Nebula Awards Interviews

Ysabeau S. Wilce 2009

2009-09-07T23:55:00-06:00

Ysabeau S. Wilce won the Andre Norton Award for Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room).

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. Whether it’s your short stories or novels, I find that you have a unique style and voice that no one else in the field is doing. How did you develop your particular writing style?

Reading, reading and reading. I have a theory that you can’t be a good writer if you aren’t a great reader. And you must read lots of different things too, with no regard for one particular genre, or for high or low literature. Obviously, I have more of an affinity towards the rococo and melodramatic, but I think it’s important not to be too limited in my reading choices, so I will read almost anything. Immersion in reading helped me develop an ear for rhythm, and made my style second nature. Now I just sit down and start typing, and out it all comes!

All your fiction so far seems to be set in the world of Califa. How did you come up with this cosmology? How do you keep track of all your characters and locations and interactions?

Califa evolved over a long long time. In the beginning elements of Califa could be found in a role playing game that my friends and I were obsessed with in high school. Back then, Califa was not called Califa, and it was more medieval. Later, when I got interested in American history, Califa began to turn into more of a California cognate. I decided, as a point of ideology, to have all my fantasy based in American mythology and geography. In my opinion, pastoral Tolkien-type fantasy is already well-picked over and I wanted to do something new. As far as keeping track of people and places, I do not do so formally. It’s all in my head. Thankfully my editor is very good at picking up continuity errors!

Have you ever considered writing fiction that’s not set in your Califa setting?

I’ve considered it, but rejected the consideration for the moment. Right now I’m still having fun with Califa and its environs, and my readers seem happy to be exploring that world along with me. But at some point I’ll have to stretch into something new.

What made you decide to write speculative fiction?

As a historian I was trained to speculate only within the facts, and after a while I found that limiting. The real world is interesting and fascinating but I like to play around with “what if”. And I wanted my female characters to be powerful and not to be constrained or defined by their femaleness--and, alas, that’s impossible in the world we live in.

How did your experience at Clarion shape your career and your life?

As far as changing my life, I met my husband there--so that’s was a major life change! As far my career goes, going to Clarion helped me make connections that proved invaluable when it came time to find an agent, so that was pretty helpful, too. Plus, I wrote the first two stories I ever sold at Clarion and I probably wouldn’t have written them otherwise, since short fiction is not my forte.

How about your travels and how it’s affected your writing?

Traveling has given me a chance to see how people live and work differently around the world, and has helped stretched my imagination. I recently read about a study that said that people are more creative when they live as expats and for me, though I haven’t been an expat in many years, I think that is true. Living or traveling abroad broadens your outlook and makes you more flexible and open minded. Which are two must-have qualities for a writer.

Having written Flora Segunda previously, is working on Flora’s Dare any easier or just as difficult? How about the upcoming novel, Flora’s Fury?

Every novel is excruciating in its own way. I am great with characters and background details and horrible with plot, so stringing the plot together is always very hard. Flora’s Dare was difficult because I was trying to combine two novels into one. Flora’s Fury is hard because I didn’t have a plot in mind before I started, so I’m starting from scratch there, and plots are quite difficult for me. Plus, I had a baby seven months ago, and he is quite demanding of my time and focus!

Since you’ve written both short stories and novels, which format are you more comfortable with? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?

I hate writing short stories. And in fact, one could argue that I have only written one true short story--the rest of my stories are novellas. I like to write long, it takes me a while to build up characters and plot, so squeezing everything down is very difficult for me. I admire those writers who can do so much in a short space, but I fear I am not one of them.

What’s the most challenging aspect of writing for you?

Description. I admire writers who can conjure up gorgeous description fluidly and effortless. I hack hack hack away at my description. Often scenery is quite vividly pictured in my imagination, but comes out on the page very stilted, and this drives me crazy. I particularly admire writers who can write action. I’m terrible at action.

Any other projects you’re currently working on?

My husband, James Thomas, and I have been collaborating on a middle reader that is sort of a mash-up of Little Lord Fauntleroy (if he were a girl and much more sour) and Frankenstein. I’m also working on a novel length extension of the Hardhands/Tiny Doom stories. But before I can finish those, I have to finish my biggest project to date: getting my son to sleep through the night so I am not quite as exhausted during the day!

Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum throughout Alaska, Spain, Mexico, Arizona, and Elsewhere. After training as a military historian, Ysabeau turned to fiction when the truth no longer compared favorably to the shining lies of her imagination. Her stories have been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and various anthologies. Her work has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Andre Norton Award, and been short-listed for the Tiptree Award.

Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
When Ysabeau is not writing, she drinks cappuccinos and reads trashy nineteenth century novels, waiting for inspiration to strike again. She currently resides in the Midwest, with her husband, a cheese-swilling financier, and a border collie named Bothwell. They do not have a Butler. You may also find her at her blog.

Jeffrey Ford 2009

2009-08-25T11:53:00-06:00

Jeffrey Ford is nominated for his short story “The Dreaming Wind.”

Before we discuss your career as a writer, I am curious about your other job, that of being a professor. In what ways has being a professor influenced your views of the world and its people? Have you found yourself ever taking a situation in the classroom and incorporating elements of it into your fiction?

Teaching has been its own journey that sometimes intersects with my journey as a writer. I enjoy it. I’ve been teaching for 25 years now, 22 of it teaching at least five courses a semester, two semesters a year, with anywhere from 75 to a 100 students, a lot of them writing a lot. In that time I’ve met thousands of people, helped some of them with their writing, gotten some of them into Early American Literature, listened, did way too much talking, and learned a great deal. Two important things I learned from teaching are: 1) If you let them, people will surprise you. 2) Even though it is not always evident, most young people have a desire to be successful, not necessarily in a monetary sense but in doing something worthwhile with their lives. Figuring out how to recognize that in each individual is the job of teaching. I’ve had much success in this, but can also recall, realizing too late, total failures on my part that I can never seem to shake no matter how many years go by. The people I work with are, to a person, all very cool. Brookdale Community College, where I teach, has stubbornly retained its sense of humanity over the years through the efforts of all. Not a bad gig, if you have to work.

Very cool! I’ve been a teacher myself for most of the past 10 years and I agree wholeheartedly with what you said there. I recently read your short story “The Honeyed Knot” and I felt a special attachment to that story because of how it seemed to intersect the personal and professional lives of a teacher. Have you written other stories that came close to touching upon what you’ve experienced as a teacher over the years?

There’s one other very brief story in my recent collection, “Ariadne’s Mother.” I’d like to write more fiction about my experiences teaching, but I’m torn in doing so. To write this kind of stuff, I’d have to base it on real-life experiences—it’s the way I know that I could get the most out of the subject—otherwise it would come across cliche. There are elements in the real world of the classroom and teacher/student interactions that are compelling but, like dreams, seem lame if faked. On the one hand, using the stuff of my students’ lives, even with names changed, seems somehow morally wrong. On the other hand, as a writer, I feel I need to express myself, my experiences of the world, that I have an intrinsic right to and that that should ultimately top all concerns. So I’m kind of stuck in the middle, and though there are at least a solid dozen stories I could tell (some of them genuinely weird or supernatural), and a hundred more I could develop, I don’t know. Perhaps when I retire I’ll put it all together in a novel.

I would love to read that if you ever do decide to do that. Your response raises another interesting question: Is there a “fourth wall” to writing, especially that of an autobiographical story, that would be transgressive to breach, or are limits more a matter of each individual writer’s comfort zones and not that of a societal one?

In a general sense, the fourth wall is an illusion. There is no fourth, third, second or first wall. These are limitations writers willingly place upon their fiction. The restriction of not breaking the fourth wall can result in some terrific fiction. I’ve seen where China Miéville says that by breaking the fourth wall it disrupts the flow of the story and is really only there to show the reader that the writer is above mere story-telling and is wanting to prove that he/she is clever and ironic. This is certainly the case sometimes, but there are times when the dissolution of the fourth wall can actually work to involve the reader more deeply in the fiction. I’m thinking of Prospero’s speech at the end of The Tempest, and certain meta-fictional devices of stories within stories or fictional narrators telling stories as in The Turn of the Screw and The King’s Indian, and the documents in The House of Leaves, and the scholarship of Pale Fire etc., etc., etc. In reality there are no rules for good fiction writing. Name a rule and there is always an instance that controverts it. Adhering to any self-imposed rule can result in a kind of “happy accident,” as in the employment of the stricter poetical forms. For whatever reason Miéville sets this limitation upon his work, it does result in compelling and powerful fiction, but his is only one facet of the argument.

What you’re asking about is a fourth wall concerning autobiographical material in a story. I’ve long since gotten over the fear of revealing things about myself, but I do hold back sometimes when it comes to writing about something someone close to me might recognize as an unflattering portrait of themselves or a recounting of something they’d done or said. In short, I’m afraid that it might hurt their feelings. Usually this concern only surfaces when it comes to people who are very close to me and I care deeply about. Even this, though, is a form of writerly cowardice. It’s important for the fiction writer to be able and willing to go anywhere. This said, there is also something important about being empathetic. So you weigh these things out. Often, I’ll build up the courage over time to tell a story I would feel some initial apprehension to. On other occasions Time, itself, will mitigate the problem and the story will be more accessible to me. Being blatant about things in fiction is not always the best policy. At times, it’s better and more effective to subsume the incident or character more deeply in the fiction. As Emily Dickinson said, she liked to tell things slant-wise. I use the autobiographical technique not so much to reveal things about myself and others, but because I think it’s a useful tool for conveying a story. Readers assume quite a bit that when I use the word “I” I’m writing about my real life. I have to remind them that there is a reason they call it Fiction. But that’s both the drawback and the beauty of it.

In reading your comments in regards to the differences between the “I” of fiction and that of real life, I am reminded of the closing line in Umberto Eco’s Baudolino, where Baudolino says, “You surely don’t believe you’re the only writer of stories in this world. Sooner or later, someone - a greater liar than Baudolino - will tell it.” How much truth is there in that statement about writers and the fiction they produce?

What, you mean that someone else will come along and tell your story better than you have? Not so. What will happen is someone will come along and tell their story better than you told your story, or in a manner more fitting the time, or appealing to a certain group, and that fiction will be in the ascendancy. No one can tell your story but you. Two writers can use a similar plot, the same character names, settings, try even to affect a similar style, but they can never write each other’s story. That’s the one thing that new writers need to remember when conceiving a plot. A lot of times they’ll get stuck on the fact that someone’s already used their idea in a well known fiction. So say they want to write a story where an individual sees himself and is followed by his double, who interferes with his life. Let’s see, you’ve got The Double, William Wilson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Prince and the Pauper, etc., etc. There are hundreds of double stories, and I can think, off hand, of at least 20 great ones. You mean to tell me there isn’t the possibility of another double story that could be interesting and worth reading? It all depends on how you tell your double story. The great recent example of this is the film, Let the Right One In. Anyone in their right mind would think that Vampire stories would have been generally staked in the heart and buried in consecrated earth, but along comes this new Vampire story with an idiosyncratic stamp on it that does its part in keeping vampires interesting. It’s not the vampires, per say, that make the story interesting, it’s the story tellers vision of the vampires that is important. No one else can tell your story the way you would.

Well, I was thinking more about the bit about writers being “liars,” but you raise an excellent point in regards to “originality.” What is “originality” to you?

Nothing can be 100% non-derivative, of course, but I guess for something to say here, I’d say that originality has to do with the power of the writer’s personal vision, the depth with which you experince the characters, the setting or the plot. It is also tied to craft in that you’ve got to know how to render that vision as clearly as possible so that the reader experiences it nearly as powerfully as you do. I always use the word “idiosyncratic” when discussing fiction writing. My students make fun of me for using it so often, but I can’t think of another one that sums up the nature of the type of vision I’m getting at. There is something integral about the writer’s psyche or personality that is at the core of the fiction, and I’m not talking here about some autobiographical aspect, but (and here’s another lousy word for what I mean) the spirit behind the creation of the fiction.

What led you to decide that writing was the profession or perhaps avocation for you? Was there a single “ah-ha!” moment, or was there a more gradual shift from whatever career aspirations you might have had until then?

I don’t remember a single moment when I decided I wanted to write, I just always wanted to write. I suppose it was from the earliest times I’d had books read to me. All of the adults in my life, when I was a kid, my grandparents and parents, were big readers. When my father read novels to my brother and I when we were very young, the experience of seeing the story in my head was powerful. I wanted to be able to do that. I never thought of doing anything else in my life, and as it turns out I’m not much good for anything else. The teaching, though I’ve always tried to do a good job and have enjoyed the students, is a necessity of survival. Writing comes second only to my family.

What were some of the stories that your father read to you and your brother? Have you in turn read them or other stories to your own children?

