
I’m not sure whether or not this would surprise anyone, but I love musicals. I grew up with access to recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan, and with shows like Cats, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Sweeney Todd, The Threepenny Opera… These days I’ve expanded to shows that aren’t even available in English (or sometimes where I just don’t like the English translation), like Notre-Dame de Paris or Tanz der Vampires or Elisabeth. I enjoy opera as well. Though to be fair, it’s not accurate to say that I love all musicals or all opera, any more than someone would say they enjoy all science fiction or all crime fiction. But I do enjoy quite a lot of musicals. And I’m a great fan of the Takarazuka Revue.
Has there been a moment while writing, publishing or publicizing The Invisible Library that has been the most interesting or meaningful?
There was the moment when I was in London last year, attending the Nine Worlds convention, and someone walked up to me and asked if I was the person who’d written The Invisible Library. When I admitted that he was, he said that he just wanted to thank me, because it had made him really happy to read it. That single moment – well, I don’t know if it was the most meaningful or interesting, but it has stuck in my memory.
If you had to play the "Book Math" tag, what books would you use to create The Invisible Library?
Um… if you want a receipt for that popular mystery known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon… oh, wait, you want The Invisible Library. How about the mysterious library of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (though hopefully not burning it down), plus the concept of wizards commanding reality through true names from Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, plus all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, plus the dragons from the Journey to the West (and from Minekura Kazuya’s Saiyuki manga), plus some of the law/chaos aspects from Michael Moorcock’s books and Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, plus a bit of the aesthetic from the Foglio’s graphic novel series Girl Genius, plus a little of the Raksha from the Exalted role-playing game, and you might get The Invisible Library. You’d certainly have a lot of good reading.
Thank you to Genevieve for taking the time to answer my questions and thank you also to Alexis Nixon, who is the Assistant Director of Publicity at Penguin Random House. Alexis worked with me to bring you this interview and sent me the book to review.
My review for The Invisible Library will be up by the end of the week (hopefully).
See you then!
-Jaime