Nikki Turner is an author currently living in South Africa. She has written many books and plays, but the main book I am interviewing her about is The Vulture King, which gets a 4.5 rating on Amazon and Goodreads.
The Vulture King is about a magical land called the Carrionlands, but in the Carrionlands magic comes at a price, you will either lose your hearing, sight or voice. An orphan called Aram has survived for five years, with a magpie for his eyes. But when he rescues a girl called Bina from being sacrificed to the Vulture King he is taken to an underground resistance where he is told that his mother is in fact alive and has been captured by the Vulture King. In a race against time Aram has to journey to rescue his mother, before it's too late.
Q: As a child what was your favorite book/novel?
NT: I have always loved fantasy and one of the first books I remember being totally lost in was, 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' by CS Lewis. I still think the story is absolutely amazing.
Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
NT: Even though I majored in Drama at University, I took English as one of my main subjects. I also started writing plays in university and went on to do a Certificate in Community Journalism once I’d finished my drama degree. So, even though my first desire was to be an actress, writing was always something I loved doing too. I just started doing more and more of it as the years went by.
Q: Who is your favorite author and why?
NT: This is very, very difficult to answer as I have so many! But, I am going to have to go with Terry Pratchett if I can only pick one. He writes the most amazingly vivid fantasy worlds and has a deft comic touch. I have never read a book of his that I didn’t love.
Q: What do you think is the best film adaptation of a book?
NT: I think the Hunger Games trilogy did a great job bringing Suzanne Collins’s books to life. They stayed very true to the books, which a lot of films don’t do.
Q: As a child what was your favorite book/novel?
NT: I have always loved fantasy and one of the first books I remember being totally lost in was, 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' by CS Lewis. I still think the story is absolutely amazing.
Q: At this moment, what is your favorite book?
NT: Magician by Raymond Feist is my favourite book of all time. I reread it every few years and I love it just as much every time I go back into the world he created.
Q: What’s your advice for upcoming authors?
NT: Write what you love and what sets your soul on fire. Then it never feels like work. If you’re trying to write a story to follow trends, it’s going to be flat and uninspired.
Q: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
NT: I write fantasy, so I don’t spend any time researching because I make it all up! What I do is spend time world-building which is creating my fantasy land from scratch and coming up with back-stories for my characters. I also spend quite a bit of time deciding exactly what’s going to happen in my story. This plotting makes the book much easier to write once I get going.
Q: How do you come up with the titles to your books?
NT: It’s strange, but the right title usually pops into my head quite early on. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, it just comes to me
Q: On a typical day, how much time do you spend writing
NT: My writing habits are a bit unusual. It takes me about three months to write and edit a book, and in that time I mostly write every day, often thousands of words. Then after I have finished a novel, there is often quite a long break before I begin a new one. In this time I do no writing at all. Although sometimes I work on a script or poem just for fun.
Q: How do you build up your characters and plot?
NT: This is the fun part and really requires nothing but setting your imagination loose. I usually do all my world building and character sketches in a notebook, ideas come more easily when I’m writing by hand. I even draw pictures of the characters sometimes, even though I’m not a very talented artist. When I feel like the characters and world are solid in my head, I start to write their story.
Q: What is the most difficult part about writing for you?
NT: Definitely the rejection. To get published, you send your book out to a lot of people and most of them don’t want to publish your story. So, you have to get used to hearing ’no’ a lot, which is never that nice.
Q: Which character in The Vulture King do you identify with the most?
NT: I identify the most with Bayre, as he takes on a protective role towards Bina and Aram. I have children, so that protective instinct is something I feel strongly too. I just hope that if I ever had to fight for what was right, I could be as brave as the characters in my book!
Q: What was your inspiration for the idea of Vulture King?
NT: I love unusual magic systems, so I spent some time trying to come up with one I thought was unique. Once I had come up with the idea of magicians bonded to birds, the rest of the story flowed from there.
Q: Other than Vulture King have you written anything else?
NT: I have a short story called ‘How to be an Octopus’ published in an anthology called Closing Time. I have also had three of my plays put on as professional productions. I have at least 5 other novels already written, which I’m still hoping to find a publisher for.
Q: What’s your experience with publishing your book The Vulture King?
NT: It was wonderful seeing my book out there in the world. But it is absolutely nerve-wracking waiting to get reviews and seeing whether you make any sales. I got mostly lovely reviews, but there was one person who wrote a terrible review, and I found that very upsetting. It’s probably best to just not read the reviews!
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