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By: Rafael Martin C.[/caption]That’s why this post took ages to get here; I had to make my brain stop thinking about how I could make this next bunch of posts perfect for you, dear readers. Luckily I realized that it’s not like me at all aiming to something immaculate that conforms to the mass.
That’s not what you’ll find here – perfection, I mean. Far from that.
What you will find is the story of a making process, its flaws and its perks, because everyone knows the making processes are never perfect and the final result isn’t either, never. So I hope you enjoy yourself in this one, because there’s a lot to tell and a lot to learn from this little interview.
It might not be perfect; I might have done things differently and chose to put things and take off some others, but what matters is that I pushed the publication button and that means that I found my perfection.
At the end of the day, what is perfection if not an abstract and very personal concept?
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Oh, wow. Look at that philosophical introduction. Definitely not like me, but sometimes I like to go out of character and surprise my readers. I guess though that you might need a little of context or we’ll end up nowhere.
It was a dark and stormy night, someone might write – and it kind of was, because here in London weather in Winter is not that great – when I discovered the existence of this marvelous trilogy dedicated to Vampires and Supernatural beings. I started it with some reservations, not sure about what I would’ve found, if I would’ve enjoyed it at all as it became clear that the Fallen Angels I was looking for were not going to appear, but it quickly became one of my favorites series of all times, with a cast of characters thanks to which I learned a lot – and cried a lot.
I felt the need to share with the world all the feelings I was having about it and the author found me first on Goodreads and then on Instagram, and since you all know I’m an annoying little shit you can imagine what came next—Yeah, I basically assaulted the author’s dm box and lost my dignity somewhere around London. And London is so big I didn’t get it back yet.
Long story short, at the end of the day I found at least the courage to overstep my anxiety and poor social skills and asked for a little interview to which they agreed almost immediately, going against every single one of my expectations. So here I am, presenting you what came out of those questions I sent out – it was supposed to be a little interview, but I got carried away and I don’t regret it at all, so bear with me because there’s juicy stuff.
I won’t be posting everything in here—I shall have mercy of you and spare my fangirling for a while longer—but there’s going to be a “part 2” and a “part 3” so worry not. In the meantime I kindly suggest popcorn and coke so that you can enjoy this first one properly.
This is my first interview with an author ever and I didn’t even know where to start with the questions, let alone with the post, so forgive me if this feels long and endless.
And now. Let me sit at my non-existent desk and pretend I’m a professional.
3…2…1… here we go.
Today’s post is going to be about The Making of Gabriel Davenport trilogy, about which I already ranted here, if you’re interested, and that has been written by the lovely Beverley Lee whose website is here instead.
This trilogy is all about Gabriel Davenport whose life turns upside down on a snowy night, when his father goes away and his mother tries to protect him from something evil that wants to hurt our baby protagonist. Throughout all the three books we follow Gabriel whilst he grows up and tries to survive this evil power that’s trying to kill him, escaping first and fighting bravely along with a cast of special characters that you can’t help but fall in love with after.
You will be facing death, evil and cruelty, but also love, religion, faith and belief; you’ll explore the world as you know it but through the eyes of someone who’s giving everything they have in order to protect what they love the most. And probably, love is what you will get to know better whilst reading the books.
What you will find in this post is the very basic: I asked Beverly a lot of things and among them there was also how The Making of Gabriel Davenport and its sequels (A Shining in the Shadows and The Purity of Crimson) were actually born. In order to understand it, I think that there could be no better starting point than this, so let’s dive into it without further do!
(Also, I tried to keep the fangirling under control, but I will apologize now if I let it take over here and there, but you know… when you get to love something so much it’s kind of hard to not to, right?)
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Sam: hello, it’s me, the ghostly presence on this platform, the one who asks a lot of questions, the owner of this blog and the happiest bookworm on the face of the earth because I got to discuss one of my favorite series ever directly with the author. I’ll be speaking through Bold, so please don’t hate me; I’m trying to act like I’m professional here.
