Interview with Jonathan Weiss, Author of The Flux Catastrophe

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. To start off, I'd love to hear what your books are about! What is your ‘elevator pitch’ for Molten Flux and the entire series?

Yeah awesome, and it's an absolute pleasure to be with you too. I'd say my elevator pitch, and I've been finding quite a bit of success in this especially in Australia, is that it's Mad Max with magic. Obviously Mad Max is a cultural life blood for us Australians and I'm glad it's been exported over to the US. I'm very excited for Furiosa to come out, I'm hoping that'll give me a bit of momentum too. But I say it a lot because it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland that's so far gone that the technology left behind by it is indistinguishable from the magic that's come up from under the ground in its place. Anytime I'm telling anyone about the broader world of the books that it’s set in, a place called the Droughtlands, I'll always lead with that. For Molten Flux specifically, I'll tell people it's about a mutiny aboard a walking fortress of scrap metal, which I mean you get towards a walking fortress and it's great. I fell in love with things like Howl’s Moving Castle and Mortal Engines just because I love gigantic contraptions. And then for The Hytharo Redux, the other series that I'm writing set in the same world, I'll tell people it's like Avatar: The Last Airbender crossed with Dune. So, a lot of deeper political explorations of the history of the Droughtlands in there, compared to Molten Flux where it's just all action all the time. 

Yes! I love the magic system, that was a really unique aspect and I know I’ve only scratched the surface with Molten Flux. What drew you to writing a sci-fi fantasy crossover?

This is going to be a long answer but I’ll slim it down because I don't want people to have to read for pages and pages, I've got a blog for that. I'd say the reason it's a sci-fi fantasy crossover is because when it comes to sci-fi type technology and fancy kind of magic, I believe that their effects on a story are one in the same. They're indistinguishable from each other in either how incomprehensible they are or how people set up particular understandings of them to try and get on with their life and work with these strange things they're finding, even if they're wrong. And in some of the books you’ll see these layers of understanding be peeled back and delve further into the history of these worlds which changes the definition of the things that you're interacting with. Definitely, you're right about only scratching the surface. I do have four books out right now. I've just revealed the cover for my fifth book, The Hytharo Origin, which was fun. And then in total in the Droughtlands, at least what I've got planned, there are about 14 different novels across four different series. I'm going to keep alternating releases between those series. They're all set in different eras and points in time in the world, so you can jump back and forth and see a lot of little hidden easter eggs between all the different histories as you read through. 

That’s amazing! I love how it’s all mapped out. Your story really has the best of all worlds. It's a very sci-fi premise with a really cool magic system in a very dystopian world. What were some of your inspirations for the Droughtlands and the books that call it home? 

Yeah, so we've already said Mad Max that goes without saying. If you look at the book covers, you'll see that color orange and you'll think of Mad Max. We've already said Mortal Engines as well, I think that's another fantastic interpretation of a post-apocalyptic setting where all that understanding has been lost. Hugh Howey’s books, especially Sand. That was a fantastic inspiration for me because I've never seen anyone do a ‘buried under the sand’ civilization the way he does, and I really like that cool technology that people used to vibrate the sand to be able to move through it, that was quite fun.

But a lot of my other Inspirations don't actually come from books, they come from odd real-world concepts. One of the things I get into, and one of my blog posts if you're interested in reading it, is a thing called long term nuclear waste warning messages. Basically the idea of how do we store nuclear waste that's going to be radioactive and dangerous for 10,000 years, beyond what language might actually be able to carry a message to. It's basically that practice of being able to create architecture that will last that long, and also create this eerie forbidden kind of feeling, like it's cursed land where you don't want to be. So I've used a lot of that in the way that I've designed some of the ruins that you go into from this lost civilization that's buried under the sands.

It's always interesting too when a futuristic story takes away things that feel so necessary for us, like the use of water for example in Molten Flux. It puts you in a whole different world and becomes a part of the mystery of the people. Which leads me to one of my favorite aspects of Molten Flux, which were the characters. Your characters are really great and definitely faced many different struggles. Which were the easiest or the hardest to write? Any fun facts that may not be on the page?

