Stark Holborn is the author of Nunslinger – the first ever digital serial published by Hodder & Stoughton – as well as the novella series Triggernometry and the SF-western, Ten Low. As well as writing about westerns for Pornokitsch and Screen Queens, Stark works as a games writer for clients like the BBC, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. Stark is currently a lead writer on the SF-noir detective game Shadows of Doubt.

TOM: Welcome back, Stark. It’s been a while so thank you for joining the Fantasy Hive to talk to us about Ninth Life – the third book in the Factus series – which was released today, as well as discussing some other writerly stuff.

SH: Always happy to drop into the Hive. Thanks for having me.

 TOM: Your published writing trajectory began with serialised Nunslinger, and then  Triggernometry and Advanced Triggernometry before going far beyond Earth with Ten Low. Back in 2021 you said “I write westerns, primarily, from a feminist, non-traditional standpoint. “  There is certainly something of a spaghetti western feel to the desolate landscape spotted with shanty settlements and the ferocious shoot outs in rough-hewn bars that we enjoyed in Ten Low and its sequels, while the nebulous Ifs and the alien Edge added a touch of the fantastic.

To what extent are the Factus tales, stories of fantasy westerns in space?

SH: I’m a big fan of throwing genres into a blender; some of my favourite examples of science fiction don’t fit neatly into categories (Alien, Philip K Dick, the Strugatsky Brothers…). I wouldn’t argue with anyone calling the Factus Sequence “space westerns”: my writing is undeniably influenced by the western genre, especially in the sense that I’m interested in interrogating and re-interpreting it. So, the books certainly have western elements, but they’ve also been labelled as space fantasy, space opera, cosmic horror…

TOM: You’ve cited a few films that have inspired your stories – Two Mules for Sister Sara as a trigger for Nunslinger and Mad Max: Fury Road as an inspiration for Ten Low.

How did these films drive the direction of your story telling? Are there any other films that have particularly stimulated your writing imagination?

SH: Films are a huge influence on my work; both visually and in terms of tone. I’m a very visual writer, and usually have a strong mental imagine of scenes, which is maybe why I tend to write shorter chapters. With the Factus Sequence I really wanted to capture the tone of something like a John Carpenter film… genre movies that take themselves seriously but never lose their pulpy edge. And yes, there are definitely a few films that were big inspirations on the series: Fury Road and Hard to be a God on Ten Low, Alien 3 and The Thing on Hel’s Eight, Bacurau and The English and The 3:10 to Yuma on Ninth Life.

TOM: In an online writing group, I was chatting to other writers who clearly divided into plotsters/architects – who mapped out the entire story in great scene by scene detail (guilty as charged) and pantsters/gardeners, who wrote completely organically following wherever the story took them (aargh!).

Where would you put yourself on the plotster/pantster continuum and why?

SH: About 70% pantser. I do some planning, and like to have an idea of where things are heading but after that I write organically. I’ll often note down a line or two about a chapter or scene, and I have a colour-coded star system that helps me map out the dynamic range of chapters within a section, but I don’t tend to make detailed notes beyond that. It kills the momentum for me. I sometimes do my best writing when I enter into a bit of a fey mood and just go off on one.

TOM: One thing that stands out for me in your writing is the effortlessly elegant prose, or at least it appears effortless on the page. Some authors claim never to edit at all, others are frantic reviewers.

Can tell us a bit about your own editing/reviewing process. Do those fine poetic lines spring fully formed from your subconscious onto the page, or does the germ of a phrase require lots of tweaking and polishing?

SH: Thank you, that means a lot. And, ahem, see above re: fey mood. Sometimes when I’m in the flow, words or phrases (or even whole chapters) will come out right and remain almost unchanged. Other parts I have to hack at and wrangle with. Both are necessary, of course. I try to think of a manuscript a bit like a painting. There are strong, memorable details that jump out and remain in your mind when you look away, but the painting also needs all the parts you don’t immediately register; the background, the surrounding detail, the brushstrokes themselves. So, although I have my darlings, I’m just as proud of the parts that took longer. I’m always convinced it’s obvious which are which, but maybe it isn’t…

I try to think of a manuscript a bit like a painting. There are strong, memorable details that jump out and remain in your mind when you look away, but the painting also needs all the parts you don’t immediately register; the background, the surrounding detail, the brushstrokes themselves

TOM: Your other career is as a games writer and occasional film reviewer which is, in some ways, a different medium to the written word.

