Genrewonk Interviews Toby Bukell

It’s a new year and I’ve decided to start doing some new things with this here blog of mine.  And one of these new features will be interviews with genre authors about subjects I find interesting.  And first out of the gate is Tobias Buckell.  Toby is a SF author and fellow Ohioan who has written a trio of novels (Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose from Tor) that reflect his Caribbean roots.  His latest novel is a departure.  Halo: The Cole Protocol is his first media tie-in novel, and the subject of  this interview.

GW: First off, tell us the story how you ended up with a contract to write Halo:the Cole Protocol. Were you looking to write a media tie-in, or was this just out of the blue?

It was out of the blue, sort of. Bungie and Tor work together to make the Halo books, and apparently I caught their attention with my over-the-top adventure and craziness 🙂

GW: How was it working with someone else’s creative property? How tightly were you constrained?  Were there things you wanted to do, but couldn’t? Or things they wanted that you didn’t want to do?

It was pretty cool. I’d played the games and read all the books, so I had some ideas and they had some things they were hoping I could do. We each felt the ideas we all had were pretty cool, so incorporating everything into the book was more fun than anything. Halo, as a whole universe, is still fairly young, so I got to play in unexplored areas and have a lot of fun.

GW: How important was it to have a working knowledge of the property beforehand? Do you think you need to be a fan to write a tie-in novel?

I think it was pretty important. Like I said I’d played all the games, read all the books and the comics and the graphic novel. It made discussions with Bungie easy, as we were all on the same page and I had all sorts of ideas, as a fan of the series, about what I thought could be explored.

GW: How has this affected your own writing, for good or ill?

It was really nice, actually, to do something different. I’ve written 3 books all in the same series and featuring some of the same characters. Getting a chance to do something outside of all that was very useful as I’ve had time to let some other stuff sit and simmer.

GW: Would you do it again? Any other properties out there now you’d like to play in?

If asked again, I would be delighted to write another Halo book, sure. As for other properties, it all depends on if I like them. I’ve been offered a few things since people heard I was freelancing full time, but turned them down because either they offered too little money or they were properties I wasn’t enthused about. There are other properties I dig on, the one people know I’m most a fan of is Wolverine. I imagine I’d jump at a chance to do that.

Not surprisingly, as I just got out of my 20s, most of my other loves are various videogames I love playing.