The Dark Griffin
by K J Taylor
Format: APB
ISBN: 9780732288525

Enter a world where griffins rule in this dark, fast-paced story of fantasy and adventure.

He wanted to find freedom… but instead lost his soul.
In the land of Cymria, humans and griffins rule side by side. To be a griffiner—the human companion and ambassador to a griffin—is to have both status and dangerous responsibility. Arren Cardockson is a despised Northener, a people conquered and enslaved centuries ago. By freak chance, Arren became a griffiner, but many resent and fear his existence. When his griffin dies during an attempt to catch a wild griffin, Arren’s life spirals out of control. Meanwhile, chained in a cage behind the fighting Arena where rogue griffins entertain the crowds, the mysterious black griffin dreams of escape. When Arren is sent to the Arena, his meeting with the renegade griffin sets his life on an inexorable path of murder, conflict—and an encounter with his past.

Katie J Taylor was born in Canberra in 1986, and attended Radford College, where she wrote her first novel, The Land of Bad Fantasy, which was published in 2006. She studied for a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications at the University of Canberra, and graduated in 2007 before going on to do a Graduate Certificate in Editing in 2008.

AC: Katie, welcome to The Specusphere. Please tell us a little more about yourself, your writing career and interests.

KJT: Hi there, and thankyou so much for interviewing me!
About myself—well, I’m 23 years old, I work for the YMCA as a childcarer, and I’ve lived in Canberra my whole life. I have ten ear piercings, a nose piercing and four tattoos, and I love George RR Martin and Nightwish (I listened to their album Dark Passion Play endlessly while writing Dark Griffin and its sequels). I’ve travelled a fair bit, with my family, and I came up with the idea for Dark Griffin while sitting on a mountaintop in Tasmania. Exercise helps give me ideas.

AC: Cymria, your world, is a complex place and a dangerous one—if you are different. Arren is a Northerner, a race enslaved by the Cymrians, and he bears that stigma, despite the fact that he is freeborn. Arren’s appearance reminds everyone of his heritage. Prejudice and pride are important internal and external conflicts for Arren—trying to fit in, but never able to. Tolerated only because of his griffin companion and his abilities, both of which draw attention to him from unwanted quarters. Is the underlying theme of this story about being true to oneself, one’s heritage? How much was the idea of prejudice a factor behind the writing your book?

KJT: The racism angle is there for two reasons: first as a kind of indictment of fantasy itself, where you’ll often find “evil” races and “evil” creatures. Think of Lord of the Rings. If there were any Orcs that weren’t servants of evil, I missed them.

The Northerners in my series were specifically designed to represent the “evil” race—they come out of “the cold North”, they’re less advanced, they’re tribal and have a warlike society. Oh, and lest we forget, they have eeeevil black eyes and black hair, and very pale skin. I even gave them long, thin fingers like Voldemort. But, of course, they’re not evil—just different.

In a way, the whole world expects Arren to fit into this mould of being savage and vicious, like a wild griffin. And he’s aware of it. What makes him more interesting, I think, is that in his own way he’s just as racist as those around him. He hates himself for being what he is, and he honestly does believe that his people are inferior. So he builds walls to keep it away. He does everything in his power to hide it from himself. He insists on being neat and clean at all times, maintains an air of rigid good manners, and avoids fights. He didn’t believe he could be a Northerner and a griffiner at the same time, so he denied one and obsessed over the other.

Eluna was what held those walls together, and once she’s gone those walls fall down and we begin to see the immature and violent person he really is.

I suppose, at a subconscious level, the other reason I put those themes in there is because they’re a part of me. In a way, Arren’s struggle is just like growing up, which is something I’m still doing myself. We all have walls that we build. We all try to be something we’re not. We all know what it’s like to be an outsider. When I wrote the book I hadn’t been out of high school for that long, and in many ways I was still a teenager inside. In a way, Arren is a tribute to those painful years where, like everyone else, I didn’t know who I was.