Would your like to see your books made into films?

SH: Of course! We did actually sell the film option for Ten Low to an LA-based media company a few years ago, but that lapsed recently so it’s back in the wind. I’d love to see the world of Factus brought to life onscreen… Don’t ask me about fan-casting though, I always struggle with it. (Except for Dev Patel as Silas). But anyway, I like to think I’d remain open minded to the visions of others, as long as whoever was working on the adaptation approached it with heart and integrity.

TOM: Factus is a fascinating setting and I’m glad that we do get to see it again in Ninth Life but as with Hel’s Eight, in Ninth Life we get to see more of the other moons, space-stations and planets within the iron grip of the Accord. I particularly enjoyed the prison encampment on Prodor where the invasiveness of the local Flora put me in mind of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s recent release Alien Clay and a bit of your own short story The Feast of Mulligan Lang. that you wrote for IZDigital.

Where do you find your inspiration for all these varied and variegated settings, and how do you develop them so that setting ‘becomes character’?

SH: Alien Clay is so good! And thanks, I love Prodor too. That was so much fun to write. It’s made up on a bunch of inspirations; the lush, visceral worlds of Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber being a big one, for sure. Also, Piter De Vries’s Sapho stained lips in David Lynch’s Dune, Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market… Reading a lot about mushrooms, too. Fungi are wild. The more I read about them, the more it changes the way I see the world.

I tried to imagine a place that was the absolute opposite of Factus in many ways – waterlogged, lush, teeming with flora and fauna – and then build it out in my head. What would people eat? (Snails and all sorts of swamp-dwelling aquatic life). What would people wear? (Anything that doesn’t rot). In which case, what’s the fashion? (Sheer plastic). What might people crave while living in such a damp, abundant place? (Dryness? Death?). Distil all that like snail wine and I ended up with Prodor.

TOM: Where Ten Low had a single first person protagonist you added a second one in Hel’s Eight with Pec Esterhazy’s journal of the past, breaking up and steadily converging with the present time adventures of Ten Low and company. In Ninth Life you add a third layer of protagonist in Idrisi Blake who is compiling an archive of the recorded history of Gabi Ortiz. I mean – you could have just given us Havemercy Grey’s unadulterated testimony of her experience of Gabi, rather than inserting fragments (albeit substantial fragments) of that testimony as elements within Blake’s very diverse archive.

Can you tell us how that approach came about and what advantages you think it gave you in the telling of the story?

SH: It’s a format that had been kicking about in my head for some time: the idea that someone could use the seductive power of storytelling to entirely shift another person’s world view over the course of a journey.

It’s a format that had been kicking about in my head for some time: the idea that someone could use the seductive power of storytelling to entirely shift another person’s world view over the course of a journey.

TOM: That idea about the power of story telling is really fascinating, it reminds me of a paper I saw recently making the point that  ‘Storytelling is humanity’s oldest “technology” to create social change.’

SH: And as anyone who’s read Nunslinger or Ten Low will realise, I’m a sucker for an unlikely travelling duo so the two concepts meshed in my brain. Idrisi Blake’s role in the story small but vital – their drive to uncover the truth is part of the fuel stoking the engine of the plot. And when it came to the fragments, I just decided to go off-piste with it. Interviews? Yeah. Screenplay extract? Why not! Once I gave myself the freedom to do it, it was so joyous to write in all those different styles, especially as I usually write a pretty controlled first person present.

TOM: Your books are populated with complicated independent female characters who pass the Bechdel test on practically every page. One film you identified as inspiration Mad Max: Fury Road attracted some attention (positive and negative) for its feminist movie themes. Having only watched it for the first time this year, it certainly struck a chord for me with reproductive rights, water rights and environmental degradation, and renewal taking centre stage.

