Hello and welcome to this Author Spotlight interview here on Track of Words, where today I’m thrilled to be joined by the fantastic S.A. Tholin, author of the brilliant Primaterre series of science fiction novels, and recent winner of the first-ever Self-published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC)! I’ve been a fan of Sofie’s writing for a while now, and I loved Iron Truth, her novel that won the SPSFC, so it’s long past time that we chatted for an interview. In this Author Spotlight we talked about her Primaterre series and what readers can expect from its blend of science fiction and horror, the realities of life as a self-published author, the impact of winning the SPSFC, and loads more. So kick back and enjoy the interview, then make sure you check out Iron Truth and the Primaterre series!
Without further ado then, over to Sofie.
Track of Words: To start off with, tell us a little about yourself – who you are, where you’re from, how you ended up being a writer, etc.
S.A. Tholin: I’m Sofie Anya Tholin, originally from a small village in the Swedish countryside. At nineteen I moved to Cambridge to study English and wound up falling in love with the country and the people, spending the better part of a decade in the UK. I’m now back in Sweden, living in another village, this time in the middle of the north-eastern Scanian woods.
I’ve always loved telling stories, but I credit my grandfather for setting me down the writer’s path. I learned to read when I was three, and after I’d devoured Lord of the Rings at five years old, he was so impressed that I was ushered into his library and told to pick any book I liked as my next read. I chose All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque – and at this point a lot of people might’ve justifiably said, no, that’s not an appropriate book for a child, pick another one, but not my granddad. Reading that book was an experience that really blew open some doors in my mind, the kind of doors that can’t ever be shut again. After that, I think I had no choice but to become a writer!
ToW: How would you describe yourself as a writer? What sorts of things do you enjoy writing about?
SAT: I think of myself as a kitchen sink writer. You know the phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink’? My stories are like that, but I also throw in the sink! Emotions, explosions; anything that can be turned up to eleven, will be.
The psychological aspects of any story are important to me. I like to write about people pushed to their limits and beyond, exploring their mental journey. Resilience and perseverance are big themes, as well as a character’s ability to find strength they didn’t know they possessed. This isn’t necessarily presented as a positive – my characters are always flawed and sometimes utterly mistaken in their beliefs!
I really enjoy writing diverse points of view and opinions, leaving it up to readers to decide who they agree or sympathise with.
On a more basic level, I love writing about creepy abandoned places, derelict ships, sea monsters and unreasonably oversized weaponry.
ToW: For anyone who isn’t already aware, could you talk a bit about your Primaterre series and what readers can expect from these books?
SAT: Here’s a quick summary of the main characters and their overarching story:
Joy Somerset is a junior botanist on a passage to a new colony world, a place of clean air and fresh starts. She never reaches her destination, waking more than a hundred years later into a terrifying, war-torn future.
Reclusive Commander Cassimer is troubled by a past that has lionised him and seen him named ‘The Hero of the Primaterre’, an epithet which does not sit easily on his shoulders. After years of combat in the most brutal of circumstances, Cassimer now leads a banneret strike time – the Primaterre’s elite special forces – on the hunt for a missing, clandestine starship.
On Cato, a storm-lashed planet that harbours as much danger as it does secrets, Joy and Cassimer’s paths cross, their goals and stars aligning. Bringing out the best in each other, they employ diplomacy, spycraft and outright savagery in a war against their mutual enemies.
Across the four volumes of the Primaterre series, Joy and Cassimer must make friends of implacable enemies, confront eldritch alien threats, and destroy the corruption at the heart of the Primaterre Protectorate.
At times the Primaterre series is unflinchingly brutal, but never without the hope of something better on the horizon. Though it is a fairly dark vision of colonised space, dripping with cosmic horror and betrayal, at its heart the series revolves around the characters, their camaraderie, their love and their fates. However tragic, their lives have meaning and influence, sometimes long after the uncaring universe has had its way with them.
Readers of my work can expect immersive tales, stories within stories, a complex narrative (or two), plenty of thrilling set-pieces to keep you on the edge of your seat (hopefully), and lots of Easter eggs, references and allusions. I really hope to engage the first-time reader with gripping plot and action, but to give reread rewards to those who want to dig in and discover connections across the series.
ToW: You’ve explored the Primaterre universe quite widely, with five full novels available. Without spoiling anything, what can you tell us a bit about this setting, and what the thought process was behind some of the key factions and cultures that you’ve developed over the course of the books?
