C.S. Friedman is one of the most commanding voices in modern fantasy, a writer who has spent decades proving that the genre can be as dark, intelligent, and serious as any literature on the shelf. With Black Sun Rising and the Coldfire Trilogy, she built a world where the very forces of nature answer to human fear, then populated it with Damien Vryce, a warrior-priest wrestling with faith and doubt, and Gerald Tarrant, one of the most magnetic and unforgettable anti-heroes ever put to page.
Her fantasy pairs rich, inventive worldbuilding with characters of real moral weight, and it is no accident that readers and fellow writers still name her work as a standard-bearer for the field. The Magister Trilogy and the Dreamwalker series extended that gift for atmosphere and character into new territory, and Feast of Souls showed she could reinvent her approach to dark fantasy without losing an ounce of her power.
You can find more of her work at http://www.csfriedman.com, and you can support her directly on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/csfriedman.
Additionally, she has a new special edition out with Grim Oak Press for her book Black Sun Rising, which is on pre-order and shipping this year. It is an honor to sit down with a writer whose books have shaped so many of us who followed.
Grim Oak Press is producing a special edition of Black Sun Rising with interior illustrations by Jeszika le Vye. When you were writing that book originally, did it ever cross your mind you’d one day have fans treating it as a collectible art object?
When I was writing the book, I was still in the mode of “wow, I’m a published author!” and just seeing my work in print was exciting. 😊 Later on, I would dream about all the forms this trilogy might take, but I have to admit, “illustrated collectible edition” was not one of them. I didn’t know such things existed. I am beyond thrilled to learn that they do and that my work was deemed worthy of becoming one.
It is currently being made into a Roblox game, which is yet another medium I had not considered, mostly because when I wrote the trilogy, nothing like it existed. Very exciting!
What’s it been like working with Grim Oak on this? How involved do you get in art direction, or do you let the illustrator run with it?
Shawn and I go way back, to the days when he was running a bookshop specializing in signed editions. I stopped by on a book tour to sign all the C. S. Friedman books he had in stock. So when he approached me about this project, we already had a good rapport, and I was the one who recommended Jeszika Le Vye as illustrator and cover artist. She is a phenomenally talented woman, with a gift for the kind of intense, moody art that the trilogy requires. She did the cover for my last novel, Nightborn. You can check out her work at Jeszika.com.
An author’s ability to offer artistic input to an artist depends entirely on her relationship with that artist. If I feel there is a detail that needs to be tweaked, I try to come up with a suggestion of how to do it that will involve as little change as possible. Respecting an artist’s time is as important as respecting their art. Some artists will choose to involve the author. I have a background in art, and that definitely contributes to my ability to evaluate a work and possibly offer helpful suggestions. Or just kvell with suitable terminology. 😊
Are there other titles in your backlist you’d love to see get the Grim Oak or high-end collectible treatment next?
Well, obviously I’d love the whole Coldfire Trilogy to be done, so everyone should go buy a copy of Black Sun Rising to help make that happen. I think my other work that is worthy of such treatment is This Alien Shore, which is my most popular SF novel. In addition to being a great story, it explores the concept of neurodiversity—hopefully from a new angle—and is deserving of a place in posterity.
What current projects are you working on?
So many things, they get hard to juggle! I have finally decided to write another novel in the Coldfire universe that will take place after the great Sacrifice that changed the world. The Trilogy asked what would happen if regular people suddenly had to deal with a force akin to magic. After the trilogy, the big question is, what would happen if that force suddenly became inaccessible? I hesitate to call it a sequel because it will not deal with the main characters from the trilogy (no Gerald Tarrant, sorry), but the characters are rooted in that story, and I think Coldfire fans will really enjoy it.
I have two AI stories I want to write that were on the back burner for a while (most short story ideas simmer there for a year or two before I figure out how I want to approach them), but AI is changing so rapidly these days; I think I need to get them out soon. So I am trying to work those into my schedule.
And I am launching a series of short stories set in the Coldfire universe, exploring key moments in Erna’s backstory. These are primarily for fans of the trilogy, to flesh out the history that was hinted at but never explored. The series is tentatively titled Coldfire Chronicles, and the first one will feature Gerald Tarrant as a young boy, coming into power in a world where adepts were one in a million and sorcery was not yet a household word. Future stories may include the Rakh War—which brought the Canopy into existence—the first appearance of the Iezu, and of course the great war between the forces of light and darkness, which the army of light so famously lost. They’ll be shared with my Patreon followers first, so do consider joining them.
Gerald Tarrant is one of genre fiction’s great morally compromised figures. Was there a point writing him where you worried you’d made him too sympathetic, or not sympathetic enough?
I once had a reader tell me that the reason he loved Gerald Tarrant as a character was because he was not an evil figure who was really a decent person deep inside, whose fall from grace could be understood and even sympathized with as he struggled towards redemption, as so many dark figures in fantasy literature are. Indeed, at this point the “sympathetic monster” has become something a cliché. Tarrant, by contrast, is consciously, deliberately, and unapologetically evil. People like to read about him because he embodies a darkness hidden deep in the human soul that we fear to confront, holding up a dark mirror that is both compelling and terrifying. It takes Damien two books to develop anything akin to “sympathy” for him, and I think that is the reader’s journey as well. I focused on making his story interesting, emotionally compelling, and morally chilling, and never thought in terms of how “sympathetic” he was to the reader.
When you’re building a character meant to blur good and evil, how do you know where the line is that keeps a reader invested instead of alienated?
