An Interview with Richard Swan

We don’t often consider the intricacies of the legal system in fantasy worldbuilding—more often than not, it loses out to swords and dragons. However, as history will attest, the fundaments of legality have done more to shape our world than a blade ever did.

Richard Swan is a critically acclaimed British genre writer. His debut fantasy novel, The Justice of Kings, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. His other work includes the Art of War trilogy, as well as short fiction for Black Library and Grimdark Magazine.

We spoke to Richard about how he married his deep legal expertise with a visceral and gripping world and characters – and about what’s coming next.

What got you into writing in the first place?

Honestly I’m not sure. The idea to sit down and write a story occurred to me apparently at random one school lunchbreak when I was about 12, and everything since has flowed from that one errant, fateful thought.

How do you find time to write?

I actually write full time and have been doing so for about 4 years now. But when I was a practicing lawyer I would simply have to find the time whenever it presented itself—the odd hour here and there in early mornings, late evenings, lunch breaks.

How has your work influenced your writing?

Naturally being a commercial litigator of ten years’ experience heavily influenced the Empire of the Wolf trilogy, and all of its process and procedure, philosophy and jurisprudence. Litigation also gave me a very broad vocabulary and quite a formal, almost proto-Victorian way of writing which I think lends itself well to the fantasy genre when you’re writing dialogue in a medieval pastiche.

Are there any particular authors you look up to?

Most recently I’ve really engaged with the writing of Chris Buehlman and Fonda Lee. Growing up I think Iain M. Banks was the author who had the single greatest influence on me, as well as perhaps Peter F. Hamilton and Dan Abnett.

What are you reading, listening to, watching and playing at the moment?

I’m reading Dead Man in a Ditch, the second Fetch Phillips novel by Luke Arnold (another recent favourite), re-listening to Blueprint for Armageddon (the Hardcore History podcast about WW1), I’m watching KAOS on Netflix, and I’ve just started playing Space Marine 2 on my Xbox Series X. 

What is your approach to writing short fiction, as opposed to novels? How do you start?

Honestly I don’t write a lot of short fiction. I don’t love the medium. I’ve done a few pieces, two for Grimdark Magazine and two for Black Library. It’s a skill that is very different from novel writing and it’s a strange thing to say but I actually find it much harder to write than a 100k+ word novel!

Can you give us a few of your favourite pieces of short fiction that you’ve read over the years?

My favourite piece of short fiction is Lena by qntm. I also love the Fall of Malvolion by Dan Abnett.

From publications in Grimdark to a dalliance in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it’s safe to say your writing edges into the darker side of speculative fiction. What draws you to this?

No particular thing. I don’t set out to deliberately write dark things (and I would generally reject any categorisation of my work as “grimdark”); but I think when you’re writing higher stakes epic fantasy and sci fi then necessarily you’re going to run into some heavy stuff. As well as coming from a military family, I spent my formative years being media-marinaded in the Global War on Terror news coverage, and I think that cosmic microwave background of terrorism, war, extraordinary rendition, etc., as well as learning about counterterrorism, jurisprudence, and public international law at university, set me on a certain path vis-à-vis fiction writing.

What’s one trope you’re tired of seeing at the moment?

Probably retellings.

What’s one thing you wish people wrote about more?

Just weird shit. I wish people just really let their ids out and indulged in some oddness in their fiction.

What inspired you to write The Empire of the Wolf trilogy?

The kernel of the idea was “what if fantasy lawyers?” and then a whole bunch of inspirational flesh was added to the bones—Cicero by Robert Harris, weekend trips in the UK and abroad to medieval towns, games such as the Witcher, and on a subconscious level almost certainly the Star Wars Prequels. The inspirations are too many and diverse!

How long did it take you to write, from inception to finished manuscripts? How much time was spent planning and plotting?

I generally spend 5-6 months drafting a 150k word novel, and probably another month or so editing it (plus another month after that for my editor’s edits). I love planning books and that probably takes another month of effort, though of course I have ideas all the time and these little threads accrete over years.

Vonvalt is an incredibly fun character to read – a fantasy Judge Dredd. How much of your legal background did you draw on when creating him, and was there an element of catharsis?

Naturally a large amount of inspiration was taken from the day job, and of course fiction is always a great medium to vent one’s spleen. Funnily enough I find epigraphs are a great way to do this!

Sova and its surrounds are wonderfully realised throughout the books. There’s elements of the Holy Roman Empire, old Saxony, Eastern Central Europe and others that come through. What was your inspiration for the aesthetic of the world, and how did that inform the choices you made when it came to language and character?

When I started planning the Empire of the Wolf I’d recently been on a trip to Bruges and it was that that tipped me down the more Central European worldbuilding rabbit hole (as opposed to a more Anglocentric approach). I was also playing a lot of Witcher 3 at the time which certainly fed into the broader aesthetic. I wanted Sova to be culturally Holy Roman / Prussian / Teutonic but mixed with the various Slavic peoples of the surrounding nations. This was quite a nice way of showing the forced integration of Sovan Imperialism, and you’ll see things like characters with a German forename mixed with a Serbian / Czech / Lithuanian surname (and vice versa).

"The older I get the more I find myself willing to allegorise in my fiction...these days it’s a huge part of the appeal of writing SFF."

As a whole, the trilogy reads as a critique of a complacent state refusing to adapt to changing trends and the threats presented therein – which is a pretty apt reading of where things seem to be moving. Did you aim to make a political statement with your work, or was this something that came about naturally?

It is certainly that and more. I was certainly frustrated by contemporary transatlantic shenanigans when I wrote Justice of Kings. The older I get the more I find myself willing to allegorise in my fiction; it was something I avoided doing in my 20s but these days it’s a huge part of the appeal of writing SFF. 

This was not your first foray into trilogy writing. What did you learn from your first trilogy that you think helped you the most in writing the second?

I think the biggest takeaway was learning how to structure the books; how and when to escalate matters, when plot threads need to diverge and when to converge, when things should be resolved and when they should be left open, etc etc.

Will we see a return to Sova in the future?

Indeed! My next trilogy, the Great Silence (beginning with Grave Empire, coming Feb ‘25) is set in Sova but 200 years after the events of the Empire of the Wolf.

What was the one moment that made you feel like a Real Author™?

Getting a literary agent was the first big milestone, and I think being published after that felt like a question of when, not if.

How do you beat writer’s block?

Go for a long walk or a long shower. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’ve found myself in the shower at 3pm.

Do you have a particular approach to research and preparation that you think has improved the believability of your worldbuilding?

I use the “cultural iceberg” method for worldbuilding, and creating that detailed sandbox has enabled me to create worlds that feel real and lived-in. Drip-feeding the reader with cultural quirks, idioms, contemporary references, references to shared “off camera” experiences, and so on, all serve to deepen the narrative.

What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to new writers who are eager to break into the speculative fiction world?

The only truly objectively correct piece of writing advice is to read constantly and broadly and write as often as you can. My personal advice on top of that is to lean into the thing that makes your fiction unique. Look for an angle; there are a thousand thousand generic medieval fantasies and space operas out there.

Is there something about the industry that you wish you knew before you got involved?

How glacially slow it all is!

Grave Empire is scheduled for release in February 2025 and can be preordered via the link.

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