He read Stevenson (Kidnapped) and Kipling (the Jungle Books were awesome), the stories of Chekov, Oscar Wilde, Ryder Haggard (She). He’d bought this set of books at a flea market, all red bound, called The World’s Greatest Literature. 25 books for something like around 15 dollars. He read those to us. Like I’ve said before, I was the only kid on my block who knew who Theophile Gautier was. There were a lot of stirring renditions of the poems of Tennyson. When it came to reading to my own kids, we did Frog and Toad, Doctor Dolittle, dozens of Goosebumps, The Mushroom Planet Books, Curious George (he’s a pisser), and later I read them The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, The Narnia Books, The Baron in the Trees. Eventually they both got fed up with me reading to them and did their own. My younger son, though, this school year, his senior year in high school, had to do a paper on a British author. He chose Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows. I told him I’d never read Wind in the Willows and had always wanted to, and he asked me if I wanted to read it to him for old time’s sake. So I read it out loud to him over a period of three or four nights, and we both dug the characters and the story. The writing is great. After that, months went by, and one day, remembering the story of Ratty and Mole, I remembered what a pleasure reading it aloud had been, and I realized that by his letting me read it, he’d given me a wonderful gift.

Although I’m not a father, when I taught sixth grade, I used to read historical myths from all sorts of civilizations aloud to the students and they loved it. It seems there still is a fascination with the spoken word in our society, based on the growing popularity of audiobooks and podcasts. Which stories, if any, of yours have been told via these formats?

I’ve had no novels and only a handful of stories committed to audio. I like the format. It does matter who the reader is, because just the tone of a reader’s voice can change the experience of the story. I listen to audio books all the time on my monumental drive to work and back (nearly two hours each way). The stories of mine that are on audio are “Creation,” which came out on an audio version of a Best of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction anthology. I’ve never seen the actual audio book, but was sent a copy of just my story by Gordon Van Gelder when it came out. The reading of the story wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t crazy about it. I’m kind of particular when it comes to this stuff. Reading one of these things successfully, I’ll admit, seems to me as though it would be very difficult. The others are—“The Dreaming Wind,” “The Annals of Eelin-Ok,” and “The Dream of Reason.” Tony Smith at Starship Sofa is currently turning the story, “The Empire of Ice Cream,” into audio and that should be available at his site before too long. Tony’s got a great treasure trove of audio fiction at his site as do the folks at Podcastle. The story, “The Dreaming Wind,” has been read for audio three different times by different readers. Two versions are at Podcastle and one is at Starship Sofa. “The Dream of Reason” will appear in an audio Year’s Best from Audiotext pretty soon. Haven’t heard that reading. Of the readings at Starship Sofa and Podcastle, I think they are all quite good. I am partial to the audio interpretations of my work done by Rajan Khanna. Others may like the Paul Tevis and Larry Santoro readings better. Like I said, they are all wonderful. Rajan’s approach and the tone of the telling, though, really appeal to me, personally. I’d love to someday have a publisher pay him to do an audio CD of my stories, especially the YA ones. I’d also like to be rich and good looking.

What about mixed audio/visual presentation? Ever think that might catch on with the reading public? Do you envision your stories working in that format?

You mean movies? I’d be interested in that Hollywood cash, to tell you the truth, but so far my phone’s not ringing off the hook. Would it excite me artistically? It probably would to see my characters before me on the screen. Plays have been done of some of my work, and seeing them was interesting and affecting. There’s nothing like this kind of “presentation” of fiction, taking it out of the individual reader/author format, for the potential to see a story in a new light. There have been vague rumblings from time to time from film makers and production companies concerning my fiction. It presents itself and then soon evaporates. What can you do? On the other hand, if they don’t make movies inspired by my fiction they can’t make shitty movies inspired by my fiction. Sometimes I see a film that has been inspired by a book, and it does interesting things with the source material, becomes a work of art in its own right, but that usually isn’t the case. In most cases the original text is used as a roadmap instead of an opportunity to play.

Good point about film adaptations, but what I meant to ask (and worded it poorly) was about your take on things such as “story remixes” that Cory Doctorow and others have pushed for the past few years that would allow authors and other artists to warp and twist the notion of a story beyond something that is just spoken or just written, but which would combine elements of both to create fiction of a different sort. Do you think there’ll be a viable market for that in the near future?

What the hell. If people enjoy creating it, go for it. Whether there’ll be a market for it is sort of beside the point. There eventually was a market for Burroughs’ cut up novels. This stuff doesn’t strike me as particularly “new” but if it wears that badge now all the better.

You have had six novels and three short fiction collections appear in wide-release in the past 12 years. Which consumes more of your time on average, working on the short fiction or working on a novel?

I think it balances out to almost even. Usually when I’m working on a novel, I don’t write many stories and the novels take me about nine months to write. The other times, when I’m not immersed in novel writing, I write stories. It’s hard to calculate because some stories take years to write, some take years to contemplate and decide just how to tell them. There is a different head required for each of these pursuits. I wish I could describe the difference, but like a lot of things I thought I was sure about with writing, this is one of those things that I’ve realized lately I really can’t express. I hate this question, not because it’s a bad question, but because I usually give a bad answer.

Speaking of the “different head” required for novels and short stories, I have noticed that your last three novels have taken place in specific historical periods (1890s, 1930s, 1960s) in the New York/Long Island area. Was there an extensive amount of research involved for The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year? If so, did the research initiate the stories, or did they affect the narratives after you had begun the writing process?

You’re on to me. You might be the only person to ever mention this to me, but yes, it’s no mistake that all of these stories take place on and around Long Island. I wanted to write a kind of thematically connected series of mysteries that, subtly, in the background, chart the history of this area. I want to write a contemporary mystery and also one that takes place in the old days, involving the European settlers and Native Americans. That’s for the future maybe. Now, I’m angling toward something more fantastic.

Are you far enough along that you could give a brief description about that “something more fantastic”?

I’ll take the fifth here and we’ll see what happens. I do have a new group of stories that could constitute a 4th collection. There would be 17 to 20 stories, and I’m considering calling Crackpot Palace. Quite a few of the stories have yet to appear yet in their original anthologies, so if this book does see publication (fingers crossed, it won’t be for a while. The stories I speak of will be showing up in a number of different venues over the next year or so.

Your first novel, Vanitas, was published in 1988. Almost ten years went by before your next books, The Well-Built City trilogy, were released. What changes, if any, occurred in your approach to writing during that time?

Forget my approach to writing, what happened is I had two sons. I spent a lot of time with them, reading to them, playing crazy games, and walking for hours with them in this double stroller we had, checking out the world. This was where it was at. I didn’t have time to write novels then, but I continued to write. I focused my attention on writing short stories. I wrote a bunch of them at night, after everybody was finally asleep. I was tired, but it was a blast. Occasionally, I’d sell one. I was sending more realistic stories to literary journals and obviously fantastic stories to genre magazines. During this time, two things happened as far as writing. I finally got the notion to combine the two types of stories I was writing. Not exactly genius—all revelations for me came slowly as far as writing went. Once I did that, though, I started publishing a lot more stories. I have to say that the genre magazines were much more accepting of my hybrids than the lit. magazines, and it seemed to me at the time, much more willing to take a chance with something either structurally or thematically different. The other thing I finally realized was the beauty of revision. Revision went from being a theoretical concept to an integral part of the creation of the stories. That personal discovery was thrilling to me. Every story is a combined creation of both the (and I wish I had better terms to describe this) conscious and the subconscious. They’re both important to crafting a good piece, but it’s essential that they both have the story’s best interest at heart and are willing to relinquish ground to one another when it is called for. A big part of learning to write fiction is getting to a point where you can feel their allegiance or lack thereof to the story. Still, mistakes are often made. What can I say?

I have two follow-up questions to this, as you raise some interesting points. First, in regards to the literary/genre publications: You note that the genre magazines seemed to be more willing to experiment with your literary hybrids. Is this still the case, or have you seen a greater willingness by lit journals to publish stories that incorporate fantastic imagery and motifs?

At the time I was referring to, the lit. magazines were heavily focused on “realism.” It wasn’t just my stuff they weren’t interested in. Remember, we’re talking about the mid to late 80’s, and that was pre-Chabon, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Lethem. In other words, it just wasn’t “Literarily” cool enough to have a story infused with the fantastic. Granted, they may not have wanted my stories because they were just flat out shitty stories, but I read a lot of the lit. magazines then, and I rarely saw a speculative story in any of them. Back in the late 70’s, when I was in college, the fantastic in “Literature” was business as usual—Pynchon, Barth, Barthelme, Coover, Carter, Gardner, Marquez. This whole thing seemed to re-emerge not too long ago with the advent of some of the writers mentioned above. Add Kelly Link to that list. All terrific writers. I think Chabon has done more toward bridging the bullshit divide between “genre” and “literary” than just about anyone recently. Still, people love those categories and camps. They can’t live without them. When I wrote The Physiognomy, it was sold as a “literary novel,” but it tanked like the Lusitania. The genre readers and reviewers revived it and gave it a life. Still, there was a lot of resistance to talk of hybrids of genre and literary techniques and concerns within the genre. I put my ideas about this in a letter to Locus Magazine as a response to a letter Rob Chilson wrote in which he defined what Fantasy and Science Fiction are. I thought his definitions were comically constrictive and really kind of reactionary. My letter got me little love from the genre stalwart. Funny thing is, just a couple years later, the stuff I was talking about was all the rage. This was right around the time Kelly Link’s work had begun to be recognized and Jeff VanderMeer’s. These writers, and a lot of others were all blending different genres (fantasy, horror, mystery, science fiction) and traditional genre concerns and techniques with those from what had always been labeled “literary.” It’s not that other writers hadn’t been doing this stuff forever. Avram Davidson, Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, Lucius Shepard, Carol Emshwiller, to name only a few, it’s just that a pronounced interest in it seems to re-emerge for a brief time among readers and reviewers, and then it slips back down again. Right now, it seems to me that the genre is going through a period where it is pulling back toward its center, away from these hybrids, becoming more conservative, more emphasis on tradition in both science fiction and fantasy. Horror/Dark Fantasy, on the other hand, seems to be pushing the boundaries and blending styles more these days than its cousins. This might be as a result of economics or maybe the print to electronic evolution we are in the middle of or just part of a natural cycle. It might be for the better or worse. Who knows? These are merely my perceptions of a certain time. I’ll grant I could have gotten it all wrong.

Secondly, when revising a story, is there a gestation (perhaps digestion might be more suitable?) period between story conception, initial draft, and revision, or do these things vary based on the story being told?

All this varies greatly with each story. The story, “The Way He Does It,” was 15 years old before I finally finished revising it and selling it to John Klima for Electric Velocipede. “Giant Land,” another story took a solid decade. Then there is “The Trentino Kid,” which I wrote and revised in two days and sold to Ellen Datlow for the anthology, The Dark. Stories each have an idiosyncratic personality, some take forever to get right, some (rarely) come full blown with very little revision needed, and some, although they are published, with multiple chances at further revision for publication through their inclusion in anthologies, you can never get right, even though it seems like readers have no problem with them. As far as the conception part goes, it’s about the same. I have all manner of pieces of stories in different states of completion on my computer and in a filing drawer. I have to wait for quite a while some times before the path to proceed becomes clear to me. Ellen Datlow gave me a wonderful piece of advice back when I started out. She said, “Whatever you do, don’t throw anything away.” What usually happens with a story is that I’ll have the initial idea, and it will excite me, but then in trying to write it it will seem too complicated for me to get down. A point will come, though, sometimes completely out of the blue, where the way to proceed with a story that has seemed too complicated will instantly, for whatever reason, suddenly seem simple. The path is clear and I can then travel it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but are there then “wrong times” for the “right idea” for a story?

Didn’t Dr. John do that song? Absolutely. You have a story you’re writing, and it seems like it should work, but at the moment, it doesn’t move you. Three weeks from now, it might. That’s what I was describing above sort of. The ideas for the stories don’t change, but your head about how to go about writing them might some day. When it comes to you and things all of a sudden fall into place, you realize the “rightness” of the idea and finish it.

How has the growth of online fiction markets, from the late Sci Fiction to current e-zines like Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons, affected the market for short fiction? Have you noticed an appreciable difference in the SF short fiction market in terms of overall quality or willingness to experiment as a result of the emergence of these e-zines?

Is there a willingness to experiment? I don’t know if “experiment” is the appropriate word. There does seem to be a willingness to take serious the work of new fiction writers with divergent styles. Strange Horizons has been doing this for quite a while, and I think Clarkesworld, under the editorial leadership of Nick Mamatas and now Kathy Sedia, has done a terrific job of this as well. These are the two most obvious examples, but there are many more. I’ve remained interested over the years in what’s going on in the smaller magazines and e-zines. I read, when I can, the stories and articles, and at times get a story accepted by one of them. I keep an eye on them with a writer’s sensibility as well as that of a reader. This phenomenon is one of the great strengths of the field. A lot of the writers you find in these magazines, you will soon find on the shelves at your local book store, and the stuff you can’t find at the book store can be found in these magazines. I wouldn’t say that the work here is generally better or worse than in the major magazines, but I think it needs to be considered as part of a larger whole, incorporating all of the venues. When you look at it that way, the speculative short fiction field seems vibrant.

As I re-read your fiction in preparation for this interview, I remember noting that many of the fictions that I enjoyed best used first-person point of view. Do you find it easier to tell a story in first-person, or is there something else involved in the choice of narrative approach?

