13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?Erm... I don't know. I suppose by default I tend to use a lot of Western mythology - lots of Norse, Greek, and Eastern European folklore, since I read so much of it growing up. I do slip in Asian myths where I can. I also lean towards a vaguely Christian/Jewish structure when writing about angels and demons, although my vision of Hell and demons takes a lot more from old occult theories than religious ones.
Since thus far my books are either set in America or the UK (or in the case of AFTERLIFE, wherever you think it's set), obviously I'm largely writing about Western culture, a world where most people work jobs they don't particularly care for, can afford decent houses and mobile phones, and have a social life if they want it, and don't go hungry. That's the kind of environment I grew up in, and although I don't shy away from portraying the rougher aspects of that society - violence, drug use, addiction, etc - my characters more or less always
start there. Whether they stay there is another matter.
Is this my favourite culture? I can't really answer that. Like I said, it's the culture I know. Even when I was writing high fantasy, I stuck to a Westernised fantasy culture, again heavily influenced by Greek mythology in terms of religion, and Romany culture in terms of society. When my stock fantasy characters wandered off to the southern parts of my generic fantasy world, they found themselves in sprawling deserts populated by vaguely Arabic-esque nomads, and when they went north, they encountered vaguely Scandinavian-esque warriors. (Keep in mind that I was very young when I wrote this).
What I'm saying in a roundabout way is that I have no truly favourite culture to write, I suppose. I like to mash things up where I can, and I certainly enjoy the cultures I do write in or I wouldn't write them, but I've never made a conscious decision about it. I've very much written what I know and developed it from there.
( Questions under the cut )
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