Asian American writing duo Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle have previously collaborated on the Seattle Slayers series. In Ebony Gate (Tor Books, $28.99, reviewed in this issue), they brilliantly employ their extensive knowledge of Chinese and Japanese mythology and lore to create a vivid world of magic in San Francisco's Chinatown. When Emiko Soong, ex-enforcer of a powerful magical family, is called on to save the citizens of San Francisco from a terrifying threat, she doesn't hesitate. She straps on her swords and knives and does what she does best--wreak havoc on evil. Vee and her family reside in California; Bebelle lives with his family in Seattle, Wash.
Can you tell us a bit about your writing process as a team?
Ken Bebelle: Until meeting Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman, and Jarrod Shusterman and Sofía Lapuente very recently, I had not met anyone who co-writes the way we do. Julia likes to joke that between the two of us, we have one brain. One writer's brain, that is. We collaborate with Google Docs, and once we get down to writing the words, it's an organic process. Sometimes one of us will get an idea for a scene further along in the book and jump ahead, and then the other will catch up from behind and connect the dots.
Julia Vee: We have literally written the same sentence in the same writing session before. It's a little freaky. But mostly our process is joint ideation, lots of discussion before one word of text is typed up. I think of myself as someone who focuses on the bones of each scene and the story spine. Both of us are exploratory in our drafting approach. We plot first and often end up writing an altogether different novel.
As for research, we have a friend who is an actual sword dealer, and he has been invaluable answering all our sword questions!
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| Ken Bebelle (photo: Anne Dang) |
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KB: We love swords! About to order a custom Ebony Gate one from our sword dealer.
We try to plan and plot, really we do. But then we get in there and write, and stuff happens. Our characters make interesting choices. Or we dream up new scenarios that we simply can't let go. Then we go back to the plan (now in tatters), pick up the pieces and rearrange things, and chart a new path. If we didn't allow ourselves to go off script, we wouldn't enjoy the process as much as we do.
What made you choose San Francisco, especially Chinatown, for this setting? Could the story have been set elsewhere with the same impact?
JV: For me there was never a question: we were having a magical Chinatown. San Francisco was the first city I fell in love with, and I've run all across it in many races (it's only 7x7 miles!). My earliest memories of San Francisco were walking with my parents to buy groceries in Chinatown. I saw Chinatown through a child's lens of wonder, and it felt natural that there would be a magical world tucked away there.
KB: I grew up (mostly) in the suburbs south of San Francisco, and when my friends and I started driving, "the City" was where we went to have fun. Despite being in such close proximity, it really did feel like going to a wholly different place. As Julia said, it's geographically small, but feels huge and expansive once you step over the border. That's the feeling we wanted to evoke in the book.
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| Julia Vee (Nicole Gee Photography) |
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Writing urban fantasy fiction doesn't seem like an obvious progression from your background as an attorney, Julia, or your career working with prosthetics, Ken. Do you feel your work experiences contributed to your becoming authors of urban fantasy?
JV: Studying and practicing law gave me an appreciation of rules. In contemporary fantasy there is always that interesting aspect of parlay with beings like the Fae, who may not lie, and become expert at skirting the truth.
KB: For me, it was kind of the other way around. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were seminal movies in my childhood. Luke getting his robotic arm at the end of Empire? That literally set me on the path to becoming a prosthetist. I fell into reading urban fantasy later in life when I read a Dresden short in an anthology, then ended up devouring the entire series pretty quickly.
Your bio, Ken, references writing with Julia as a team beginning in eighth grade. How did you two connect as a writing duo?
KB: If I remember correctly, Julia and I first bonded over fantasy novels that we both happened to be reading. I was that kid who never left the house without a book. I'm pretty sure Julia was the same. I don't remember how we learned about it, but the story that we wrote got sent in (by paper mail!) to a fiction contest. We didn't win first place, but we did win $50, so yes, I think it was a successful first collaboration.
JV: Knowing us, we spent our prize money on comic books.
KB: Money well spent! In high school we continued, but did not finish, other projects. I seem to recall a virus-driven post-apocalyptic story, as well as another swords and sorcery with a lot of royal drama. But high school and college prep got in the way, and we never finished those. Then we both went on to college and careers until late 2016, when Julia did NaNoWriMo and contacted me about co-writing again. Amazingly, we fell right back into it without missing a beat.
JV: Ken and I also went to Chinese school for Mandarin. So we had Saturday mornings to hang out, in addition to normal school time. Again, we were likely geeking out over comic books (I was obsessed with Sandman) rather than studying our Chinese textbooks.
The world-building in Ebony Gate is exceptional and absolutely fascinating. Can you say a bit about how you created the specifics of Emiko's world?
JV: We wanted to springboard from East Asian myth and lore, so the underworld of Yomi, and having a shinigami [a Japanese death god] give Emiko her call to adventure was a way to slide the supernatural into the real-world setting of San Francisco. We wrote in a lot of liminal spaces, so doors and gates hold significance for our characters as they move between worlds.
The sword went through a few iterations. The soul idea came from when we were taking a break from the story and writing Emiko's origin story in a novella called Bronze Blade. We realized how much history this sword held, and why she couldn't let it go even as she ached to put the past behind her and begin anew.
KB: For a couple of writers who spend so many words making up magic and the fantastic, we also dwell a lot on whether or not things make sense. It's funny, because we dropped a Japanese death god onto Emiko without batting an eye, but then agonized over the social rules and conventions that governed their interaction. It's the little details that help blend all these disparate elements together.
Specifically about the shinigami, the name translates to "kami of death," kami being Japanese for "spirits or natural powers" from the Shinto religion. The shinigami is a spirit that facilitates the transition to the underworld. But Julia and I imagined that position as a job, and a very bureaucratic one at that. So that was our reframing of a powerful being that holds a blood debt from Emiko's mother.
Emiko's low-key, "normal" magical life in San Francisco morphs into her becoming the reluctant savior of the city. Were you influenced by classics in the genre when contemplating the plotting of her hero's journey?
JV: Without getting into spoilers, very early on, Ken asked me "where is Emiko going?" And I had a clear understanding of her arc from Soldier to [REDACTED] by the end of the series. Ken and I definitely grew up reading SFF classics like Dune and Neverwhere and, more recently, works from Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, and Ilona Andrews.
I think of Emiko as having the heroine's journey. What I mean by that is, when a character is on the classic hero's journey, they are often stronger alone. But in some stories, like Guardians of the Galaxy, the protagonist learns that they can rely on their found family, and that is what we wanted for Emiko.
KB: I don't know about classics, but it's definitely one of my "Id elements," as Julia would say. I love the character that just wants to have a quiet life, until the universe forces them to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Do you plan a series of adventures for Emiko? If so, when might readers see the next episode?
KB: Tor acquired a trilogy from us, so yes! Blood Jade is scheduled for July 2024.
JV: In Blood Jade, Emiko must leave San Francisco and return to the world she left behind. In unraveling the mystery surrounding the General rising, she uncovers family secrets that her mother buried.
Is there anything you would like readers to know about your work and your collaboration that we haven't asked you?
JV: Ken and I love talking about craft and nerding out about worldbuilding. We spend about a year ideating a new world and in trying to figure out how to share this bonus content with our readers, we finally launched PhoenixHoard.com to share the things that didn't make it into the novels themselves. Most of our notes lived on Google Docs and Notions, so we are slowly getting it up on that new site. We commissioned some character art, and hope it will provide readers with a little extra for that immersive experience! --Lois Dyer, writer and reviewer