Interview with Greg van Eekhout

GB: You know I love the process porn and my blog's readers have not been getting a lot of that recently. So, let's start with process. Tell me about Norse Code--how was it written? Did your process change for this book, different motivations, challenges, typewriter, etc.? I also want to know how you came up with such a great title.

GVE: I like to write in coffee houses, with my laptop and a big Americano. That's pretty much my process. Other than that, it's just a matter of grinding it out. I had a 9 to 5 for about half the time I worked on the book, so I was at the coffee house before work for at least an hour a day. After I left the day job, I taught college English composition part time and did contract work, so my schedule became less structured, but I try to treat writing as much like a day job as I can.

Norse Code was written on the skeletons of two short stories. The first, "Wolves Till the World Goes Down," (in Starlight 3) is about what the gods do when Ragnarok arrives. The second story, which I never finished, was about a valkyrie who works for a genomics firm. Her job is to track down blood descendants of Odin and recruit them to serve in Odin's army. For the longest time, the book was called "Greg's Damn Norse Novel," so I needed a real title before sending it out. I'd had a lot of suggestions from friends: Valhalla Boulevard, A Norse is a Norse of Course of Course, A World Tree Grows in Reseda ... My friends are special. I settled on Norse Code, which was the working title of the unfinished short story, at the last minute. I'm not sure I made the right choice.

Check out the full interview!