I guess I like the first person for novels, because I like to inhabit the main character, to experience the fiction more directly as it unfolds. If you have a good character that the reader is interested in following, usually what the character assumes, the reader assumes (until they learn not to). The first person character, for me, effortlessly assumes the reality of the world of the story. In the writing, you can impart a lot more information with a lot less effort from a first person point of view. Some people feel third person is superior. It may be, but that’s not my story. I use third person in short stories quite a bit now, usually ironically. There’s something about the third person that has about it the air of “the expert,” which seems ridiculous to me; a certain distance. Is the third person ever anything but the first person tricked out in godly robes? I’m reminded of The Wizard of Oz (the film and the individual played by Frank Morgan). Behind the show of the flaming omniscience is a kind of goofy confidence man. It’s more realistic that the reader not know the inner thoughts and feelings of all characters they’ll meet or the back story on every element of a narrative. The unknowing aspect of the first-person adds a verisimilitude to the experience. I prefer wandering errantly through worlds than being confined to the panopticon. Another concern I always see about first-person characters is that if the story is being told from their point of view, you usually know their ultimate fate at the end of the novel, unless, of course, the writer is pulling a Sunset Boulevard. Not having this at your disposal, as a writer, could be a problem in a given instance, but there’s a lot, beside death, that can happen in life and is interesting to write and read about.

Your last comment about there being a lot more than death that can happen in life that can be interesting to read and write about reminds me of something else that I’ve observed about your novels (the short stories to a lesser extent): They tend to be episodic, with conclusions, but not the Big Conclusion of someone’s life ending at the end of the story. That sense of there being “something else” that might happen in the characters’ lifes after the final curtain is drawn, is that something that you’ve consciously aimed for in your novels, or did it just result from the demands of each individual story?

I have to be true to the lives of my characters. Rarely in life does it all come together in an amazing crescendo of completion and closure. I got some criticism for this on The Shadow Year, basically because everything wasn’t sufficiently explained. The character at the heart of the story remained uncertain about a lot of stuff in his life. Shit, there’s aspects of my own life from my early teens that I’m still trying to grapple with and figure out. You’d have to be one supremely psychologically well-adjusted motherfucker to not have any lingering doubts, wonderments, questions about your childhood. So if that’s the way it is in life, why should my character be expected to figure it all out by the end of the novel? I’ll have to write a book where that character spends the entire novel on the couch of a shrink, maundering over his doubts and at the end, as not to disappoint, he’ll put a bullet in his head for a heart breaking finality, tying things up neat and sweet. I like the endings you describe that hint that, yes, the reality of the fiction, the lives of the character, goes on. I really like the endings in a lot of Japanese novels, like Diary of a Mad Old Man by Tanizaki or the novels of Jonathan Carroll. Sometimes, not often, a perfection of closure, all ends being neatly tied up, seems right, and when you can get it and it feels honest, that’s cool. But a lot of times when writers go for it, you can feel the strings being pulled, the marionettes being manipulated, in the lead up to it and the fiction is compromised in order to get it.

That desire for “closure” by many readers, could that be attributed to certain formulae that have been used by storytellers for years, or is there something else to it?

I think it’s the influence of sit-com pacing and Hollywood story telling more than anything. I can think of more novels in which that kind of neat “closure” isn’t offered than I can ones where it is. God forbid some reader might wonder about the fiction beyond the confines of the book’s cover or that the character be unsure at the end of a story. The Japanese novelist, Tanizaki, is a master of original endings in books like The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man. The endings are like whispers and their abruptness has a devastating effect. I also admire the ending of Jonathan Carroll’s The Wooden Sea. That book is so not a conventional novel. If you approach it as a conventional novel, especially concerning structure, and not on its own terms, it’s going to be confusing and disappointing, but if you are willing to forgo expectation of convention, you’ll see the book is a creature unto itself that elicits a powerful emotional response as well as ideas.

This raises another question: What exactly is a “conventional” story and why do you think it evolved to the point where many readers expect all stories to follow those prescribed forms?

I suppose the parameters for a “conventional” story are ever shifting, but in the readership as a whole, I would think there are certain aspects of story that are generally expected at certain points in the history of literature. Linearity is a big favorite. I’ve enjoyed writing stories that aren’t linear ("Pansolapia," “In the House of Four Seasons,” “The Bedroom Light,” “A Few Things About Ants"), but I have to say the general consensus isn’t strongly in favor of them. A lot of readers want to always have their expectations fulfilled. Hey, that’s what they want. Nothing wrong with that. Then there are other readers who feel let down if they get exactly what they expected. I just write the stories as they come to me. If you write them good, they’ll usually find at least a few appreciative readers. As a reader, though, I can tell when the writer is breaking with convention, and I usually like that. There comes a point, though, or I guess it is tied to the manner in which the writer tells the story, where it can get boring or too dissonant, and then I lose the fictional world and I might as well be reading the back of the cereal box. If the writer can somehow manage to keep a hold of the reader when entering strange new territory then that can be some of the most exciting reading. At this point I have no idea what I’m talking about.

You’ve already named in passing some of the authors whose stories have had an impact on you. What authors have you read recently that you would hold up to readers and say, “Damn! This book is worth reading!”?

I really liked that Wild Nights! Joyce Carol Oates book. A subtle approach to what could have been very heavy handed, with nice atmospherics and creepy effects. The juxtaposition, or I should say blending, of realism and the fantastic is seamless. And, I have to hand it to her, she really kicks Hemmingway’s ass. Mark Twain comes across as such a weird creep. None of them comes out the other side unscathed, but that’s part of the fun of it. It reminded me in some respects (the dream-like quality of the stories) of The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. It was more reserved, though, perhaps due to the length of the pieces as opposed to a novel. That’s not to say it was better or worse, but just something else in the long run. The White Hotel is a truly unique reading experience. I’d say that’s a terrific one to check out. Another writer whose work I discovered some years ago but keep returning to is Alvaro Mutis. His novellas about Maqroll, the gaviero, collected now in one edition put out by NYRB, is a must read. I keep thinking about this horror novel put out by Vertical Press, Strangers by Taichi Yamada. It’s not just a ghost story, it’s a haunted story—more than just scary, which at times it is, but the whole thing has that overwhelming sense of not rightness that great horror does. It gets you where you live. A couple of fairly recent suggestions from fellow writers have turned out to be excellent. Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis, suggested by Jeff VanderMeer and Blood Sport by Robert P. Jones, suggested by Michael Swanwick.

You’ve mentioned several non-English language authors in passing during the course of this interview. Do you think there’ll be a time when foreign genre fiction will become very visible and influential here in the United States or in the British market?

I think foreign genre fiction is already influential with readers and writers in the US. The problem is we’re usually only seeing works that are older. That’s not to say that these are not worthwhile—they most certainly are, but I’d love to see the contemporary stuff. There are so many US novels translated each year overseas, and I’m not knocking that as I appreciate both the readership and the dough, but there are so few books translated into English on our side. It’s not fair, but that’s beside the point. It’s a product of America’s sense of manifest destiny, and it denies us the possibility of joining the rest of the world through the dialogue of literature. The US could do a great thing and put aside a billion or so—come on, you know that’s chump change in a time when we’re talking hundreds of trillions—and set about translating literature from all over the world. I love reading books from authors of other countries. I know no translation is perfect and that some will be flat out bad, but even if I was smart enough to learn Japanese on my own and read Tanizaki, I wouldn’t have time to also learn Arabic and read Mahfouz and Portuguese and read Amado. It all goes back to the Tower of Babel and that malicious prank God played on us. I have a friend who is a translator. She’s Japanese and translates from her native language into English and back. It seems like incredibly hard work. I think everybody could benefit by making contemporary literature more universally accessible.

In the novels and authors you list above, are there any perceived characteristics that make these novels, whether read in translation or in their original languages, somehow “different” from what you might find in an Anglo-American story? Or are there more similarities in story structure, thematic elements, characterization, etc.?

I’d say the aspects of structure and characterization are fairly similar to what I read in Anglo-American work. Occasionally you’ll read something like Amos Tutuola’s Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle, and although it is ostensibly in English, the structure of the story and the language will be influenced by the culture of the writer. It’s difficult with Tutuola, though, at least for me, in that I’m not sure how much of what I perceive as a difference is cultural or his unique, personal form of expression. What I enjoy about translation are both those moments of likeness and unlikeness. The things that are different are the cultural surroundings, the details of the place, the interesting anecdotes that are novel and exotic. I get to learn what it is like to be someone who lives in another part of the world I may never get to visit. It expands my world view. It engenders understanding and sunders, to an extent, that overshadowing illusion that is life in contemporary America fostered by our media and our government—all for the price of a paperback book. Man, that’s a deal everyone should take advantage of. On the other hand, I always find instances in these books where I find a shared humanity with the characters and through them the writer. For instance, I’m right now reading a book by a Muslim warrior/poet and anthologist/royal advisor from the 1100’s, who lived and wrote during the time of the Crusades—The Book of Contemplation by Usama Ibn Munqidh. The book is a compilation of anecdotes about the battles he participated in, the political intrigue of the area, everyday life, moral, religious, and political philosophy, etc. Usama’s got the stories to tell, and he’s got a sense of humor. In one part of the book, he’s relating his take on the honesty or lack thereof of one of his contemporaries and says of him, something to the effect of, “That guy is so crooked, he’d steal a loaf of bread from his own house.” I cracked up. It’s a line I could imagine Rodney Dangerfield having used in his comedy act. Just one small instance, but right then, across vast distances of time and space, cutting right through cultural differences, etc., I felt a real closeness to this writer. I got a glimpse of his humanity. That kind of experience really widens your world.

Many readers of SF like to pick up on literary trends. Whether it be New Wave, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, New Weird, or something else, fans seem to want some sort of “movement” to hang their hats on and to speculate about. What are your thoughts about “movements?” Is there anything that you’d care to speculate in regards to such things, even they in fact exist?

Some people have a good time with this bullshit, in which case, I say let it roll. I think for readers it’s vaguely useful as well in that they can discover new writers through it and find writers doing work that might be in some way similar to what they’ve liked in the past. It’s also a way to sell yourself as a writer. Like now, for some reason Steampunk is back, staggering around the ring. You know there are ready readers for it, so jump on it and write a steampunk book. You might catch the wave, get people interested in your fiction and cash in. You might not, though, too. I think the zombie thing is pretty shot by now. Science Fiction writers squeezed that singularity deal for all it was worth, and from what I see they’re still at it. Writers can use these appellations to distinguish themselves. Readers like that. It’s best if you can invent your own movement—then you are whatever...Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Beethoven’s Last Movement. I’ve been in anthologies devoted to Slipstream, The New Weird, Steampunk. I have a very poor grasp of what any of them, as movements, mean. I suppose, in the end, they are just constructs through which one can view and sell literature. I don’t think they’re essential, but a lot of people like them.

Would it be safe to say that current literary trends are more akin to re-explaining the literary wheel, or are there certain changes being introduced each time a “movement” emerges?

I suppose it would be “safe” to say that, but these appellations are very vague and a lot of times don’t stand up under close scrutiny. For a while I’d see my name along with those of Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer, and China Mieville in articles talking about New Weird. If you really look closely at the writing each of us does, I don’t think there is much of a similarity in the kinds of fiction we write with the exception of the fact that it is “speculative.” So it may be a re-explaining of sorts, but what it really is is a replacement of one inadequate taxonomy with another.

One final question: If Roland Barthes were somehow to be alive and in front of you today and started talking about the “Death of the Author,” what would be your response to him?

Ooo, Roland Barthes. I feel like Joseph Cotten in The Third Man (his character a writer of Westerns) when that reporter asks him, “And what, sir, do you think of Mr. James Joyce?” I don’t know if I’d say anything to Barthes, as his program is about reading, not writing. So basically, I don’t give a damn. People should read any way they want. I’ll say one thing for old Roland, though, he was a shrewd customer. In his Death of the Author deal he is about negating the influence of the “authority” of the author (her intentions, her biography, her utterances) on the interpretation of a given work. By disavowing the author the reader becomes the authority on the text. All well and good, but among readers, the critic has a certain culturally perceived authority, therefore leaving the critic the ultimate authority. Spoken like a true critic. Nice work if you can get it. The idea is that the “language” of the text is everything, and nothing outside the primary text should have a bearing on interpretation. This then establishes the reader, for all intent and purpose, as the “author” of the text, and since we are disavowing authors, the reader must then disavow herself. The noble thing about the post-modernist critical agenda is its attempt to deconstruct the sway of Western hegemony. The problem I have with it is the belief among many of its practitioners that the everyday reader doesn’t have the wherewithal to sort these ideas out for himself, that the reader is not making intellectual choices about how they want to read and interpret a text, or that their choice or mode of interpretation is in some way wanting. There’s a definite aspect of elitism to it. I’m reminded of a quote by Thoreau (approximate)—“If I knew someone was coming to my house to do me some good, I’d run in the other direction as fast as possible.” For how long had post-modernist criticism been the “authority” in academia? That said, I very much enjoy the ideas at play in this critical milieu, and it’s fun to think through them. The texts I like most are the essay, “The Detective and the Boundary” by William Spanos and the books of Michel Foucault (not so much for the overall philosophy but more for the anecdotes and tidbits of info I can steal for a story).

Jeffrey Ford is the author of The Well Built-City Trilogy from Golden Gryphon Press, and stand alone novels The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl In The Glass, The Shadow Year from Harper Collins. His three short story collections are: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life. Ford has the following stories forthcoming in anthologies—“Ganesha” in The Beastly Bride (Viking), “The Coral Heart” in Eclipse #3 (Night Shade Books), “Down Atsion Road” in Haunted Legends (TOR), “Daddy Long Legs of the Evening” in Naked City (St. Martins), “Daltharee” in Best American Fantasy 3 (Underland).

