Midnight in the City of London. The Masters of Finance rule the world. Small creatures run for cover. Nyla is still working on the graveyard shift in the Most Successful Bank in the Universe, trying to survive. But the Monsters in the Bank are not sleeping
The reluctant trilogist
Why do people write
trilogies? I don’t know. I certainly never intended
to write a trilogy. All I wanted was to
write about the things that were sitting on my heart and pushing to get
out. All I wanted was to tell a story
that had never been told before.
And I’m actually one of
those writers whose style gets called ‘sparse’ and ‘pared down’ – which means every
word that is in the book has passed a number of strenuous stress tests that
would leave any bank, for example, flat on the floor. I use as few words as possible. This has worked well for me in stories,
articles and other books.
So how did I, of all
people, become a trilogist? Because, as the old joke
goes, it was the shortest and most efficient way to tell the story.
My story is about a small
person (like myself, like yourself perhaps) who falls, quite accidentally, into
the deepest darkest heart of the Most Successful Bank in the Universe. Her journey explores that dark world as we get
to know thousands of characters and experience many crises and finally, a
global catastrophe. The narrator is small but the story is immense. Again I’m pinching
myself. Is this me? I actually started out as
a poet!
But then, when I think
about it, many classic trilogies have a similar story line. Maybe their authors also started out writing
a simple story (‘There and Back Again’, for example) and ended up with a trilogy
spanning eons and thousands of characters.
Maybe they also found it was the shortest, most efficient way to tell
the story…
Volume 1 of ‘Graveyards of
the Banks’ – I did it for the money follows my
narrator, Nyla, into the night time world of the graveyard shift at the Bank, where
she creates graphics to killer deadlines that illustrate the visions of
thousands of bankers who shout at her, make impossible demands and treat her
like the scum beneath their feet. But
she does get some of the money she needs if she submits to the nightly bullying
and extreme stress. (And also to a zero
hours contract where she can be fired any day, no toilet breaks and regular
public humiliation…) It’s a bit like a
reverse LOTR that starts out in Mordor… and it ends with some
major cliffhangers.
Volume 2 Monsters
Arising, begins, surprisingly, with a narrowing of Nyla’s world. The ‘death by a thousand cuts’ (as one
reviewer described her experience in volume 1) has lowered her expectations of life and she
grasps at a chance of personal happiness with one of her fellow workers, a man
who has also been severely damaged by his time in the Bank.
However, in the Global Center of Excellence,
the larger forces that power corporations and societies will not let Nyla
escape into ‘private life only’. The pain
level created by Nyla’s abusive supervisors increases to a point where
something has to give. And it does. (All connected to the mysterious character of
Vera who arrives at the end of volume 1 – yes, some of the cliffhanger
questions will be answered and some will continue to volume 3.)
Volume 2 is both darker
and lighter than volume 1. We get to
know some of the characters a lot better, and the Bank’s contempt for human
rights turns into destruction of human life.
On the other hand, we also see how Nyla and friends try to create something
positive in their ‘little’ lives, constricted as they are by the conditions
under which these lives have to be lived.
Volume 2 is a volume of
many twists. Prepare to be surprised and
go on a rollercoaster of emotions, hope and fear, excitement and
helplessness. But you’ll never guess the
end and resulting cliffhangers leading into volume 3. At least I hope so…
So I’m beginning to
understand why ‘Graveyards of the Banks’ needs to be a trilogy. But what is the effect of
writing a trilogy on the writer? I thought writing a whole
novel was tough. And it is. Particularly towards the end of the writing
process when you have to hold the entire book in your head all the time in
order to get the dynamics on the macro level right.
But with a trilogy, there
are new problems that I never even saw coming. Not only is the story
three times as long, volume 1 is already published when volume 2 and 3 are
still being finalized. This is both good
(I was able to be inspired by reader feedback) and bad (writing with a sense of
live readers behind the book is another level of stress I was entirely
unprepared for). I try to see it as an
advantage. After all, every novel is a
dialogue between author and reader.
But how are readers going
to read my trilogy? Are they going to read it
in one go or ‘binge’? Or are they going
to stretch the reading experience out over weeks? I try to remember how I
read the trilogies I loved. (And I do
love trilogies, as a reader, it just never occurred to me that I might be
writing them, too..)
Some of them were already
well established trilogies when I discovered them, so in theory I could buy
them all. This was the time of the
bookshop, and I remember hunting the volumes down from shop to shop. It certainly made me want to read them more. The experience of reading
a hotly hunted volume 2 and 3 is very intense.
The characters live in my mind while I hunt for volume 2 and 3, and I am
ready to throw myself into this very different world. I remember throwing key and bag aside when I
got home, half slipping out of my coat, and starting to read. I remember running into a lamp post while
reading on the sidewalk.
And now for the age old
question: can you read volume 2 on its
own? Yes! I provide a ‘what went before’ section to get
you started and off you go! (You may
want to read volume 1 afterwards…) And here it is:
‘Graveyards of the Banks – Monsters Arising’.
Nyla Nox
efinancialcareers and of course in her novel trilogy ‘The Graveyards of the Banks’. Volume 1, ‘I did it for the money’, will be out on 6 March but is already available for pre-order. She also writes stories about fantastical creatures and her work has been included in collections by Cleis Press, Zharmae Press and Drollerie Press. Find out more at her website and follow Nyla on Twitter @NylaNox
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