My agent Don Maass has an understanding of story that I’ve not seen rivaled. Don, you’ve been a reality check, a wise teacher, and an encourager. You make me a better writer.

Huge thanks to the amazing editorial team at Orbit. Devi, thanks for your many insights, your enthusiasm, and your guidance ushering me through an unfamiliar process. Tim, thanks for taking a chance on me. Jennifer, you were my first contact at Orbit, and I have to tell you, the fact that I’d e-mail you a question and get an answer the same morning was a big deal. Of course, then you started sending me paperwork—and then I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Alex, thanks for your brilliant Web page design, the beautiful billboards, full page scratch-and-sniff ads in the New York Times, and those nifty little cardboard display stands at Borders. They’re fab. Lauren, thank you for taking my ones and zeros and making something real. Hilary, copyeditor extraordinaire, a special thanks for two words: bollock dagger. They made the novel.

I also want to thank all the other people at Orbit and Hachette who do the real work while we artists sit in cafés wearing black, drinking lattes. I’d mention you by name, but I don’t know your names. However, I do appreciate what you do to take my words and make something out of them. So, layout people, art people (by the way, Wow!), office go-fers, accountants, lawyers, and the mail guy, thanks.

Crazy dreamers need a lot of encouragers. Kevin, your being proud of me is about the best thing a little brother can get. Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth’s air. Rather than rushing to correct me, you listened—and still do. Jacob Klein, your encouragement and friendship over the years have been invaluable. You were there at the very beginning (4 A.M. in Niedfeldt, I think). To the Cabin Guys at Hillsdale College (Jon “Missing Link” Low, Nate “My Head Looks Like PK’s Butt” Davis, AJ “My Girlfriend Will Clean It Up” Siegmann, Jason “I Love Butter” Siegmann, Ryan “Mystery Puker” Downey, Peter “GQ” Koller, Charles “Sand Vest” Robison, Matt “No Special Sauce” Schramm), I couldn’t have shared a slum house with better wangs. Dennis Foley, you were the first professional writer who gave me time and guidance. You said you’d tell me if I should give up and get a real job—and that I shouldn’t. Cody Lee, thanks for the unbridled enthusiasm; it still makes me smile. Shaun and Diane McNay, Mark and Liv Pothoff, Scott and Kariann Box, Scott and Kerry Rueck, Todd and Lisel Williams, Chris Giesch, Blane Hansen, Brian Rapp, Dana Piersall, Jeff and Sandee Newville, Keith and Jen Johnson—thanks for believing in us and helping make the years of work and waiting not just tolerable, but fun.

Thanks to everyone over the years who, on finding out I was a writer, didn’t ask, “Oh, are you published?”

Last, thanks to you, curious reader who reads acknowledgments. You do realize the only people who usually read acknowledgments are looking for their own name, right? If you’re quirky enough to read acknowledgments without knowing the author, you and I are going to get along fine. Picking up a book by an author you’ve never read is a leap of faith. Here’s my offer: you give me a couple of pages, and I’ll give you a helluva ride.

Meet the author

BRENT WEEKS was born and raised in Montana. After getting his paper keys from Hillsdale College, Brent had brief stints walking the earth like Caine from Kung Fu, tending bar, and corrupting the youth. (Not at the same time.) He started writing on bar napkins, then on lesson plans, then full time. Eventually, someone paid him for it. Brent lives in Oregon with his wife, Kristi. He doesn’t own cats or wear a ponytail. Find out more about the author at www.brentweeks.com.

Interview

What professions were you involved with before becoming a writer?

I came to writing backwards, by which I mean directly. Most writers have a long list of strange jobs they held before they settled into writing. I’ve known I wanted to be a novelist since I was thirteen. I figured that instead of doing something practical that made money until I was old enough to have the leisure to try, I’d just try. To support myself, I worked as a bartender and then as an English teacher. When we married, my wife and I decided I would write full-time. Unless your spouse thinks being poor is romantic and is tremendously patient, unbelievably supportive, and basically unconcerned about owning toys, this is a recipe for disaster. For us, it worked.

Do you mainly read fantasy fiction or are there other genres that you enjoy?

Fantasy is my first love, but like most writers my reading habits are fairly promiscuous. I love reading history because it breaks you free of some of your own culture’s preconceptions while staying within the bounds of human psychology. If you read something totally outlandish in a fantasy novel, you think, meh, whatever. If you read something totally outlandish in history, you think, how did that happen? How did people accept that? It’s also fun because you find places where other novelists have “borrowed.” I was reading about the Borgias in sixteenth-century Italy and it slapped me in the face—Pope Alexander VII was the Godfather, complete with dysfunctional kids. I checked into it, and Mario Puzo readily admits it. I also dabble with mysteries and whatever’s on the best-seller rack, and I’m a recovering literature major.

The Night Angel Trilogy has a very dark and gritty concept. How did you derive the idea for it?

There are a lot of answers to this question.

First, few writers admit this, but coming up with ideas is the hard part of writing. I pay a guy in Bulgaria to do it for me. Then I do the easy part and make a novel out of it. No, actually, ideas come from a secret email discussion list in New York City. You can’t get on the list until you’re published, but you can’t get published until you’re on the list.

Second, the darkest part of the trilogy is near the beginning of The Way of Shadows, where we see the abuse of children. At the time I started the trilogy, my wife (who has an MA in Counseling) was working with children who’ve been molested and who then act out sexually. Without help, these kids often become abusers themselves. The very idea of an eight-year-old kid abusing a five-year-old is monstrous. Is an eight-year-old capable of evil? Is an adult abuser too deeply wounded himself to be held accountable for the deep wounds he inflicts? How about an adolescent? Where’s the line? My wife shared only a little of what she heard, both for my sake and for confidentiality, but it was clear that this was evil. That abuse is so common in a society where children have as much supervision as they do in ours is frightening. I extended that only a little bit to what might happen in a gang with no responsible authority figures—and, quite honestly, then I toned it down. Incidentally, in an LA Times feature on gangs this year, one gang member claimed that sexual abuse is rampant in today’s gangs, but such a taboo that you don’t even hear about it in hardcore gangsta rap. He claimed 90 percent of young men in gangs have been abused, and virtually all the girls. If he’s even close to correct, I think sexual abuse is a huge component of why these kids are willing to obliterate themselves with drugs, to die, and to kill.

Third, calling these books dark and gritty is like saying George Clooney was an ugly kid voted least likely to succeed. Well, maybe he was, but that’s not the whole story. There is darkness and grit in these books, but I think that’s balanced and ultimately overcome with hope and redemption. It’s simply a matter of whether you think hope is wan and weak, or robust. Is your idea of hope when a brilliant girl who does all her homework wants to ace a test? Is your idea of redemption turning in a coupon at the grocery store? Hope isn’t vibrant unless it has to be chosen over despair. Redemption is cheap unless there’s a suffocating darkness in which even a hero is tempted to hide. I see these books as a fight to escape from darkness to light, which is reflected in the titles. So yes, the books start in a place that’s dark and gritty because without that, light and peace are meaningless, worthless, boring.