How far do you feel issues of feminism can be discerned/addressed in Ninth Life and your other writings?

SH: I’m an intersectional feminist, so I’d hope that translates into the world of my books. I wanted to write characters inspired by the (sadly rather few and far between) female protagonists of cult science fiction: Ripley, Halo Jones, Auntie Entity… women who are complex and normal and extraordinary and tough and vulnerable in a huge variety of ways. Ten’s world might be dystopian, but it’s a queernorm one where a whole spectrum of gender identities and sexual preferences are normalized. Someone asked me why I’d chosen to do that the other day, and my main answer was, well, why wouldn’t I?

TOM: No book is written or read in a political vacuum. As I read of the siege of Factus in Ninth Life, I saw some fairly obvious, but – given the long lead time of publishing – quite possibly unintended contemporary resonances. The barren rock of independent Factus, besieged, bombarded and starved of supplies and Gabi Ortiz, fighting against her former masters of the Accord makes almost as much a turncoat Traitor as Ten Low once did. However, for all the dramatic gritty bloody action of the Factus series, I don’t think it glories in war or glamorises rebels.

Horace wrote that stories should be both dulce (sweet/entertaining) and utile (useful/instructive). What ‘utile’ would you most like readers to take away from Ninth Life?

SH: Definitely an unintended resonance, given the book was finished last summer. But it is obviously something I feel strongly about; community solidarity, collective memory, the ability for the oppressed to challenge systems of oppression, and for those challenges to be heard and remembered.

TOM: The cover of Ninth Life is another stunning creation. I know you had some input into the shape and colour palette for the cover of Ten Low.

Do you still get a say in cover design and what do you like best about the covers of Ninth Life in particular and the series as a whole?

SH: This third cover was probably the hardest to get right, because we had to keep things consistent with the look of the series, but make it different enough to stand on its own… luckily, Julia Lloyd is a great designer and I think the final cover firmly ticks both of those boxes. I still love the original Ten Low cover though: it’s so striking, and always reminds of Metropolis.

TOM: I have enjoyed the theme to the titles in each of your book series and you have said “I do write things without pun titles sometimes…”  (Can I suggest “Degrees of Triggernometry” for when you pick up Malago Browne’s narrative once more) and I have enjoyed the numerical theme to the Factus titles. However, Ninth Life – in its framing story with Blake – has taken us into a future beyond the lives of the protagonists of Ten Low and Hel’s Eight.

Do you envisage returning to the Factus setting in a future story? (Maybe one picking up on Blake and – in keeping with slightly disordered numerical theme you could even call it er… Blake’s 7 ?! or perhaps not?)

SH: Haha, don’t tempt me… I have another world I’m currently exploring in a new project which is more space gothic (think bounty hunters meets Gormenghast meets rusty bionics meets Gideon the Ninth).

TOM: Ooh – that’s a great teaser for your new project!

I have generally found the SFF community, with its vibrant conventions and online groupings, to be a lovely found family of mutual support and shared interests.

What has been your biggest positive in terms of support, encouragement or simply experience, from within the community (And hoping to catch up with you at Bristolcon if not Glasgowcon!)

SH:  I’ll be at both! And you’re right, the science fiction community in the UK has been extremely welcoming and loyal, and I’m always so humbled by the reviewers, other authors and readers who take time to not only read the books but help spread the word. In terms of singular experiences, being Guest of Honour at BristolCon (my home con) was an absolute honour, as is getting to visit the always-excellent Cymera.

TOM:  And for a final question, let’s have a go at taunting the Ifs by having a question number 13!!

Are there any questions you would have liked me to ask but I didn’t and how would you have answered them?

SH: Maybe about games? Not many people ask me what I’ve been playing… which is good because the answer is: not as many as I would like! I’m a big fan of indie games and got the chance to check out some great demos recently, including the brilliant, bizarre, stop-motion Scottish folklore adventure Judero, and the technicolour weirdness of Octopus City Blues. Two for the wishlists!

TO: Thanks again for joining us and the best of luck with the launch of Ninth Life

Ninth Life is out today form Titan books! You can order your copy HERE