I started writing my first fantasy novel, The Quest for Mortoangus, when I was twelve years old with the help of my best friend, Ian Leino. I wrote because I liked to be surprised and delighted, liked to gasp and laugh, and wanted to share the whole mad experience with someone else. I remembered why I had begun writing in the first place: because I liked adventure and mystery and romance. But once I got past their startling bigotry, I remembered what it was that I had loved so much about those musty old scribblers. Turns out, they were saying awful things about women and minorities. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson - just to see what they were up to. Lonely and bereft, I started hitting up my old flames - Jules Verne, H.G. I called poetry some awful names, and poetry changed the locks. Then I woke up one morning and realized it was over. In short, it was going to be dreadful, and no one was going to read it. The collection was going to be a fabulist pastiche, an impressionistic olio, a book of surreal psalms. The Books of Babel was going to be a collection of prose poems. So, naturally, I decided to rip it off.Īt the time, I was trying to become a professional poet, which is sort of like trying to become a unicorn. It is a perfect specimen of literary accomplishment. The original idea for Senlin Ascends came from reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which is a beautifully written travelogue of fantastic, unreal destinations. Where did the idea for Senlin Ascends come from and how did the plot begin to take shape in your mind? But as he navigates the Tower’s many pitfalls in search of his wife, he begins to grow and change in surprising ways.Ģ. He soon learns that his pride and education have not prepared him for the adventure that lies ahead.

Senlin, who was accustomed to being the smartest man in town, suddenly finds himself alone and far from everything he knows. It is a changing, byzantine place, filled with competing monarchs and secret agendas. The Tower is an immense and ancient structure that is home to hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom are unscrupulous, many of whom are desperate.

Very shortly after arriving at the foot of the Tower, Senlin loses his new bride, Marya, in the teeming crowd. His story begins with a disastrous honeymoon to the Tower of Babel. Senlin Ascends, the first book in the series, focuses on the unexpected adventures of a small-town headmaster named Thomas Senlin. The series will conclude with the fourth installment, which will be a bittersweet moment for me. I’m just finishing the draft of the third book. I’ve been working on The Books of Babel for about six years.

Senlin ascends book