Featured Interview With Jon Sparks
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’ve always lived in the North-West of England: born in Macclesfield, raised in Lancaster. I now live in Garstang, Lancashire, with my partner Bernie and several bikes.
I’ve been writing fiction as long as I can remember, but for many years I made my living as an outdoor writer and photographer specialising in landscape, travel, and outdoor pursuits, particularly walking, climbing, and cycling. I’ve won awards for my writing from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild.
Three Kinds of North is not the first novel I’ve written, but it’s the first to be properly published. And it’s just the first of a series, The Shattered Moon.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love reading, and I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t write stories.
I have a misty recollection of one about a boy called Ajax who lived on a space station, which certainly would have been written while I was at primary school. I know I submitted something to Gollancz when I was an undergraduate, back in the days when it was home to much of the best SF around (and when it was a genuine family firm, not an imprint of a corporate giant). I think I know which story it was, but I can’t be sure. It wasn’t good enough, anyway.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Let’s start with the genre question. I read all sorts of books (and I think that’s vital), but my favourite since childhood has been science fiction. As in my own writing, though, I take a broad view of what counts as SF.
A selection of favourite authors would include Ursula K Le Guin, Iain (M) Banks, Kate Atkinson, Becky Chambers, Dorothy L Sayers, Terry Pratchett, Kim Stanley Robinson, and (going back to childhood) Arthur Ransome.
My single greatest inspiration is Ursula K Le Guin. I love most of her books, from early ones like Planet of Exile to The Dispossessed. I have a special fondness for Malafrena, but the one that made the biggest impression on me is The Left Hand of Darkness. It was and is a great book, but its impact on me went beyond that. I also came across it at just the right time, some years after its first publication in 1969. I’ve often described it as my first grown up SF read (which is not to say that none of the SF I’d read before was grown-up stuff). It nailed, once and for all, the myth that SF doesn’t do character; it focused on sociological rather than technological themes; and it offered some wonderful descriptions of landscape and outdoor experience, guaranteed to resonate with me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
‘Three Kinds of North’ is Book One of a series called The Shattered Moon. Early reviewers have described it as ‘absolutely captivating’ and ‘enthralling’. A post-apocalyptic background, with those shattered moons in the sky, makes it Science Fiction by definition, but there are no rockets or robots here.
Early versions first emerged over twenty years ago, and slowly grew into a very long novel which I’ve now split into two. ‘Three Kinds of North’ is the first and the second, ‘The Sundering Wall’, is scheduled for publication in August 2023. The division of the two came fairly naturally, and also allowed me to flesh out certain aspects of both books.
Three further books in the series are well advanced and I’m planning to publish them at six-monthly intervals. I have partial drafts of two more as well as a collection of short stories set in the same world.
Here’s a very brief blurb/microsynopsis:
Growing up in a remote village, orphan Jerya finds a new home in the Dawnsingers’ Guild, which oversees the slow recovery of civilisation under shattered moons. She’s exhilarated by learning, and by the discovery of love, but her new life soon turns sour. Can she resolve growing doubts about the very basis of the Guild’s rule? An agonising choice looms, but new discoveries may also lie in prospect.
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