AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Robert Low, part two

Historical novelist Robert Low knows a thing or two about the subject matter of his Viking novels. A former journalist who’d covered rough assignments in Vietnam and Kosovo, Low turned to his love of Viking culture into fodder for his novels. An enthusiastic reenactor of ancient warfare, Low knows what he’s talking about when it comes to layering battle detail in his novels. His latest release, THE WOLF SEA, is the second book in his Oathsworn series, and I’m eager to immerse myself again in the grungy violent world of post-Rome Europe.

Low and his agent Jim Gill were caught in a bloody corporate power struggle when Gill’s then-agency PDF, angered agents and clients so much they fled and started a new agency, United Agents. I asked Low how the upheaval affected him, since the conflict reveals the seamier side of the publishing industry.

Enjoy part two of our interview with Robert Low (click HERE for part one).

Q: THE OATHSWORN SERIES is going to follow the adventures of Orm, the young Viking now making his way in a perilous post-Roman world. Did you conceive the story as a standalone or was it always supposed to be a series? What are some of the challenges to writing a recurring character?

RL: Initially, it was a standalone tale, in which the quest for the treasure of Atil’s tomb ended exactly the way it did in The Whale Road – they got it, they touched it, they lost it. End of book. My agent, Jim Gill, loved the book and actually thought I had teased him with the ending, so the idea of a Book 2 was planted. Then he went and sold three books to HarperCollins, the lovely man, so I had to come up with them! Writing Orm as a recurring character is no problem – he starts out at 15 and develops to manhood in these three books, so each one is like dealing with a different, new hero. There are few who end up coming with him right to the end of the three books – one reviewer on Amazon loved TWR, but could not see how I was going to follow it up, since I kept killing characters off faster than the Black Death.

Q: Do you plot extensively in advance, or let it unfold organically? Have you ever been so unhappy with a scene or a plot thread that you’ve chucked it and started over?

RL: I NEVER start off with a plotted novel. I don’t know where it is going any more than the reader does. About four or five chapters in, I have to start roughly outlining chapters, because I have characters and new ideas I want to use in it and I will forget unless I note them down. About half-way through I stop dead, plot out the last half, then go back and re-read what I have just done. By then I have come up with fresh info, new research, blatant flaws etc etc which I can remedy. Then I write the last part to the close and go back and read the whole thing again. It is not unknown for the entire affair to take a left turn at this point and head off in an entirely new direction.

Q: What part of crafting a novel gives you trouble and what do you do to overcome it?

RL: That middle part. Fifty to sixty thousand words in. I used to think it was me, but other writers have told me of the ‘souffle moment’, when the whole thing starts to sag. My answer is to stop, go back, read it, correct it, do some more research – which might throw up a ‘eureka’ plot device moment which kick-starts the whole process.

Q: You got caught in a power struggle between your agent Jim Gill leaving PFD for United Agents. Did the kerfuffle impact your writing? Has that whole conflict simmered down?

RL: PFD were a great, slightly old-fashioned agency, in the sense that they valued their talent assets, be it writers, actors whatever. Of course, this is not 21^st century business and, sadly, they allowed themselves to be wolfed up by a sports promo agency and everything those three words represent. I had not been with them very long, but long enough to see that I had value only as a cog. I did not like that and neither did the agents. PFD forgot that the relationship between a writer and his/her agent is pre-eminent. Jim Gill saw what I could do and gave me the break. He is the one who touches base to find out how I am doing etc etc, for, essentially, writing is a lonely business. The whole PFD thing impinges on him worse than me – I won’t suffer, while he loses out on any money made from my first three books (the contracts stay with PFD) and has to start again. I felt I was vindicated in my decision to go with Jim when he and the rest of the refuseniks started United Agents, for the overall boss of the conglomerate who owns PFD promptly launched a website called United Agents Group, which was such a petty act.

Q: Tell us about your latest release THE WOLF SEA.

RL: The worst of the three to write – the middle one, which starts in the middle and ends in the middle. It also has to have a coherent plot and be a stand-alone novel with a satisfying ending. Hopefully I have pulled it off. It takes the Oathsworn almost from where Book One left off and heads them into the eastern Med in pursuit of the only ‘chart’ back to Atilla’s treasure, a series of rune-marked navigational aids carved into the hilt of Orm’s sword, which has been stolen. In the end, they have to travel from Constantinople to Antioch amd down to Jerusalem to get it back, becoming embroiled in all that was happening in the Middle East circa 966AD. Believe me – it was no less chaotic and troubled then as it is now. Hopefully, I will not have this ‘middle book’ problem again even if, as seems likely, this turns from a trilogy into a series.

Q: What was the best advice you’d gotten in this business? The worst?

RL: Best advice – don’t give up. Don’t give up. And, finally, don’t give up.

Worst advice – Never write in the first person, it is too limiting. Three books and still saying ‘I’ …

Another piece of – well, not advice, exactly. A rejection slip reason for turning The Whale Road down. Too many confusing foreign names. So all my Vikings should have been called James or Joe, presumably. Sheesh!

Q: What are you reading now?

RL: Anything to do with the Baltic Crusades and the Battle of Tannenberg, 1410, which is my latest project. For fun – The Earthworms, by Prudence Andrew, one of the best medieval novels ever written in my opinion. Because I can – and frequently do – read two or three books at a time without losing the plot, I am enjoying Mirabilis by Susann Cokal and, less enjoyably, The King Of Vinland’s Saga by Stuart Mirsky. I will probably give up on the latter, all the same because, though it has lots of ideas, I have seen them before in all the Sagas and his style is also Saga-like, which is rather like reading a script (since the Sagas were meant to be spoken, even acted, it is not a good writing style to slavishly emulate). And, yet again, the Vikings Do America …