Beverley: Beverley Lee is an English independent author who has written The Making of Gabriel Davenport series and who is also one of the loveliest people I had the pleasure to get to talk to. You should read her books, love her characters (hello Moth, my whole soul and heart belong to you) and support her job because she’s amazing and so are her stories. If you’re curious about her works, please go and have a look on her website here, where you can also purchase the whole saga (it’s a two bird with one stone situation and you won’t regret it, believe me and you’re all welcome).
S: First of all, thanks a lot for this opportunity. I never thought the little amount of time I spend on this platform would’ve ever taken me here, talking to you about your amazing saga. Never even thought about the fact that I could actually approach an author and getting the chance to interview them, so many thanks are needed.
Gabriel Davenport is a trilogy that really mixes a lot of different concepts and elements together. You talk about Evil powers, possessions, folklore, magic and vampires all in three books and somehow everything fits perfectly; there’s balance and there’s connection between all the elements in the story.
What made you choose to put everything together rather than write exclusively about one topic, focusing on that single aspect as a lot of urban fantasy do? What was challenging in making everything so cohesive and reasonable?
B: I never set out to incorporate all the different elements together. In the first book it all started with something evil in a box. That’s all I had in the beginning. I knew it was going to get out because what’s the good of a scary story if it doesn’t, but I didn’t know its back story or have its voice, until I continued to write. And I knew vampires would form part of the story. My master vampire came first, and his voice was with me from the beginning. I knew how he thought, how he felt. His two young wards were another matter. I hadn’t expected them to take centre stage at all, but one of them did, demanding his spotlight. I don’t think I have to tell you who that was!
The dark magic and the folklore evolved because the story wanted it. I didn’t plan any of it. When I begin, I have a start and an end and a few steps in between. I’m very character led. They lead and I follow, weaving the story around them.
In Shadows, it was Teal that gave me the breadcrumb I needed, finding what he did in the sewer. As soon as I had that, the story blossomed.
What was challenging was tying up all the loose ends in Purity. That book nearly broke me. It stands at around 92k words, but I think I wrote triple that trying to find the right pathways. Again, I had the ending, I knew that very last line, but getting there involved lots of blood, sweat and actual tears.
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S: Where did the idea for this saga come from in first place? As it is a debut novel, I think it’s interesting getting to know how it was born and how much it changed from the very first draft.
B: I had the idea for the original story a lot of years ago when I saw a TV show about an old house used as a paranormal research centre, and wrote a few thousand words about a house that dealt in those things. Four characters emerged from that very badly written draft, characters that would go on to be Gabe, Carver, Ollie and Clove.
The actual first few scenes in Gabriel, as it is now, were written for a competition for new writers, but I never sent it in. About six months later, I pulled it from my files and started playing with it again. At that point Gabe was a baby called Erin. As soon as I changed the gender of that baby, things started to fall into place.
I think I only deleted one scene when I had finished that draft, and what you see now, is very true to how it first came out (although much tidied up!)
S: And talking about draft, how long did it actually take before you could say that each novel was complete and satisfying for you? Were the drafts completely different from the final results?
B: I think Gabriel went through seven full drafts, maybe eight? I know it went to my beta readers after four, and the last draft was going through my editor’s line edits. As I mentioned above, the final book is very close to my original idea.
Shadows, again, took six or seven drafts, and this one was my dream story. Very little changed at all from the first draft to the last.
Purity was the rebel child. This book almost broke me because I wandered down so many different paths trying to tie up all the loose ends.
I have characters that were deleted, characters that were renamed, countless scenes that were good but were cut for pacing and flow.
And I don’t think any writer is ever truly satisfied with a book. You just have to push it from the nest at some point and pray that it knows how to fly!
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S: How did you choose the genre of this novel? Did you start writing thinking “oh, this novel will fit this and that category” or it was written first and then somehow labelled? And how would you label it, if you had to put it into specific categories?
B: I never write my stories to fit into a specific genre. When I first started Gabriel I thought it was more dark fantasy, but when people read it, more and more said it scared them so much that they labelled it as horror. Supernatural suspense is another label that has been tagged onto my books. And Modern Gothic.
As far as I’m concerned a story is what it wants to be. I get quite frustrated when I see all the advice that say your book HAS to fit into just one. Life isn’t about just one thing. Stories shouldn’t have to be either.
