An Interview With Stephen Donaldson

Online now (and somewhat later than promised – sorry!) is my interview with author, Stephen Donaldson.

I interviewed Stephen shortly before the release of Fatal Revenant, the latest book in his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, and the interview touches on both this and his many other works, as well as writing and literature in general. The interview originally appeared in issue 10 of Death Ray magazine, but the version now online contains some material not included in the magazine due to space constraints. The complete interview, as well as an overview of Stephen’s work, and a fact file on the author are online now in the Articles section of this website.

Matt

Stephen Donaldson Interview: Excerpt (& Outtakes)

This month’s issue of Death Ray (issue 10) features my interview with Stephen Donaldson, as you may have noticed from the post below.

As is inevitably the case with these things, a few answers had to be trimmed a little and a few others had to be missed out altogether to fit the space available in the magazine, so there’s a few outtakes and a few extended highlights which I will be posting on this blog over the coming days. For now, however, you can read the full interview in Death Ray magazine, and below is a small excerpt from one of the questions we were forced to cut for reasons of space.

In the interview, Stephen talks about his decision not to write The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – a story he conceived at the same time as The Second Chronicles – immediately after completing the two earlier trilogies, because of his feeling that he needed first to improve as a writer. I asked Stephen if the stories he wrote in the meantime were specifically chosen to help him develop his abilities in certain ways, and here’s what he had to say:

“This question comes up most often in the form of: ‘Do you know what you’re going to write next? What are you gonna do after you’ve finished The Last Chronicles. The truth is I’ve no earthly idea, but I never had had an idea. I don’t try to answer that question until I’ve finished the story that’s right in front of me. Once it’s done then I say ‘oh, ok, now what will I write next?’. And the same has been true for the past twenty years. I haven’t searched for ideas that would help me prepare for Covenant, I’ve just searched for ideas that felt like they were so exciting it felt absolute necessary to write them.”

Read the interview in issue 10 of Death Ray (on sale now) and check back here for more outtakes soon.

Out Now: Death Ray #10 (Stephen Donaldson Interview)

Just a quick note to let you all know that issue 10 of Death Ray is out now (in the UK at least). This issue features my interview with Stephen Donaldson (as well as all the usual wide-ranging content we’ve come to expect from Death Ray).

The interview should be of interest not only to readers of Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Gap saga and other books, but also all those with an interest in fiction and writing in general. Stephen talks in quite some detail about literature and provides some some thought provoking answers. I’ll probably be posting a couple of blogs about this in the near future – it’s impossible to interview somebody like Donaldson without forming your own thoughts on the themes discussed, so I’ll share those here in due course.

In the meantime, pick up a copy of Death Ray to read the interview – available from newsagents as they say.