Naomi Novik

Thank you for so much for having me.

The Skull of Months is basically this sort of enormous corkscrew shaped school.

In fact, when I first was writing the books, I didn't actually know what it looked like.

I was about halfway through when finally the shapes sort of coalesced.

There's a very famous legend of the Scholomance.

It appears in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

And the original legend is of this school where wizards would go to study the dark arts.

They would ask their questions.

There would be no teachers.

And their answers would be given to them in letters of flame that shone out of the dark.

And they spent their entire time in the school in the dark.

And at the end of it, when they graduated, the devil would take the hindmost.

the last graduate, and keep their soul in payment for the secrets and dark knowledge that the others have gained.

That basic sense, that idea of sort of these, the students in the dark and paying this terrible price, this sort of almost gambling with something more than their lives, almost, was the sort of the genesis of the Scholomance.

And from there, it mingled, of course, with so many, you know, the trope of the magical boarding school, which itself grows out of the trope of boarding school stories, is one of my favorites.

And the two sort of felt like a place of an interesting conversation.

You know, I started writing as a fanfic writer.

So for me, what I always am interested in as a writer is having conversations about

Writing in a way is very much how I respond.

Writing is my response, my reader response.