Larry Nolen is a history and English teacher who has taught for most of the past ten years in Tennessee and Florida, in both public and private school settings. Fascinated with languages from an early age, he devotes much of his spare time to reading and translating interviews and articles from Spanish into English. Larry also has an unhealthy fascination with squirrels and dreams to one day edit an anthology of squirrel SF. His blog can be found at ofblog.blogspot.com.

Charles Coleman Finlay 2009

2009-08-18T01:57:00-06:00

Charles Coleman Finlay is nominated for his novella “The Political Prisoner.”

Authors, based on interviews that I’ve read and conducted, seem to be driven creatures. When was it that you realized that you just had to write stories?

I started drawing comics when I was 8 or 9 and writing stories shortly after that. In college, I wrote poetry and short stories, I drew comics and political cartoons, and had some very minor work published. But all in all, I was a dilettante. I daydreamed about being good at writing or art, but I wasn’t committed to doing the hard work. It wasn’t until I was almost 30, after my first son was born, that I decided to be serious about it.

You have to understand that my own father had wanted to be a painter but life had always gotten in the way. So there he was, struggling and in his 50s, when he won several million dollars in the lottery. Suddenly he had everything he needed, but he couldn’t seem to paint. He’d lost whatever spark he had. I looked at my own son and didn’t want to end up the same way. I didn’t want to be telling him “Go pursue your dreams” when I had never chased my own.

I’m not a naturally gifted writer like so many of my friends, but I love story. Story is very important. Fiction or non-fiction, history or autobiography--story is the way we make sense out of our experience in the world. So I started working at the craft of story-telling, trying to become the best writer I could be.

Interesting life story there! You speak of your love of story and how you had to work at the craft of storytelling. What are some of the things about story crafting that you learned over the years?

Not to overthink it. Internalize the skills and then stop thinking consciously about them. If I can make the story visceral and immediate and meaningful, I want to do that and get out of the reader’s way.

Your first novel, The Prodigal Troll, evolved out of a novella, “A Democracy of Trolls,” that was first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. How did this story develop, from its initial novella form to its current state?

Actually, it worked the other way around. The novella was born of the novel. Back in 1999 or 2000--I forget now--Warner Aspect sponsored a first novel contest that was eventually won by my friend Karin
Lowachee for her amazing novel Warchild. I wrote a present tense fantasy novel about a young boy raised by trolls called A Democracy of Trolls. When I didn’t even make the finalists list with it, I started rewriting it into past tense and excerpting pieces as standalone stories, which were bought by Fantasy & Science Fiction and Black Gate. I’m vastly oversimplifying the story, but eventually Lou Anders got wind of the book and bought it for his debut line at Pyr. He insisted that I make some good changes, including the title. It was a much better book because of the extra revisions.

Interesting, as when I was reading it, I kept feeling as though it were a series of episodic stories tied into a whole. Didn’t know the original story started as a novel first. What sorts of changes did you make to the overall story once you decided to connect the excerpted pieces back into a unified novel?

The Prodigal Troll is an example of a story that I overthought. I wanted to create echoes of Tarzan and The Jungle Book with it, but structurally I also had in mind Daniel Defoe’s novel Captain Singleton, about a young boy who is kidnapped and raised by gypsies, makes a journey across Africa, and then ends up a pirate. So I wanted to show human society from the inside, and troll society from the inside, then explore Claye/Maggot’s inability to fit into either, and then his integration of traits from both cultures as he chooses his own path. I made revisions to emphasize those four distinct parts or phases of the book. The infant Claye/Maggot makes a journey out from the castle, and then returns place by place to the same scene where the book started, but transformed. I also wanted to critique the idea of the noble savage and fantasy’s fascination with nobility-as-heroes. And I was trying to do all that in the context of an entertaining adventure story.

Now I realize it was too much. For one thing, how many people have read Tarzan, The Jungle Book, *and* Captain Singleton? Some reviewers, like Rich Horton, seemed to get exactly what I was trying to do with the book. But for the most part, all the changes I made to emphasize the structure and themes seemed to get in the way of the adventure.

When I read The Prodigal Troll, I too got the Tarzan and The Jungle Book references, but being unfamiliar with that DeFoe work, I wouldn’t have made that connection. In your work since then, besides trying to avoid overthinking, what else has changed about how you approach telling a story?

I’ve tried to make my stories more direct and accessible. Many of my early stories were in conversation with the past, referring to or expanding on ideas or stories by other writers. I think a lot of science fiction is written in this vein, with authors counting on the fact that their readers have read certain other stories or novels that came before. The problem is that, as a culture, we have fewer and fewer pieces of shared written fiction. With “The Political Prisoner” or the Traitor to the Crown books I’ve tried to tell stories that stand alone and are immediate, that can be enjoyed by people whether they’re familiar with the past or not.

You are a member of the Blue Heaven writing group. What was the genesis of that group?

Back in 2003, I was trying to figure out how to make the transition from writing short stories to novels. A lot of my friends were in the same boat. Since we had a boat, we found an island.... Actually, the island found us. Another non-writing friend of mine, Marvin Robinson, owned a bed and breakfast called Himmelblau, or “Blue Heaven,” on Kelleys Island, this beautiful spot in Lake Erie. He had been after me to do a retreat there.

So I brought the two worlds together, and twelve of us spent a week’s retreat on the island critiquing each other’s books. The group that first year included Karin Lowachee, Christopher Barzak, Tobias Buckell, Paul Melko, M. Rickert, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and some other writers who ought to be just as well-known. We’ve been doing it almost every year since, the same core group of us, with new writers filling the empty spots. I’ve been lucky to work with and learn from some of the best young novelists of my generation that way--Paolo Bacigalupi, Daryl Gregory, Sandra McDonald, Tim Pratt, Sarah Prineas, Ian Tregillis, Catherynne Valente, Greg van Eekhout. The list goes on. The last time I counted, we’d sold twenty-five or thirty books.

Blue Heaven has made a huge contribution to my understanding of craft and of the business of writing. And it’s where my best friends are. It’s my favorite week of the year.

How would you describe the way each of you interacts with the others during this annual retreat? Is it akin to a traditional writing workshop, or are there other elements that go into the Blue Heaven retreat?

I wanted it to be like Damon Knight’s Milford workshops, but for novels, and I think that’s what it’s become. So in that sense, it’s very much like a traditional writing workshop. But it also requires a higher level of commitment: everyone reads eleven other first-fifties and at least two complete manuscripts. That’s more reading than for most workshop retreats, and we start preparing for it by mailing list a few months in advance.

We interact the way writers everywhere interact in my experience. We trade ideas about creativity and business, and have great conversations and tell great stories. The isolation creates a situation where we can focus on nothing but writing for a whole week. Most of us have other jobs, other responsibilities, so that immersion is something we look forward to.

Would it be fair to say that Blue Heaven, along with other writers’ retreats and workshops, helps writers not just with the mechanics of their writing, but with the social aspects that sometimes goes with being a published author?

Yes. It would be great to give you a longer, more complicated answer than that, but it’s not that complicated. As writers, we do most of primary work alone. The process takes so long that it takes years to build a body of personal professional experience. Workshopping not only alleviates the effects of isolation, but allows us to draw on the collective experience—successes and mistakes—of our peers. If you’re smart, and you get in with the right group of people, it can dramatically increase your creative and professional development as a writer. The downside is that, if you get with a group you’re not well matched with, it can really slow you down.

I have heard before that there is a major difference between writing short fiction and writing novels. Is there truth to this? Since you have published both short and long fiction, how does your approach vary in the planning and writing of each?

Short stories and novels are very different forms. I’ve written the rough draft of a story in one sitting, but I don’t think anybody has written a decent novel in one sitting. (Although saying that is like daring the internet to prove me wrong.) Short stories allow greater focus, placing a microscope on a single theme or idea. You can also have fun with style or voice without worrying about sustaining it past the point where it’s fun. From a practical perspective, at least for me, novels require greater pre-planning, more research, a plan for sustained writing effort, and so on. The basic unit of the story is the sentence, or maybe the paragraph. The basic unit of the novel is the page or scene. Novels need a much stronger through-arc, and at the same time greater variation in tone and content. You have to hit some of the beats harder, just so they stand out. And the climax has to reward the reader for marching 400 pages to reach it. I find I have to think about things on different scales as I write novels.

One of the criticisms I heard about The Prodigal Troll was that it felt like a fix-up novel, too episodic and meandering. A big part of that was because I was using short story skills to try to fix problems in the pacing and structure. When I started work on my new Traitor to the Crown series, I stopped writing short stories because I just don’t have the chops to jump back and forth as easily as some other writers do. It’s the same reason I stopped writing poetry when I started writing more fiction. I admire those writers who can make the quick and seamless transitions between different forms, but I’m not one of them. Now that I’ve turned in the third book to Del Rey, I’ve been working on some short stories while I outline and plan the next novel project. I love short stories, so ideally I’ll find a way to keep writing them.

How would you describe your prose style to potential readers who are unfamiliar with your work?

I strive to write simply and directly. When I use images or descriptive language, I want it to illuminate and add layers to the world-building or characters. I admire writers who can craft beautiful and moving descriptive prose, and at the same time keep the reader engaged with the story. But I’ve come to learn that’s not my strength.

Would you agree that style, whether it be ornate or a more “transparent,” plain style, is an essential part of the writing process? Which other authors’ styles have you admired most and who, if any, has influenced your prose writing?

Style = voice = what’s on the page. I don’t know how to separate them. But the writers I admire aren’t necessary the ones who’ve influenced my prose. These days, I seem to love writers whose styles aren’t anything like mine--Neal Stephenson, Patrick O’Brian, John LeCarre. Even someone like Naomi Novik, who’s also writing historical fantasy, has a very different voice and style. But if I tried to write like those authors I would sound like a bad imitation of someone else instead of myself. You have to learn what your strengths are and develop those to their fullest potential.

You mention a new trilogy of yours, Traitor to the Crown, that is forthcoming from Del Rey later this year. How would you describe the basic premise? Also, what lessons have you learned from your earlier writing that you incorporated into this trilogy?

Traitor to the Crown is a secret history of the American Revolution, where witches play a crucial role in the outcome of events. I was working as a research assistant on a history of the minutemen when I got to thinking about the connections between the Salem witchcraft trials and the first battles in and around Boston. So many things about the Revolution are still unexplained, starting with who fired the shot heard round the world. The books are about a young minuteman named Proctor Brown who has a hidden talent, and the way he’s drawn toward Deborah Walcott and her underground circle of Salem witches. Together, they change the course of the secret war for control of magic and the world while explaining many of those unsolved mysteries.

I’ve become a better writer over the past five years. The new books are more seamless, with the structure less visible and the adventure more prominent. The themes and the history are woven more smoothly into the narrative. My goal is to tell stories that keep people up all night reading the way my favorite books keep me up all night. I’ve still got room to improve, but I’m closer than I was before.

As a historian by training, I find the synopsis above to be very intriguing. What amount and type of research did you do while constructing the Traitor to the Crown trilogy?

Too much! I was already familiar with a lot of the history and the period from my own graduate school training and related work. So I was familiar with the minutemen, the major battles, and figures like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Betsy Ross. Then I read for the things that are, in Tim Powers’s words, “too cool not to use.” For example, in May 1780, near the end of the war, New England went completely dark in the middle of the day--not an eclipse, but no sun reaching the ground either. People at the time thought it was the end of the world, but it was largely forgotten as the war ended and time passed. Modern scientists have found explanations for it, but--if you’re writing a historical fantasy about the Revolution--you have to grab that and make it about the possible end of the world! There were so many events and people that tied into occult explanations that I couldn’t use them all. Then I did a lot of reading for the things that are too obvious too ignore--the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the version of the Bible that they read, the kinds of houses they lived in.

Interesting. In reading The Patriot Witch, I noticed the pains you went to tie in the characters and their actions with what was unfolding in the Boston area in April 1775. Were there times where you had to bend the “rules” a bit and have actual events take place in an altered time line in order to fit the story? Or did you find yourself having to change the story in order to make it fit in with the actual history to the smallest degree?

I tried not to alter the time line or bend the history. I worked hard to make sure that the historical figures were where in the right places at the right times, doing things that we know they did. With Proctor or the witches at The Farm outside Salem, I found the biggest problem was the need to cover periods of time where things didn’t happen. Phrases like “several days later” or “weeks later” were important throughout the series. In an invented story, I would have smashed events together and made them take place continuously without a break. By the time I got to the third book, it was a gift: Proctor needed to undergo some major changes, and this period of time between events that I wanted to connect was the perfect place for that to happen.

Your 2008 novella, “The Political Prisoner,” was recently announced as being a finalist for a Hugo Award. For readers wanting to know more about it, what would you say was the genesis for the story? Also, what theme or themes were you exploring there?

