Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!
WHY IS FANTASY LITERATURE SO POPULAR (AND WHY IS SCI-FI FADING FAST)?
Earlier in the week, I linked to a writer who had come up with some explanations for why fantasy is exploding in popularity as a literary genre while science fiction seems to be fading.
(Depressingly, a lot of people in the comments are taking issue with his premise that sci-fi is dying as a literary genre, which is just stupid. The trends are obvious and clear, as we’ve written about ourselves; fantasy literature outsells science fiction by a factor of at least ten, and probably more).
Anyway, I wasn’t too impressed with most of his reasons for the popularity of fantasy: because the future has caught up to sci-fi, because we’ve grown up on fantasy films, and because “literary” writers like Margaret Atwood are cannibalizing sci-fi sales with their own speculative fiction.
But I liked his first reason a lot:
More women than men read books.
I would amend this to say, “More women than men read fiction” (because men read a lot of non-fiction), and then I’d say he’s put his finger right on it. The more I work in publishing and the more I publish novels myself, the more obvious this is to me. As more and more men are drawn to the bells and whistles (and violence) of computer gaming, I think women dominating the publishing industry is becoming even more true.
And women readers seem to be drawn more to fantasy than science fiction.
No, I don’t think it’s that women don’t like or can’t understand “science” (or, as Talking Barbie used to say, “Math is hard!”). I think the explanation is even simpler: the fantasy genre has catered to female readers in a way that science fiction has not.
Traditionally, of course, both science fiction and fantasy gave women only ridiculously passive and stereotypical characters. (Depressingly, even some female writers still do this today **cough** Stephanie Meyer **cough**).
But in the 1970s, the industry began to change, as more and more female authors began writing books themselves. For whatever reason, more women were drawn to fantasy, or — chicken or the egg — maybe fantasy editors and publishers were simply more receptive to them, especially in the children’s and young adult field.
In response, it was like science fiction doubled down, becoming more insular and more seemingly male-dominated. But given the changing demographics, this was a massive strategic disaster.
And I think it’s the reason for where we are today.
So why is science fiction still so popular as a movie and TV genre? Well, that’s the subject of another column!
A SCI-FI OR FANTASY-THEMED OSCAR NOMINEE?
Speaking of sci-fi movies, earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced that they’re increasing the number of Best Picture Nominees from five to ten — which has some folks speculating that a genre movie could potentially get a nod.
The movies that seem to be in serious contention are Star Trek, Up, and District 9, which is too bad, because I think only District 9 truly deserves consideration (along with Drag Me to Hell, which, of course, doesn’t stand a chance in hell, no pun intended, because it’s a horror movie, and a very “B-movie” one at that).
Here’s my list of fantasy-themed movies I saw this year that I think mostly “work,” from best to worst:
District 9
Drag Me to Hell
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Watchmen
Coraline
Up
Here are the movies I saw that don’t really work (or flat-our stink), from best to worst:
A Haunting in Connecticut
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Ponyo
Underworld: Rise of the Lychans
G-Force
Dragonball: Evolution (flat-out stinks)
Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian (flat-out stinks)
Where the Wild Things Are (flat-out stinks)
Inkheart (flat-out stinks)
The Vampire’s Assistant (flat-out stinks)
The Box (really flat-out stinks)
Year One (really flat-out stinks)
Full disclosure: there are still a few movies I haven’t seen yet (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Zombieland), movies I refuse to see out of principle (New Moon), and movies that haven’t opened yet (The Princess and the Frog, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes).
Still, whenever I compile lists like this, I’m always shocked by how many truly stink-o-rama movies I see in a year. And yet I keep going back. Why is that? Answer: because when a movie is truly great, like District 9 or Drag Me to Hell, it makes putting up with all the crap worthwhile. Which I really believe, until I have to sit through another movie like Where the Wild Things Areor The Box.
THE IDIOT BOX
The closer we get to the holiday break, the more likely shows are to go into reruns (don’t ask my why — that’s simply the “rule”), but this week brings new episodes of Sanctuary (Friday, 10 PM, SyFy) and Legend of the Seeker (syndicated, check local listings).
Also, check out Spike TV’s Video Game Awards on Saturday (8 PM, Spike TV).
