Tamora Pierce Talks Tempests and Slaughter and Tortall with Tess of the Road’s Rachel Hartman

Rachel Hartman: I am over the moon to be returning to Tortall. Can you give me the whirlwind tour of the new series, beginning with Tempests and Slaughter? When is it set, relative to the others? Which old friends are coming back, and who can we look forward to getting to know?
Tamora Pierce: The new trilogy takes place in the same time as In the Hand of the Goddess and the years after Lioness Rampant, when Jon and Thayet are the new rulers of Tortall, struggling to get their realm in order.
Old friends…hmmm. Most of those will appear in the third book. We’ve already met Sarge (known here also by his birth name, Musenda Ogunsanwo), Lindhall Reed (who appeared in Emperor Mage), the Graveyard Hag (also seen in Emperor Mage and heard in Trickster’s Queen), Varice and Ozorne, of course, and Tristan (Wolf-Speaker). Their Majesties will appear in the third book. I believe Alanna does, too, as will a friend from her Bazhir days!
Hartman: You have created such a vast world with so many characters. Why did you choose to tell Numair’s backstory? Were lots of characters clamoring for attention, or did the story choose you?

Pierce: Most of my popular characters have had their younger years covered in some fashion. Of the older ones, Numair’s youth had the most opportunity for fun and surprises for the readers, as I knew roughly what it had been like. I was drawn straight to him, pretty much. The combination of powerful magic, absentmindedness, distractibility, and clumsiness was simply too good to resist, not to mention the kind of looks and body that don’t seem appealing until the kid starts to grow into them.
Hartman: What was it like writing a male protagonist? You have always delved fearlessly into pretty intimate subjects with your female characters— periods, birth control—so I assume you would take on this challenge just as intrepidly. Were there any moments where you felt stumped or intimidated?
Pierce: *rolls eyes* Oh, my stars and buttons. I was perfectly fine until I reached the point where I realized Arram wasn’t getting any younger, and I was going to have to make a decision. I did have a cowardly moment when I thought I’d just skip the whole thing, but it really was only a moment. I couldn’t cover the body-maturing material for girls and skip guys, not if I was trying to be fair to everyone.
I knew all of the medical facts, of course, but it’s a far cry from medical facts to a person’s experience. I thought I was okay, though, because I had that most perfect of sources for this kind of thing, an opposite-cis-sex spouse-creature. Oh, was I mistaken! “What are you asking me for? I don’t remember! It was a long time ago! I was a kid! Find somebody else!”
Traitor.
Luckily for me, I also have a writing partner, big kahuna of middle-grade literature Bruce Coville (Aliens Ate My Homework; Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher; Into the Land of Unicorns). Plucking up my courage, I asked Bruce for help during a writing session.
He laughed. He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed. He helped me through the major moments and the lesser ones, laughing all the way. The other part of having a writing partner, aside from writing, is that you read your work to each other. He laughed then, too. I blushed as I read, and he laughed, and he laughed…. But it worked, which is the important thing, right?

Hartman: Do you find that Tortall grows and evolves with each new book, that you’re learning new things about the setting as you go? Was there anything you learned while writing Tempests and Slaughter that surprised you?
Pierce: I definitely learn more about Tortall as I write, just as I learn more about the craft of writing and how to create characters. The biggest thing I learned, and will continue to learn as I work my way through the trilogy, is about the way of life and thinking in Carthak, particularly in the palace, at the university, and on the streets. I’m also learning more about the backgrounds of characters I thought I knew—not just my leads, but characters like Lindhall, Sarge, and Arram’s other masters. I’m encountering a far more diverse system of magical wildlife than there is in the north—the weather’s nicer, for one thing. And, as always happens when I poke my nose into the lives of the immortals and the gods, I find there is far more to them than I knew before.
I also explore our own world’s history and societies and how human life functions: its stories, its religions, its customs, and how such things change over time and through use. I dig into things I like and don’t like. I’ve certainly learned more about contemporary slavery in this series and developed a bone-deep loathing for it and the people who practice it, particularly in the “enlightened” western world. People in Europe and North America have no right to preach against slavery on other continents if they refuse to acknowledge and fight it in their countries as well. They may call it by other names, like “domestic help,” “factory workers,” “prostitution,” and “adoption,” but far too many people in those positions are slaves, pure and simple.

Hartman: Having written a substantial number of books, would you say it gets easier? Or do you find you keep setting yourself new and harder challenges?
Pierce: Because I’m a chucklehead, I try to do something different with each new hero or project. By now I know I will struggle more than I did with the previous projects, because I will be applying the new concepts to the ones I’ve already learned, but I just can’t seem to help it. I don’t want to get stuck; I don’t want to repeat myself (apart from the small things that constitute my “style,” whatever that is). I want to express issues without boring my audience, and I always want to bring in new fans. Since I’m wary I won’t be able to transcend what I’ve done before, I often go to others when I begin to think about the next series. I’ve had the best success with my Random House editors. Yes, they urge me to tackle projects they want to read, but they also seem able to choose what will work well for me—Kel as a hero without magic, Aly as a spy, a male hero…. The worst was Beka. First we went from third person to first person. Then we went to journal form. I thought I might end up chewing off a limb, but eventually it worked out! I dread the day I fail the new challenge!
Hartman: What was the hardest thing about writing a prequel/backstory?
Pierce: Actually, it wasn’t as hard as might be expected. I’d developed some aspects of the university and of Carthak itself in Emperor Mage, and I’d thought about it for years. It was made even easier because it’s completely separate from Tortall and the Copper Isles. I didn’t have to worry about any continuity with books that come later. It will get a bit trickier in the third book, when some of the action moves north, but even then it doesn’t overlap with work that has already been published. I’ll just be filling in events from other books. Otherwise that would be the hardest part, keeping everything fitted in around the previous timeline. My fans are bears for the timeline being accurate!