The Assassin’s Creed universe will see a movie and several new books release this week. Ever wonder how someone works within an already established universe to add their own story and spin?
Christie Golden – author of more than 50 novels including stories within the Star Trek Universe, Star Wars, World of Warcraft, Halo, and Assassin’s Creed spoke exclusively to Geekscape about the challenges of working within already flushed out literary worlds.
Allie Hanley: The video game “Assassin’s Creed” has a worldwide following of loyal gamers and has achieved massive success for Ubisoft. It spawned upwards of nine game sequels as well as novels based off of the game’s story. And that in turn has now segued into a film version, “Assassin’s Creed,” starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard premiering this December 21 wide.
Alongside that, you have several books coinciding with the film, one of which is the film’s novelization, and another story that runs alongside the film’s story but is your own creation. Can you tell me about those?
Christie Golden: “Assassin’s Creed: Heresy” revolves around the new Templar Director of Abstergo’s Historical Research Division, Simon Hathaway. He thinks it’s important for high-ranking Templars to connect with their ancestors, and chooses to experience the memories of Gabriel Laxart, his own ancestor who fought alongside Joan of Arc. There are parallels between the events of history and the events taking place in the present day as Simon stumbles on an old secret and begins unraveling a mystery.
The novelization, while it is, obviously, the story of the movie, adds another element of being able to get inside the heads of the characters in a way a movie can’t. There are also other Assassins in the film in addition to Cal Lynch, played by Michael Fassbender, and there are four short stories about the ancestors of these characters at the end, as a cool bonus. “Heresy” takes place right before the events of the movie “Assassin’s Creed,” and since I was doing both I could set up a few things from the movie in the first, and refer to events of “Heresy” in the second. Kind of fun!
AH: In your new Assassin’s Creed novel, “Heresy,” you weave a fascinating fictional story that fits inside of the Assassin’s Creed universe of modern day but also incorporates the history of Joan of Arc. Can you talk a bit about the process of story building inside the constraints of history, especially such a well known figure as Joan of Arc?
CG: It was a bit intimidating, of course. I mean—Joan of Arc. She’s been very well-researched, and I read a lot of books, studied geography, visited certain websites, and so on. I was fortunate that, due to her two trials (her Trial of Condemnation and the Trial of Nullification, years after her death) so much of her life was recorded in her own words and those of people who knew her well. The more I learned about her, the better she seemed to fit into the world of Assassin’s Creed. It was uncanny and just perfect. I know that Ubisoft has a reputation for stellar treatment of history, and I’m a fan of history myself, so it was good to be able to do a solid job on the research. She was so amazing in real life, her story didn’t require much “tweaking.”
AH: You’ve written novels that take place in already created universes like “Star Trek” and “Star Wars;” How did you get the “rules” down for Assassin’s Creed and do you play the games?
CG: I don’t play the games, but I had a young friend who would cheerfully do “play-throughs” for me and Ubisoft was wonderful about providing references. I’d also done two previous projects with Ubisoft through Inside Editions, “Blackbeard: The Lost Journal” and “The Abstergo Employee Handbook.” And of course, part of the fun of “Heresy” was getting to break some of the rules, or at least challenging the line of thought that the Templars were always the bad guys and the Assassins always the good guys. In “Heresy,” everyone’s a little bit gray.
AH: What’s the biggest challenge you faced with creating the dialogue in “Heresy” for Joan of Arc?
CG: I love dialogue, I was in theater and I seem to have a real “ear” for it. So the challenge was getting the characters well-enough developed so that I could all but hear them speak. One thing that was a positive, -having so much of Joan’s own words to work with, and also it became a bit of a negative in that I was writing for today’s reader, and I had to make sure she spoke in ways that those readers could connect with. So some more formal language that sounded stilted to modern-day ears was adjusted here and there, but many lines are still verbatim as they were recorded.
AH: What kind of care goes into writing within a world such as “World of Warcraft” that has a massive following and what kind of response do you get from fans?
CG: I have a rule, and that is that I don’t take on any project that I don’t A) already know and love or B) believe I could get to know and love. Some of the most fun projects have come from franchises I knew nothing about initially. I would steep myself in the material, get all excited and geeky about it, then be able to produce something that (hopefully) both the creators and the fans would enjoy. Most of the reactions I have gotten have been overwhelmingly positive. A bit, not so much, of course. Some people don’t like my “voice”/style of writing. Others don’t like the topics I choose to cover. Fans invest a lot of themselves in these worlds, and you have to respect that, but you have to make writing a good book first. Warcraft was special in that (after my first book, “Lord of the Clans”) I was an avid player of the game. So I can put in things like a tree struck by lightning on the side of a path, and the player grins because they know exactly what tree I’m talking about.
AH: What books do you have on the horizon?
CG: I have several projects lined up, but most of them are NDA so I can’t talk about them yet! I can, however, say that I’ve just finished a novelization of Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.”
AH: If fans want to reach out to you on social media or read up on your newest work, what’s the best place to do so?
CG: I do try to be responsive to my readers, because I appreciate that they support my work which puts food on my table! They can follow me on Twitter, @ChristieGolden, on Facebook as Christie Golden, read my blog at https://christiegolden.wordpress.com or visit my website which is really hard to remember…www.christiegolden.com. 🙂 I like to keep things easy!
AH: I’ve read that you attend events like New York Comic Con; what’s on your schedule for fans to meet you and get their books signed?
CG: This was a very exciting year travel-wise for me, I went to nine conventions, including one in Colombia! Thus far this year I’ve got nothing settled, but as soon as I know anything I’ll be posting it on all my various social media sites. I really do enjoy getting out to meet my readers. Writing is such a solitary business, it’s gratifying to thank folks in person and really connect as human beings and not just words on a screen.
Christie’s “Assassin’s Creed: Heresy” coincides with the film and can be read as a stand-alone or with the novelization. The thriller blends classic imaginative elements of science fictions with authentic historical details and is an original Assassin’s Creed story taking place partly in the modern day, and in the day of Joan of Arc.
You can currently pick a copy up at your local book store or online. The novelization debuts the same time as the film, Dec. 21.