Zen Cho
Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia where she read a lot of 19th century British and North American fiction. While not containing the dragons and spaceships she likes, the books did encapsulate an alien world "featuring strange people who spoke a different language, had mysterious,
intricate social customs, and used outlandish technology like
post-chaises and handkerchiefs." She now lives in London, lucky her, not that I'm jealous or anything. OK, I totally am. Zen has been nominated for a plethora of awards, the most notable being the Pushcart Prize. She was also honour-listed for the Carl Brandon Society Awards which is part of WisCon and seriously, if this means she was in Madison at some time and I missed her I'm going to be very sad. Dammit she was! And I totally had a ticket for that year but couldn't make it at the last minute. I am now very sad. Back to Zen... her debut novel Sorcerer to the Crown, the first in a historical fantasy trilogy, was published in 2015. It is awesome, as it it's followup published this year, The True Queen.
It is staggering the number of best lists and awards Sorcerer to the Crown received, but once you read it you won't be surprised. Sorcerer to the Crown was the first book I read in 2016 that literally blew me away and it lost nothing on it's re-read this spring. Currently Cho isn't a full time writer, she's a lawyer. I suspect that this might not be the case for long, which is totally my opinion not hers. But lawyers due tend to abandon ship for the literary world... just look at Lauren Willig. Aside from her first novel, she has also written a few novellas, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, which I bought immediately upon finishing Sorcerer to the Crown, and The Terracotta Bride, bought as soon as it was published in 2016. She also has a short story collection, Spirits Abroad, as well as being the editor of the anthology Cyberpunk: Malaysia. I can see a long career ahead for her; the only problem I see is that I found her at the beginning of her career so now I have an unendurable wait ahead for her next book! Which I really need now, no matter that she just published a new one!
Question: When did you first discover Jane Austen?
Answer: I was around 12 years old – an impressionable age!
Question: What do you think Jane Austen would think of her impact with so many literary offshoots, from parody to pastiche?
Answer: I suspect she'd be delighted, amazed – but also, secretly, not really surprised. I think most authors who are really good know it, even if that conviction is accompanied by the usual self-doubt and neurosis.
Question: Where do you get your inspiration from?
Answer: From everything, but mostly stories – the stories I read and watch, but also those I hear from friends and family and see in the news.
Question: What makes the early 19th century mesh so well with magic?
Answer: When you come to novels and letters from the 19th century as a modern reader, the world they contain may as well be a fantasy world, it's so different from ours. I think SFF readers and writers are drawn to that aspect of 19th century Britain as a setting: it's such a complete alternative society with its own history, social norms and technology, and it's one that is familiar to many people worldwide, since the literature of Britain's Georgian and Victorian eras have had enormous global reach due to imperialism. The focus on the early 19th century specifically, the Regency period, I think to some extent is bleedover from the Regency romance subgenre.
Question: The world building and system of magic varies greatly in the regency fantasy genre, how did you go about creating yours?
Answer: For Sorcerer to the Crown I was really much more interested in magic as a bone of contention than anything else – a resource to be quarrelled over. The worldbuilding went primarily into the power structures surrounding magic. So the chief antagonists are the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, an ancient body of magicians who are very cross about anyone they don't approve of having access to magic, and Fairyland, which is mad at Britain for various reasons.
Question: If you had to choose between writing only period literature or only fantasy literature, which would win?
Answer: Fantasy. You can interpret any period of history you like through the lens of fantasy, so I wouldn't really be giving anything up!
Question: Be honest, have you ever dressed up in Regency clothes just to pretend for a moment you are in the past?
Answer: Nope! If I'd lived in Britain at the time I doubt I would have had anything particularly nice to wear.
If you follow my goodreads feed you sometimes glean things that aren't readily apparent here on my blog. You might guess what I'm planning in the coming months, or you might, for example go "how the hell does she like The Magicians when she hated the book so much that she hasn't even bothered to write a scorching review because she probably views it as a waste of time." FYI I do view it as a waste of time. Well, this is one of those rare instances where an adaptation is so much better than the source material that it's best to forget that source exists. Although I will give a tip of the hat to how clever the showrunners are in circling around and sneaking in something from the books when you least expect it. Though they have a way of making it work where Lev Grossman didn't. Because, for those who've read the books, there's no denying that the protagonist Quentin Coldwater with his Fillory obsession is a bit of a wet blanket. He's mopey and just best avoided, hence here comes Elliot and Margo to the rescue. Secondary characters elevated to a bitchy king and queen of Fillory? Oh. My. God. Yes. Please. They not only add levity to the show, they seriously make the show what it is. Watch how much more screentime they get in season two compared to season one and you'll know what I'm talking about. And THAT is what I love most about The Magicians, they see areas where they need to improve and actually improve! This is the "dark/adult Harry Potter" I expected when I picked up the book series. This is what fantasy television is about! 
