The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,109

director, novelist, and ambassador for Save the Children Australia. The Last Smile in Sunder City is his debut novel.

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interview

You’ve worked as an actor for several years and have now published your first novel. How is the creative process different between acting and writing? Did your acting experience influence your writing?

I could probably fill another book pondering the differences between writing and acting (I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I try to balance both careers), but the most profound difference to me is that you cannot act on your own but you must write on your own. After years of auditioning, it’s empowering to be able to wake up every day and start work without having to ask anyone for permission. The counterpoint is that you miss out on the collaborative elements that make performing so much fun. (I’m answering these questions from my theater dressing room while many great minds are running amok around me.)

Working as an actor has absolutely helped my writing. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with great screenwriters and directors as we plot character arcs, discuss motivation and decide how to balance humor, suspense and vulnerability. While I haven’t rubbed shoulders with many other authors in my life, I’ve spent untold days on set (or in bars) discussing plot, style and character with some of the most passionate and experienced storytellers imaginable, and I’ve done my best to absorb as much as I can.

Where did the initial idea for The Last Smile in Sunder City come from, and how did the story begin to take shape?

I was about fourteen when my dad introduced me to the film The Big Sleep, and it kicked off a love affair with film noir, Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Chandler and all classic hard-boiled detective stories. At the time, I was also playing a lot of video games, watching anime and reading sci-fi and fantasy novels. I was seventeen when I wrote my first short story that combined those two worlds.

A couple of times since then, I attempted to evolve the idea on paper, but I didn’t really dig into it till 2016 while working on Black Sails. First, I wrote a Fetch Phillips mystery that was about 30,000 words long. I showed that to some friends and got some good feedback, so when Black Sails finished, I locked myself away and wrote the first draft of The Last Smile in Sunder City.

Did you do any specific research to build the mythology of the world?

Yes… and no. The underlying mythology of how the magic works was pieced together from a few different places, but I won’t go into detail on that, as it hasn’t completely come up in the series yet. I also wanted to keep things malleable enough that the world can evolve as Fetch does. This world is built for him, and the most important part of the worldbuilding is how perfectly it can reflect his inner struggles and challenge his ideas. There are lots of hidden secrets tucked into the cracks of Sunder City, but they can only crawl out when Fetch is ready for them.

Sunder City feels gritty, broken, and completely lived-in. What was your approach to creating this setting? Were there any challenges?

When you read Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe mysteries, he expects the reader to have a certain amount of assumed knowledge about Los Angeles. I wanted to create a similar feeling, as if Fetch is filling in details about a world that isn’t completely outside your understanding. He thinks you must live in a city similar to this one, so you don’t need all the technology given in detail, but you wouldn’t know where the library is located or what year they installed the streetcar. Because this is a fantasy story, I am walking a very fine line. I needed to make sure the reader was given sufficient information to be immersed, without destroying the intimate nature of Fetch’s voice. I relied on the feedback from beta readers to let me know when Fetch wasn’t filling them in on things that felt crucial. My hope is that you can imagine Fetch telling you this story in a dimly lit bar after he’s had one too many burnt milkwoods.

The characters in The Last Smile in Sunder City are incredibly compelling. If you had to pick one, who would you say is your favorite? Who did you