Steven Savile has published over a dozen novels and sold almost half a million books across the world in several languages. His Vampire Wars trilogy for the popular Warhammer fantasy world was made the bestsellers list in Germany and Italy and his novel Primeval: Shadow of the Jaguar was a number one bestseller in the UK. He has written for Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Stargate SG-1, Star Wars, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Slaine into a series of novels for Rebellion, as well as launching the new Knights of Albion series for Abaddon in the UK with the upcoming Black Chalice. In 2006 he co-edited Elemental: The Tsunami Relief anthology for Tor, which raised enough money to build and supply a school in Indonesia after the tragedies of Boxing Day 2004. His debut thriller Silver was released in hardcover in January 2010 and his 50 year critical retrospective of genre television shows, Fantastic TV, has just been published.

Muse: First of all, Whispers of the Muse welcomes you to the site. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Mr. Savile: I’m out in Stockholm. I’ve been here for about 13 years now and can’t imagine going back home to London. I’ve been a full-time novelist for about 8 years now, before that I was a college English teacher over here, before that, I worked for the Ministry of Defense in the UK and did all sorts of stuff I’m not allowed to talk about.

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Mr. Savile: It’s a question that changes pretty much every day, but off the top of my head, Jonathan Carroll, Douglas Coupland, Charlie Carillo, Lee Child, Clive Barker, Robert Harris, Paul Auster, Matt Dunn… erm, I can go on and on… Nick Hornby. David Nicholls. Okay… I’ll stop now.

Muse: Why do you write Fantastic Victoriana/Steamunk?
Mr. Savile: Well, really, I write what interests me at a given time. I’d been working on vampire wars for about 3 years and really needed to cleanse the palate, so I wanted to do something very different. I grew up with things like Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and it just felt that now was the time to start something very different… I had a huge amount of fun with it, so much so, having down three linked novellas I went and wrote a vast novel in the same world, London Macabre, which is out with publishers right now.

Muse: What is your writing regimen? How often do you work on a book? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Mr. Savile: I’m a full time novelist, it’s my day job. That means minimum 8 hrs a day in the chair writing. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds when it is suddenly all about paying the mortgage month by month. It stops being about love, no matter how much you try to stay in love with the simple luxury of being able to write and do what you love every day, so you need to stop, regularly, and remind yourself how bloody lucky you are… or I am. So, deadlines are part and parcel of the job. You want to be professional, you keep your deadlines because other people’s jobs are dependent upon you doing just that. The proof readers, the typesetters, layout, cover design etc etc, all of those then feed on to printers and shippers and it’s all about making other peoples jobs easier.

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Mr. Savile: Oh my, well, it’s me. I don’t write stories, per se, I write little pieces of me. I couldn’t do it any other way. So, yes.

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Mr. Savile: Not dreams, no. Observation. Real life. I watch people. I think and ask questions. For instance I saw a women in a coffee shop, thumbing through photos when a tramp came in, sat down beside her, and took the packet of photos, thumbed through them, took one, and walked out. My brain immediately thinks, hmmm wonder what that was all about.

Muse: Tell us about The Hollow Earth and Other Stories. What was your inspiration?
Mr. Savile: Really, quite unglamorously, it came out through a conversation on the phone with a publisher, Larry Roberts, over at Bloodletting Books in the US, when we were discussing our love of Lovecraft, Jules Verne, etc, and I seem to remember it sort of being a ‘put your money where your mouth is’ and I thought it’d be a lot of fun to use the old Oranges and Lemons rhyme as the basis for saving the world…

Muse: What is your favorite story from the collection and why?
Mr. Savile: I think that’s a bit like asking a father to choose his favourite son. I can’t really pick one above the other. I’ve loved Hollow Earth longest because I wrote it first. I’ve loved Mechanisms of Grief the fiercest because it was the most emotional to write…

Muse: Have you written other books?
Mr. Savile: About 20 now, including a few ghostwriting projects. I’ve written Dr Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Stargate and other media work, as well as last year kicking off my own thriller series with Silver…

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace?
Mr. Savile: I feel rather like we’re standing on the edge of an abyss, and for some it’ll be a case of jump or be pushed, but I’m an advocate of change. I find it exciting, invigorating… there’s something exciting about being able to put a NEW story in front of thousands of people without having to wait a year or more for it to see the light of day…