I went through a phase in college where I read concentration camp survivors like Tadeusz Borowski (This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman) and Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz), and, going further back, a Russian Jewish short story writer named Isaac Babel who served with the Cossack cavalry in the suppression of the Poles. The themes in those works—who counts as “human,” what are our obligations to strangers, how do we do right when all choices seem to lead to evil—resonate with me on a deep level. Science fiction is a great medium to explore those themes, because you can make the “non-humans” literally non- or (in this case) post-human. You can draw sharper lines around our obligations. You can move the setting off-earth to amplify and intensify the circumstances and their consequences. It’s like a laboratory for moral exploration.

But if I talk about it that way, it sounds like I’m overthinking things again! This novella is a sequel to “The Political Officer,” which was a Nebula and Hugo finalist in 2003. I started the new story before the first one was published. It took me six years and at least that many drafts to write because it took me that long to learn how to get out of the way and let the experience emerge directly on the page.

Are there any plans for writing more stories set in the world of “The Political Officer” and “The Political Prisoner”? What about the possibility of expanding either one or both of the novellas into full-length novels?

I’ve started a third Maxim Nikomedes novella, “Dukh and Strakh,” which takes place right after “The Political Prisoner,” and moves Max from his home on Jesusalem to the life of a political refugee on Adares, the home of the post-human camp survivors. It took me six years to write the last novella, so I don’t know how long it will take to write this one. It’s still gestating. The three novellas together, with some bridge material, form a single story arc, but I don’t know if there will be any interest in it as a novel. We’ll have to wait and see. I do know that I want to write more Max stories. I have a 30,000 word novella draft of Max as a child, before the civil war on his planet. It’s rough though, and the first part of a sequence of stories about his childhood. I won’t go back to it until after I finish “Dukh and Strakh.”

What are your future writing plans? Are there more short fiction or novel-length works due to be released after your Traitor to the Crown trilogy?

On the short fiction side, I have a Proctor Brown story I’m working on, the new Max novella, and half a dozen other stories in various stages of draft. But for the first time since around 2000, I don’t have any stories in inventory anywhere waiting to be published. These days I only work on short stories when they won’t leave me alone, when I love the character or idea so much I have to finish it. There are enough of those stories that I don’t worry about running out of things to write any time soon.

What I hope is that readers will like Traitor to the Crown enough that I can continue the story during the Civil War. With Mary Lincoln holding seances in the White House, William Mumler taking photographs of spirits on the battlefields, and missing Confederate gold, I think there’s plenty of raw material to start with… even before you get to the men who will later put on hoods and call themselves wizards. But this is a market-driven business: so much is going to depend on whether readers grab onto the first set of books. I’ve run a few ideas for new novels past my agent, including the Civil War series and some contemporary thrillers. I’m at the point where I need to start drafting first chapters for all of those projects so that they’re ready to go if there’s interest in them. Until then it’s wait-and-see.

photograph by Michell Daniel

Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of four novels (including the Traitor To The Crown trilogy, published as C.C. Finlay) and a collection of short stories. His fiction has been translated into numerous languages and reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy, Year’s Best Science Fiction, and Best New Horror. He’s been a finalist twice for the Nebula Award (in 2003 for “The Political Officer” and in 2009 for “The Political Prisoner"), and has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Sidewise, Sturgeon, and John W. Campbell awards. He’s been an instructor at Clarion and the Alpha Writers Workshop, is the organizer of the Blue Heaven novel writers retreat, and from 2000 to 2007 he was the admin for the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife (and sometimes co-author) Rae Carson Finlay and two sons, all smart readers, who keep him honest.

If you want to read some of his free fiction online or want to know more, like how many other famous Charles Finlays there are, you can visit his website at: www.ccfinlay.com

Johanna Sinisalo 2009

2009-08-12T12:39:01-06:00

Johanna Sinisalo is nominated for her novelette “Baby Doll.”

Could you share with us a bit about yourself? Your background and life in Finland?

I’m fiftyish, a full-time writer since 1997 (before that I worked in advertising, as a copywriter/executive and a shareholder of the agency; I left to follow my muse). I have an university education, majored in literature and drama, and I also had side studies in journalism and social psychology. I’m living with a soul mate, have an adult daughter with a life of her own, and I’m a very keen mountain hiker – I have hiked, among other routes all over the world, half of the Appalachian Trail in USA in 2007.

I live in a town called Tampere, which is big by Finnish standards, having about 200 000 inhabitants, and it is very beautifully situated between two large lakes, surrounded with forest land.

Your novelette “Baby Doll,” which was recently on the final Nebula Award ballot, concerns the sexuality of prepubescent children who are forced to grow up too soon. I found it relevant to modern life with its emphasis on sexuality and exploitation. What compelled you to write this story?

Everyone who keeps one’s eyes open can see how the adult world has infiltrated the world of children. I have seen eight-year-old girls who wear clothing that, in earlier years, would signal “Hi, sailor!”

I’m not a prude – I know that playing an adult is a very important phase in childhood – but somehow I find it very disturbing that parents do allow their children to be mini-adults at the age when kids themselves do not really realize what kind of signals they’re sending around.

I had observed that phenomenon for quite a time, but what compelled me to do the actual story was when I was asked to write a short story for a crime fiction anthology. The brief was: combine crime with sexuality and/or eroticism. I did not want to write the obvious passion crime story or the story of erotic blackmail etc., and I gave the brief a lot of thinking time – and then I saw Repo Man, in which the petty criminal, when finally caught, said “I blame the society.” And I thought: hell, what if I wrote a crime story where the society really was the guilty party? The society – and the media? The peer pressure? And so “Baby Doll” was born.

To you, what makes this a speculative fiction story? Or is it?

To be honest, it is not a speculative fiction piece at all. Most of the feedback I have got has been like “I hated to read it because it was just like things are” or “It truly repulsed me and then I looked around and realized that omigod, we are living in that reality.” It is a comment on present day, but I had to write is as projected to the future, because it is the only way to make people to accept the premise – we do not want so see the obvious unless it’s somehow alienated.

English is a second language to you and since you write in your native Finnish language your work is often translated. Tell us about that.

Actually, English is not my second but my third language (Swedish is the second) and I have learned English at school like most Finns. I am not fluent enough to write fiction in English, so it’s obvious I’m depending on translators. “Baby Doll” was translated by David Hackston, who is British, but James and Kathy Morrow helped us edit the story to suit the American market (mostly language-wise).

Because in Finland we have just five million inhabitants, it’s crucial to know other languages. In addition to Swedish and English, I can get along with German and French, and I can speak and read even some Italian. For me, I’m often envious that you Americans can go almost anywhere in the world and be understood in your own native language!

I’m very proud of the Nebula nomination, because it seems extremely rare that a translated work gets nominated. As far as I know, there has been only two translated stories nominated for a Nebula before” Baby Doll”, and both of those were by very renowned writers, namely Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. It’s a tremendous honour to be in that kind of company.

What is the speculative fiction scene in Finland like? How is it different than in English-speaking countries.

Actually, we have a very active sf/f community in Finland. Our national con, Finncon, is the biggest speculative fiction festival in Europe and attracts several thousand visitors. I have to mention that in spite of the fact that it is a three-day long con with foreign GoHs and a very ambitious program, Finncon is free to attend for everyone (and thus even mundanes drop in and have fun), the expenses are covered by sponsors, advertisers and public grants (and the volunteers who arrange all this are to be hailed highly). In other aspects, the scene is very similar to English-speaking countries – we have lots of sf/f clubs, websites, some very good prozines, etc.

It is true that in Finland the tradition in literature and cinema has been mostly realistic, but in past few decades we have seen more and more of speculative fiction and slipstream, and this trend has become more and more accepted in the literary circles in the past years.

How would you describe your fiction?

This is a tough question. I have some favourite themes that seem to surface regularly, like the question of equality in society (feminist touches here and there, of course), our domestic mythology, and the dichotomy between nature and culture. Sometimes I like to experiment with structure – compile polyphonic stories, or otherwise break the narration with fictitious or genuine documents, citations, etc. My novel Troll – A Love Story is a good example of this technique.

Of course I want my stories to have several layers – they are not just the plot. I was so glad that the jury of James Tiptree, Jr. Award (coming up later) realized exactly that.

Do you have a set writing schedule or do you write when the muse strikes you?

As a professional writer, I have to set schedules. I actually prefer working with a deadline, because that makes me sit down and write, even if I don’t particularly feel like it just then. When I have too much freedom with my schedule, I find myself being very creative – namely coming up with excuses why not to work just now.

Your novel, Troll—a Love Story, which tied for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2004, has been translated into English and published in the USA. What can you tell us about it?

It is set in an alternate history Finland which is, in every other aspect, just the normal Finland, but there is this large wild beast, troll, living in our forests. All the troll mythos and stories and fairy tales we know are thus based on this actual living animal species. In the beginning of the novel, a young photographer finds a sick troll pup and takes it home – and after that everything changes.

The novel was quite a success – it won the national Finlandia Award, the most prestigious literary award in Finland in 2000, and has thus far been translated to almost 20 languages. That’s not very usual for a Finnish book. Even the movie rights option has been bought in the USA.

You edited an anthology called “The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy.” When compiling these stories, what were you looking for?

I was looking for stories and novel excerpts that would be somehow very Finnish. We have our share of post-Tolkien standard fantasy like most western countries, but I tried to search for literature that would reflect Finnish themes and the Finnish way of thinking. We have a very strong, original, and unique mythology, in which nature plays a remarkable role, and our history produces interesting points of view as well. I also wanted to do a historical cross-cut, so there are samples of both the very old and the most modern works, and everything in between. There’s also one story of my own included (requested by the publisher), so, if you are interested, go for the Amazon!

Who are a few of your literary influences? Who do you like to read for pleasure?

I particularly like some authors who have experimented with both of the sf/f /slipstream and so-called contemporary fiction, like Margaret Atwood and Michel Tournier. Some classic writers like Jane Austen and Vladimir Nabokov never cease to charm me. Of genre writers I, of course, have to mention Ursula K. Le Guin. But there are hundreds of sf/f authors who have written things that have impressed me a lot: China Miéville, Lucius Shepard, Jeff Noon, Connie Willis, Gene Wolfe. I recently read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and just adored it. It’s not perfect, but it represents that kind of post-modern writing I just appreciate.

As a comics fan and writer, I also have to mention Neil Gaiman and his brilliant Sandman.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing the script for a movie, an internationally produced sf comedy, titled Iron Sky. It’s currently in pre-production. The premise is “In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018, they are coming back.” Go to www.ironsky.net and watch the trailer – it’s worth it! Some of you may know a sf parody movie Star Wreck, which was distributed online, and has had like 9 million downloads this far. Iron Sky is made by the very same garage Kubricks, but this time they have professional producers and four million funding euros from Germany (!) and Britain to help! It has been a lot of fun to work with these awesome guys. Their special effects skills are to watch out for, and the story is nothing like the usual stuff (to be a bit arrogant, here).

What are your plans for the future? Goals? Aspirations?

I’m working on a new novel and have negotiations on the way to perhaps join the team of an animated TV show for kids. As I have written a lot for television and do know a thing or two about screenwriting, I really would like to work on more scripts – more movies, or, to be very ambitious, some HBO-style slipstream TV series.

Johanna Sinisalo was born in 1958 in Sodankylä, Finnish Lapland, and now lives in the town of Tampere. She has studied theatre and drama and worked in advertising for 15 years before becoming a full-time writer. She started her writing career with sf/f short stories, and has this far been awarded with the national Atorox Award for the best domestic sf/f short story seven times. She has also written a generous amount of reviews, articles, comic scripts and screenplays, and edited two anthologies, including The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy.

Sinisalo’s debut novel Not Before Sundown a.k.a. Troll – a Love Story got the most prestigious literary award in Finland, the Finlandia Prize in the year 2000, and tied the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2004.

She has published three other novels and a story collection and her works have been translated to almost twenty languages.

Marshall Payne has worked as a touring musician, music producer, sound technician, a salesman, and a waiter. He has written over 100 short stories and his fiction has or will appear in Aeon Speculative Fiction, Brutarian, Talebones, Fictitious Force, to name a few. He has a website at http://marshallpayne.com/ and a blog at http://marshallpayne1.livejournal.com/.

Mary E. Pearson 2009

2009-08-05T06:44:00-06:00

Mary E. Pearson is an Andre Norton Awards finalist for her novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

What made you decide you wanted to write for young adults?

I am not sure I decided or chose to write for young adults. Those are the characters who spoke to me. I do love the teen years because it is such a pivotal time in our lives. We make many big decisions that can affect us for the rest of our lives. I know many decisions I made in my teen years have altered the course of my life. As a writer, I also have way more patience with teen characters who are making mistakes than with adult characters and since I spend a couple of years writing a book, patience is essential!

At what point did you decide you wanted to pursue writing professionally?

I was teaching second grade and trying to write on breaks and then when it looked like my job might be cut or I might have to transfer, I decided to quit and take a year off and actually finish the book I had been working on. And then I finished another one and sold it. I always intended to go back to teaching but writing there was always one more manuscript to finish up. Soon I realized I was a full time writer for good. That was fifteen years ago.

In your opinion, what are the qualities that make a book suitable for YA?

As for what actually makes a YA book a YA book that is a tough question. A few years back it would have been easier to answer because YA seemed to have more parameters: length, maturity, etc. None of those seem to apply now, and really, no one can agree on exactly what makes a YA a YA. For me, I think YA, most of the time, simply means the main character is a teen and it is written from a teen perspective, that is, not an adult looking back on their teen years. The questions of suitability is a whole different animal. Teens, and their reading interests, are every bit as varied as adults are, so I don’t think there are any one group of factors that makes a book more suitable to be a YA book. If I were to substitute the word adult for the term YA you can see how impossible it would be to answer that!