For me, my turning into a bookworm all started with science fiction. The reason is two fold. When I was younger I rarely read at all. Instead I watched lots of movies. In particular I watched a LOT of Star Wars. When I mean I watched a lot of Star Wars, I mean really a lot. I mean an entire summer just watching the original trilogy over and over. When I found the Star Wars Expanded Universe in the form of Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, I felt as if a whole new world was open to me. I give Timothy Zahn almost all of the credit for turning me into the bookworm I am now and I hope one day to tell him that in person. He took characters I already loved and gave them new adventures for me to devour. The second half of my conversion was due to Douglas Adams. After high school I spent that summer reading all of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as all of Jane Austen, but that's another story. Those books by Adams are still a touchstone for me. I remember how it felt to hold them with the circular embossing on the covers while I laughed at the absurdity of Arthur Dent's predicament. It almost makes me want to curl up on the side porch in blistering heat and re-read the full trilogy, as this would be the cheapest form of time travel. But the truth is over time I have moved away from science fiction and more to it's counterpart of fantasy. I remember years ago the heated discussions online of the divide between science fiction and fantasy despite them being shelved together in bookstores. It all came down to dragons. So perhaps I like my imaginary worlds to have a few dragons these days. This means that my science fiction reading has lapsed of late. So more than anything I'm trying to reconnect with my roots here. To go back to imaginative storytelling with a science base and the occasional spacecraft. Here's to worlds without dragons! And of course Star Wars!
Fiction is like the umbrella or tent pole under which almost all other imaginative writing falls, sometimes even biography if we're being honest. So be it science fiction, fantasy, romance, those are just the species under the genus that is fiction. Therefore I could claim that fiction is my most read genre... which isn't actually true, but you get what I'm saying. In fact, in my mind bookstores often just throw a book in fiction if they are at a loss as to where it should go. In my mind Diana Gabaldon should be romance and Gregory Maguire should be fantasy... but do bookstores listen to me? No. Which is why sometimes, yes, I will move the books around while muttering under my breath. But usually only in used bookstores because they don't have computers that would thwart my plans. Oh, and I ALWAYS turn books I love face out. But enough about me and my weird bookstore quirks. I've chosen what I hope will be an interesting cross section of fiction, a little classic, a little modern, and all worlds to get lost in. 
Much as my Regency handle should Mr. Darcy drop by is Miss Eliza, Mark Anthony also has an alias, that of Galen Beckett, though I don't believe his was to ensnare an Austen hero, but more to give that right fantastical authorial feel to his Mrs. Quent trilogy. Mark spent his childhood summers in a Colorado ghost town falling in love with the mountains as well as the fantasy stories he read "pushed" on him by a pair of older sisters. Of course this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has read his Mrs. Quent trilogy which is a delicious combination of magic and nature. Instead of veering into the realm of fantasy right away he initially trained as a paleoanthropologist. Along the way it wasn't so much human evolution which called to him, though you will see that it does work it's way into his writing, but the evolution of man that is reflected in myth and the literature of the fantastic. This shift shouldn't have surprised anyone, what with Mark growing up on a steady diet of Tolkien, McCaffrey, and LeGuin. 
Question: When did you first discover Jane Austen?
Question: What do you think Jane Austen would think of her impact with so many literary offshoots, from parody to pastiche? 
Question: The world building and system of magic varies greatly in the regency fantasy genre, how did you go about creating yours?
Question: If you had to choose between writing only period literature or only fantasy literature, which would win?
Garth Nix (yes it's his real name) was born in 1963 in Melbourne, but raised in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia. Originally intending to be a solider he soon turned away from that insular world and focused on his love of writing. Nix got a BA in professional writing from Canberra University, but had to supplement his income with, well, an income, till he was able to quit his day job and become a full-time writer in 2001. Yet during those years of struggling to be a writer he was always on the periphery of the literary world. Starting in a Canberra bookshop after graduating he has since been a literary agent, a marketing consultant, a book editor, a book publicist, a book sales representative, and finally a full-time author. Nix's wife is even in the literary world, being a publisher. Though as Nix has pointed out, all these jobs didn't help him get his leg up as an author, just kept him connected with that world.
