C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo) is an event I look forward to every year. It’s just a great show all around. This year was special though, this year was my first time attending possibly my favorite convention as a member of the press. My co-writer, Ryan, and I got to talk to some amazing people, including Mirah Bolender, author of City of Broken Magic, a wonderful fantasy story that hit shelves just last November.
To start off, can you tell me about the book and a little about the characters, all that good stuff.
Alright, well, City of Broken Magic in a nutshell is about a magical bomb squad, so you can kind of think Hurt Locker except instead of diffusing bombs its magic. And it’s not so much magic as it is magic, rechargeable batteries. Like, if you had a rechargeable battery and you didn’t refill it in time, a monster would take root in it and eat you and your family and your house and the block., and then just keep eating.
So, the main characters of the story are called “Sweepers” and they go out and uproot these things, and it’s getting increasingly harder and ridiculous for them to do so because their city is kind of under this impression that infestations – which is what these monsters are called – can’t take root inside the city walls, which is due to a misunderstanding that goes decades and decades back that they’re still dealing with. So, basically monster hunting.
I really, really like this concept. I think its unique. I like this idea of these people that have to go in and fix stuff that’s left over from the past and the different scenarios. So, where did this idea come from? What influenced and inspired you?
Well, there’s a lot of different ways that it came about. Back when it was very first thought up it was going to be a BGF thing, where they were going to be fighting nightmares or something, except during my college work-shopping class we were supposed to put together a bunch of different topics, like one of them was “a day in the life” with a bunch of footnotes and “a house of leaves” which was a nightmare, and a whole bunch of other things, which basically turned into Chapter 1 – where they jump down a chimney. So, it kind of went away from the original thing, became its own stand alone chapter for that particular assignment and basically I liked it and my teacher liked it enough that it turned into my senior capstone project and it evolved from there.
Who would you say are some of your biggest influences in the genre that inspired you to go for a fantasy story?
That’s also difficult because that’s all I read haha. I try to read nonfiction sometimes but it’s a lot easier to connect with characters on an emotional level and have that human nature in a fantasy novel or fiction novel because when you’re talking nonfiction, then you’re kind of skimming over someone’s life in a biography or you’re talking about an event and so many times the humanity gets paved over for the events like this date-this date-and this date, and I like more of the human story behind it.
So, when it comes to authors I can’t deny that Brian Jacques had a big, big influence, I mean the talking mice – I was stuck on that for years. Harry Potter of course. Nowadays I’m trying to read more widely, I really like V.E. Schwab, I read Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer which was really good too – I go more by individual books than authors so it’s kind of hard to say, you know, “this is my literary influence”.
So, based on what you’re telling us, would you consider this an urban fantasy, procedural type situation?
Kind of. The Sweepers are not military and they’re not exactly police but they work very closely with the police. They’re basically understood by the city to be the inheritors of the mob action unit, essentially the flying squad, but they’re not. The mobs deal heavily in infestations so that’s what the city keeps proposing them as, but they’re just a specific, more civilian based task-force that is meant to take care of this particular problem.
What can you tell me about the main characters, Laura and Clae and coming up with their characters? Because I really like their dynamic in the story.
Well, Clae came first. When I was first putting together that first story for my fiction workshop class, I was thought “ok, I have Clae, I have a basic premise, but I don’t want to look right from Clae’s perspective because its a lot harder to do that, so I need to pick someone else and stick them in there” so then I came up with Laura. And I really like her and she’s like the easiest character to write because she’s kind of my baseline at this point. She’s the interpretive lens for everything but she’s also a lot more than I originally intended her to be and I love that.
So, a lot of the modern popularity of fantasy seems to stem from young adult novels like Harry Potter and the like but it’s become popular with pretty much everyone, including adults, so you see a lot more adult fantasy, do you feel like there’s a difference when writing for young adult fantasy vs adult fantasy?
I supposed the themes you can tackle. From mine, I’m not really sure where it falls with who reads what, but it’s built as an adult book. When I was originally creating it I was thinking young adult, but my editor kept saying “let’s make the monster scarier, let’s age them up” and I really like the changes that she made, so it’s an adult book but it’s one of those where the readership overlaps so much that I don’t think it’s fair to place that solid “adult/new adult” label on it. A lot of descriptions I see for that kind of book don’t quite apply to this, so basically anyone can read it – not little kids. Older readership, but it’s hitting that area in between,
Yeah, I did notice a lot of death in the first couple pages haha. Which I liked because I wasn’t expecting it, because I’m more used to the “wholesome” fantasy, where there’s a monster but everything’s going to be ok and we can be friends with it. And you said your professor and editor influenced it but was that something you were going for, was the more serious tone?
Yeah. Basically, the monster that’s included in this, the infestation, I tried make it scary. Its kind of formless, so it can be anything it wants to be – it can grow and it can shrink and you never know exactly if it’s there in the room with you, only certain people can pick up on that and Laura is not one of them. So I’m trying to make it as creepy as possible, I’m not sure if I’m succeeding but I really hope I am, but it’s not a nice thing. How it got created is a later in the series deal but it does not like people, it REALLY does not like people, so there’s not going to be any sort of reconciliation for that.
So, you said Laura kind of came out of nowhere but would you say you relate to her? I guess out of the characters in the book, who’s your favorite?
Probably Laura, but possibly Okane. I really like Okane a lot because I’m an introvert and don’t do many things. Clae is nice because he speaks his mind, I can’t do that, Laura is a nice but I really wish I had some of the snark I gave her.
Do you have any more books coming out? Do you have a definite number in mind for the series?
Well, Tor bought three books and book two is actually coming out November 5th at this point. The cover reveal just happened last Monday.
And where can we find you on social media or do you have a website or anything?
Yes, I have a website, it’s mirahbolender.com, and I’m also on Twitter @mebolender.
