Ekaterina Sedia's The Alchemy of Stone

Ekaterina Sedia burst onto the literary scene with The Secret History of Moscow, a delight of a novel of which Neil Gaiman wrote, "The prose and the atmosphere is beautiful and decaying, and everything's grey with astonishing little bursts of unforgettable colour... Deep, dark, remarkable stuff." A rave review in the LA Times read in part, "[The novel] really feels like a secret: an alternative world a half-dimension removed from ours, a place woven out of whisper and shadow, populated with forgotten creatures and even less-remembered thoughts," while the Guardian Unlimited wrote, "Sedia's novel is emblematic of much that is good about contemporary fantasy. It unites a classy prose style...with first-hand experience of a 90s Moscow crippled by post-Soviet economic decline. The story is infused with the tropes and traditions of fantasy, but set amid the grim reality of that decade's turbulent politics."

Sedia's latest novel, The Alchemy of Stone, is being published this month by Prime Books. It's about "Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, who finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets--secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. However, this doesn't sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart--literally!" I recently interviewed Sedia about her fiction, her editing projects, and gargoyles...

      

Amazon.com: How is The Alchemy of Stone different from The Secret History of Moscow?
Ekaterina Sedia: [The new novel] takes place in an imaginary world on the brink of social and industrial revolution. There are alchemists and Soul-Smokers, and children raised to get precious stones form the mines underneath the city. The protagonist is a mechanical girl who is also an alchemist; then there are gargoyles who had created the city. It also is a lot more plot-driven than The Secret History of Moscow. On the other hand, there are similarities--both books have undergrounds, imaginary beings, and bittersweet endings. Oh, and both are about outsiders in some broad sense.

Amazon.com: Steampunk is hot right now. Is it coincidence that you have a steampunk novel coming out?
Ekaterina Sedia: It is partly a coincidence. This book originated with an idea of a female automaton, and that led to all sorts of questions--how does one figure out automaton's gender? If it's intelligent, could she be owned by someone? And other such exciting questions. At the same time, I was lamenting a distinct lack of social struggle and the real consequences of industrialization in fantasy. So with that, steampunk seemed like a suitable [subgenre], as it allowed me to talk about all of these things and even have a giant, steam-powered calculator along with some version of Luddites. And the fact that there is interest in this genre did not hurt--my editor very much encouraged the steampunk element.

Amazon.com: What draws you to fantasy?
Ekaterina Sedia: Well, I really don't differentiate between fantasy and SF--it's all fantastika to me. I like it for its possibilities--mimetic fiction has very limited ways of asking questions and presenting moral dilemmas, the characters are explored through familiar situations more often than not. With the fantastic, you can basically look at the same people in the whole new light. I tend to focus on character more than worldbuilding, and this is I think where the main value of the fantastic lies--new sources of light, new angles to explore the familiar human concerns.

Amazon.com: What was the hardest part of writing the novel?
Ekaterina Sedia: I have to say that plotting was difficult at times--there's quite a bit of politics and people with conflicting agendas, so some footwork was required to get them to come together at the right time. Also I tried not to cast anyone as explicitly evil--just a bunch of people doing their best, according to their perceptions of right and wrong, and then those agendas are pushing against each other and forcing the protagonist into some unpleasant situations. A slightly different kind of difficulty had more to do with the emotional aspect of it. The relationship between the protagonist, automaton Mattie, and Loharri, her maker, is disturbing at times, and at others it is downright wrenching. The dynamics of an abusive relationships are difficult for me to contemplate, let alone write about. Yet, I wanted it to be a real relationship, no matter how painful and messed up, rather than a simple object-owner dynamics.

Amazon.com: What’s your favorite part of the novel?
Ekaterina Sedia: I loved writing the gargoyles--they speak in a unified voice, plural first person, and I tried to give it a certain resonance--that was tremendous fun and also challenging.

Amazon.com: You edit anthologies as well as write short stories and, of course, novels. What do you get out of stories and editing that’s different from what you get out of writing novels?
Ekaterina Sedia: The difference between writing and editing is the difference between creation and discovery, I guess. I enjoy writing, but the element of finding something absolutely great and brilliant and then showing it to other people is missing. Basically, we all read books we then had to go and tell everyone we knew about, and force them into people's hands. Editing is just like that, but double that--because you get to find pieces no one else have read before.

As for short stories versus novels, a short story is like a bonsai tree--small and perfect and evocative, a tiny object giving an impression of a much bigger reality. With a bonsai, you cannot have a single leaf out of place because it will ruin the aesthetic impression. Novels are more like forests--a lot less groomed, you can have leaves out of place and entire trees that are craggy and awful, and yet the whole is still beautiful and can be truly breathtaking. So for me short stories are these tiny things, polished and terribly fun to work on, appreciated quickly and easily and full of instant gratification. Novels are a lot of a long draining work, but then the final result (if successful) is something you can spend weeks in, happy and lost and joyful.

Amazon.com: What are you currently working on?
Ekaterina Sedia: I just finished a first draft of a young adult book, basically a Victorian Gothic with salamanders and alchemy. I'm also working on my next adult book--which is steampunk but with a twist. I'm very excited about this one. There are also a couple of short stories kicking around, and I often find myself working on shorts as a break from longer work. I'm also editing my next anthology for Prime Books, called Russian Winters. I got a few very exciting pieces in that one, and will get more. It's going to be a wonderful little book, if I may say so myself.