Masterworks: A Našû for Ilu - Stephanie Churchill - Interview

 Today is the first of a series on nine interviews I'm sharing on the Crowvus Book Blog. These are from the authors of the short stories included in the Masterworks anthology by the Historical Writers Forum. We're running through chronologically, some are video interviews, others are written.

So, without any further ado, I am delighted to welcome the fabulous Stephanie Churchill, the author of A Našû for Ilu, who is sharing a little insight into her brilliant story...

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you write (besides Masterworks!), and what inspired you to begin writing.

When you ask this question of writers, I feel like so many of them answer with something like, “I wanted to be a writer since I was a child.” That is definitely not my story. I was a clueless child in the sense that writing stories just never really occurred to me. Telling stories, on the other hand, was my favourite pastime. I was a big daydreamer, was always telling myself escapist tales in my head, falling asleep at night weaving more details into whatever fanciful thing I had actively created in my imagination. It wasn’t until after I had done practical things with my life like going to school, working in the legal field, and then starting a family that the idea of writing came up.

It took someone with credentials to suggest it or I would never have taken the idea seriously. After writing a ridiculously long review of her book, Sharon Kay Penman, who was my favourite author at the time, asked me: “Have you ever considered writing?” I laughed at first, but the more I thought on it, the more seriously I took the question.

I’ve always loved historical fiction, but Sharon set the bar way too high for me. She was a model showing me what it would take to be serious when writing that genre. I knew I could never do justice to the details the way she did. I’m more interested in telling a story than I am in articulating historical events, so I opted to write what I call historically inspired fiction—books that read like historical fiction but don’t actually contain any real history. I’m really just after telling a good tale.

A Našû for Ilu is my first piece of purely historical fiction.

-~-

Introduce us to your chosen artwork

The Bull-headed Lyre of Ur was unearthed in 1926 by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley, during his excavations of the Royal Cemetery at Ur in what is now southern Iraq. It was buried in the tomb of Puabi, a Sumerian queen who lived during the Early Dynastic III period (100-200 years before the setting of my story which takes place during the reign of Šarru-kīn whom we know as Sargon of Akkad, founder of the Akkadian dynasty). Made of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and shell, the lyre is decorated with intricate carvings and inlays, depicting a variety of scenes from Mesopotamian mythology and everyday life. Since it was buried in the tomb with a queen, it was clearly a highly valued possession.

-~-

A Našû for Ilu centres around music. How much would you say music influences your writing?

To be honest, I don’t know if music influences my writing specifically, though many writers have certain playlists to evoke certain emotions when they write. I draft best in utter silence. If I was to pick a certain genre to listen to when I write, I would have to choose epic video game soundtracks without lyrics like the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and more recently Genshin Impact.

-~-

Your story is set in the third millennia BC. What are the trickiest things about writing so long ago?

When I was explaining how I started writing, I mentioned that I was scared off from writing historical fiction because of the level of accuracy I knew I would want to maintain when conducting research. The beauty of writing in such an early era, a time period that is barely emerging from the pre-historical, is that there aren’t a lot of indisputable facts to be accountable to.

While excavations of Sumerian cities have revealed a wealth of material culture, including temples, palaces, ziggurats, and artifacts such as pottery, jewellery, and seals, enabling scholars to reconstruct the physical layout of cities and determine a fair bit of their social and economic organization, and religious beliefs, they also disagree on many things. Even the historical timeline is disputable.

To further muddy the waters, later civilizations—the Assyrians and Babylonians—wrote about the Sumerians, but often their accounts changed and enhanced the history to suit their cultures’ priorities both political and spiritual. Parsing the objective from the propaganda can be a challenge for even the most stalwart historian. (I talk about this problem somewhat in a blog article I wrote about Sargon of Akkad here.)

In my case, with my natural reticence to write history, this muddiness emboldened and enabled me to write about it. For in parsing the objective from the propaganda, it is very difficult for others to argue any conclusions I ultimately came to since even the experts don’t agree. Who can really say my version of events is wrong?

-~-

Your story is written in first person POV. What are the biggest benefits of this style of writing?