With several novels attached to your name, is writing the next novel easier or more difficult?

I always thought that once I had a published book I would be infused with immediate confidence and wisdom when it came to my writing. Maybe if I wrote the same story over and over again I would have that, but what I have found is that each story is unchartered territory that I have to find my way through, often with new processes and tools I haven’t used before. It doesn’t get easier, but I suppose that is what keeps it interesting and challenging for me too and yes, sometimes frustrating.

How have you improved as an author over the years?

I have learned to slow down and pay attention to the characters and what they have to say. Writing is such a mystery. Where do the voices come from? The snippets of dialogue that surprise you? The previously unknown characters who step on stage and turn your story around? Or the characters who are suddenly more pivotal than you imagined? I have learned to shrug when a story goes in a direction I hadn’t seen coming say, here we go-- and feel more like a participant watching it unfold than the architect of it all. So I guess you could say I have learned to trust the process more than I used to even when I feel very uncertain about it all… I trust that it will all work out somehow. That is a huge improvement for someone who liked to control all variables!

What influenced you to write The Adoration of Jenna Fox?

Two questions drove the story: First, How far would a parent go to save their child? And secondly, How far will medicine advance in another fifty years? I asked myself both of these questions when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer, but still I didn’t think they would ever turn into a story. Years later these questions melded with an image I had of a girl looking out over water who I knew had been in some sort of accident and was recovering. By exploring these questions through the very different circumstances and time period of Jenna Fox, I was able to achieve the distance I needed to explore these questions.

What kind of research did you have to do for the book?

Since Jenna had brain damage of a sort, I needed to brush up on my basic brain anatomy, and also learn as much as I could about how the brain and mind work. I also read up on brain damage, stroke victims, language acquisition… anything I could to help me build this new world that Jenna was living in. I also tried to find what all the cutting edge research was in medicine and technology, and then just push it a little past that. It was a challenge because medicine and technology is advancing so rapidly, sometimes things that I thought were in the outer reaches of possibility were actually very close to reality. Prosthetics, for example were advancing by leaps and bounds as I wrote the novel and I had to keep upping the possibilities.

Any recent details on the movie adaptation?

Apparently the screenwriter has finished the screenplay and now she and the director are working on finishing touches together. I can’t wait to read what they have done!

For unfamiliar readers, which books of yours would you recommend they start with?

My books are all so different. I don’t write within just one genre. If they want something light and funny, David v. God, if they want romance, Scribbler of Dreams, for gritty contemporary, A Room on Lorelei Street, for science fiction, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, and if they want something more in the slipstream genre, I would go with my newest book out this September, The Miles Between. I write the stories that speak to me, and whatever genre they fit into comes later.

What projects are you currently working on?

It’s a secret. I don’t talk about my works-in-progress, but I will say that I think fans of The Adoration of Jenna Fox will be surprised--and I hope, pleased.

Mary E. Pearson writes for teens. Her books include: THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX, A ROOM ON LORELEI STREET, SCRIBBLER OF DREAMS, and her newest out in September, THE MILES BETWEEN. Her books have received numerous awards and honors including the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award, the Golden Kite Award, the ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults lists, NYPL Best Books for the Teen Age, and her latest was an Andre Norton finalist. She writes full time from her home in San Diego where she lives with her husband and two dogs. You can visit her blog at Live Journal for news and updates.

Gwyneth Jones 2009

2009-07-29T10:55:00-06:00

Gwyneth Jones is nominated for her short story “The Tomb Wife”.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what’s the appeal of science fiction for you?

It’s a way of thinking: basically, I’m insatiably curious. What is sex for? What do scientific revolutions look like? Why do human societies develop the way they do? What would be the consequences of a change that seems desirable? Or undesirable? Reading and thinking about (or otherwise consuming and creating) science fiction seems to tell me more about the world around me than any other art form.

What are the goals that you think a writer is capable of achieving through their fiction? What are your goals when you write?

I think I’m with Joseph Haydn here. He said something like, composing music gave him immense pleasure, and the thought that his delight in music might also give pleasure and comfort to others, even if it was only sometimes, made him very happy.

What’s the experience of juggling two pen names like? What are the advantages/disadvantages to you personally?

I’m never conscious of juggling.

Which are you more comfortable with, writing for teens or for adults? Or are both forms natural for you and it’s only after you’ve written the story or novel that you decide which is a better fit for your audience?

Usually I know what I’m doing. I enjoy both forms equally, and it’s very clear to me that when I write as Ann Halam I’m writing for adolescents, not for children, nor for kidults (I mean the Harry Potter type adult audience). But sometimes the distinction slips. The book I’m writing at the moment is supposed to be an Ann Halam, but it’s more adult in theme and treatment than I’ve ever tackled as AH before.

How about the short story vs. the novel, which is easier to write for you? What’s the advantage of each format?

I wrote some “modern fairytales” long, long ago, but for most of my career I’ve felt more at home writing novels. I draft, draft and redraft, I research and ponder everything, and the net result can be that my short stories take almost as long to write as a novel. Lately I’ve been getting better at short stories, and learning to enjoy the game

You’ve written several novels over the past few decades. In your opinion, how has your writing today improved since the last novel you published? Is writing easier for you easier or more difficult?

The ideation in some of my early sf novels was fierce! I was trying to understand, and translate into fiction, some very big ideas, plus I had (still have, but I’ve tamed it a little) a passion for economy of expression. Every word a wanted word was my rule, not a single sentence that didn’t absolutely have to be there. It was intense and exhilarating, keeping that up over 100,000 words; and a knotty experience for the reader. Nowadays I write more easily, and I think my narratives have more space.

How does the critic in you affect your writing?

Well, it means I tend to know what’s going on. I’m aware of the wealth of other science fiction that’s gone into forming my own work, and I’m more aware of the bigger picture in the genre, at any given time, than the non-critic novelist.

Currently, who are the authors that impress you?

I’ve been enjoying Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet. Anything by Kathleen Ann Goonan. Plus, recently I found an arty futuristic novel, kind of a thriller, called “The Art Of Murder”, Jose Carlos Somoza, translated from the Spanish, which blew me away. Somoza immediately became a star, for me.

Regarding your Nebula story, what was the inspiration for “The Tomb Wife?”

The story’s about a kind of interstellar travel, set on a kind of starship, and features an exotic alien character, but really the inspiration is rather personal. It’s about not wanting to go on, after a loss; not wanting to let go of a world that’s over. A mood that overtakes most people from time to time I suppose, as they grow older.

What projects are you currently working on?

A gothic novel by Ann Halam. A novella (I think!) set in the same milieu as The Tomb Wife; and as my recent UK novel, Spirit. A critical essay, a presentation on Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji for Brighton Festival; and that’s about it.

Gwyneth Jones is a writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy, who also writes teenage fiction as “Ann Halam”. She lives in Brighton UK. Her latest novel is Spirit, Gollancz UK.

James Alan Gardner 2009

2009-07-23T01:18:00-06:00

James Alan Gardner is nominated for his novelette “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story”.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what’s the appeal of science fiction for you?

Science fiction seems to be the only genre interested in large-scale events. I don’t just mean intergalactic wars and blowing up suns (although that stuff can be fun); I mean anything that leads to substantial changes in the world.

Consider, for example, how conventional literature would treat Einstein. It might talk about his home life or his relationships with other scientists; it might try to analyze what made him so brilliant; it might examine the psychological consequences of being idolized as the smartest man on Earth. What conventional literature *can’t* do is say, “This guy changed the world! This guy significantly altered how we look at ourselves and the universe.” Other genres of literature ignore everything but the personal.

Science fiction can and does do the personal—not always with nuance—but it also has bigger fish to fry. Its perennial message is, “The world of today is fleeting; it wasn’t here yesterday and won’t be here tomorrow.” Science fiction says the world can and will be changed by individuals, by societies, and by impersonal forces. That’s an enormously important message that other genres barely seem to notice, let alone address.

How about your background in Applied Mathematics, does it have any impact on your fiction?

I wrote a story called “Kent State Descending the Gravity Well: An Analysis of the Observer” which I think is one of the best things I’ve done. It’s directly based on my Master’s thesis on black holes; it plays on the actual mathematical model of a black hole and draws out an analogy with the difficulties of how science fiction stories are framed.

I’ve already said that the great strength of science fiction is its willingness to address large-scale issues...but one of SF’s weaknesses is the tendency to tell a very limited range of stories. If, for example, we’re talking about technological change, there’s a great temptation to frame it in a way where technology goes disastrously wrong. We don’t have a lot of examples where someone invents something new and nothing bad happens at all. In “Kent State” I used mathematics to talk about the cheap-and-easy “you’ve seen it all before” stories that SF is often guilty of.

Apart from that, I like to throw in math where I can, but it’s an uphill slog to get equations past editors.

How have your experiences with Writers of the Future and Clarion West helped improve your writing? What were the valuable lessons you learned in each?

Both brought me into contact with other novice writers who were pretty much my peers. Many of us were all coming to the ends of our “apprenticeships” and about to break into the big leagues. It’s great to live with such people for a while and bask in the company of intelligent folks who think writing is a wonderful way to spend one’s time.

Of course, WotF and Clarion both taught me new ways of looking at stories. The WotF workshop was a week taught by Algis Budrys: a seasoned pro of the old school. Clarion West was six weeks long, instructed by Orson Scott Card, Karen Joy Fowler, Connie Willis, Lucius Shepard, Amy Stout, and Roger Zelazny—a tremendous line-up, each of whom gave me so many insights and tips I couldn’t possibly list them all. (But I still remember most of them and use them every day.)

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome before getting published?

The biggest hurdle was really just getting serious. For years I wrote but didn’t make a systematic effort to put things in the mail. Admittedly, that was probably a good thing—I wrote a lot of the usual novice crap, and if by some miracle some of it had got published, I’d now be dying of shame. During those years, I spent much of my writing time on self-indulgences...including a number of plays that were good enough for small local theatre productions but had no higher ambitions.

In the year leading up to Writers of the Future and Clarion West, I got more disciplined in sending things out. By then I was close to being ready for prime time...so things began to sell within a few months. But my biggest hurdle was simply getting my act together and saying, “I really have to go about this in a business-like way, rather than remaining in my comfort zone as an amateur.”

Which are you more comfortable writing, short stories or novels? What in your opinion are the strengths of each?

Every story and novel is different. I’ve whipped off some stories in a few days; others have taken weeks and weeks. When a short story falls into a long slog, it’s *really* painful—I feel as if a short story shouldn’t be that much work. I can see the end of the story hanging out in sight, and for some reason, I just can’t get there. With novels, I expect to be a tortoise rather than a hare, so it’s not as frustrating when it feels like I’m not making progress.

My short stories are more idiosyncratic than my novels, and I like that about them...but novels pay better and something in the back of my head keeps saying that novels are more *important* than short stories. (Of course that’s nonsense, but who ever manages to make those voices in the back of their head shut up?)

One strength of a short story is that it doesn’t have to be sustainable for too long. “The Ray-Gun”, for example, has a tone of voice that wouldn’t really work at novel length—it’s too dry. A novel needs ups and downs and lots of variation, but a short story can do a single thing with full intensity.

The strength of a novel is, of course, the opposite: it *has* that variation. Of course, a novel also has the advantage of time; the reader lives with a novel’s characters for a lot longer and bonds with them in a different way. A story can deliver a short sharp shock, but a novel can become a long-time friend.

How did you end up writing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze? What’s your opinion of media tie-in fiction?

The easy answer is that I wrote it because I was asked...and I was asked because I’ve written a number of action-adventure books with strong female protagonists, so Lara was right up my alley.

I confess I’m also a video game addict, so I was delighted for the chance to play with one of the industry’s foremost heroes. Furthermore, the people behind the books were great; they let me write the book the way I wanted to, with practically no restrictions and a lot of helpful input.

So I had a blast writing Lara and I came up with plenty of fun scenes. How does that compare with media tie-in fiction in general? To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever read any other book of that type: no Star Trek, Star Wars, or the like. Oh wait...I read all “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” books back in the 1960’s. I was, of course, around 12 years old. I remember those as being fantastic (though I suspect I wouldn’t think the same today). They were the last media tie-in books I ever read.

When you wrote the first League of Peoples novels, did you originally plan it to stretch out this long? How did you initially come up with the concept?

If you’re going to write adventures with interstellar travel, you need to answer a fundamental question: “Why haven’t we met aliens yet?” Different writers have answered that in different ways: for example, that we *have* met aliens but didn’t realize it, or that interstellar travel is so expensive and difficult that aliens can’t be bothered. My initial answer wasn’t very original—that there’s an interstellar authority which forbids contact with “pristine” races like us—but then I dug deeper into the nature of that interstellar authority. If they wanted to protect untouched cultures, they must be reasonably benign...but I didn’t want them total goody-goodies. It was a small leap from there to the idea of, “Do what you like as long as you don’t bother your neighbors. If you cause trouble, you’re dead.”

