Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald are the authors of the new novel Tarou: The Fall. Their other work includes the Time Shards trilogy. They live in Northern California.
Q: What inspired you to write Tarou: The Fall?
DFr: The world
of Tarou: The Fall was introduced in "Queen of Swords," a
short story I wrote in 2009 about the mythical Kingdom of Swords in the
realm of Tarau, populated by warriors and where women fight in a tournament for
the dubious honor of marrying a tyrannical king and bearing his children. The
story was in an anthology called I Kissed A Girl and, as the
title suggests, it does not end well for the king.
Fast-forward to 2022. Dave and I were invited to write a story for Weird
Tales #366, the Sword and Sorcery issue. The result was "Maid of
Steel” and in it, we expanded the world of "Queen of Swords,"
adding three additional realms and a Middle Kingdom—the latter having been
destroyed 200 years prior in a cataclysm that reshaped the continent and
unleashed abominations from the bowels of the earth. Because…who
doesn’t love abominations from earth’s bowels?
When we had the opportunity to pitch a novel to Weird Tales Presents, Dave and
I decided that we wanted to play in the world of Tarou some more. This time we
thought it would be fun to go back 200 years and tell the story of the
cataclysm that destroyed the Middle Kingdom.
DFi: Another irresistible idea was that all our classic Tarot imagery were half-remembered echoes of another world. It was so much fun to bring that fantasy world to life, and giving all four realms and the high kingdom that ruled over them their own individual personalities.
The Tarot suits lent
themselves very well to what we wanted. We had already established that Athamé,
the kingdom of Swords was (of course) a harsh warrior culture. Wands/Staves fit
the bill as our mysterious wizardly kingdom. We made Cups our emblem of Beauchalice,
basically a pastoral medieval France known for its wine, cuisine and horses;
while Coins/Pentacles became “Pentaclys,” a five-city league of merchant Great
Houses (and another of five lesser houses), all evocative of early renaissance
Florence.
Oh! We also have to give a shout-out to our Art Director Jeff Wong for
including so many perfect Tarot art illustrations in the book, as well as
bringing our rough scribble of a map to glorious life.
Q: How did the two of you collaborate on the novel, and were you both familiar with Tarot beforehand?
DFr: We’d co-written two short stories (both for Weird Tales magazine) and the Time Shards trilogy for Titan Books over the last…er…seven years. So we’ve pretty much worked out all the knots as far as collaborating.
We both bring different strengths to the writing table and we’ve learned what battles are worth fighting when we disagree on something and when it’s better to trust the other person and let it go. And the times we just can’t agree on an issue, we leave it up to our editor to play Solomon.
I’ve been into tarot since my early teens—a lot of females of my generation went through a phase in our teens/early 20s where we were drawn to the Wiccan religion because it empowered women.
I also performed at a lot of renaissance faires and met a lot of really interesting men and women who read tarot back in the day, and I really wanted to do my own readings. I bought the Cat People deck and that started a healthy tarot deck collection that I still have all these years later.
I also have a lot of books on the subject, along with the booklets that go with each deck, so we had a ton of research on hand when we decided to integrate more tarot symbolism into the novel.
DFi: Dana is a black-belt in Tarot compared to me. I had virtually no exposure to it growing up. Being raised Southern Baptist, of course I lumped Tarot along with all the other sinister tools of the occult…
I think my biggest surprise while researching was that the cards began as simple playing cards in Renaissance Italy—and that they are still just used as regular playing cards in many parts of Europe. The whole fortune-telling aspect to Tarot didn't arrive until centuries later.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
DFr: Dave and I do a lot of our plotting/character and story arcs on walks or long drives, and in the case of Tarou, we actually did figure out the ending before we started writing the book. When we got to that point of the book during the writing process, we tinkered with the original idea a bit but it’s pretty damn close to it.
DFi: What Dana said. I will just add that some of the character arcs evolved far differently than initially imagined. It’s so funny when your characters go off script and take you places you never saw coming…
Q: The author James Rollins said of the book, “It’s Dungeons and Dragons. It’s sword and sorcery. It’s as dark as it is bright.” What do you think of that description?
DFr: One of the best blurbs I’ve/we’ve ever received for any of our books. I absolutely love it. And I like to think it’s accurate. I also loved that he referenced Fritz Lieber’s Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser in his blurb ‘cause that is some classic sword and sorcery there!
DFi: Absolutely. Having a bestselling writer of his caliber tell you “Sometimes a novel reminds me why I love to read epic fantasy” gave us both chills—What an honor!
Q: What are you working on now?
DFr: A short story for an urban legend anthology set in Flint, Michigan (don’t drink the water!), a horror/fantasy novel developed from a script I wrote with another horror author a while back, and a horror novel based on a short story I wrote for the upcoming cryptid/urban legend issue of Weird Tales magazine and also on a monster—Ol’ Nal—that I created for my Lilith series. I killed him in Hollywood Monsters (the third book in that series) but had so much fun writing the character that I decided I needed to bring him back.
DFi: Speaking of short stories, Dana and I also have a creepy little co-written story (“Transplant”) in the upcoming special Mad Science issue of Weird Tales magazine.
For my part, I’m hard at work co-writing a new nonfiction book with Canadian author Karis Burkowski. This one is on the problematic relationship between Judeo-Christianity and women throughout history. We retell biblical stories from several female characters’ POV and discuss their back story, and also present some very moving poetry from stellar poets like Danielle Coffyn and others. Our working title is Clearly Written by Boys: A Woman’s Guide to the Bible.
Q: Anything else we should know?
DFr & DFi: Thanks for talking with us! Readers who love Tarou: The Fall can look forward to more adventures set in this post-cataclysmic grimdark fantasy world…
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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