Beverley definitely has got interesting point of views. Her books can easily fit in one single category at first sight, but there's so much more in them that as a reader I couldn't actually classify it; Gabriel Davenport is simply Gabriel Davenport. It's a series you love, not a one that you need to imprison in a category and hearing that from the author herself made this trilogy even more special to me.
The following might be a little boring for those who are simply readers, but for me it was one of the most interesting part of this interview. As a writer who's still exploring what I can do and not do, a few questions regarding the writing style of the trilogy were much needed. So here we'll peek into the choices Beverley has made regarding the writing process itself, how the Gabriel Davenport saga finally came into the world, to the readers.
S: Chapters are a lot and very short, in a few hours you end up reading a good portion of the book because the story is fast paced and addictive. You really can’t put it down until you’re done. Or at least, that’s the way I felt.
There’s also several story lines developing at the same time, and then they all come together, inevitably. Every single story is vital for the others. What was the hardest part in writing so many situations all together, making sure that they were coherent one with the other?
B: I kept an actual timeline of who was where and what they were doing, because otherwise it was very easy to forget and make a continuity error. (In Shadows I lost a whole night somewhere for one character and had to rejig it)
The short chapters were planned, because I know as a reader, that’s the one thing that will keep me reading just one more. Having those also helped me fit so many different characters into the plot without writing a book that was as big as War and Peace!
The coherency came with the timeline, I knew where they needed to be at any one point. And it helped that a lot of my characters don’t come out until it’s dark so I could give my time to the human elements in the daylight.
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S: How did you choose what to write first and how to create the links between each other?
B: The links came with the story. As it progressed they formed and strengthened, weaving together much like chain links in a fence. And I don’t think I actually chose what was first (although with Gabriel I knew it began with the Davenports and their cottage). Again, it’s story and character. You follow a pathway and sometimes it leads to gold dust and sometimes it’s a big fat brick wall and you have to backtrack and find the pathway again.
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S: And here, maybe a common question: how did you write it all? As in, how did you choose the writing style that better fit for this kind of novels and how did you prioritize the different storylines you created? Basically, what was your writing routine back when you had to get this saga done so that your characters could live their adventures and change and grow up together with the readers?
B: I’d love to know the answer to that myself! When I wrote Gabriel it was only going to be the one book, but as it grew and I got to know the characters and how they felt, it was clear that wasn’t going to be enough. That ending in Gabriel was only going to have people hammering on my door yelling ‘but what now!’
My writing style is just my writing style. I didn’t change it for this trilogy. I guess you could say it’s my voice, that elusive thing every writer seeks. And I didn’t prioritize any storyline, apart from possible cutting back on the human element as the stories advanced. It’s important that every chapter moves the story forward, and as my chapters are short, that led to it being fast paced.
Because the characters have been with me since 2015 I’ve got to know them all very well. Even when I wasn’t writing I was thinking about them and putting them into different situations as I went about my life. What would be Noah’s reaction to this? What would Moth’s expression be if he saw this? Little things, but it all made them seem fully fleshed. A lot of my scenes were written whilst out walking or driving in the car. My mind likes to produce tantalizing snippets just when I can’t write them down!
One of the most important things is that a character should not be the same at the end of a novel as they are at the beginning. Because they’ve lived through whatever the story has thrown at them (and did it ever throw the flames of hell in their direction). Their growth happened because of those events, not because of any concrete path I set them on. I gave them *time* to be who they were, without rushing them or forcing them into little boxes. I let them forge their own allegiances, delving away until they gave me their backstory, their reasons for doing what they do.
A lot of the time I made sure I wrote about 1k a day in the drafting process. Enough to advance the story, but also time enough to let me dwell on where it had gone, chew over the little things that might become big things in the future.
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S: There’s a switch of focus and narrator, at some point. Usually that would have bothered me, but in this trilogy it was marvelously done and I almost didn’t even realize when it was happening. It wasn’t annoying and I can safely say you mastered this writing technique ahah. Do you think that there’s a fundamental difference between the writing style you used in the first book – third person narrator – and the last two books, where we had chapters in first person and chapters in third person, but also flashbacks and fragments of memories? Which one was the writing style that, according to you, gave the most to the reader and gave a better perspective of whatever was happening in the novels?
