Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Antonia Hodgson! She is the author of four historical crime novels and a soon-to-be released epic fantasy novel, The Raven Scholar. The first book in the Eternal Path trilogy, her upcoming novel is an excellent story with factions competing for a throne and a murder mystery that just opens up more and more new questions about the past. Her latest book will be out next week—on April 15 in the US and April 17 in the UK, including a special signed edition! I’m thrilled she’s here today to discuss a book with a female protagonist that was revolutionary when it was first published.
About The Raven Scholar:
From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth.
Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.
Then one of them is murdered.
It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.
If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.
We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
The year, can you believe it, was 1999.
I was working in the editorial department of a London publishing house, newly promoted to one of those fiddly hybrid jobs with slashes in the title: Editorial Assistant/Assistant Editor/Dread Queen of the Photocopier.
‘You can commission a couple of titles a year,’ my boss’s boss told me. She was smoking at the time, because she smoked all the time. The rumour was, she smoked 100 cigarettes a day, which isn’t so much a habit as an occupation. Publisher/Smoker. This was the first time I’d been in her office, and before I could even sit down, she said: ‘Now, I don’t know anything about you. Tell me everything. Where do you see yourself in five years — no, wait, don’t answer that. Stupid question.’
‘You can commission a couple of titles a year,’ she said, which is where we came in. ‘If you can get them past The Meeting.’
The Meeting took place once a week in her office. A handful of senior editors would squeeze together around a table and discuss each other’s projects, under yet more clouds of smoke. The publisher had final say, but she encouraged Views.
This is the Fantasy Cafe, you are all presumably fantasy readers, so you will know what I’m describing here: an imperial court. Factions and feuds, favourites and not-so-favourites. A wry ambassador from the rights department. You may be amused to learn that the only editors exempt from The Meeting were the two SFF editors. Their genre was considered so bafflingly weird (and, crucially, so consistently profitable) they were pretty much left to their own devices.
Which inspired my own strategy. I needed to find my own commissioning territory — rich, fertile lands that I could love and nurture, but which were of no interest to more senior editors around that table. That way we could all stay friendly, or ‘collegiate’ as they say in publishing.
The first book I commissioned was a memoir by Bill Drummond, co-founder of the KLF. It’s a wonderful book, still in print twenty-five years later. The author — a committed psychogeographer — chose to work with me in part because one of his favourite bus routes had a stop right outside the office. As any contender fighting for the throne could tell you — in order to win you need to work hard, strategise and form alliances. But you also need a touch of luck.
The second book I commissioned was Bitten by Kelley Armstrong.
And at last — breathe a sigh of relief everyone — I have reached the actual point of this piece.
For those of you yet to read Bitten — it is the story of an investigative journalist called Elena Michaels, who is bitten (without consent) by her lover, transforming her into the only female werewolf in the world. After a painful and disorienting transition, Elena discovers she has supernatural strength, heightened senses and — this bit probably goes without saying — the ability to turn into a humungous and rather awesome wolf.
Wait a minute! I hear you say. This sounds like SFF!
Correct! It was also a thriller, set in contemporary Ontario. And there was sex! Sex scenes! In 1999! Hurray! ‘Mixed-genre’, publishing folk would have called Bitten back then, scratching their heads a little.
Wait another minute! I hear you say. Wasn’t Bitten published in 2001? What took you so long?
Correct again! (And impressive recall of the scheduling facts, dear reader.) It took me so long because — this is where I get to show off, forgive me — I bought Bitten on a partial manuscript; just a few sample chapters, maybe about twenty thousand words, if memory serves. This almost never happens. Least of all for a debut author, and a new editor — unheard of.
But I loved that partial. Loved it. I knew instantly that Bitten was special. Elena was special. We’d had Buffy on TV, Ripley and Sarah Connor in film. But on the page, she was so fresh — not least because she was narrating her own fascinating, dramatic story. Elena is bitten — an injury, an outrage is done to her. But she takes complete control of her situation. She holds her own against an entirely male society of werewolves — many of whom think she has no right to even exist. She takes them all on and she wins, on her own terms.
Maybe this sounds pretty familiar — expected, even — for a female protagonist in 2025. In 1999, I promise you, it was revolutionary. One thing I am still struck by, reading Bitten today — is how angry Elena is allowed to be. Openly, righteously furious. And I wonder — is that still pretty radical? Maybe not in fantasy novels, but here in the real world? The New York Times, reviewing Bitten at the time, said ‘[it] suggests that being a wolf may be more comfortable for a strong, smart woman than being human’.
Hmmm. So it does.
While working on this piece, I got in touch with Kelley. She remembers me acquiring Bitten in the autumn of ’99. In fact we’re both fairly sure I was the first person to secure the rights anywhere in the world — possibly before Kelley’s home country of Canada, and definitely before the US. I just leapt on it, like a werewolf leaping on its prey. Must have. Mine.
I was supported by my chain-smoking publisher. A female C.E.O — maybe it chimed with her, too. I know she liked my passion for it. And those SFF editors encouraged me too, because I was a genuine fan of the genre. (They knew this because I kept stealing books off their shelves. Which was easy to do because they’d removed the bright, fluorescent strip lights from their office and lived in a perpetual, noirish, anglepoised gloom. I am not making this up.)
Bitten sold nicely in its first edition and then took off in a big way in paperback, reprinting and reprinting. I ended up publishing all thirteen of the Women of the Otherworld novels, as the series came to be known. I even got to help name one — Waking the Witch — inspired by my love of Kate Bush. Kelley became a New York Times number one bestseller, Bitten became a TV show. Here in the UK, we sold hundreds of thousands of Kelley’s novels and short stories, and she’s still writing today of course.
What strikes me about this story, I suppose, is that I went looking for a niche and found a canyon. (Or a gorge, maybe? With a nice river running through? You get the idea.) By necessity, but also out of curiosity, I had to look outside the mainstream of the day. When I did, I discovered a book that spoke to literally millions of people around the world.
I’ve now written an epic fantasy of my own — The Raven Scholar. My female protagonist — Neema Kraa — may not have supernatural strength, but she has an inner determination, a certain grit, especially when she’s being underestimated, that I think Elena Michaels would recognise and approve of. And like Elena, she’s always up for solving a crime.
Unfortunately Neema also has a tendency to write interminable monographs that no one reads, with titles like Ancient Ketuan Cave Poems: Some New Insights into the Evolution of Chisel Techniques. I can only hope this essay of mine fares a little better, and that you have managed to read to the end. Don’t worry — we’ve almost made it!
Anyway, to finish on an upbeat note — I guess the moral of this story is that you don’t necessarily have to tread on toes, or steal other people’s territory, in order to succeed/win the throne/vanquish the dark forces of evil camped at your gate. There is another option. Stay open to opportunities, look in a few unexpected places, trust your own taste and judgement, and — most important of all — exist on the right bus route. Be lucky, in other words. May it find you when you need it most.
 Photo by Rebecca Douglas |
Antonia Hodgson has written four acclaimed historical crime novels. She won the CWA Historical Dagger for The Devil in the Marshalsea, and her work has also been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year.
Antonia’s first (unpublished) novel was a gothic fantasy and her dream has always been to write an epic series, given the chance. In 2020 she set to work on The Raven Scholar and is now busy finishing its sequel. |
