The Night Shade Interview: LIGHTBREAKER’s Mark Teppo

Ross E. Lockhart | June 13th 2009 at 4:53 pm

This weekend, I had a chance to sit down and chat with the Bunny Magus himself, Night Shade author Mark Teppo, about his recently-released novel Lightbreaker, its forthcoming sequel Heartland, Urban Fantasy, Western Occultism, industrial music, and Mark’s appearance this coming Tuesday at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books. So here you go, the Night Shade Interview with Mark Teppo:

Q: LIGHTBREAKER is “Urban Fantasy,” but bears some notable differences from the werewolves, vampires, and “Dungeons and Dragons”-style magic typical to the subgenre. In particular, the magic of LIGHTBREAKER is grounded in Western Occultism, and protagonist Markham is a Rogue Magus. How much research did you have to do in order to get this aspect of LIGHTBREAKER to feel real?

A: Some will say I didn’t do enough research, and I’ll be in full agreement with them. But then, I always feel like I haven’t done enough research.

Research is a funny thing for me: I feel the need to do enough of it to be able to talk intelligently about some topic without appearing to be completely uninformed, but once you start, really, it can be very hard to stop (there are, looking at the results of quick search in my librarything.com catalog, more than thirty books on or by Aleister Crowley alone). At some point, it gets silly, and I have more books than I can ever hope to read during the time I have set aside to write the book; I must hope that I absorb their contents by virtue of having them nearby or something.

Then again, LIGHTBREAKER has been a work-in-progress for going on two decades now, and there’s quite a bit of the background material that is culled from the work I did back in college, studying the whole magico-religious side of things. Some of it is validating my college curriculum, but mostly it’s a subject that fascinates me endlessly, so it is a topic that I’m constantly seeking more knowledge about. Happily, I get to turn around and use all of that for texture.

Let’s put it this way: there’s an entire six-foot tall IKEA bookcase next to my desk that is filled with primary source magick books. Another one on the other side of the room is devoted to comparative religion, cultural anthropology, and all the stuff that would be classified as secondary source. A good deal of which I haven’t read all the way through, but it’s right there when I need an answer to something.

Q: Markham seems to share some literary DNA with early occult detectives like Algernon Blackwood’s Doctor Silence, Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki. Did you have these character templates in mind when creating Markham?

Honestly? No. I should probably go refresh my memory of them though. LIGHTBREAKER—in its first iteration, a very, very long time ago—was much more of a vampire and werewolf sort of urban fantasy, but the market, as we know it today, didn’t exist then and we couldn’t get anyone interested in it. In that iteration, while there was some of the magick elements (the Chorus, for example, and some of the Crowley influence), it wasn’t nearly as strong as it is now, and when we came back to the book a few years ago and wanted to give it another go, I really wanted to do something that was tied more concretely to the Western Esoteric heritage, but clearly my own vision.

I tend to avoid like-minded characters and writers when I’m working through the first book of a series so as to imprint it with my own vision. I figure if I don’t know the details of what’s been done, it is much harder for me to unconsciously ape them. Later, when I’m more grounded in my own take on things, then I can reacquaint myself with the fellow occult detectives and add some riffs on the history there. But too early on, the homage—or the use of them as character templates—comes out too much like parody.

Q: Seattle and the surrounding Pacific Northwest area play an important role in LIGHTBREAKER, and there are a number of recognizable landmarks, including a certain bookstore down in Portland, Oregon. The sense of place in the book really sells the action. What sort of reaction have you had from readers in the Seattle area?

A: I’ve had a few people harass me about the use of Portland in its role as an urban city in proximity to Seattle. Mainly Portland residents. They all ask why I didn’t use Vancouver, and I tell them because when you say “Vancouver,” to a local, their immediate question is: “Which one?” (Vancouver, WA, or Vancouver, B.C.) The really silly thing is that this a regionalism, because the moment you go outside the Pacific Northwest and say, “Vancouver,” referencing a metropolitan area, everyone thinks of Vancouver, B.C.

When I was first drafting LIGHTBREAKER, I was living in Eugene, OR, and I would drive up for writing weekends in Seattle—passing through Portland every time. So, for me, Portland is the obvious choice for nearest big city other than Seattle. We still have family in Eugene, so the Portland pass-through happens once or twice a year, including the requisite stop at Powell’s.

Markham’s house, in the original version of LIGHTBREAKER, was on Cherry, between Second and Third. It’s a white building. Still there, and I still think about it as his place when I go by, even though he’s completely itinerant in the released version of LIGHTBREAKER.

Ravensdale used to be a small town on the map, and I thought it was so far from downtown Seattle. Recently I realized I drove through it while taking the scenic route back to where I live. It’s now within commuting distance of Seattle, but it had always struck me as being out in the wilderness when I tried to find a suitable place for the first test of the theurgic mirror.

Q: You’re currently working on the next book in the Codex of Souls, HEARTLAND. What can fans of Markham expect in the next adventure (and beyond)?

