1--What is the title of your latest release?
A STRANGER IN THE CITADEL
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
In a world where gods banned reading, librarians wander the wastes with something that could get them killed on the spot: books.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I honestly have no clue, like many creative things, it was an idea that slowly bubbled up into my brain and took hold until I couldn’t ignore it.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
No.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Naive, eager to learn, on the cusp of great educational growth.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
The names of all the enslaved people that George Washington kept on his estate.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
My local vegan restaurant has a “TLT” which is tempeh, lettuce, and tomato with avocado. It’s delicious. I have one so often there one of the waitresses calls it the “Tobias LT.”
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I just built a new home, so it’s a tiny room on the second floor with all my books on the walls, all white desks, a sort of Scandy-beach cottage feel, and it looks out over a large backyard and our barn. But usually, I write on the back deck, same view, but out in the breeze and shade. It makes me happy. Kim Stanley Robinson showed me a writing set up he had in his garden, and I aspire to put a gravity chair out under a tree somewhere, or maybe a hammock, to write in.
10--Who is an author you admire?
All of them. Writing a book is a marathon, it can break you. Even if you just do one, it’s an accomplishment. So much of life is aligned against us having the space or energy to CREATE that it’s a miracle anything gets written.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Books in aggregate did. Gave me the sense of larger horizons than my humble origins. I can list groups of books, but I resist a singular book because we change, our understanding of the books shift, and it’s a complex, formless void of literature that is the loam of my identity. I do give away copies of books like Vernor Vinge’s A FIRE UPON THE DEEP or Sönke Ahren’s HOW TO TAKE SMART NOTES, or anything by Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks, Octavia Butler, Karen Lord, Nalo Hopkinson, and many, many others. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin series is fucking spectacular, huge fan of that right now.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Science Fiction.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Right now, it’s Sisu. The world needs more Nazi punching.
15--What is your favorite season?
Rainy season in the southern parts of the Caribbean.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
My birthday is right after New Year’s, so people are usually too hung over and everyone already gives you “Christmas/Birthday” cards/presents/etc, so I tend not to do anything.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m currently reading Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Damn good science fiction.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Grenadian.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I play Ultimate Frisbee.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
A novel called RUNES OF ENGAGEMENT from Tachyon Press, by me and David Klecha. Imagine a platoon of Marines goes through a portal into a standard fantasy world with dragons and elves. Chaos friggin’ ensues! It’s some of the most fun writing, and with one of my closest friends, a marine himself. All the cool details in it are thanks to him!
From the powerful storyteller Tobias Buckell (Crystal Rain, The Tangled Lands), a complex novel of humanity’s passion for the written word. At the revolutionary crossroads of magic, betrayal, and long-forgotten truths, a naïve, compassionate royal and a determined, hunted librarian discover a dangerous world of mortal and ancient menaces.
Lilith has heard an oblique warning all of her life: “Thou shall not suffer a librarian to live.
The life of the youngest musketress of Ninetha has been one of hard training. But Lilith’s days have also contained many pleasures, the royal privileges of her family’s guardianship of the Cornucopia, a mystical source of limitless bounty. Lilith has never seen a book, and she never expects to encounter one within in the safety of the citadel.
When Ishmael, an outcast librarian, shows up outside the Afriq Gate, Lilith saves him from immediate execution by her father’s second-in-command, the zealot Kira. As Lilith’s curiosity draws her to the Ishmael, she lets slip her family’s most dangerous secret to Kira, sparking a deadly rebellion and an unexpected journey full of stunning revelations.
Fiction Adventure | Action [Tachyon Publications, On Sale: October 17, 2023, Paperback, ISBN: 9781616963989 / ]
Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the US, and the British Virgin Islands. He now lives (through many strange twists of fate) in a small college town in Ohio with his wife, Emily. Buckell was a first place winner for the Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Nebula Award. He is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop.
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