[Author's Note, June 2000: This interview appeared in the DAW Books online newsletter in February 1998. I've added a couple of additional comments in brackets.]
Why are you writing the Crown of Stars series?
I've wanted to write an epic fantasy
series since I was fourteen, when I completely fell in love with J.R.R.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. But I had to wait a long,
long time to write one because I wanted to write a story that was ‘mine'
instead of just a re-hash of Tolkien. I first got the idea for the
basic plot of Crown of Stars about 1990: a kingdom in
which the heir had to go on ‘walkabout' to prove his or her fertility and,
thus, fitness for the position as regnant (ruler). As is usual for
me, I let this idea ‘stew' on the back burner for a few years to see what
kind of flavor it would pick up, and soon after this I was lucky enough
to bump into a scholar whose specialty was the history of Ottonian Germany
(10th century), a place and time in which the kings didn't have a ‘capitol'
city and palace but instead were itinerant: always traveling from
place to place. This fit so perfectly into my original idea that
I knew I'd found the historical background from which I could steal --
er -- borrow many events and conflicts for my novel. Once I had that,
it all fell together remarkably well.
How is it coming along, and how long will it be?
Crown of Stars is going to be a four
volume trilogy! [Author's Note, May 2000:
Well, that's what I thought at the time!!!] I'm currently
about halfway done with volume three, The
Burning Stone. After that, I'll write volume four, which
will be called Crown of Stars. [Author's Note, May
2000: Another sterling example of my brilliant predictive accuracy;
in fact, volume four is called Child of Flame.]
Why did you start a fantasy series, after writing the science fiction Jaran books?
I love to read both science fiction
and fantasy, and always have. I think of them both as speculative
fiction, fiction that explores landscapes other than the one we live in.
Fantasy tends to be set in a mythical past; science fiction tends to be
set in an unknowable future. After writing four volumes of the Jaran
saga, exploring that unknowable future, I needed time in a different landscape,
and I decided the time was right for fantasy and a chance to explore a
mythical past.
Will there be another Jaran book?
The Jaran saga was originally conceived
of as seven books, each one a standalone novel that had its place in a
larger sequence. That conception hasn't changed: the Jaran books
aren't really, as it may seem, about Tess and Ilya; they're really about
the Jaran culture and how it changes over time. So, since the first
four volumes are actually three books (I know, I know, this gets terribly
confusing! Check out the bibliography!),
that means there are still four books to write. I have many, many
notes and several scenes sketched out for the next book, which will be
called Eternal Blue Heaven. But I'm not sure at this point
when I'll be writing it.
In the Crown of Stars series, will Liath and Sanglant ever get together?
I can't answer that! You'll
have to read the rest of the series!
You obviously did your homework on medieval history and literature for this series, delving much deeper than the well known medieval literature such as Boccacio and Chaucer. How did you balance a desire to impart a genuinely medieval atmosphere with the necessity of creating a compelling, magical fantasy that would appeal to many types of readers?
I still vividly remember reading Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager and falling in love with the world of Middle-Earth and the story of the Fellowship and their adventures. I think that young readers bring magic to their reading because they're not as hemmed in by expectations, and chores, and work, and ideas about ‘how things should be' as adults are. So I set out to write a story that my 16-year-old self would love.
At the same time, as an adult, I wanted the story to have a reasonably genuine ‘alternate- medieval' atmosphere rather than just being 20th century people dressed up in fancy clothes. My biggest pet peeve in poorly-thought-through fantasy epics are those with no working economic system, where inns and markets function like grocery stores and horses run like cars and there's always plenty of food available and no one ever gets sick. Plenty of people in the world todaydon't live in the safe suburban world that many of us are lucky enough to live in -- and I wanted to give a glimpse into a world where famine lurks on the doorstep and people have a different set of ideas than we do about how the cosmos works.
So I try to write both as a 16-yr-old
and as an adult. I try always to remember the magic and the adventure,
which I love, and yet not forget the dirt and the disease, which are also
part of life.
What writers do you admire? What are you reading right now?
I love books and reading, and there are really too many writers I admire for me to list them here!
However, most recently in science fiction and fantasy I've finished four great books: Tad Williams' Otherland, Katharine Kerr's The Red Wyvern, Catherine Asaro's The Last Hawk, and Blue Mars, the third and concluding volume of Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Mars trilogy. I'm currently tag-team reading a wonderful traditional fantasy by Dennis McKiernan, Into the Forge, and a provocative historical fantasy about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhetaten and the Hebrew prophet Moses called Pillar of Fire, by Judith Tarr. I'm also reading a fine book on the global economy by William Greider called One World, Ready or Not, which will make you look closely at the "Made In ___" labels on all the merchandise you buy!
I'm also always reading in a number of books at any given time for research on the medieval period, but in particular lately I've fallen in love with several of the old chronicles which have survived from the early medieval period, such as Widukind of Corvey's History of the Saxons, Snorri Sturluson's History of the Kings of Norway, Saxo Grammaticus's History of the Danes, The Saga of the Jomsvikings, and Liudprand of Cremona's Antapodosis ("Tit-for-Tat"). First of all, there is enough sex and betrayal and violence and intrigue and honor and glory in these chronicles to fuel a truckload of fat fantasy novels, or even to teach the writers of Melrose Place a thing or two. But more importantly for me, there are moments while reading what these men wrote that I feel as if I have reached across the gulf of centuries and touched their hands and heard their voices -- and isn't that the point of setting it all down in words?