Today Bradon Mull was interviewed by Callie Hansen on the Shadow Moutain YouTube channel. I was able to take the time to watch it live and thought I would share some of the questions and answers with everyone. I will not go over everything said, just mostly just the things that affect Fablehaven and DragonWatch. If you want to watch the full interview, you can find it on YouTube!
The first question I want to go over is: How do you come up with so many names for people, creatures, and magical items?
Brandon’s answer, “I do put thought into names because, to me, the perfect fantasy name is something king of new, and different, but also reasonably easy to pronounce.
And so finding those kinds of names, at least for me, takes time, takes some thought, sometimes I make up the names.
For example, the perfect fantasy name to me is Gandal, right? Easy to say, easy to spell and you don’t have a friend at school named Gandalf usually.
And so that’s the kind of name I’m looking for, for wizards or trolls, something that’s different but cool.
Um, and what do I do to come up with these names? I get like a big fat name your baby book and flip through that. I’ll look at lists of foreign names, like get online and type in Scandinavian names, or you know, Hindu names, anything I can think of, just to get myself into a pool of different names that I don’t always see in my life, or my culture.
And then it’s just sometimes making up names, right? Like finding syllables that work together and making up a fantasy name. Like my only guiding star is does it feel right? It’s not science but I am trying to find names, for reasons I can’t completely articulate sorta match the feel of the character.
That’s why I comb through lots of names, every now and then a name just hits me. But the general answer to this question is, kinda, lots of time, lots of thinking, lots of searching is how I hunt down names for things.
When I’m looking for naming items and stuff like that, then sometimes I’m trying to use, maybe, more familiar words, right, like I have a weapon called The Unforgiving Blade in DragonWatch, and that’s just using you know, words we know, unforgiving, but Unforgiving Blade, I’ve never seen those two things put together before. So that’s what made it feel a little other or a little different.”
I enjoyed getting this insight into Brandon’s writing process, it’s always very helpful as a young writer to get to hear how your favorite authors work.
The next question I’m very excited to talk about is something the fandom likes to discuss a lot and I think this is the most straightforward answer we’ve gotten from Brandon thus far.
Question: How old is Bracken?
Brandon’s answer, “That’s a great question. And it’s sort of a complicated question, that’s sorta getting answered toward the end of DragonWatch. And it’s a complicated question because Bracken is semi-eternal and so he’s almost eternal, he’s not quite eternal, he’s not quite in his eternal state but unicorns are close, they’re way more eternal being then they are temporal beings in my universe, right? So it’s almost like our age scales don’t apply because they’re on a different scale if that makes sense. I think if he were to become mortal he would be around 17, that’s like his vibe right? But he’s been 17 a long, long time if that makes sense. So that’s why it’s kinda hard to say how old he is. So how old is he on our scale? He’s probably thousands of years old. How old is he on his scale? He’s about 17.”
And then Callie mentions how he showed up at the end of Fablehaven but his age wasn’t ever specified.
To that Brandon says, “You’ll get more specifics before DragonWatch is done, a little more about his age. We just get into Ronodin and Bracken stuff towards the end of DragonWatch where you’ll get extra details about them.”
So what I’m hearing is that if we get more details about Bracken he can’t be in prison the whole time, right? Excuse me while I scream! Sorry, Bracken is one of and favorite characters and very near and dear to my heart so I’ve been suffering during DragonWatch.
Anyways, it’s always interesting to get to know a bit more about how the Fablehaven universe works and unicorn aging has always been a mystery (that there will be a post about coming soon using this new information) and it’s great to have this information directly from Brandon so we can stop guessing so much.
Brandon also states that Ronodin and Bracken are around the same age. I always head cannoned Ronodinas older but I could see them being around the same age. Brandon also goes in a bit more about they come from the eternal state of being where the lines get a little fuzzy but he thinks Bracken came a little bit ahead of Ronodin, but they “grew up together” so that gives a little more knowledge of Ronodin and Bracken.
Later in the interview when asked about how he gets his inspiration for the antagonist in his books Brandon states how when writing he likes to write villains whose motives and actions make sense to themselves, and I think he has succeeded in doing that with characters like, Celebrant, Ronodin, and The Sphinx.
But he also said how he likes to sometimes, write villains who seem unknowable, and he doesn’t understand like the Underking, who wants bad things for reasons that don’t make sense.
After answering a question about Patton being and member of DragonWatch, (The answer was yes,) Callie asked if there might ever be a Patton Burgess series since the fans love him so much, and Brandon says that if he ever does return the Fableehaven, the most reasonable place for him to go would be a prequel about Patton, saying:
“It seems like that could be really fun, seems like there’s room for a story there. It seems like a character that readers have liked, that I like. And so if the right story forms a book like that could totally happen”
How exciting is that? I would, personally, love the see that. And will most likely write and fanfic about it in the future.
Before that answer, Brandon said that DragonWatch, book five, Return of the Dragon Slayers, is finished and edited. Which I am very excited to hear! But why can’t we have to book sooner? Now that I know it’s finished and out there somewhere, I need it even more than before!
One of my favorite questions was: Are Kendra and Bracken going to kiss?
Brandon’s answer was, “I see why you would want to know that, I can’t tell you, I just can’t. But I can tell you that there will be relationship stuff with Kendra and Bracken, before this series is over we’ll do more relationship stuff with them. There’s been some forces sorta keeping them apart in DragonWatch, and that’s partly because I need Kendra to be kinda on her own journey, and Bracken is a pretty powerful character, and too much Bracken the series, would-I think he would sorta take over some the scenes that Kendra’s in so I created some excuses, and had some tough things happen that Kendra has to deal with, that kept them apart for part of the series. But before the series is over we’ll get some more relationship stuff with them and see what happens.”
Okay, before we get into the for reasonable, put-together thoughts about this, let me scream for a bit. So, Mr. Mull, you mean by “forces” is Ronodin and the Fairy Queen? (and you) Right, gotcha.
What I think this means is that Kendra needed more trama and Bracken and Seth so she didn’t have a good support system and would have a mental breakdown and oh I don’t know throw fruit at people?
Anyways, you can see me scream about that more on TikTok and the Fablehave Friday Livestreams.
Now, reasonable thinking time, so after hearing that, we can assume that Bracken isn’t in prison the whole book. And we will get to see some of Brackendra, and hopefully more than 66 pages.
Because that’s the amount of pages Bracken is in for the entire DragonWatch series, I counted.
That is all in the interview that I wanted to cover today. Please let me know what you guys think about what Brandon said in the comments! I think I’m even more hyped for Return of the Dragon Slayers now than I was before.
I will keep you updated with everything Fablehaven, and I hope to talk with you soon!
Comments
Post a Comment