Novel: The Nilwere
Release Date: November 15th, 2024
Available for Preorder, or add it to your wishlist!
About the Author:Tim Boiteau is an award-winning writer of dark, mind-bending fiction. His short stories can be found in Daily Science Fiction, Deep Magic, and The Colored Lens, among other places. He lives in Michigan with his wife and son.
Today, we’re thrilled to sit down with Tim Boiteau, author of The Nilwere, a dark fantasy novel that combines frontier grit with gothic allure. In our upcoming blog series, Tim delves into his creative process, inspirations, and themes that shape The Nilwere. Many thanks to Tim for his insightful responses, which we’re excited to share with you!
The Nilwere is a unique blend of genres, mixing frontier aesthetics with gothic, dark fantasy. What inspired you to blend these genre aesthetics?
The blend of genres was largely a result of an attempt to draw a distinction between two different time periods within the world of The Nilwere. When Constance and friends plunge into the woods, they leave behind the world of gunpowder and bustles and enter an older one, a world of crumbling castles and dinged-up armor. The contrast is also meant to highlight a shift from the independence to the dependence of the female characters. I also wanted a setting that harkens back to aspects of New World America, an untamed and unforgiving place from the perspective of European settlers.Can you share a bit about your writing process and how you developed the world withinThe Nilwere?
I started this in Fall ’19 and finished the first draft early in 2020, then rewrote it several times as the pandemic engulfed the globe. I wouldn’t call it luck that I happened to be working on a book set in plague times when COVID struck, but I take inspiration wherever I can find it. In general, the political landscape of the country, protests and unrest, also left their mark on the narrative. When you see these things unfolding around you, it feels very end of days, but then you remind yourself that upheaval and change has been one of the recurring themes in the story of humankind. We’re living on bloodied ground, but our own attention and memory capacities aren’t designed to think in such timescales. In any case, despite being set in a historical fantasy world, this novel comes closer to commenting on the state of our own world than most of the fiction I’ve written thus far.As for the worldbuilding aspect of writing, it largely served the purposes of the narrative. Religiosity I knew would be an important aspect of these characters’ lives, and so the religion of the Family and their bible,The Book of the Family, developed side by side with the story as a way to mirror and comment on aspects of the narrative and the psyches of various characters, while also providing them with traditions and rituals that enrich and structure their world.
What themes and messages do you hope readers take away from the story?
This book was gestating during the #MeToo movement, during which it seemed every day the news presented us with horror tales about abuse, degradation, and control. The fairy tale seemed to me to be the perfect vehicle to explore some of these ideas, as the genre has its own interesting history, starting out as grim moralistic tales, then, in the mid-20th century, being warped into the unrealistic dreams-come-true cliché, and more recently pivoting back to their darker roots. Most people’s ideas of a “fairy tale” story is one in which a person of low birth rises into the status of nobility, and Hollywood was the quintessential magical woodland where such transmogrifications were possible—indeed, in which they were guaranteed, if those that entered possessed the spirit required to rise up and meet the challenges presented to them. And yet it turns out that many such magic transformations came at the hands of monsters. The monsters of bothThe Nilwere and other well-established institutions like Hollywood are shrouded in mystery, and it is this cloak of darkness and silence that gives them their power. Both in this tale and the ones of the real world, slaying a monster is not an act of destruction but of naming, identifying, knowing. Ultimately, knowing your monster is the best way to protect oneself.Did you face any challenges in approaching this particular narrative? How does this project fit into your larger body of work as a writer?
This novel marks my first attempt at building a fantasy world from scratch and not setting my fiction in some distorted version of the modern era or potential future world, and the commitment and effort it took has increased my appreciation for other writers who have constructed much grander playgrounds than my own. In fact, the worldbuilding demands of this particular story were much greater than I had initially expected and involved much (fascinating) research and immersion in 18th and 19th century literature, lifestyles, and culture.
Most of this work had nothing to do with the actual plot of the story but served to enrich the texture of the world, which may in turn make the bizarre occurrences of the plot easier to swallow. Many examples (e.g., icehouses, the game of graces), are on show in the opening chapter, a whirlwind tour of a frontier town as it unravels, or times when the protagonist revisits memories of her hometown, but throughout the narrative, I ran into little moments about dress or toilet or diet when I would find that I suddenly needed a crash course in historically realistic descriptions of some mundane activity.
What are some of your favorite books and/or media, and do you actively draw inspiration from them, or is what you write largely a departure?
From a non-fiction standpoint, Stacy Schiff’sThe Witches: Salem, 1692 was an important reference in helping me both with the naming of characters and capturing the flavor of a small frontier town on the brink of collapse. As for inspiration from fiction,The Nilwere is chock full of Easter eggs that pay tribute to my favorite books, writers, and artists. In terms of dialogue and period literature, I was reading a lot of Henry James, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters at the time of writing, and you can find homages to them in many of the character names and worldbuilding details—for example, in the naming of the famed novelist Eton Brimley, which is an anagram of Emily Brontë. However, I will leave the other references for readers to discover on their own. In terms of the fairy-tale plot,Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,Howl’s Moving Castle, andSpirited Away were also top of mind when writing. On the darker side of things, I’m a big fan of ’70s and ’80s horror films such asAlien, John Carpenter’sThe Thing,Suspiria,Dawn of the Dead, andThe Shining, and I believe their influences shine through here.Thank you, Tim, for sharing your insights into the world of The Nilwere and the creative journey that brought it to life. From its unique genre blend to its exploration of complex, timely themes, this novel promises to be as thought-provoking as it is haunting. We’re excited for readers to experience this dark and immersive story. Stay tuned for more updates, and get ready to enter the shadowed world of The Nilwere!
Interested in learning more about The Nilwere via an expirimental audio experience?
Check out our mockcast on YouTube.
