Interview with Christine Pope

Christine Pope is a novelist who defies categorization. She's equally at home writing contemporary romance and science fictionized fairy tales. She writes short stories. She blogs. She keeps up with Kindle boards. She is my hero! This year she's been especially prolific and if I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her. If you like well-plotted, character-heavy fiction with a romantic edge, you owe it to yourself to discover Christine's work, if you don't know it already.

Let's talk about the books.

Your new book, All Fall Down, is the first of your "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms." What are the "Latter Kingdoms" and what is the book about?

The "Latter Kingdoms" are a group of countries spread across one continent in a fantasy world that's more Renaissance than medieval in terms of technology, the arts, politics, fashion, and so forth. Since I plan for the series to be set in a variety of these kingdoms, I wanted the series title to reflect all of them. All Fall Down is mainly set in a kingdom named Seldd, a land that's rather backward compared to many of the other countries on the continent. It's about a young woman named Merys Thranion who has been trained as a physician, and how she's captured as a slave and brought to Seldd, at first to heal a nobleman's injured daughter. But she comes up against a far more difficult situation when the plague appears for the first time in hundreds of years. And behind her surface struggles is her growing affection for Lord Shaine, her master. Physicians in her Order are not supposed to form personal attachments, so poor Merys really has to go through the wringer on multiple levels in the book.

Did you originally intend to write a series? Will each story in the series be stand-alone or will there be "cross-pollination" of plots and characters?  Can you tell us a little bit about the second book in the series, Dragon Rose?

You know, I really didn't think about writing a series. I just started writing several different books set in this world, and then I sort of realized partway through that they were a series, although one connected by milieu and not any overarching quest or storyline. All the books in the series are standalones, although events in some books may be mentioned in passing in others. For example, the next book in the series, Dragon Rose, has a brief comment about the plague that dominates the storyline of All Fall Down. Dragon Rose takes place about five years later in a neighboring kingdom called Farendon. It's a very different book, somewhat inspired by the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but with an almost gothic tone.

Your book Blood Will Tell and your novella Breath of Life are both set in the Gaian Consortium world. What do you have planned for other books in that series?

I have two more books planned right now, but I'm sure there will be more than that. The first one is called The Gaia Gambit, and it's another planet-hopping romance/adventure story with an adversaries-to-lovers relationship at the center of it. That one is planned for a spring release, depending on what happens with my other books. The next book after that is called Marooned on Mandala, and it also has a Zhore hero (the same alien race we first meet in Breath of Life), although the heroine is very different. She's a Gaian ambassador who gets flung into a world of hurt when the ship she and the Zhore are on crash-lands on an uninhabited planet. I actually got the idea after a fan commented that she really wanted to see another book with a Zhore hero. Your wish is my command! 

Breath of Life is a lovely sci-fi take on the classic "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale. Do you have any plans to science fictionize other fairy tales?

See my comments on Dragon Rose. I really don't have any plans to do more science fiction fairy tales, although I am going to do some set in the "Latter Kingdoms" world. I have some ideas jotted down for a Red Riding Hood–inspired book called The Wolf of Harrow Hall.

You've published a couple of books this year. Anything else coming out this year? What's in the queue for next year?

Dragon Rose is slated for release in December. It's finished and has gone through its first edit, and I'll be sending it out to beta readers in October. For 2013 I'm planning on releasing The Gaia Gambit, the next Gaian Consortium book; Desert Hearts, a sequel to my paranormal UFO romance Bad Vibrations and the second book in the Sedona trilogy; Binding Spell, another "Latter Kingdoms" book; and possibly Marooned on Mandala and (I hope) Angel Fire, which will complete the Sedona trilogy. In addition to all that, I'll start getting the rights back to my small press–published books in 2013, so I'll be editing and updating them as needed and then releasing them with new covers.

Book Review: Christine Pope's All Fall Down

Illustration by Nadica Boskovska

Writer Christine Pope ventures into fantasy in All Fall Down, a story of pestilence and ignorance and a woman who fights both. This is fantasy in the vein of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels, more of a magic-tinged historical novel than a romp with fairies and elves. The world building is precise and developed with both logic and flair. There are contending kingdoms and the actions of rulers impact the lives of the ruled, sometimes in a benign way but often… not.

These people come off the page, they feel real and rooted with problems and responsibilities and hard, hard choices to make. The political situation that exists in the world Pope has created has an impact on the plot; it's integrated into the narrative on many levels and not just thrown in to create random drama.

Merys, the heroine of the story, is a healer, a woman of science not superstition. Kidnapped by slavers who sell her to a lord whose domain runs on slave labor. Lord Shaine is not a bad man, and it's to Pope's considerable credit that she makes him sympathetic and sexy in a way that makes him more than a standard-issue alpha male.

Merys is enormously appealing as a woman who relies on her wits to better her own situation but who also takes care of those around her. Her intervention in the life of a young stable hand changes his life for the better. Her bond with the daughter of the man who holds her captive is warm and caring, and extends to the young man the girl is destined to marry. Merys has real "people skills" and interacts as easily with the cook as with her master's aristocratic allies.

As always, Pope's prose is a multi-sensory experience, with mouth-watering descriptions of feasts and detailed accounts of courtly dress. At its core, this is a romance novel, with several story strands resonating with romance--from the sweet relationship between the lord's daughter and her beloved to Merys' growing attachment to Lord Shaine despite their difference in philosophy. There's a true maturity to their bonding, which does not come without sacrifice but which is all the sweeter for it.

This book is the first in a series of novels set in "The Latter Kingdoms." I cannot wait to read the next one, which is called Dragon Rose.