I'm really glad you enjoyed them as well, I love writing about all the characters. I especially love writing the minor characters or the side characters who just appear for a scene or two and then disappear. In Molten Flux there’s this one character called Grud who’s just a random conscript, but just so full of himself and such a pain in the ass every time he appears. I just love playing around with him because he's such an antagonist to anyone who's in his company.

I'd say one of the hardest characters to write is probably the main character of my Hytharo Series, Spiric. The plot of his world is that he's been thrown a thousand years past his people, and he's one of the lost people who can bring rain back to the Droughtlands, who's people sealed it away initially. But the problem is, with his memory stolen he doesn't know how to do that, or even if he should. He was always the hardest character to write because he was such a fish out of water. I could never figure out a way to make his plots stick to the current narrative until I started to look at the way that history repeats, and I used that as a theme for his adventure. So Spiric does get to be very complex because his stories take place over like four or five different eras, but all at once at the same time. So I'm very careful about how I reveal information to him, and then information of him to the reader. 

I can't wait for that story! As we’ve talked about, Ryza’s world is volatile. Between the war that rages with the smelters and Revance, all that comes with the use of molten flux, and what’s hidden in the sand, it makes for a really dynamic story. What was your worldbuilding process like? What type of research did you need to do for the book? 

The worldbuilding process is a process in itself. It's come up through the years. I've been working on this world and toying with it for coming up on 10 years now, so it's been a while in the works. And thankfully I can write a lot faster these days. The worldbuilding process itself is one that takes place in layers. You have everything that happens on the surface with the people of the Droughtlands. Then you also have everything that's hidden under the sand with that extinct civilization called Those-of-Glass. And you'd think logically I'd build up what Those-of-Glass were first, I'd figure out who they were and how they fell and then go to the Droughtlands, but I've done it backwards. I don't actually know a lot about Those-of-Glass, and I've done this on purpose so I can keep in the headspace and the perspective of people who discovered their ruins. I can keep those ruins weird to look at. 

It goes back to some of the wee bits of research around those long term nuclear waste warning messages. I've also gotten into a thing called Psycho Acoustics, which is basically the study of how you can get particular audio tones and pitches to evolutionarily make people scared, because that's a thing that in our genes is made to make us scared when we hear a particular sound. So there's all these little bits and pieces I researched to put in there. I think the main thing though for Molten Flux and then it's sequel Blazing Flux, I got really into how artificial intelligence works. I need to start talking to Amber Toro about that because she actually runs an AI company. But I started having to learn about how generative AI's data models build themselves and how they cleanse themselves, because what molten flux ends up being is this ancient lost artificial intelligence from Those-of-Glass, but because the people who found it reinterpreted it and gave their own impressionable magic to it, everything starts to get really messed up from that, too. 

That's really cool. You said you’re not even entirely sure about Those-of-Glass and what’s buried under the sand. Do you feel as a writer you’re a panster or a planster? With all of these novels planned that seems pretty amazing. What’s your process in laying it all out? 

I really do try to plan it each time I write a book. It all goes out the window about halfway through, usually there's entire other versions, a dozen or more chapters that just don't exist in every single book that I've had to throw away because I just find so much of a better story along the way. And yes, especially when it comes to the ruins of Those-of-Glass, those ancient ruins, because I always want to make them as scary as possible. I think that the more I plan them the less scary they become, because there's no mystery to them. So whenever you encounter them, well yes I am making it up as I go along but I'm asking myself, ‘What is the most terrifying thing that the character could come across in this moment?’ and, ‘How can I weave it back into the story as well? How can it be a larger metaphor for what they're doing?’ So you see in Molten Flux when Ryza goes underground in the first ruins, it's this strange ruin where two sides of the city exists and by using magic you can sort of walk between them in this really dangerous way. It exists as this larger metaphor of this precipice that Ryza has been standing on for the whole book between these two worlds, between this past he's trying to leave behind and this really bloody and violent future he's trying to find salvation for himself in. So yeah, there's a lot that goes into it.