AC: Griffins have the reputation of being fierce, powerful creatures, at least in the world of literature and history (heraldic devices, for example). In your world, Katie, the “tame” griffins bond with their humans from an early age (sometimes just after hatching) and they are forever devoted to that human and will defend him to the death, will literally tear a threat to shreds (and eat the remains). Your griffins are nothing if not ruthless. Have you always been interested in griffins, and what was the impetus to use them for this story? 

KJT: I don’t really like the term “bonding”, since it implies that there’s magic involved. I prefer to call it “being chosen”, which is what it is, and actually newly hatched griffins don’t choose humans—their brains are too underdeveloped.

There’s a way of cheating your way into being a griffiner: by raising a griffin from birth, you can make it grow close to you and it’ll probably stay with you as a matter of course once it grows up. But that’s forbidden and is looked on as a violation of the griffin’s rights. As seen in the book, some people risk stealing newly hatched chicks anyway. Very few of them get away with it.

As for why I used griffins, simply put it’s because I didn’t want to write about dragons and it occurred to me that griffins were very underrepresented in modern-day literature. I can only name two other authors who used griffins prominently in any of their books, and those were written some time ago. I figured since griffins hadn’t really been used much, that would give me a lot of free rein to do what I wanted with them, and would make me stand out from the crowd. And it did: pretty much everybody who reads my stuff mentioned how much they liked the griffins.

AC: Did I miss it in the book, but are there female riders of griffins? If not, why not?

KJT: Yes, there are several female griffiners in the book—Lady Riona the Eyrie Mistress, Arren’s lover Flell, Rannagon’s wife Kaelyn just to name a few.

AC: The new take on griffins was interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the chapters where POV was solely that of a griffin. You started off the book with the mother of the dark griffin, her POV, where her life is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of invading humans. Throughout the book, you go into the POV of a griffin and these passages are particularly evocative. How “easy” was it for you to slip into griffin POV?

KJT: Very easy, actually. When I was growing up, two of my favourite books were White Fang and Call of the Wild—and to date, I have never found any book that does such a brilliant job of really making you feel like you’re seeing the world through animal eyes. They don’t try and make the wolf and dog characters more “human”—the complete opposite, in fact. I suppose Jack London saw the same thing I believe, which is that if you’re good enough at it, you can make a nonhuman character just as sympathetic without having to twist them away from what they are.

To write from a griffin’s POV, I had to think like one, and it’s not that hard given that their thought processes are so simple. In a way they’re easier than humans, because a human has a constant barrage of interference going through their head. Most humans will be thinking of several things at once—their minds wander, they get confused, they contradict themselves, they worry about what other people will think. Whereas, a griffin won’t do that. A griffin thinks in simple, direct ways—they don’t hold onto the past, or speculate about the future except in very vague terms. If a griffin is hungry, they go after food. Nothing else matters until they’ve done that. Of course I have no way of knowing for sure, but that’s how I imagine animals think. Even when a griffin plots or schemes, they don’t do it in a humanlike way. They don’t understand things like bribery, and “persuasion” means pinning someone down and threatening them until they give in. Either that or they get their human to do it—what else are they good for except bringing meat and cleaning your talons?

To begin with I was actually afraid that people wouldn’t like the griffin POV or would find it too unrelateable, and I also thought a griffin wouldn’t really be able to carry a whole story. But as time has proved, I was completely wrong! In fact, I now have a future trilogy planned where the protagonist and main POV will be griffish. It’ll be great fun.

AC: I was curious to read the list of names in the acknowledgements at the front of the book. Some very interesting names. Who are they?

KJT: As you may have guessed, they’re internet handles. I spent several years practising by writing fanfiction, and developed a bit of a following in the online world. The people mentioned in the acknowledgements are some of my reviewers who helped to encourage me, and who gave me some feedback on the opening chapters of Dark Griffin. Thanks again, guys! You’re the best!