SAT: The largest faction, the Primaterre Protectorate, is essentially an exaggerated take on what a Swedish space empire might be like. The Primaterre society is, at its core, the ultimate manifestation of folkhemmet – the people’s home – a concept that was the basis of Swedish 20th-century politics. It’s social engineering on a national scale, nudging the citizenry toward complete consensus. The nation is the home, the people are the family. Everyone is equal, everyone is expected to do their part, and to look after one another. In the Primaterre and Sweden both, it was an idealistic goal achieved through dark methods. The end result is utopian, so long as you ignore the bad – which, thanks to the absolute consensus, most everyone does with ease.
It’s much harder for the people who aren’t part of the family to ignore the bad, especially when it arrives as a Primaterre soldier kicking your door down and ordering you off-planet. To go where? They don’t know, they don’t care; you’re not family, so best of luck out there in the cold, harsh universe.
So with that in mind, the other factions in the universe either sprung up as reactions to the Primaterre Protectorate – disgruntled outcasts, vengeful foes, as well as cowed former enemies – or as competitors. There are also the cultures who do their very best to have as little to do with the Primaterre as possible, and my personal favourites: the colonies that have fallen between the cracks, isolated, seemingly irrelevant, and all but forgotten.
The Swedish influence isn’t necessarily obvious, nor the only influence. My version of Mars, for example, was originally settled by a Scottish expedition, and the planet Cato, the setting of the first book in the series, was conceived as a Liverpudlian colony. (Which, considering the post-apocalyptic state of Cato, may seem like an insult to the people of Liverpool, but the colonists are quite blameless for the terrible fate of their planet! It was a very nice place before Bad ThingsTM happened.)
ToW: You’ve self-published all of your books – for readers who maybe aren’t that familiar with self publishing, could you talk a bit about what it actually entails and how it works?
SAT: Ultimately, the author is responsible for everything. You’re your own boss, there are no deadlines, and you have to set your own goals. I enjoy being in charge of the whole process; I write, edit, then edit again (with editor/proofreader assistance) and I collaborate with an illustrator to create a cover and any interior graphics (like maps and diagrams).
Once the book is complete, it has to be formatted for the various platforms involved, and uploaded. At this point, I order paperback proofs for one final round of editing.
Then, after release, there’s marketing, promotions and writing advertising copy. It’s a steep learning curve, but incredibly satisfying when it all comes together!
Maybe for future novels, I wouldn’t mind giving the more traditional route a go – querying agents, crossing my fingers a publisher is interested – but the Primaterre series is my passion project. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’m happy to keep doing my own thing.
ToW: Having self-published five novels now, have you learned any particularly interesting or unexpected things during this process?
SAT: I am a terrible perfectionist. It kills me to discover even the smallest typo in my work, so learning just how difficult perfection is to attain was a hard pill to swallow. Summer Empress was first published with a word missing from a sentence, and not just any sentence – it’s one of my favourites in the entire book, part of a passage I must have read a hundred times. I obsessed over that stupid sentence, and still that mistake slipped past me, my editor and my beta reader!
I am now much more forgiving when I spot mistakes in other people’s work; they’re impossible to avoid! You can publish a hundred thousand words, 99,999 absolutely flawless, yet somehow that one awful typo will find a way to sneak in. I still try to hold myself to that unattainable zero defects standard, though, spending endless hours poring over the text to root out mistakes.
ToW: Huge congratulations on winning the inaugural Self-published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) in 2022 with the brilliant Iron Truth, the first novel in the Primaterre series! What does winning this prize mean to you, in terms of personal stakes but also your writing career as a whole?
SAT: Thank you so much!
I loved taking part in the SPSFC. It’s a year-long celebration of self-published SF, a wonderful showcase for a wide variety of books, and though it is nerve-wracking, it’s such an exciting process that I was a little sad when it was over. [You can find out more about the SPSFC here – ToW]
It was fantastic to win against some great competition. As an independent writer, I don’t have a machine around me, no PR, no ARC teams, no other authors writing blurbs to endorse my work. I finish my books and throw them out into the void, and initially, it can feel like they just disappear. For me, the sense of validation was a huge deal and is incredible motivation to keep going. It’s almost as good as when readers reach out and say nice things!
In terms of more tangible rewards, the SPSFC got Iron Truth in front of more eyes. It’s amazing to see people all around the world reading it! It’s also opened up some new opportunities that, without the SPSFC, I doubt ever would have happened.
