Author Interview: Scott Telek discusses The Void Place

Author Scott Telek answers some questions about the third book in the series on the eve of the book’s release.

Merlin is kind of mean in this. In most depictions he is much more kindly and supportive. What led to your unusual conception of him?

During the writing of Book 2, I saw Merlin growing a bit nastier, and was unsure about it. But since my telling begins with Merlin as a failed attempt by the devil to mislead humanity, as I began to think of the series as a whole, and where it’s all going, that fact began to loom larger, and—without giving spoilers for the future books away—I developed an idea of how Merlin fits into the saga as a whole, which is through developing this idea that he may not be nice, may not be on humanity’s side at all, and may in fact be wrong about the whole thing.

Then, in the writing of it, I began to see that this approach developed a bit of tension with him, and also gave him a bit of an arc to go through over the course of the books. Because we all know this story so well, we feel like we know all these characters, and so I saw this as a way to actually develop some tension and ambiguity with this character we feel we “know.” In this, Merlin is not perfect, he is deeply flawed and that makes him more interesting and gives him space to develop. And to my pleasant surprise, this approach also started to develop some suspense for the overall Arthur story, which we all feel that we know already. So now, maybe Merlin is wrong about the whole thing. Maybe creating Arthur is a mistake. Which hopefully brings this static material back to life. And I can say it’s not going to be a “good” or “bad” thing going forward, it’s going to be very shaded and ambiguous like everything else.

Merlin’s relationship with Uther is unusually combative. 

I will say that I realize I was largely influenced by the prickly relationship with Merlin seen in John Boorman’s film Excalibur. I just plain have to admit that. But even there, Uther is more of a powerful king and a boor. 

There are things in the legend that try to have it both ways. On the one hand, they keep repeating that Uther loves Merlin. On the other, by the end, Merlin will no longer speak to Uther, and their encounters are filled with distain. Similarly, it is implied that Merlin explicitly creates Arthur, and on the other, that Arthur just kind of happens. Once I decided that in my version, Merlin definitely creates Arthur as a kind of social engineering experiment, it began to skew more and more that Merlin is just using Uther. And if Merlin is just using Uther, it’s a bit more interesting—to me, who is increasingly realizing that I love it tragic and as emotionally devastating as possible—that Uther has some sense of it but just doesn’t know how. 

In most depictions, Uther is also more of a fearsome leader.

A lot of it was determined when I wrote the scene of Merlin tormenting Uther at Stonehenge at the end of Book 2. As the scene was flowing, I thought “Do I really want to go in this direction with this?” and ultimately, I decided to. And I had this conception as Uther as undone by his insecurities and the workings of his own mind. A lot of it also has to do with a contrast between Pendragon and Uther as well, with Pendragon as the confident one. 

And… I really liked this idea of Merlin manipulating Uther entirely through his own insecurities. Not directly makinghim do anything, but just laying the world’s biggest mindf**k on him so that he ends up doing what Merlin wants. Then I liked the idea that Uther has some idea of it, but no idea how it’s happening. And then Merlin being surprised that Uther can tell he’s being manipulated at all, which gives Merlin some pause.

Speaking of Uther’s mind unraveling, how did you think to tie the episode of the Perilous Seat into that, and then into Uther’s obsession over Igraine?

Well you have this episode of the man trying the seat, and in the legend it’s, as usual, not explicitly tied into the overall story. If I want to stay true to the legend I have to include the story, but I didn’t want it to be just a disconnected episode. At the same time, one of the mysteries of the story is why Uther gets so lost in obsession over Igraine. So I just thought that you could make one, in part, because of the other. So we could position that Uther desperately turns to Igraine because he is in such a low place after his failure with the seat. 

Tell me how you handled the whole sexual assault angle.

I was very concerned. I know that there are many people who would question that this story be told at all, and some who would say that a man has no place telling it. Now I am shocked to bring it into the wider world and discover that many people don’t care at all, and even encountering women who say it wasn’t even rape and that trying to be responsible with it is just political correctness run amok.

I’ve detailed the steps I went through to be true to my values and tell the story responsibly elsewhere, but the main things was reaching out to women, attempting to be true to their accounts of sexual assault, and naming the crime as a rape. This is an excellent case that calls out the distinction of whether it is violence alone that determines if a sexual assault is rape—and I must say I am surprised at the vehemence of some people to insist that it is not rape—but for me it was important to make the statement that this is indeed rape. 

I took pains to do that within the novel in a way that doesn’t disrupt the narrative, and in fact when I did, it opened up a whole new angle to the story that will explain where Merlin is during Book 4, and also bring another character’s story to a close, so it really worked out for the overall narrative, and it also highlights Merlin’s flaws at this point in his development—and gives Merlin a place to go, to mature into.

One of the most exciting things about the novel is that we start to see some of the major Arthurian characters.

That was one of the most fun aspects, especially with Morgan and Margause. They aren’t mentioned in the legend until they get married, and then they’re dropped again, but you have to put together “well, they must have been around… they must have been present for all of this…” and from that you could see how the events taking place here would set up their conflicts with Arthur, and their bitterness in general, for the entire series. And it was just extremely fun to imagine Morgan Le Fay as a ten-year-old child, and see the earliest stages of her powers. 

We also see Kings Lot and Uriens, who go on to become major characters, and we set up their conflicts with Arthur—which in this case, is largely because of loyalty to Uther and wishing to hold onto tradition, which no one could really blame them for. We also meet the Ectors and their son Kay, who will be with Arthur until the day he dies, so it is a very exciting time. 

Another character who has an excellent part in this book and will be a major figure for a while is Uther’s best friend, Ulfius. This is a character that is just kind of around in the legend, but when you think about it, he’s around for some crucial events, and is the bridge between Uther’s generation and Arthur’s. There is one throwaway line in Malory that Arthur goes to live with Ulfius and Bretel (AKA Brastias) while he is being prepped to be king, and that line became almost the entire basis for Book 5, in which the teen Arthur will have Ulfius as his mentor and from whom he will learn the lessons of knighthood. On top of that, I just love Ulfius. He’s one of my favorite characters. He has such an excellent part in this book, and he’s going to go on to have a very important role up right through Book 7. 

Speaking of important future characters, we have a few glimpses of Arthur himself, albeit as an infant.

Yes. When I was conceiving the novel, I thought Arthur would just be a blank here, and we’d start developing him in Book 4, which will be all about his childhood until he pulls the sword from the stone. And he is still an infant, but in A Man of Our Kind I sort of hinted that the spirit world is aware that this creature [Merlin] has been born on it, and they come to check on him, and I thought the same thing would obviously happen with Arthur. The figures that inhabit the world of magic and spirit in this book would know that this extraordinary creature has been born, and would come to check on him. Also, that Arthur himself would radiate something, some kind of magnetic quality, which would show him as something special, and which will be explored very richly in Book 4.

Finally, the main character of our series is finally in it. All of these three books have been leading up to Arthur, and the rest of the series is going to be about him, so it’s going to be a very exciting change to actually be writing about Arthur himself, this character—and group of characters—that will be developing over the next twenty-two novels, and whom we will follow from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age and finally death—and it’s all starting now.