AC: For how long have you been writing? What was the first story you ever wrote and at what age? Have you always written speculative stories? What is the appeal, to you, of speculative fiction?

KJT: I was writing poems and things in primary school, but I didn’t start trying to write novels until I was about 13. I started out with animal stories since I found human beings too confusing. Some of the first things I wrote in primary school were about horses; when I was 13 I moved on to Redwall-style stories about heroic mice and rats.

I wrote my first novel, The Land of Bad Fantasy, in high school when I was about 16. I had just been given my first laptop, and I took it into school and worked on LoBF whenever I had time—lunchtime, free periods, and English class (the teacher must have thought I was taking notes, because he never caught me). When LoBF was finished I took it on a camping trip and read it aloud to my family and some friends. They liked it and said I should try and publish it, so I sent query letters to every publisher in the Yellow Pages. I got one or two expressions of interest, which helped me to get an agent—Tara Wynne with Curtis Brown. She got it published with Omnibus, and that was how I got started. Then I took a few years off to go to university, where I wrote Dark Griffin.  

Like every other author I know, I write what I like to read, and fantasy is what I like. Another reason why I stick with it is because I think fantasy is a genre that could have a whole lot more done with it—it has pretty much endless space to do whatever you like, and that’s what I love most about it. 

AC: What is your writing process? Do you allow your characters—human or griffin—free rein, or do you plot and plan each scene?

KJT: I’ve never been much of a planner; I start out with a good solid picture of the plot in my head, and the details fill themselves in as I go. I used to believe in characters doing their own thing and so on, but nowadays I’ve been doing it long enough that I realise I’m the one in charge. I just have to make sure nobody says or does anything out of character, and everything works out very naturally.

AC: What is your daily writing routine?

KJT: It’s nightly! During the day I have chores to do and a job at the local primary school. At night after everyone else has gone to bed, I shut myself up in my room, put on my headphones and start tapping away. On a good night I keep going until about 2am, but I’ve been known to keep at it until even later than that. 

AC: Arren is an interesting character. At first he is somewhat naive, but by the end of the book he has become many things—naive not amongst them. He and the dark griffin (now known as ‘Darkheart’) form an unlikely alliance—unlikely, at first, but very apt given both their emerging natures! Often fantastical creatures become human caricatures, but not so your griffins! 

This passage was particularly compelling, and a little chilling:

“Griffiners were not quite human. Many people said so. After so long living among griffins, they became griffish themselves. And griffins killed. For food, for pride, for revenge. For survival. They did not understand weakness or timidity… he had killed, and it had been right. Not good, not kind, but right for him. The only way. A griffin’s way.” 

You could have made your griffins more “human”, but instead you chose to portray them as creatures with their own standards. Did you ever consider making them more “friendly” (like Temeraire, for example, or the dragons of Pern, etc.) It seems to me, as a reader, that griffins impress their humans, rather than humans impress griffins. 

KJT: I specifically set out to make them as unhumanlike as possible. It bugs me when nonhuman characters are written in such a way that they may as well be human—I mean, what’s the point? I wanted the griffins to feel real, and I wanted them to be true to what they were, which is, essentially, big cats. And one of the characteristics of big cats is that they cannot be tamed, and their predatory instinct is something that can’t be removed, no matter what you do. 

And yes, humans certainly are more impressed by griffins than they are by humans! Most griffins look on humans as something there for their convenience, or as something that has to be put up with. A griffin will choose you for several different reasons—because you’re rich, because you’re well-born, because you’ve found some sort of favour—basically most of them will choose a human who looks like they’re going places. Others will choose on impulse; they’re not analytical thinkers, griffins.