ToW: There seems to be a strong horror element to your writing – is that a natural thing for you, to combine horror and science fiction?
SAT: I started out writing horror short stories, and I can never resist adding a touch of the speculative to my work. Science fiction is definitely a good fit, as science can be either the source of the horror or what saves us from it; not just in future imaginings, but in our lives today.
I have a tendency toward catastrophic thinking, in any situation always imagining everything that could go wrong, which makes writing and reading horror almost therapeutic for me. It’s nice to be able to explore the Worst-Possible-Outcome in a safe, fictitious setting. If the characters overcome the horror, it’s confirmation that happy endings are possible. If they don’t, well, you can learn from their mistakes and know what not to do, should a murder clown or vicious alien ever come after you!
ToW: All of your novels are pretty hefty tomes, which makes it all the more impressive that you’ve written and published five of them in as many years. What sort of routines do you have for writing, and for remaining consistent and so prolific?
SAT: Thanks for saying so, I always feel like I don’t do enough!
I’m a massive procrastinator – given the opportunity to do nothing, I will happily seize it – so the key is to write every day. Holidays or sickness, it doesn’t matter; stopping spells disaster for my productivity. My perfectionism initially led to me rewriting the first page over and over, never getting anywhere. Participating in NaNoWriMo taught me to push through, to let go of negative thoughts and get the story out. For my first drafts, I write after midnight when the world is quiet and dark. I find the peace I need to not be destructively self-critical (I save that for the second draft!).
ToW: What can you tell us about what you’re working on next, or what you’ve got coming out over the coming months?
SAT: I’m currently focused on my Primaterre Tales series, a collection of standalone novels exploring vastly different characters, cultures and perspectives. The first book, Queen of the Corpsepickers, is a ridiculously over-the-top pirate heist told from the point of view of RebEarth, a terrorist faction who are most certainly bad guys.
The next in this series will be a much more typical Primaterre story about a military rescue submarine operating in the hadal depths of a war-torn planet.
Right now I’m working on the third in the series; a murder mystery on Mars, taking a look at the more normal, urban lives of Primaterre civilians. As it’s meant to be a somewhat cosy slice-of-life, I do have to resist my natural impulse to throw in too many giant mech battles – so far, there’s only one.
After that, I have plans for Volume 5 of Joy & Cassimer’s adventures, and several fantasy/horror epics… and this is why I wish I could write faster!
ToW: Finally…when you’re not writing, what might we find you getting up to?
SAT: Mostly thinking about writing! And a lot of research – the other day, I spent a good hour reading up on rhubarb, just to get a single rhubarb-related sentence right. Necessary? Maybe not, but I enjoy it! In my silly moments I like to daydream about a rhubarb expert one day reading my book and going yes, this character knows what they’re talking about. Finally someone who gets rhubarb!
To relax and clear my head I love playing video games. I just might be the world’s biggest fan of Resident Evil, but I also play games like Darkest Dungeon, Elite Dangerous and Crusader Kings – though I would not recommend that game to anyone who wants to get some work done. Start playing and before you know it, it’s the next day!
Other than that, I practice a bit of yoga, play a couple of daily games of pool, and read a lot of books, of course!
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Sofie Anya Tholin is an award-winning Swedish author. Following multiple honorary mentions for her short stories, and a Fantastiknovelltävlingen victory in 2002, she moved to the UK to study English at Cambridge. She returned to live and work in Skåne, Sweden in 2012. Iron Truth is the first full-length novel in The Primaterre series, and is followed by Lonely Castles, Chaos Terrain and Summer Empress, with more entries in the adventures of Joy & Cassimer to come in the future.
Her latest novel, Queen of the Corpsepickers, is the first volume in a new series of Primaterre Tales – standalone stories set in the shared universe of the Primaterre.
To find out more, follow @tholin on Twitter for updates and news about future releases, join her on Patreon for giveaways and exclusives, or check out her website.
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Thanks so much to Sofie for chatting to me for this interview, and for agreeing to be part of the 2022 Track of Words Advent Calendar. And huge congratulations once more on the SPSFC win! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this interview – make sure you pick up a copy of Iron Truth if you haven’t already read it, and dive into the Primaterre stories!
Check out my review of Iron Truth here
All of Sofie’s books are available to order right now – check out the link below to order your copy of Iron Truth, or grab the next book in the series if you’ve already read that one:
*If you buy anything using any of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave me a tip on my Ko-Fi page.
