Q&A: Genevieve Cogman (the Invisible Library series).

As you folks hopefully know, Genevieve Cogman is a British fantasy writer who has just come out with two books (The Invisible Library and The Masked City) set in her Invisible Library series.  Well, actually, the books have been out for a while in Great Britain; it’s just that we’re only getting them now in the United States.  I reached out to Genevieve with some questions about the books, which she was gracious enough to reply to: you’ll find her answers below.  Let me note in passing, by the way, that I paid extra to get my hands on the British editions of both books, and I was very happy to do so. Make of that what you will.

So, onto the questions!

• OK, You’re in an elevator with the person who is in charge of deciding which books will be sold by Target and Walmart.  You have thirty seconds to pitch your series. Go!

It’s a series involving world-travelling librarians stealing books for a secret library that helps support reality. It involves dragons, fae, an analogue for Sherlock Holmes, alligators, zeppelins, and trips to interesting foreign places. Strong female characters, strong male characters, and a lot of running away screaming.

• But, more specifically: what do you think are the central emotion(s) of  your books? – Or, if you prefer: which emotions were you looking to provoke in your readers?

I’m afraid I didn’t really think of it that way. Unless you count “pleasure at a good read”? I just wanted to tell an entertaining story.

• I’m going to cheat a little, here: I know that you’ve done a bunch of role-playing game writing (GURPS, In Nomine, among others). What are your thoughts about running RPG campaigns around the Library?

I think that the GM would have to be very careful about characters playing Librarians abusing the power of the Language. It’s the sort of thing that could be rules-lawyered in a lot of ways that might spoil the fun of a campaign. (That’s the sort of thing which is easier to handle as an omnipotent author than as a player character!) But I think it could be done. And an episodic format of “go run this errand for the Library” might work quite well. The problem might be in integrating mixed groups of Fae, Librarians, and dragons. But hey, players are good at coming up with reasons why their characters are special snowflakes who are happy to interact with each other, even if all the other specimens of their kind aren’t…

• We all know that it’s terrifying to write books, of course. What did you do to help you face the daunting task of filling all those empty pages with words?

I had friends to encourage me. I had a desire to finish the story. And I drank a lot of coffee.

• How do you want us to buy The Invisible Library and The Masked City?   Print, Kindle, other e-book, audiobook if there’s going to be one?

I think it already is an audiobook, available at audible.com [ML: found here]. But honestly, get it in whatever format is easiest for you. Different people find different things more convenient.