Which one was the one you felt like suited you the better?
B: As I mentioned when I started writing Gabriel, it was only going to be the one book. After Gabe’s character had developed more in my mind and I realized there were going to be more books, I wanted the reader to really see and feel things through his eyes. Switching to first person gave me the ability to do that, despite it breaking a few writing rules that say you shouldn’t do it. Only a few people have said that they found it jarring, so I think my gamble paid off.
Third person lets you play around with a lot more characters, but I went in fairly deep on them all. I want my readers to understand the reasoning and motives behind all my characters. The Gabriel Davenport Series is a very involved, very complex trilogy, and I think it works because all of my creations are equally important to the whole.
The flashbacks and fragments of memory were used because of how the story played out. There are characters that go back centuries, so using flashback is the only way to portray why they are acting like they do now.
As to your question, they were all needed in equal measure. Little puzzle pieces if you will, to make up the entire picture. Without each piece there would have been a blank space. I always used to feel happier writing in first person, but now I’m quite happy to dabble in any tense, as long as it benefits whatever I’m writing.
Before we wrap this first part up, I’d like to direct your attention on to two of the topics Beverley explores in her novels. She goes deep into faith and religion alongside with magic and folklore, so I couldn’t help myself and I had to ask. It's a weird mixture where the two main elements are worlds apart even, but Beverley dealt with them carefully and thoughtfully to the point in which a lot of passages had me pausing during the reading process in order to think them through.
S: Certainly today God and Religion in general are hot topics. There are those who believe unconditionally and those who doubt. Some more that completely don’t believe. Some other, believe in a greater power but they don’t name it God.
Was it hard to write about Noah without going too deep into the Religious matter? And what made you decide that Noah had to be a priest rather than, I don’t know, a farmer? Do you think religion plays an important role in the whole novel?
B: I didn’t set out to make religion an important theme in the series. I made Noah a priest because, in the beginning, the story needed that, and because the whole first scene with him trudging through the snow was fully fledged in my mind from the start. As a character, he came to me pretty much fully formed, and no writer will ever try to change a character like that! I tried not to delve too deeply into the theme, using the balance between light and darkness in religion as a metaphor to mirror other things that were happening in the book.
Different readers will take the religious theme in different ways, depending on their own thinking and their faith and beliefs. But that doesn’t mean that those two are glued to only religion—faith and belief are strong themes throughout the whole series. Faith in each other and belief that the darkness has light, if you are prepared to search through the shadows.
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S: All that magic… I honestly expected fallen angels instead of witchcraft, but I am more than glad to have been proven wrong. Is there any specific kind of magic or witchcraft that you looked up in order to build up that part of your novel, or was it all coming from you and you alone? Do you believe in magic and supernatural powers like the ones you told us about in your saga?
B: I built a lot of my magic system around mythology, both Greek and Norse, although the actual creation of how the White Witch became what she was, was all my own idea. I’ve always loved the idea of mixing vampire and witch blood, but I wanted to do it in a unique way, creating something that could span the centuries, bringing with it its own needs and questions. For The Purity of Crimson I did do some research into necromancy though, again taking small parts and weaving my own ideas through them.
I don’t necessarily believe in the existence of magic and supernatural powers as I write them, but I do believe things exist that we can’t explain with science.
So here we go. This first part is over and I am sorry, but I won’t reveal all my cards in one go; it’d be no fun at all. I hope you enjoyed it even if it probably resembles more a draft than a professional blog post, but as I said at the beginning I’m not here to be a professional; I just want to talk about what I like and make you all part of it in the most accessible and easy way I know.
I know it’s a bit long, but what can I do? I love chit-chatting, above all if the topic is this saga I won’t stop praising anytime soon, so stay tuned to find out more about Beverley’s characters and book writing tips!
As usual, lots of love to whoever got to this point. I really appreciate it.
See you soon!
Sam.
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