Another important influence came from Samuel R. Delany. In one of his books (I believe it’s in “The Fall of the Towers” trilogy), he represents superior intelligence as the ability to predict events better than lesser intelligences. A human who wants to cross a street can look at cars in the distance and immediately judge how long it will take them to drive past...in other words, whether or not it’s safe to cross. A dog can’t do that; the dog’s eyesight is as good as a human’s, but its brain doesn’t have enough calculating power to assess the situation. Delany extrapolated from that to hyperintelligent non-humans; in his book, these non-humans can, for example, look at a coin spinning in the air and immediately judge whether it will land heads or tails. They’re amused that humans are too slow-witted to do the same.

I borrowed that concept: in the League of Peoples, the criterion of intelligence is the ability to predict the consequences of one’s actions. Humans are at the bottom of that totem pole, slowly evolving through the transition from animal ignorance to something higher. The best among us seriously care about the effects of what we do; the worst don’t.

All the League of Peoples stories grew from those two threads: “Don’t bother your neighbors” and “Intelligence is being able to predict the results of your actions.” Those threads have ramifications that haven’t yet come out in the stories; at some point, I’d like to do another League book or two to reveal more secrets.

What was the inspiration for “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story?”

When people ask me about science fiction, I always talk about the serious stuff (as in my answers to preceding questions). But I add that I also love SF because of spaceships and time machines and exploding planets and ray-guns. Despite the horrendous things that happen in science fiction and the grim importance of some subject matter, the genre also has a sense of exuberance that I’d hate to lose. Science fiction must always have a place for ray-guns. So I began to think about a ray-gun story for the twenty-first century: something that basked in the old gosh-wow but had the level of sophistication we now expect. “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” was the result.

Were there any difficulties in writing that novelette? What made you decide to make Jack’s love story run parallel with that of the ray-gun?

My approach was based on the idea of “stone soup” that Kirsten mentions in the final scene: that the novelette’s action arises from stories the human characters impose on the gun, and that the gun itself is simply an inert cipher. Thus the plot comes completely from Jack’s maturing narratives as he grows up. When he’s a kid, having a ray-gun makes him an action hero; when he discovers girls, the ray-gun turns into a symbol of how open he’s prepared to be; when he feels he’s been betrayed by Deana, the gun is about hurt and vengeance; when he’s finally ready for an adult love, the gun is the token of intimacy. (Of course, since this *is* a science fiction story, I turn everything on its head in the end...but still.)

What projects are you currently working on?

With the attention “The Ray-Gun” is getting, I’m preparing a number of pitches in the hope of catching an editor’s interest. Oddly enough, I’m looking at fantasy rather than science fiction… though in a science-fictional way.

I’ve always been interested in the concept of archetypes and the way that people so eagerly substitute mythology for reality. So I’m stirring together a lot of high archetypal ideas (including magic), but in light of the principle that you shouldn’t confuse myth with real life, *even if the myths have an element of truth*. We fill our heads with stories that were true once upon a time, but aren’t anymore; we treat the stories as real and ignore any experiences that conflict with them.

Not only is this a relevant topic for our current lives, I think it will become more important as time goes on. Technology has the potential to make us into beings akin to old myths. How do we still keep our heads straight?

So I’m looking at novels involving such ideas. I just hope the ideas don’t get lost in the usual complications of plot, action, character, etc., etc.

James Alan Gardner lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He has published eight science fiction novels and a collection of short stories. Gardner has won the Aurora award twice, and has been a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Mike Allen 2009

2009-07-16T00:17:00-06:00

Mike Allen is nominated for his short story “The Button Bin.”

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. Let’s talk about your nominated story, “The Button Bin.” What was the inspiration behind the piece?

Years ago my wife and I were visiting a charming fabric shop at the center of an equally charming little mountain town. While she shopped I took a seat beside an immense bin – an RC Cola machine, I believe, lying on its back with its front and all the mechanical parts removed – filled to the top with every kind of button you could imagine. Like any decent primate attracted to shinies, I started to run my hand through it, discovered I could submerge my arm in buttons at least past the elbow.

Then, I wondered: what if I pulled my arm out and the buttons had attached themselves to my skin? What if I could then unbutton my flesh, see what my soul looks like?

It may say a lot about how dark my view of the world can be that the entire plot of “The Button Bin” exploded into existence inside my head right then and there.

Using a second-person perspective is a tricky technique. What made you utilize this method?

The final line of the story wouldn’t work if I told it any other way. So I firmly believe.

At risk of tainting how others experience the story: I see “Button Bin” as an interior monologue. The narrator is addressing himself in a manner that borders on stream-of-consciousness. That’s why I did all these wacky things I’d be afraid to try in a more conventional story: second-person, present tense, no quotation marks, etc. Writing it that way made the story move when it hadn’t before.

What was the most difficult part in writing the story?

Without a doubt, figuring out how to tell it. From the moment of that download from the Muse in the fabric shop I was certain I had a terrific idea, at least in my head, but every time I attempted to set it down on paper it quickly grew bogged down and boring. I hung up on issues of style and plot. As I originally conceived it, at first the narrator didn’t know who the owner of the button bin was, and I couldn’t quite piece together how he figured it out — years went by before it occurred to me to just have someone tell him. Eureka!

Yet that was just part of the problem. The hallucinatory images and furious emotions that fueled the story as it existed in my brain didn’t appear on the page until I approached it in second-person present tense, the way I’ve sometimes written poems. I have to give some oblique credit to Joe Hill (specifically, Heart-Shaped Box and “The Black Phone”) and Cormac McCarthy (specifically Blood Meridian). Somehow exposure to those writings gave me tools I needed, in terms of plotting and voice, to get this single story done the way it needed to be done.

I think it’s true, too, that at the time I had the idea I didn’t yet have the life knowledge or writing skill to bring it to life as a full-blown story. I couldn’t pull it off without the experiences I gained in those intervening years as both a crime reporter and a poet.

How has your poetry background aided you in your fiction writing?

I’m not sure it has, in a larger sense, though I think it helped me in this instance. First, the second-person perspective, rare in fiction, is not that uncommon in poetry, so I had a fair amount of practice with it. Second, poetry plays an active role in this story: the sharing of favorite poems is essential to the friendship between the narrator and his niece.

More generally, writing poetry makes you sensitive to the sounds and rhythms of language, always a handy thing in any kind of writing. The subjective viewpoint of “The Button Bin” allowed me some flourishes along those lines that I hope add to its intensity.

Maybe, though, there is a pragmatic side to this poetry thing. In my day job, I work as a reporter, and over the past ten years I’ve written well over two thousand news stories. That can tap directly into the same well of energy and creativity that my poetry and fiction comes out of. Because of this it can take me a long time to finish a short story when I don’t have a hard deadline. The poetry has been a way to keep my creative baubles out there where they can be seen while I plod along on larger works.

How about your experiences editing anthologies like Clockwork Phoenix?

I have to say, in terms of experience, the next best thing to writing short stories is editing them. You can learn from others’ mistakes and others’ triumphs, and when unsolicited submissions pour in you’ll get direct exposure with a number of both in short order.

I’m a hands-on editor, as several of my contributors could tell you, but I’ll confess, it’s still much easier for me to deduce how to fix problems in someone else’s story than in one of my own. I think that has to do with distance. I can look at a story I’m editing for one of the Clockwork Phoenix books and say, here’s what the story does, here’s what I think it should be doing, here’s how to get there. With one of my own stories, of course, I know exactly what I intended — but is it really there on the page? I can’t always see whether it is or not. That’s why reliable and patient beta readers are just so damn essential. In the case of “The Button Bin,” those readers were Cathy Reniere, Jessica Wick and Sonya Taaffe. To them, my heartfelt thanks!

Can you tell us more about speculative poetry?

I can tell you a lot more than we have room to discuss.

The speculative poetry community is a lively, thriving entity inside the larger universe of speculative literature. Most of the major short fiction outlets publish poetry, and nearly all of the smaller ones do.

If you want to get a sense of what goes on in speculative poetry, I’d recommend starting in two places. First, the archives at Strange Horizons hold strong examples from just about every major voice in speculative poetry going back over the past 30 years. (Not to mention there’s a pretty wide sampling there of my own best work.) The editors who do the picking, Harold Bowes, Mardel James, Roger Dutcher and Mark Rudolph, are all accomplished veterans who publish or have published poetry journals of their own. Quite a few of the print mags that use poetry, Asimov’s especially, slant toward short humorous verse — which I think has inadvertently created a grossly wrong impression of what speculative poetry is about — while Strange Horizons has room and inclination for much more serious and ambitious work. I think it’s fair to say they represent the field’s “mainstream.”

Now, once you visit there, slide on over and have a look at the new kid on the block, Goblin Fruit, edited by two talented young women in their twenties, Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica Wick, with an emphasis on fantasy and folktale. These folks just broke the record for number of poems from a single publication nominated for the Rhysling Award. Explore the archives there, and you’ll see some overlap with Strange Horizons, but you’ll also see an almost completely different set of poets. What you’re looking at here is a new direction in speculative poetry (though technically, it’s been simmering for several years) that is going to become even more dominant in the years ahead.

I publish my own poetry journal, Mythic Delirium, that I feel falls somewhere between these two poles in its content. My newest issue features Neil Gaiman, so, you know, it’s not just career poets that play in these sands.

What motivated you to champion this medium?

Enlightened self-interest, of course. I write it, so I want people to read it.

When first I started volunteering with the Science Fiction Poetry Association, I quickly developed a sense the ship had lost its rudder, and wound up running for president in what was the organization’s first (and so far only) contested election. Becoming a spokesperson of sorts for speculative poetry essentially came with the job, and I set about (with many others’ help!) trying to raise my field’s profile at least a tad. Though my successor as president, Debbie Kolodji, is doing a fine job of steering, some of that advocacy role seems to have followed me off the boat. I don’t guess I mind.

As a writer, what challenges are you currently facing?

The usual: getting things finished. Then getting them published. Then getting them noticed. It’s funny, you know. Learning how to write isn’t enough. Learning how to promote your work is at least as important.

What projects are you currently working on?

Dare I say it? A novel. But who isn’t?

The first two episodes of my book in progress, stories called “The Hiker’s Tale” and “Follow the Wounded One,” have been quietly published in out of the way places, though reviewers who’ve noticed them, like Rich Horton, have said nice things about them. I’m now into what might be the fifth or sixth episode, and still going. I hope to finish the complete draft this year, we’ll see.

What I know will be out soon is the second anthology in the Clockwork Phoenix series, coming this July. Hopefully we’ll once again be able to debut the book at ReaderCon. It features a new novelette in Tanith Lee’s “Flat Earth” series, and new stories from Mary Robinette Kowal, Catherynne M. Valente, Marie Brennan, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gemma Files, Claude Lalumière and a host of others. I think the second volume is even stranger than the first; we’ll see what folks make of that.

Mike Allen wears many hats, and occasionally they’re purple. He edits a poetry zine, Mythic Delirium, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, and the anthology series Clockwork Phoenix, fhe first volume of which made the 2008 Locus Recommended Reading List. Obviously, he also writes fiction; stories have appeared in Interzone and Weird Tales, with new ones scheduled this year in Tales of the Talisman, Cabinet des Fées, and the Norilana Books anthology Sky Whales and Other Wonders. He lives in Roanoke, Va. with his wife Anita, a demonic cat, and a comical dog. You can view his website at www.descentintolight.com and read his LiveJournal at http://time-shark.livejournal.com. He also for no apparent reason has accounts with MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Richard Bowes 2009

2009-07-07T23:56:00-06:00

Richard Bowes is nominated for his novelette “If Angels Fight”.

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. When you were a kid, did you ever imagine that you’d be a writer?

Writing wasn’t that alien a career when I was growing up. My father was an editor and ended up writing high school textbooks. My mother wrote for TV in Boston in the 1950’s. A couple of her uncles were well known Irish authors. One of them was Liam O’Flaherty who wrote the Informer.

I’d had a lot of problems in school - dyslexia among other things. If something really interested me I’d read it compulsively. Otherwise it was slow torture. But I could always talk and always write - express myself in words.

When I was in my late teens I decided that I wanted to write and my parents were good with it. There was no immediate way they could see me getting killed writing - unlike some of my other interests. Unfortunately once I decided to write, I froze and couldn’t write at all.

I’d flunked out of the first college I’d gone to. At the next one I took a writing class and the teacher Mark Eisenstein was great at getting blocked kids started. Years later I wrote a novella called “My Life in Speculative Fiction” about that time and that experience. It’s in my collection Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies and in an earlier out-of-print collection Transfigured Night and Other Stories.

What made you finally take that plunge into writing professionally?

When I think of someone writing professionally, I envision her/him making a living at it. When I got out of school and moved to Manhattan I was twenty-two and for a few years I worked as a fashion copywriter in the Garment District. Outside of that time, I’ve never made a major part of my income writing.

What’s the biggest hurdle you had to overcome before getting published?

My lifestyle: after college there was a long period where I wrote almost nothing. I was young I was gay in New York. I had major drug and alcohol problems. I was busy. After a while I got things together and a while after that I started to write Spec Fiction. The SF first novel I completed sold quite quickly and I thought it was all going to be a piece of cake.

What’s the appeal of speculative fiction?