I heard an interesting statistic recently that only about 30 percent of people, according to psychologist Russell Hurlburt’s research, regularly think to themselves in internal monologues. I am in that camp and had no idea the majority of the population don’t have a running commentary in their minds at any given time of day. (Interestingly, I also think in images, which is, Hurlburt posits, what the other 70% do.) So the idea of writing an entire story from the perspective of an internal monologue is the most natural thing in the world to me. To do otherwise is really, really hard (and I’ve tried). What I have heard from readers of my stories who note the strengths of my writing, is that they feel united with my characters in very close, personal ways because there is an element of intimacy you can nurture as the narrator in first person. You can be as honest as you are willing to be with your audience. There is nowhere to hide.

-~-

Tiamat is a strong narrator. How did you come up with her as a character?

Tiamat is so much like most of the female main characters I write. I think she is probably an amalgamation of many parts of my own personality which is what made it so easy for me to write her. In the same way that so many actors get type cast for portraying the same type of character in their roles, I might be type cast as an author who writes this type of character almost exclusively. I’ll let the reader decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

-~-

Have you got a favourite line from A Našû for Ilu of which you felt particularly proud?

Yes, but without context it won’t mean anything. And unfortunately, the context would be a spoiler. The line itself isn’t a piece of brilliance but rather a “mic drop” in the story that was really satisfying to write. It will make sense once you read the story.

“Peace, dubsargal,” she said to my father without shifting her gaze from me. “Tiamat and I are old friends.”

-~-

What do you hope readers will take away from your story?

Whenever I talk with people about this story, or my research into Sumerian society, I often tell people that modern people would be shocked by the ancient world. I think it’s easy for us to look around our modern homes with our modern comforts and assume that no previous civilization could ever have had it as good as us. While that is true in many ways—it’s kind of hard to beat antibiotics—we also need to understand that their lives weren’t without comfort. There is some evidence that the people who lived “in the land between the rivers” had ways of cooling their homes!

I’m not saying I’d want to chuck it all and live back then, but I also think we need to set aside our notions of superiority and realize that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we give them credit. I hope readers get a taste of this.

-~-

If time travel were possible (perhaps it’s only a matter of time!) would you choose to go back to the 3rd Millennia BC or another time? Why?

Wouldn’t it be fun to go back and visit a point in time from history we have some fixed assumptions about only to see how far off we are in our certainty of those assumptions? I would LOVE to go back to the 3rd Millennia to test the historical theories that people much smarter than me have posited. But also, to test the most basic things, like is our timeline even right? I’d love to know if the living conditions of the cities, the quality of life, the climate, and their way of living is everything or nothing like we think it is. But I’d probably go back even farther in time because I have so many more questions to answer about pre-historic times than I can even begin to list here.

-~-

What’s next for your writing? Any projects in the pipeline?

The reason I even began researching ancient Mesopotamia was for a fantasy trilogy inspired by the works of Stephen Lawhead, C.S. Lewis, and Plato (yes, the philosopher) I have been attempting to write for six or seven years. In fact, I’ve written the first book over again probably four times. The early versions were too abstract in setting, so I needed to find an era of history to use as an “anchor” to make the place and culture of my fantasy world understandable. After I completed all my research and rewrote again, I discovered I’d veered too far into historical. One of these days I’ll finish it.

You can find A Našû for Ilu in the Masterworks anthology, which is available on #KindleUnlimited HERE!

Now, let's meet the author!

Stephanie Churchill is the author of three historical-feeling fiction novels, The Scribe’s Daughter, The King’s Daughter, and The King’s Furies, and one short story, Shades of Awakening, written for the Historical Writers Forum anthology, Hauntings. Her writing takes on a cadence that is sometimes literary, sometimes genre fiction, relying on deeply-drawn and complex characters while exploring the subtleties of imperfect people living in a gritty, sometimes dark world. Her unique blend of non-magical fantasy fiction inspired by true history ensures that her books are sure to please of historical fiction and epic fantasy literature alike. A Našû for Ilu is her first published work of historical fiction.

Stephanie grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. After graduating college with a degree in History and Political Science, she worked as an international trade and antitrust paralegal in Washington, D.C. She now lives with her husband, their two children, and two dogs in Minneapolis, Minnesota.