Meet The Author – Jon Ford (Part 1)

We have another author interview for you! Today, in part 1, Jon Ford talks about his series – Ballad of the Songbird. Book Three, Tooth and Claw, is coming soon. Find out more about Jon here and come back soon for Part 2 where Jon will also tell us about his writing habits and history.

Before we get into the series, just tell us a bit about yourself and your writing journey to date.

Looking back, there were two key stops on my writing journey.

It really started when I began playing a Star Trek role-play-by-email game in my early 20s.

The way the game worked was that you were assigned a role on a starship, and you could then create your character. One person in the game would write the first piece of the story, then hand off to the next person. They would then write a bit and then hand off to the next person and so on. The beauty of it was that by the time your turn came back around, the story could be heading in a wildly different place to where you left it, so you had to be ready for anything. It was a lot of fun. I played it for a couple of years, and by the time I’d finished, I was running about five or six characters. I still have the story to this day.

This ignited within me a real passion for writing.

Then in 2005 I started playing an MMORPG called City of Heroes. It’s a computer game where you basically create a superhero and run around a virtual world fighting crime. The key here is that you can create basically as many characters as you like, and the game provided an area to put in back-stories for them. Of course this led to me writing all kinds of fan fiction about my characters, which I posted on a forum for players of the game. Before long, other players were asking to have their character included in what was now and rapidly becoming an adhoc ongoing story.

I was always getting told that I should publish it, but I couldn’t because a) I was playing in an IP I didn’t own, and b) it was awful!

But it did get me thinking…

The Ballad of the Songbird saga was my first attempt at taking some of those characters and spinning them into a whole different universe of my own creation. I love it. Love playing in that universe.

But…there was still a little part of me that missed the original superhero characters. So, with a little tweaking to change the backstory (i.e. removing all the IP related stuff), I created my own little superhero universe, too. The Femme Fatales series is a spiritual successor to that fan fiction.

Your next book ‘Tooth and Claw’ is out soon and is the third instalment in the Ballad of the Songbird series. The books are set in the future in quite a different world, what happened to the world prior to book 1 (Hunters)?

Don’t ask me why, but a while back I’d been deep-diving on Vampire and Werewolf myths and legends from around the world and found that they’re everywhere. Western culture has a very specific idea of what a Werewolf or a Vampire should be, but there are different types of them all over. In certain parts of Africa, there are Were-Hyenas for example. In Indonesia, they believe in Were-Tigers.

So, The Ballad of the Songbird saga is all based on two fundamental questions:

Why do so many different countries have their own myths and legends based on Vampire or Werewolf type monsters?

And what if they are all true?

So that’s where I started.

These creatures of myth and legend have lived amongst us for centuries, many simply happy to blend in and live alongside humankind without any problems. But some, like the Vampyrii, wanted more than that. Considering themselves superior to humans, they planned a revolution. For decades they went about placing agents in high places, then when the time was right, they triggered a global coup in 2016. The media called it ‘The Rising.’

The United States fell first, becoming a Vampire state now called New Victus. Their arch enemies, the Werewolves, took control of Canada, now called Pack Nation. As the world started to fall, an old magic rose in Europe to put a stop to it. The Fae.

The world is now a very different place in 2045. Countries around the globe began to band together to create factions. The Federated States of Europa. NordScania. New Africa. The Empire of Japan. And more. The world has been in an uneasy state of peace for almost thirty years, but things are about to change.

You have a large cast of characters, and even world powers, how do you keep track of everything?

I love ensemble casts.

Back when I was a kid, I used to read the UK run of Marvel’s Transformers comics. The writer was Simon Furman, and it always amazed me how he could juggle such a huge cast of characters. I got a taste of it later myself when I was writing those old City of Heroes fan fiction stories. Hence, writing large casts of characters actually comes pretty naturally for me.

It was important in the Songbird books because of the scope of the saga. It has multiple threads which will all slowly start drawing together. Indeed, Tooth & Claw is where we really see all the characters come together for the first time. So, we have Gayle Knightley in London, Lyssa Balthazaar in New Victus, Zarra Anderson in Havana, and so forth.

I also feel like it provides something for everyone. I have the freedom to create/write characters that fit into any gender type, sexuality type, race, and even species (i.e. Vampire/Werewolf/Ice Giant, etc) that I like. And as I write from each character’s perspective, you can truly get into the mind of each one, and as a reader, you can find the one that relates to you.

The downside of all this, as you’ve alluded to in your question, is keeping track of multiple lines of continuity. It’s tough. I have a huge admiration for how someone like GRR Martin keeps track of all his lore! I personally use a huge spreadsheet to track it.

I call it the ‘Spreadsheet of Doom’ and it tracks every character arc, every interaction, the dates, the time of day, everything. It has pages in there with diagrams of all the characters so I can track where injuries and wounds occurred. It has a family tree for all the Vampyrii Houses. It even has the Academy timetable detailing which lessons fall on which days at which times.

It takes almost as long to keep this updated as it does to write the books. And with each book the task becomes even larger and more difficult!

