SFRevu : The Weavers of Saramyr is your first book for the adult market. How does it specifically differ from other Chris Wooding novels? What tools did you employ in the writing to ensure these differences? Chris Wooding: Weavers is more ambitious in scope than any of my earlier stuff. I had a much bigger canvas to work on and a much bigger cast to play with than any of my previous books. The most obvious difference, though, is that it's about adults. In the YA market there's a pressure to keep the age of the protagonists down, which naturally means they behave a certain way; in Weavers, that wasn't the case, and it makes for a very different kind of story.

I also had much more latitude with Weavers to paint in the background, since there's not such a need to keep up a breakneck pace as adults' attention spans are assumed to be longer (not that that's necessarily true...) Slowing down a little helped with the atmosphere of the book, though I still think it shifts pretty well! I spent a lot longer on the setting - the mythology and the geography and customs of Saramyr - than I had on any of my YA fantasies. And there's no chance I'd have got away with some of the things the Weavers do if the book came out in the YA market...

SFRevu : Did you find it more enjoyable / easier / more difficult than writing your young adult fiction? Why or why not? Are you now planning to produce for both markets equally or will you be doing more adult stuff from now on? CW: It's not that much different, really. My last couple of YA books were nudging towards adult fantasy anyway, and I never really simplified my writing style or toned down for teenagers. Nowadays I don't really think about the market when I'm writing a story. With Weavers it was possible to shuck off the (very minor) constraints imposed by the YA market, but it took me much longer to write because I was fretting about the need to produce a really good debut novel. I actually rewrote the entire thing from scratch because I thought I could do better than the first incarnation. But in the end, writing for both markets is pretty much the same for me. I do intend to write for the adult and the YA market concurrently, but I couldn't tell you in what proportion. I'm not thinking about it until I've finished the Braided Path trilogy. One thing at a time.

SFRevu: Who is your ideal reader? For your YA fiction? And for your adult fiction?

CW: Someone with a goldfish memory span who buys the book, forgets they've bought it, and buys it again ad infinitum.

SFRevu : Why genre? Chris Wooding has been writing fantasies for young readers for a good while - why not some other more mainstream area for adult readers? What is it about fantasy and science fiction that makes you want to tell these kinds of stories?

CW: In a word, escapism. I've always had this omnipresent sense of vague dissatisfaction with the way things are, and most times I'd rather be somewhere else. That's why I think it's so important in fantasy/SF to create a believable and immersive background to set your story in. Books to me have always been a window out of the real world, and the best part about writing is fashioning somewhere new to go. I enjoy world-building more than any other part of the creation process, and that's where the genre really shines. Fantasy/SF is limitless in potential; you can be fearlessly creative in a way that I don't think you can with genres that are grounded in a world the reader already knows. But in the end what it all really boils down to is this: the reason I write fantasy is because then I get to make monsters, and monsters are cool.

SFRevu: What was it you first read that turned you on to genre fiction? What works do you regard as formative in your early reading? Which titles made you a genre fan? Do you still find time to read within the genre?

CW: I do read a lot of fantasy and SF. I spent most of my teens reading around the 'mainstream' and so I'm still in the stage where I come across brilliant authors I've never heard of and go: 'How did I miss him/her?' Formative works were the obvious ones: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I think I was into fantasy even before I could walk; my mother used to read me fairy tales when I was an infant and they put hooks in that never came out, and since she was a fantasy fan there were always books lying around the house. I'd pick them up and be found malnourished in a cupboard six days later just finishing off the last few pages. I seem to remember reading Douglas Hill's Last Legionary series when I was really young, and the Tripods trilogy and a bunch of John Wyndham. That got me into SF, I'm pretty sure. I used to love Terry Brooks' Shannara sequence, too. Then there was Clive Barker with Imajica, Stephen King's The Stand, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game... There's just too many, different books I liked for different reasons at different times.

SFRevu: What are your thoughts on the new wave of British genre writers that are coming up. It seems like a boom time all round at the moment - particularly for the Brits - do you agree with this? Who do you rate and why?

CW: It does seem that way, and I think it's great. I have been struck by how inventive a lot of the newer titles are. I don't know whether that's a case of the publishers being more daring in what they publish or that authors are more consciously avoiding the well-worn genre ruts, but it's certainly a lot more exciting when you pick up a new author and you don't know exactly what you're getting. Too often you can judge a book by its cover, but nowadays the more rigid strictures of genre are getting increasingly blurred, and I'm all for that. Especially in fantasy, it seemed that there were only a select handful of authors who were straying off the beaten path; but over the last few years that's become less true. I rate most of the new crop of British writers, to tell you the truth - by which I mean the ones that have come through in the last five years or so - but standouts are Roger Levy for his prose, China Miéville for raw creativity, and Richard Morgan for the body count!

SFRevu: Tell us a little about how your first book deal came about? You have impressive list of published titles and accolades for someone your age. How do you keep it from going to your head?

CW: I got picked up by an agent when I was eighteen, after about two years of writing novels, submitting them to publishers and having them rejected. I was getting absolutely no feedback off the publishers, which was frustrating but understandable in retrospect, so eventually I started sending my books to agents instead. I think it took me about six rejections before I thought to include my age in the covering letter, and then I was picked up straight away. My agent told me later that she didn't really have much of a hope of selling the book I'd sent her, but that she'd taken me on to see what I'd do next. It was her who persuaded me to try writing a teenage book, since I was obviously in the prime position to write one, being still a teenager myself. Scholastic signed it up pretty much immediately, and that was it.

As to going to my head, I don't think there's much danger of that! In the end, I'm just making up a story; it's not like I'm curing cancer or anything. No, I just feel lucky that I get to write books and other people like to read them. Either that or it's because they make handy coasters and doorstops...

SFRevu: Describe your writing process. How do you plot a novel? What are your working disciplines? Are you strict with yourself or does it come to you easily?

CW: I'm a very steady writer: I do it pretty much nine-to-five (well, more like fourish because after that I really can't be bothered...) and forget about it on weekends. I've no idea where this workmanlike mentality came from - it's not as if I've ever had a job to instill that nine-to-five ethic. But I feel guilty about doing nothing if I'm not writing during the day, and I am pretty conscientious about it. I have up and down days, like any writer does. Sometimes I thrash through pages and pages, other times I end up steadily head butting my keyboard because of my inability to produce more than a paragraph in a week.

Each book comes out a different way, but generally when I have an idea I plot it to the point where I can confidently start writing it, and then I plot a few chapters ahead of myself, write them, plot ahead again and so on. I always know the general arc of the story and characters, and then fill in the details as I go. But I find that's a necessary part of the way I write; I don't plot everything out rigidly, because if I think of a better ending halfway through the book I can always change it. It makes the process a little more dynamic.

I'm big on re-edits, though; for me, finishing the first draft is only half the work done. I spend a lot of time going back over my books and changing bits, smoothing out the rough edges and tightening the plot. My first draft is usually full of inconsistencies, set-ups for situations that don't actually happen, things like that. I'm pretty sloppy in the actual writing process; it's in the edits that I get strict on myself.