R. Scot Johns is a life-long student of ancient and medieval literature, with an enduring fascination for Norse mythology and epic fantasy. He first came to Beowulf through his love of J. R. R. Tolkien, a leading scholar on the subject. As an Honors Medieval Literature major, he has given lectures on such topics as the historical King Arthur and the construction of Stonehenge. He owns and operates Fantasy Castle Books, his own publishing imprint, and writes the blog Adventures of an Independent Author, where you can follow his progress as he writes The Jester’s Quest, his second novel.
Scot will be on virtual book tour in March ’09 to promote his latest epic fantasy novel, The Saga of Beowulf. We interviewed him to find out more about his exciting new epic fantasy.
Q. Thank you for this interview, Scot. Can we begin by having you tell us why you chose epic fantasy to write?
A: I’ve loved epic fantasy ever since I was a kid and first read Lord of the Rings. I grew up reading tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur, but Tolkien just captured my imagination in a way that thoroughly immersed me in another world. After that, it was nothing but epic fantasy for quite awhile. But I’ve also always had a fascination for historical adventures, which is what drew me to Beowulf. One of the things I love about epic fantasy is that it’s generally set in a pseudo-historical distant past, with medieval villages and pre-technological societies that contrast highly with our own. It’s partly based on that romantic notion of a simpler time when people lived more closely with the earth, and it speaks to our own remote past, out of which the human race has clambered to reach its present state, for good or ill.
Q: Did you outline before you wrote your book or did you just go with the flow?
A: I outlined extensively. Given that The Saga of Beowulf is an adaptation, I had a pre-ordained structure that I had to work within to some degree. And since my objective was to bring the story as it’s told in the original tenth century poem as completely as possible into a contemporary medium, I adhered to it as strictly as I could, given the dictates of the modern novel format, which are altogether different than those of Old English poetry. I began by thoroughly outlining the structure of the original story as it exists in the poem. Then I created a timeline of events, a chronology of scenes that placed the story in sequential order, since the latter portion of the poem really jumps around, referencing three or four events in a span of a dozen lines.