A: The idea is to do two-book cycles. Each pair has a set-up and resolution that is contained enough that new readers can pick up all the odd numbered books and not feel like they’ve missed too much. They have, but they won’t be plunked in media res like they will be with HEARTLAND. And, when they go back and catch up, there will still be new things for them to discover.

HEARTLAND, as you can see from the teaser at the back of LIGHTBREAKER, takes Markham to Paris where he confronts the Watchers and addresses the issue with the death of the Hierarch. In ANGEL TONGUE and its unfortunately still-untitled sequel, he returns to the States and deals with the other fallout from the end of LIGHTBREAKER (and we do fun things with crop circles, the number stations, pre-civilization linguistics, and the floating head of Baphomet).

Books 5 and 6 will pick up threads left over from HEARTLAND, and take him to South America, Egypt, Nepal, and somewhere in the South Pacific where bad things will happen on an aircraft carrier. There will be monsters, probably. Books 7 and 8 will go back to some old history between when he left Paris (prior to LIGHTBREAKER) and the start of LIGHTBREAKER, and deal with the whole underground occult artifact smuggling side of things. I’ll probably have finished reading all the Crowley books by then, so I’ll get that out of my system. Then, Books 9 and 10 will address what happened in the final chapter of LIGHTBREAKER as well as tying up the remaining threads from HEARTLAND, Book 4, Book 6, and Book 8.

Theoretically. It’s a bit sketchy for the last few right now. Though, I know what the cover art is for Book 10 already. I just have to convince Chris McGrath to do it when the time comes. I think it perfectly sums up the series to that point, and I just need to move some pieces around a bit to make sure everyone is in the right place.

Q: You write to music, and in an interview with the podcast Writers and Their Soundtracks, you revealed your LIGHTBREAKER soundtrack. How’s the HEARTLAND soundtrack shaping up?

A: The anchor song is a Fields of the Nephilim song again: “She,” also from the Mourning Sun album. I was starting to think about the epigram for the book and, even though I knew “She” was the Fields reference I wanted to use, I hadn’t realized how perfect an early couplet of the lyrics were to the whole book. So, bonus!

The other song that’s definitely in place is “Hole To Feed,” off Depeche Mode’s latest record (Sounds of the Universe). Much like how Covenant’s “Greater Than The Sun” ended up summarizing how I felt about LIGHTBREAKER (which isn’t the same as the songs that were the thematic thrust of the book), “Hole To Feed” plays in my head right at that point where Markham and Marielle realize, in the aftermath of HEARTLAND, what’s left of their relationship.

Other than that, it’s mostly stuff I’ve been listening to a lot while I’ve been writing the book (Die Warzau, Gothminister, Garden of Delight, Rammstein, Laibach, Ulver and various side-projects, Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Therion). I haven’t had a chance to really sort through some atmospheric mood pieces yet.

Q: Markham also appears in “Wolves, In Darkness,” a serialized novella at codexofsouls.com. For readers who are on the fence about LIGHTBREAKER, is this a good introduction to the world of LIGHTBREAKER?

A: I wrote “Wolves, In Darkness” to try to do two things: one, introduce the back history between Antoine and Markham a bit, as it may seem a bit oblique in LIGHTBREAKER (neither of them really wants to talk about it). It doesn’t contain any spoilers for LIGHTBREAKER, really, but it’ll give you a better understanding of why those two are pissed at each other. And two, it is back story that introduces some of the major players in HEARTLAND.

I know. Cheating. Sucking you in as an intro to the world, and then making you come back again later before you read HEARTLAND. I won’t even go into the trick with the “teaser” in the back of LIGHTBREAKER.

Q: You’re reading at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books this coming Tuesday. What do you have in store for your audience?

A: I’ll probably read “How I Came To Magick,” which is Markham’s manifesto and is intended as an introduction to the world-view and an explanation for why I opted to not go the usual route with vampires and werewolves and what-not. Sharp-eared listeners will probably catch the fact that the voice of Markham in it is a post-LIGHTBREAKER Markham, so calling it an “introduction” is sort of a lie.

There are a lot of those: a sort of lie. The working title of Book 3 was THE BOOK OF LIES for a long time, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it runs counter to the titling schema we’ve fallen into, I’d be real tempted to use it for Book 4.

Q: Finally, since Night Shade Books is running a sale right now, what are some other Night Shade titles you’d recommend readers order along with LIGHTBREAKER and their HEARTLAND preorders?

A: Any of Liz Williams’ Detective Inspector Chen books they don’t have, of course. Richard Kadrey’s BUTCHER BIRD. Walter Jon Williams’ IMPLIED SPACES. I’m looking forward to Tim Lebbon’s BAR NONE, Jay Lake’s MADNESS OF FLOWERS, and Seamus Cooper’s THE MALL OF CTHULHU myself.

Mark Teppo is the author of Lightbreaker and Heartland (forthcoming). He will be appearing at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books (866 Valencia Street) on Tuesday, June 16 at 7pm. You can learn more about Mark at Mark Teppo (dot) com.

Filed in Editorials, lightbreaker. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use this URL to trackback.