![]() ![]() I got a really bad review from someone who said, “Oh, well, it’s not very original, because it’s a translated text.” And I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not! I liked that, but of course, when it was published I was really astonished that people thought it was real. But I was also thinking about On Exactitude In Science by Borges, and how it did have footnotes, and getting this really dizzy kind of feeling when I was reading it because I was believing the story as I read it as if it was actually real, as if it was a nonfiction text, not a fictional one, even though I knew perfectly well it was a fictional text. I was mildly making fun of some of my academic friends. ![]() But I was like, “I don’t want to do footnotes.” So, it ended up I liked the conceit of them being translated texts and all the about what that meant, and these made-up histories and libraries of texts that people were examining. As you know, there’s a lot of world building in The Gift, and quite early in the writing of the book my editor at the time suggested footnotes. It actually came after I wrote the story. I’d forgotten this about the earlier series, but once again you frame The Bone Queen like it was a “found text.” Is there any particular reason you decided to approach the books that way? ![]()
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