(Re)Telling tales
Louie Stowell
‘Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Taking the Blame is about Loki being blamed for a crime he didn’t commit (for once). Thor’s hammer goes missing and everyone assumes Loki did it and he has to turn detective and find out whodunnit in order to clear his name.
‘I started the book with a recap of book one so you can read it even if you haven’t read the first one. Book one is about him learning to be Not Awful. Book two is him learning to think about someone other than himself. Up to a point. It’s also about horses. I drew a lot of horses, on purpose, which was an act of pure masochism.’
Why did you decide to write a book inspired by a myth?
‘I love the Norse myths for their weirdness, their surrealism. I remember an academic called Jackson Crawford describing the plots of the myths as “dream logic”.
‘Fleshing that out into motivations is fascinating, but also, I wanted to keep or . The tiny, ordinary details of human life become suddenly more vivid when you view them through outsider eyes.
