1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
Hola, hello, thanks for having me! I’m Rafael Torrubia, the author of The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver and I’m particularly excited to do this interview, as I grew up between Spain and Scotland, mostly in the small towns of Penicuik and Almodovar del Rio. I’ve written everything from fantasy fiction, to poetry and protest history, in my previous life as an historian. Like most recovering historians, I’ve also worked in wine, whisky and at the National Museum of Scotland. Currently, I work with the Open Book charity, delivering writing workshops across Scotland. When I’m not writing (a rare thing), I can be found enjoying a whisky, a muddy allotment, or a dark river somewhere in Perthshire.

2.- How did you start writing? When was the first time you wrote something with publishing in mind?
I’ve wanted to write since I was tiny. I remember making a little version of me out of pipecleaners for a school project which had a tiny beret, and the claim ‘I will be a famous author by 21’. Now, I’m maybe on my way just a few years later!
I’ve published a fair amount of poetry and short stories, and one history book on the Black Power movement, but the first time I wrote something specifically for publication, was this book, The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver.

3.- When would you say the first idea for The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver appeared?
The very first time Shipwright appeared was when I was listening to Lal Waterson’s song ‘Midnight Feast’, after a break-up, which opens with the lines:
I never thought I would find life easy
I was lately falling apart.
And then you came, and then you made me
Lean that bit harder on my heart.
I could see Shipwright in my head then. A veteran of an old war, and facing another catastrophe, thanks to the man she loves. That’s the question I wanted her to be answering in the novel – how hard is she willing to lean on her heart, and what will it cost her? Once Shipwright was there, the Shroudweaver had to emerge to keep her company, and so he stepped out of her shadow, lean, quiet and strange.

4.- Could you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind this novel?
There’s a lot of stuff in there – it partially came as a result of the world I was writing in. There are parallels to climate catastrophe, revolution, migration and displacement in there. It also came from an urge to write the wild, epic fantasy that I adored from my childhood, Mythago Wood, The Elenium, Malazan Book of the Fallen, but to fill it with characters who loved each other deeply as friends, family or partners, and who took terrible risks and did incredible things as a result. The very bones of the book come from the myths and landscape of Scotland, and further afield. Shroudweaver’s visceral magic, the blood-cursed mountain of Thell, Shipwright’s wild sea and the haunted fields of the Barrowlands have echoes in the Cladh Hallan bog bodies, the city of Derinkuyu, or the Tomb of the Eagles on Orkney.

5.- How did it change this novel from its inception to the version that finally got published?
It started off as a much slimmer, more poetic piece, just under 90k words. My prospective agent was very complimentary about it, calling it a ‘beautiful fever dream’, but wanted more meat on the bones before he took me on, so I wrote about another 80k on spec, doubling the length. However, the poetry survives both in the tone of the book, and also in the epigraphs. If any readers want some clue to the events of the sequel, you might be able to find a few hints in the epigraphs of each chapter. Some things appear more than once. Some little prophecies may come true.

6.- The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is a long epic novel; did this influence its acquisition process?
It did, but probably not in the way you think! The 90k I originally submitted ballooned to about 200k, which we then edited back down for submission. The sale of the novel came down to several lovely publishers who all had different visions for the end piece. Gollancz, specifically my incredible editor Bethan Morgan, turned everything on its head, by asking for it to be even bigger and wilder. That was when I knew that they got the world, and so the final book is just short of 250k, and is the richest, strangest fantasy epic I could hope for. Having all that room to play let me really spend time in the world, letting the readers feel the landscape seep into their bones, and spend time with the characters in personal moments that might not have made it into a shorter piece, and the book thrives for it.

7.- Could you tell us a bit about the drafting process of this novel?
We’ve touched on this, but essentially I don’t write scenes in order. I tend to walk, or listen to poetry, or let myself just roll ideas around my skull until an image, a line or a feeling comes, and then the rest of the scene follows from that. The first chapter of the book came first, but the rest of it came in a very unhelpful order. Crowkisser and Icecaller, two of my most dangerous women, were impatient to be written.
Once I have a few of these scenes, I’ll set them in relation to each other, and start to think about how to connect them; how to stitch some sinew onto the bones. The story tends to flow naturally from that.
The one exception to this was Thell, where something very pivotal happens, from multiple viewpoints. When you read this, please imagine me frantically shuffling around chapters on my dining room table, so everyone eventually was where they needed to be, at exactly the right time.

8.- Is there a particular character that you consider your favourite? Why?
If I’m allowed two – Crowkisser, our ‘villain’. I find her voice so easy to write, and all her decisions are motivated by grief, then fury, then fortune. And I think all of us have found ourselves at points in our lives where our heart has broken so terribly, that we do things we would never have thought ourselves capable of.
My second choice is Coglifter, my elderly spy. She has a relatively small role in this book, but she was a delight to write. Ruthless and sly, but also deeply caring, and a lover of good food and good drink. I enjoy having characters who are older than many fantasy protagonists, and Coglifer is the gnarled, feisty end result. You might find this isn’t the last you see of her.

9.- How would you pitch this novel in a single sentence? To which kind of reader would you recommend it?
This is a book about murdered gods and stolen names, about the war and what comes after. It’s for anyone who wants a wild, epic fantasy which has the beauty of poetry alongside sweeping battles, thundering magic, deep love and true, thrilling strangeness.

10.- The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver has been recently published. How do you feel about it?
The reception to the book has been absolutely wonderful. The book is as beautiful outside as in – Kerby Rosanes and Rachael Lancaster at Gollancz did an incredible job on the cover, and the reviews and readers seem to have understood exactly what I wanted to make – a beautiful, driving story with characters that stay with you, in a world which makes you feel like a child again, cracking the spine of some thrilling tome.

11.- Is there any advice that you would like to give to somebody who wants to draft an epic fantasy novel?
Don’t think about making it epic. Start with the things you care about, then give them to your characters to care about. Then think what those characters would do if they had the magic, power and skills to change the world. Things become epic from there.
You will also need very patient family and friends, and a few extra years than you think. A dog or a cat would help.

12.- What can we expect from Rafael Torrubia in the future?
The sequel to The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver, which is already under way. Anyone who gets to the end of this one, will see that the situation…needs resolved. Beyond that, I have a project about a family of guides on the edge of a mythical, shifting wood, and an ongoing prose-poem fantasy about a bog body who is rescued, resurrected and put to work in a Glasgow pub.