That makes a lot of sense. I think it's really cool that you took the leap to write stories. I'm always in awe, and I know that you have a lot more planned in this universe. What made you realize you wanted to be a writer and that novels were your medium? 

I talk a lot and I also am pretty long-winded, so I could never do things like short stories or plays or scripts because I didn't like being pinned down into a particular time limit or a particular form when I was a kid. I was actually into stop-motion animation, so you’re moving around your little plasticine figures and taking a picture of them 24 times to make a second of footage, but that was too slow for me. I think I love writing because I get to control every single aspect of the way the story comes to a reader and there's nothing really that can constrain that. There's no budget, there's no laws of physics that you need to worry around, it's just words on a page. So that's kind of what's driven me into writing novels and I think that the reason I've kept going is because I never stop thinking about these stories. Like I just can't do it. I feel almost empty, I feel like I'm dying when I have to walk away from writing for months sometimes, back when I was working full-time somewhere else. 

Well I’m glad you listened to that because these stories should be told. What is your favorite part about being an author? And what do you think is the hardest? 

I love it. I love it when I'm doing the first draft and I'm about a third of the way through the book and I'm hitting that real hot streak. Like, if I'm about a third of the way through it means I'm hitting that first big action scene, or that first big turning point as Act One ends. I think that's my favorite part of the entire process. And then close second to that is actually finishing the book, the big finale, because usually I write those in the space of a week in massive chunks. I'll write seven or eight thousand words each day for a week to smash it all out. But yeah, I'd say those are my favorite parts, I love writing the books.

As far as hardest parts go, is coming back to read it again and making it all makes sense. Editing is very tough and it's arduous. But I still put that as slightly easier than marketing and trying to keep up with all the social media stuff, because it just doesn't feel like it's contributing to the book. It feels like it's just screaming out to the void sometimes, but over the past four or five months I’ve found a really great community online, both with all your great guys at SFF Insiders and The Break-Ins, as well as a whole bunch of other great people on Instagram. 

It really seems like a community starts to form around these amazing stories, and that leads me into my next question. Your publishing journey isn’t traditional, but self and small publishing is becoming a lot more common, which I think is really exciting for the industry. I’ve found that I can find a lot more unique, clever stories in this realm than I can in trad. Why did you choose to go Indie?

Yeah, I did try to query for a little bit both with Molten Flux and Hytharo Redux. They were both kind of getting ready to be published around the same time, which is why I'm doing this crazy alternating publishing schedule, because I didn't want to sit on one of them for a while. But I guess the reason why I wanted to go Indie and do it myself kind of comes back to the main theme of Molten Flux, and the rest of the books in the series, which is that I wanted control. I wanted to have total autonomy over every aspect of the production. I didn't want to have anyone that I had to wait for, I didn't want to have to have someone say no to something that I thought was a great idea. Looking at the world of Molten Flux, it is pretty unique, there's not really anything out there like that. And anything that was out there that's like that, such as Hugh Howey’s works, that started as an indie work anyway. So I want to take the gamble on my own, because everything I was seeing in traditional publishing was, you know, you need to write something kind of cookie cutter and then, even if you did get through an agent and then to a publisher, you'd just be told great that will come out in two years. I don't want to wait that long. I've got a production schedule at the moment which has me putting out a book every five months and I'm loving it. 

Wow, that is a lot of writing. The feedback that I've seen for your stories, and my own experience, is fantastic. How do you hope your work will impact your readers, and what themes are most important for you to convey throughout these books? 

