Emily Gee on UK debut fantasy novel ‘Thief With No Shadow’ : UK SF Book News

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Jul

8

Emily Gee on UK debut fantasy novel ‘Thief With No Shadow’

Posted in: UKSFBN Talks To on 8th July 2007 by Sandy Auden

It's always nice to find a genre novel that combines multiple aspects of the fantastic with a fluid prose style and an excellent underlying structure. Emily Gee's Thief With No Shadow combines mythological monsters, a medieval setting and a large dose of romance to create the emotional tale of Melke, a wraith, who can make herself invisible at will, a useful trait if she is to save her brother, Hantje, from certain death.

Because Hantje has been captured by the fire-breathing Salamanders and the price for his freedom is a magical necklace, owned by a nearby family. Melke uses her skills to steal the jewelry but in doing so condemns the family to death instead, as an ancient curse descends with the loss of the necklace…

From the very first page, where Melke is pursued by the necklace's owner Bastian, Thief keeps you right at the heart of the action. "I started it there, in the middle of a theft, because that's when things begin to go wrong for the characters," said Gee. "Unfortunately for Bastian and Melke, it gets much worse after that!"

Events become deadly in a very short time in Thief so it isn’t some rose-tinted romance. "Originally, Thief was less dark than it is now," the author explained. "The story was a plot in my head when I attended a workshop in New Zealand by American über-agent Donald Maass. He posed the question: What’s the worst thing that can happen to your characters? And then he suggested doing it to them. My initial response was: No way can I do that to them. Obviously, I changed my mind!

"The plot for Thief sat in my head for several months after the workshop, and during that time it became much, much darker than it had initially been. I have to say that I found it a lot of fun to write a dark version of Thief. Dark suits me - as long as there's a happy ending!"

There are also some unusual sex scenes in the story. "I included those scenes because that was the way the story went. They just evolved out of the plot. I didn't deliberately set out to write disturbing sex scenes!

"The milder of the two scenes is described in full and was actually quite amusing to write. (Proof of my twisted sense of humour, no doubt.) The other scene ... well, there’s only a 'before' and 'after' because when I got there I realised that I didn’t want to write the full scene. It was just somewhere that I didn't want to go!"

Intriguing, no? Thief With No Shadow is out now from Solaris Books and is available from all good bookseller, offline and online, including Amazon.co.uk.

For more information about New Zealander Emily Gee, visit her website at www.emilygee.com.

Source: Emily Gee

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