AC: Readers of The Dark Griffin may be shocked at some of the cruelty, or the bloodthirsty scenes—heads being ripped off and consumed, or arms, or other appendages devoured. Again, this is a world that allows the creatures to act as their nature intends, not conform to the “standards” of humans. Did you have fun playing around with your world and your creations? How did the idea of this story evolve?  The Arena reminds me of the Roman Colosseum where prisoners are thrown to the griffins—sport for the crowds. Cymria has its very dark places and as a reader I could not help but feel sorry for the caged griffins. I hope they stage a revolt!

KJT: Heh, violence is my specialty.

Did I have fun? You know, my dad accused me of that very thing. After reading a particularly nasty section, he turned to me and said “you enjoyed that”. The answer is, no I don’t. I do enjoy writing exciting scenes, like most authors. I guess the brutality is there partly because it’s just what I do by now, but it’s built into the world because it’s a world dominated by griffins, and griffins are violent and uncontrollable animals. Everything flows down from them. When I was thinking about how a world essentially ruled by them would work, I thought “hey, there should be some sort of collosseum like in Ancient Rome. That would be the sort of thing these guys would look on as entertaining”. The griffins certainly like it. In one of the other cities—Withypool—they have fighting pits, where unpartnered griffins go to prove their strength. They use it as a form of stress relief, too—it’s an opportunity to follow their instincts without having to worry about the consequences (griffins can be prosecuted for murder, if they kill someone without provocation. In Eagleholm, the punishment is being put in the Arena just as it is for a human).

I suppose the cages really show the difference between wild griffins and “civilised” ones. Like Northerners, wild griffins are looked on as essentially untrustworthy and potentially dangerous—they don’t have any real rights, and there’s nothing wrong with making use of them. That was a parallel I deliberately wove in there.

AC: Do you have a favourite character in this story? And did any character (human or griffin) surprise you by what they said or did?

KJT: Darkheart is the most fun to write about, especially in the later books when he’s finally off the leash, so to speak. He’s fun to write because he’s just so damned simple. All his motivations can be summed up in a couple of short sentences, and he doesn’t have much in the way of an internal monologue.

I like Arren, too—it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, and I like how he never completely loses his sense of humour despite everything he goes through. I think most people in his situation would become pretty sarcastic.

I also like him because even though he’s the protagonist, he’s not a hero. I don’t believe in heroes. In book two he sums up what he is, with my favourite line from him: “Some people think I’m a villain, and some people think I’m a hero. But I’m neither of those things—I’m a man.” He’s right. You can be a villain or a hero, or you can be a human being. You can’t be both.

I think readers will be surprised and interested to see how he evolves over the next two books. I can promise that he won’t go in a direction you expect him to.

I think the one character who surprised me was Shoa. At first it seemed like she wasn’t really that involved, wasn’t doing that much—but looks can be deceptive! Her reveal is an important reminder to the reader—“the griffin isn’t just a pet or a steed—it has much more power over its human than you realise”. As a side note, Shoa’s name was originally “Shoah”, because I read somewhere that it means “destruction”. Then I found out it was also a name for the Holocaust, so in the interests of good taste, I changed the spelling.

AC: What is the next book in the series? When will it be out?

KJT: The next book is called The Griffin’s Flight. It should be released in January next year—all three books were completed before I even signed the contract, hence we’re able to release them quite close together.

AC: Is there anything else you’d like to tell The Specusphere? Are you going to be doing any book signing tours, for example? And if so, where?

KJT: I will be holding some signings in the future—we’re planning one at an Angus & Robertson here in Canberra—I’ll post the details on my site closer to the time. We’re also going to hold two launch parties. The first one will be on the 12th of August, starting at 5:30pm, at the Co-Op bookshop at the University of Canberra. The launching speech will be given by Tony Eaton. The second launch will be on the 26th of September, at the Paperchain bookshop in Manuka, starting at 4:30pm. The launching speech will be given by none other than Jackie French! Both parties will be open to the public, so feel free to come along!

AC: Best of luck with your book, Katie, and thanks for spending time with us.