I hope it'll impact them enough that they'll buy the next one, is my cynical answer. I tell a lie. I think that the way I hope that it will impact them is that they'll see some of the deeper themes that are hidden beneath it. There's a lot that goes into them, a lot of both my own personality and things that I've come to know about myself as I've developed over the past decade as I've written these books. I've noticed that everyone's taking away slightly different things or interpreting characters slightly differently. One of the characters in Molten Flux, people came to me and interpreted them so differently from how I’d intended and I actually used that to pivot how they’re portrayed in the next book, which was really fun. I love those perspectives that people give me, because these books and the magic system itself is all about perspectives. It's about how things are differently interpreted. So if someone does come away thinking of things differently from the way intended, that's cool still! I'm fine with that. But if they find things the way that I've laid them out, if they understand it fully, that's just as good. Especially for the Hytharo books, there are so many complicated little easter eggs, so many little puzzles you can solve in there. If someone comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, I think I know the answer to this thing,’ I'll be over the moon. I'll be ecstatic. 

I love books like, and then you’ll want to go back and reread them, it's so fun to find the little easter eggs and hidden treasures that are put in there.

And that's why I'm doing this alternating release order between these series, because there's just so many different easter eggs I can hide between them as well. I've even been telling readers, you'll get a different experience depending on which order you read these different series in. So I hope that by the time I have all these series fully completed and out, there’ll be a dozen different ways that you can tackle them and interpret them. Essentially the idea is that you'll only get to read them for the first time once, so everyone does have that different experience that you can't really take back. 

That’s so fun. In having different paths, by the end you’ll have a whole fandom that’s arguing about which order you need to read them. 

I can't wait for the slap fights that come from it. I'm so excited for the flame wars.

Brilliant! To wrap it all up, do you have any advice for aspiring authors out there that may be afraid to take the leap into telling their story? 

Yeah, definitely. As far as the writing and storytelling process goes, trust your gut and just write the story. There's no point sitting and dithering about like, should I plan it this way or should we do it that way. Having some clay on the pottery wheel spinning is better than having nothing there at all. You'll know if it's not working, you can go back and rewrite it. And if you do hit a point where you've got a bit of a writer's block, you can sit on that and figure out why that is, rather than sitting with nothing at all. As far as jumping into the publishing world, especially the self-publishing world, I'd say get ready to get really good at selling yourself, really good at talking about your books, really know your elevator pitches. And when it comes to dealing with social media and Instagram, you'll pick up and make a whole lot more friends just by directly reaching out to people, rather than trying to keep posting and keep hoping that organically someone will pick you up. Just talking directly to people is the best way to get in contact with them. Which is a crazy thing to say because it seems really obvious, doesn't it? 

Yeah, it's that door to door. I love when authors reach out to me to read their book! Being able to make those connections is always really cool, and that's what I love about this community. Everybody really is for each other and for the art, not in competition. Especially with how many books people go through these days, you guys can't keep up with us.

And that's it. Like I don't know what's faster, the people reading or the people writing them sometimes, right? It's terrible, it’s an arms race. 

Hey, everybody's benefiting right?

Exactly.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sitting down and talking to me, this has been amazing. Thank you for taking the time. I hear there’s a Kindle Countdown Deal for the US and UK on the Molten Flux and Blazing Flux e-books, so everyone should definitely go check those out! You won’t be disappointed. Don’t just take my word for it, there are a few reviews of Molten Flux here on SFFI! 

Jonathan Weiss is an Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction author of the upcoming FLUX CATASTROPHE and HYTHARO series. Ever since being a small boy he hunted for the best way to tell stories, dabbling in film and stop motion before eventually finding a passion for novel writing as a teenager. More than a decade later he’d gathered a bachelor’s degree of Journalism from the University of Wollongong and a career in commercial cloud sales, yet they were never as satisfying as the time spent writing.

With the support of his artist wife and the cacophonic trio of their pet budgies, he’s now dedicated himself to a full-time career as an author. When not writing, Jonathan can be found reading halfway through books and being so satisfied he forgets to finish them, working through the never-ending queue of un-painted Warhammer 40,000 models and attempting to fit far too much food on his tiny barbeque.