Book 3 of the saga, Tooth & Claw, has taken the longest to write thus far, mostly because of the need to keep continuity straight. It’s been a hugely complex undertaking.

And it’s only going to get more complicated.  

Who is your favourite character to write for and why?

Wow, that’s tough. Probably Gayle Knightley, who is the main protagonist. But the thing is that it’s not specific characters I enjoy writing the most, but specific interactions. Having a large cast of characters means I can throw characters together and explore dynamics. Some of these I LOVE writing.

Gayle and Michael’s relationship is a joy to write. As is the dynamic between Gayle and her younger sister Allyson.

Then there are the characters that I originally conceived as sort of secondary, but as I started writing them, I found myself falling in love with them and they gain themselves bigger roles organically. Becka and Mercy spring immediately to mind for that very reason.

When you get to Blood to Earth (book 2) you’ll meet both Bobbi (the transgender Vampyrii black market arms dealer), Yetu (the Troll) and Rahanah (the WereTiger). The first two only ever get little bits here and there, but they’re a joy to write as they’re such unique characters. Rahanah has more of an ongoing role, but she has a really spiritual side and an innocence I really love writing.

Who do you find the most difficult to write for?

Damian Dane, the leader of the Werewolves probably. He’s quite dour and serious, which doesn’t really play into my wheelhouse as well as I thought. I had to do some rehabilitation on the character in Tooth & Claw for my own writing sanity.  LOL

On your site, there is a wealth of material relating the background of the books (and spoiler-free so don’t worry if you haven’t read book 1 yet) but I note you have a plan for 7 maybe 8 books?

There will be 7 books in the series.

Each will be a colour of the rainbow. Hunters was red, Blood to Earth was orange, Tooth & Claw is yellow, and so on. It’ll look like a rainbow on your bookshelf (at least that’s the plan) and is a subtle nod towards the fact the books are LGBTQ+ friendly.

These 7 books will bring the main story to a close, but I have ideas beyond that.

There may be a prequel series. That is likely to be a trilogy, I think. And I’m definitely interested in a series of detective novels from the time Gayle’s sister was a cop.

I did toy with the idea of a series of young adult books based around the kids at the Academy, too, but not sure if I’ll get to that one.

And how do you keep on track and fight the urge to forge ahead with the next book?!

Keeping track isn’t too bad due to the aforementioned ‘Spreadsheet of Doom!’ so that keeps the continuity straight. As for fighting the urge to forge ahead, well, the books are BIG!

Hunters was around 150k words. Blood to Earth around 158k. Tooth & Claw will be the same. They take a while to write, and while I love writing them to bits, I do tend to need a break after to refresh my brain. Which is why I have the second series ongoing. The Femme Fatales.

These are lighter. Where Songbird is a big, sprawling urban fantasy epic, Femme Fatales is a snappier action blockbuster type affair. Think Game of Thrones versus the MCU.

The first Femme Fatales book, The Scorched Sky, came in at 90k words so is much shorter than the Songbird books. I’m also writing a series of single character-focused novellas based in the Femme Fatales universe. Knightingale was the first of those.

These are great for giving me a chance to cleanse my palate a bit before moving back to the Songbird saga.

If they made a film of the Ballad of the Songbird series, do you have any actors you could see playing any of the characters?

Oh, yes!  I’ve always thought that Songbird would make a better TV show than movie maybe. Something along the lines of Game of Thrones. With that in mind, I’d been putting up a ‘Casting Call’ series of blogs on my website detailing who I saw in certain roles or what other readers suggested.

Gayle Knightley was the easiest of all for me because I’d always had an image in my head of the person I wrote the character for. I always knew that Gayle should be a flawed character. Sexy and smart but broken and a little reckless. She’s sharp of wit and sarcastic. As I was starting to whip Hunters into shape, I was also starting to watch a show called Wynonna Earp. It took only the first episode to find my Gayle. Actress Melanie Scrofano plays Wynonna exactly how I pictured Gayle. From that point forward, she is the only person I have in my head when I write Gayle.

Some of the other characters are more fluid, but I do have ideas on most of them. The other one that most firmly sticks in my head, though, is that of Gayle’s father Jaymes. I absolutely wrote the part as if it was being played by Hugh Laurie.

Do we find out in the books where the name Ballad of the Songbird comes into the story?

Oh, yes. Tiny spoilers ahead…

In Hunters we hear mention of something called the Song of the Winds. It starts to build more prominence through book 2, Blood to Earth, and we’ll finally get some answers as to what that is in Tooth & Claw. Essentially, the Song of the Winds is a kind of musical tapestry that weaves all our life stories together. Gayle’s is a part of that, and hers is known as ‘The Ballad of the Songbird.’

That’s all I’m saying.

By the way, The Ballad of the Songbird is an homage to a comic series I used to read as a teen called The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore. I always loved that title.

Come back soon to hear more from Jon about his writing habits and techniques! Don’t forget to check out some of our other awesome author interviews here.