It’s where I was lucky enough to find people willing to buy my work and to read it. Spec fiction has the last of the viable short fiction markets. Short form work gets reviewed, talked about, given awards, anthologized. About twenty years ago I started writing short stories. I’ve written forty-two of them in the last twenty years. All but the first one I wrote have been published and even that got cannibalized.

What’s the best piece of advice you received from Mark Eisenstein?

Write what turns you on. Nobody is going to be interested in what you write if you aren’t.

What was the inspiration for your Time Ranger stories?

History: it drove my father crazy that I learned all my history from historical novels and Time Travel/Alternate Reality Spec fiction. Some serious history books I find very readable but most of them are deadly. From the Files of the Time Rangers is kind of my historical novel.

It’s a mosaic novel - made up of short stories as is my earlier Minions of the Moon. A lot of the stories were my attempts at different forms. One that made the Nebula short list a few years ago, “The Ferryman’s Wife” was my version of a 1950’s John Cheever/New Yorker story set in the suburbs but with Time Rangers, Greek Gods and an 18th century English Noblewoman thrown into the mix.

In Jeffrey Ford’s interview with you, you mentioned that you used to write rules for board games. What was that experience like?

Well, a lot of it was good, clean fun and sometimes the money wasn’t at all bad. We did commercial games (sold in stores) and promotional games (ones companies used to push products, ideas etc). I learned a lot about plotting and multiple viewpoints. Board games from Monopoly to Dungeons and Dragons are closer to dramas than short stories or novels.

Did you encounter any difficulty writing your “If Angels Fight” story?

It was a struggle - they all are. The year I wrote that novelette I only finished one other story. The parts set in 1950’s Boston - the scene on the river ice, the moment when young senator Kennedy visits his aunt on her birthday and the rest - came from memory and were pretty easy. The present day material and the time lines were harder.

What’s the most difficult aspect of being a writer? The most rewarding?

I wrote about this in a piece published last year called, “I Like Writing but Hate Being a Writer”

The actual writing is maddening but also wonderfully satisfying. A lot of the rest of it I’m less fond of.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m turning “If Angels Fight”, an earlier Nebula nominee “There’s a Hole in the City” and a lot of my other recent stories into a mosaic novel tentatively called, Dust Devil: A Life in Speculative Fiction.

Richard Bowes was born and raised in Boston and has lived in Manhattan for most of the last forty-three years. He has written five novels, the most recent of which is the Nebula nominated From the Files of the Time Rangers. His most recent short story collection is Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies. He has won the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild and Million Writers Awards.

Recent and upcoming stories appear in F&SF, Electric Velocipede, Clarkesworld and Fantasy magazines and in the Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Year’s Best Gay Stories 2008, Naked City, Beastly Bride, Haunted Legends and Lovecraft Unbound anthologies.

His story, “If Angels Fight” has been selected for all three of the annual best fantasy anthologies and for the Datlow, Year’s Best Horror. It and many of his other recent stories are chapters in his novel in progress Dust Devil: A Life in Speculative Fiction.

Cory Doctorow 2009

2009-07-02T00:27:00-06:00

Cory Doctorow is nominated for his novel Little Brother.

Most of this Q&A was taken from Julian Bennett Holmes’ Publishers Weekly interview.

Why did you decide to write a young adult novel?

A bunch of my friends had written young adult novels and were having the best time. My friend Kathe Koja had been a famous horror writer who’d written very graphic horror, and she decided to write these very very spare, almost Hemingway-esque young adult novels. And the experiences she described were just so cool, writing for kids who read not just for entertainment but to try to figure out the way the world works. The feedback she got was so blunt and honest that she was really, really, really excited, and she let her horror novels go out of print.

The other thing is that I was going to write a book where the technology really worked, where it was real technology. I thought young adult was a good genre for that. In young adult fiction, there’s an honorable tradition of talking about how technology works—unashamed lectures—and I really like that mode. [Robert Anson] Heinlein was a great proponent of that. When I was a kid, I found out a lot about how finance and politics and so on worked through books like Have Space Suit—Will Travel. My book is sort of a radical, political Have Space Suit—Will Travel. So young adult seemed like the right genre.

What was the flash of inspiration for Little Brother?

One thing was the kids I was meeting, who thought of technology increasingly as something that controlled them and not as something that empowered them. That was the complete opposite of how I’d grown up. People in my Dad’s generation grew up thinking of computers as these soulless machines that would regiment them and put them in lines, but in my generation—I got a computer in 1979 and a modem in 1980, and it was like the whole world opened to me. The amount of control and power I had over my world as a nine-year-old was unbelievable. I don’t think there had ever been a nine-year-old before that who could travel across the globe with these things and have conversations and meet interesting people. But now I meet kids today who tell me, “The computer is used to spy on me, the authorities know what I’m doing, marketers know what I’m doing.”

Another inspiration was thinking about how all these techno-thrillers I read depended on technology that was like magic—technology that did something technology really can’t do. As a geek, I thought I’d be able to use technology in the story and not make it totally implausible. I thought, “Can I write a tight, well-paced techno-thriller where everything could actually happen?”

How much of the stuff in the book is real and how much is possible in the future?

I’d say 90% is real now, and 100% is possible in the future. Most of the stuff in the book just requires reconfiguring the bits we have today. The things that aren’t real yet are Microsoft releasing a free Xbox and making money by selling software licenses. The book relies on the idea that everyone has one of these in the closet because Microsoft is giving them away on the street.

For a while, merchants were giving us barcode scanners called QCats. They gave them away for free when you bought anything at RadioShack, and the idea was to be able to scan barcodes in magazine ads, and so pretty soon everyone had them lying around the house. And then someone figured out how to hack them to read any barcode. You could, for example, catalog your whole CD library. And you could count on everyone having one sitting in a closet. That’s a magic combination.

One of my favorite hardware hacks of all time is when someone figured out to build a WiFi antenna out of a Pringles can. The most amazing thing is that the directions for where to drill used the Pringles labels as landmarks: through the left eye, through the cholesterol count, and then the bar code in the middle, too. It’s pretty amazing when anyone interested in doing the project has access to a precision-manufactured piece of hardware: a Pringles can. It’s sitting there so cheap that anyone can walk out anywhere in the developed world, 24/7, and get one—that’s a really powerful thing for the transmission of an idea. So there’s a lot of stuff in the book that’s barely possible, a lot of stuff that actually exists, and stuff that could exist pretty soon.

What research did you do in preparation for Little Brother?

Little Brother was all stuff that I knew was going on, or stuff I’d written about, or could look up, or had already spoken to people about and written about on Boing Boing. So it’s the opposite of coming up with an idea and then figuring out what you need to know. It’s knowing a bunch of stuff and seeing what ideas come out of that.

I’m working on a new novel that’s a little more research-intensive and a little less foreknowledge-based. It’s set partly in India, and I know a lot of what I need to know, but I haven’t spent much time in China and I haven’t spent any in India. So I’m taking a research trip and spending a little time in both.

It’s going to be a young adult novel called For the Win. It’s an extension of a short story I wrote called “Anda’s Game,” which is about people who play video games, and this play is a form of work called gold farming. Games have a virtual wealth, a virtual gold, and a lot of people would rather buy the gold on eBay than do the repetitive tasks required to amass it. And so people in the developing world are paid to work in essentially sweatshops and play games all day, making virtual gold that’s then sold to rich players.

What were the differences between writing for adults and writing for young adults?

I once asked a young adult writer what she thought the soul of young adult fiction was. She said, “Being an adolescent is the state of perpetually going through these one-way changes, where you’re very brave, and you jump off cliffs. You can’t go back again. Like one day you’re someone who has never told a lie of consequence and then you’re someone who has. You can never go back and be that other person again.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the centers of our brain that govern risk don’t fully develop until we’re out of our teens. There was a court case last year or the year before in which a teen had done something very foolish, and part of the defense was that his capacity to understand risk was not physiologically fully developed. He literally couldn’t parse risk the way an adult would. I think if you could parse those risks, you probably wouldn’t take all kinds of momentous steps in your life. From a plotting perspective, I like to keep that in mind.

The only other big difference was that when it was all done, my editor said, you know Scholastic has some interest in distributing this as part of their book club. But they won’t do that if it’s got the F word in it, so do you mind if we just take it out of the two places where it is? And I said, take the F word out. No big deal.

Have you exhausted the issues covered in Little Brother?

Not at all. These are immutable topics for our era. Surveillance will be key to all the work I do, because we live in a surveillance state. I live in London. My photo is taken 500 times a day. London is the most surveilled city in the world. Scotland Yard recently advocated that five-year-olds should have their DNA logged into a police database if they exhibit so-called criminal behaviors so that later in life when they offend, we’ll know who they are and we can pick them up. London Metropolitan Police have put up posters all over the city advising us that if we see people taking pictures of security cameras, that we should rat them out to the police because they might be terrorists. It’s increasingly difficult to take note of all the ways we’re losing our civil liberties. Go into an airport and try saying, “I don’t see how I could blow up a plane with my shoe and some water.” They’ll throw you out of the airport, they might even arrest you for “making jokes about terrorism.” It’s not a joke; it’s a security discussion! We’re not allowed to ask the man who’s telling you to take off your shoes, why do I have to take off my shoes?

How do you balance your writing with your other activities?

I do a lot of stuff—I’m on a lot of advisory boards, I’m on some boards of charities, I do all this activism stuff, I write Boing Boing, I write six columns—and yes, this stuff takes up a lot of time. What allows me to do all this is that it’s all part of the same thing. I think the job of a science-fiction writer is to figure out how technology is changing society, how it might change society in the future, and sometimes to even influence how technology is changing society. But that’s also the definition of a tech journalist, a columnist, an activist.

One question I often get is, “How much time do you spend on Boing Boing?” Depending on how you calculate it, I either spend all of my time or none of it. Every time I run across something relevant to anything I do, I write it up for Boing Boing. So in addition to making it searchable, and having people comment on it, and making it clearer, putting it on Boing Boing is powerfully mnemonic for me—it means I remember it. These are sometimes like pieces of a puzzle that I don’t have the box art for. I find these pieces lying around, and I put them on Boing Boing so that I’ll know which pieces I’ve got—and every now and then I’ll find a corner piece, and a whole piece of the puzzle snaps in.

Little Brother was very much like that. I had a flash of inspiration, and I went home and wrote the book in eight weeks, from the day I started to the day I finished. Technically it’s a very research-intensive book—there’s a lot of factual and technological material in it—but everything there, I had already written about on Boing Boing. So I’d been collecting this stuff on Boing Boing without knowing what it was for.

I know a lot of visual artists who work this way—they have of boxes of stuff that looks like it should go into something someday, but they don’t yet know exactly what. My friend Roger Wood, a sort of mad clockmaker, has boxes and boxes in his flat labeled “doll parts,” etc. Boing Boing is like that, but machine searchable.

That said, I don’t have much of a social life.

What was the most difficult part in writing Little Brother?

As with anything, finding the time. Writing, even when conducted “full time,” always seems to be a discretionary activity that falls behind administration, interviews, etc.

What’s the appeal of science fiction for you?

It’s capacity to use parables about the future to describe the hidden shifts technology is wreaking on the present.

What projects can we expect from you in the future?

I’m presently working on a young-adult novel called For The Win, and it’s kind of a novelization of my short story “Anda’s Game.” It’s a book about trade unionists who use video games to organize people in the developing world, to work in special economic zones where labor organizers aren’t allowed to go in. And the way that they do that is by signing up people who work in gold farms, which are virtual sweatshops where people perform repetitive virtual tasks, or videogame tasks, to amass videogame wealth that’s then sold to rich players. It’s set about 10 to 15 years in the future, in the midst of a huge kind of hedge-fund bubble based on virtual goals. And these Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web, or the Webblies, set out to sign up and organize all these people. The book revolves around special economic zones in India, and in the coastal cities in China , and also in Orange County in Southern California.

Cory Doctorow is an activist, teacher, public speaker, and technology expert. A New York Times bestselling author, he is also co-editor of BoingBoing.net, one of the most popular blogs in the world and recipient of more than three million unique visitors per month, and a columnist for publications ranging from Information Week to The Guardian.

Most recently a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Doctorow served as a Canadian Fulbright Chair in Public Diplomacy and also serves on a number of boards of directors and advisory boards, including those of the Participatory Culture Foundations, the Open Rights Group, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc., Onion Networks, and others. He also served as Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] for over four years, where he was a delegate to treaty negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva.

Doctorow has won the Locus Award three times, been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula, won the Campbell Award, and was named one of the Top 25 Web Celebrities by Forbes magazine for the past two consecutive years, as well as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He also received the Pioneer Award for significant contributions to online freedom from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is frequently invited to speak at colleges and corporations across the country.

Cory’s novels include Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and Eastern Standard Tribe, as well as two short story collections. Cory’s written and online work has been referenced by media outlets from CBS television show “Criminal Minds” to the “The Colbert Report.”

Born in Toronto, Canada, Cory currently lives in London. His parents both worked in education, his mom in early childhood education and his dad as a math and computer science teacher.

A New York Times Notable and an LA Times and Washington Post pick for one of the best books of 2008, Little Brother is his first Young Adult novel and it deals with issues of security, civil rights, censorship, and technology—but it is also an adventure story with smart teenage protagonists. The author hopes that you’ll use technology to change the world