THE BOX OFFICE
SoTransylmania got a 0% rating at RottenTomatoes.com — not a single critic liked it. Didn’t I warn you it would suck? Didn’t I?
Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.
With the unexpected success of Paranormal Activity, it’s not surprising that publicists for The Fourth Kind, which opens this weekend, are pushing the angle that “it really happened!” in their marketing campaign.
But this isn’t the first fantasy or sci-fi-themed project that’s acted as if its story was real.
The Blair Witch Project may be the most well-known, with its infamous (and wildly successful) pre-release viral campaign that had people wondering if maybe it really had all happened.
But there are plenty of other examples.
(And by the way, no, Cloverfield isn’t one of them. Like Blair Witch, it may have been filmed with hand-held cameras, but as far as I know, no one ever claimed or believed that a giant monster had destroyed New York City!)
The Saga of Darren Shan: Okay, so last month’s The Vampire’s Assistant turned out to be a complete bust, but it was based on the first three books in this teen series, written by Darren Shan. The main character in the books? Darren Shan, who claims the events that turned him into a vampire actually happened. By the end of the series, we learn exactly how he ended up human again: “Darren Shan,” the character, goes back in time to stop the younger version of himself from getting involved with vampires in the first place. His older “vampire” self then gives his “diaries” away (which are later published by his other self) and goes off to die.
Shadow of the Vampire: This 2000 movie has a clever premise: the star of the classic 1922 vampire film Nosferatu (an “unauthorized” adaptation of Dracula, and the source for the idea that vampires are killed by sunlight) was an actual, if disgruntled vampire. The cast and crew are told he’s a method actor who they will only ever see in full costume and make-up — and the vampire himself has only agreed to be in the film in exchange for the life of the leading lady, which the director has promised him if he finishes the movie. The film, which is only so-so, does such an amazing job matching certain scenes with the existing classic movie that you can’t help but wonder, “Hmmm.”
Almost Every Ghost or Exorcism Movie Ever Made:The Amityville Horror and Exorcist were both huge successes, and they both shouted at the top of their lungs that they were “based on a true story!” How true? How closely-based? Well, let’s not quibble over unimportant details, but rather point out that many, many ghost and/or exorcism stories since then have made the same claim: The Entity, A Haunting in Connecticut, Audrey Rose, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting, and on and on and on!
Communion: A True Story: Why would anyone possibly believe it when an established speculative fiction author writes a book like the 1987 novel memoir Communion: A True Story, in which the novelist author is the main character and he claims he was contacted by alien “visitors”?Uh, because they want to believe? To novelist author Whitney Strieber’s credit, he doesn’t claim they were “aliens” per se; he even allows they may have only existed in his mind. I guess that’s something.
The War of the Worlds: Two things made listeners believe that Orson Welles’ dramatic 1938 radio production of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds was a real radio news broadcast: the fact that the hour-long production ran without commercial breaks, and that it was presented as a series of actual news bulletins. The widespread “panic” may have been overstated at the time by headline-hungry newspapers, but it’s undeniable that plenty of listeners were confused as to what they were really hearing. In any event, it made Welles a star.
Deadpool: Well, hey, this superhero’s catchphrase is “Breaking down the fourth wall brick by brick!” He’s definitely aware that he’s a character in comic book — aware of the yellow boxes of text, and even of things that happen in the “real” world outside of the comic book (or in other comic books), things that his character couldn’t possibly know about. Okay, so this doesn’t mean he’s “real” — it’s more that he might be insane — and it isn’t exactly what we’re talking about here. But it’s still really cool!
Gothic: How incredibly fantastic is it that the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley and Shelley’s wife Mary were all friends? And how cool is it that in the rainy summer of 1816, forced to spend time indoors, they decided to entertain each other by telling ghost stories? The end result was the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and The Vampyre, co-written by Byron and his doctor, John Polidori, considered the first actual work of “vampire” literature. The 1986 Ken Russell movie Gothic (again, just so-so) adds some visual panache to their stories, which is necessary (I suppose) for film. But the idea that Frankenstein and vampire stories were both born among the same people over the same few days? You can’t make that story any cooler than it already is!
The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, the series of YA books by Libba Bray that includes A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing, is flat-out terrific.
The books tell the story of Gemma Doyle, a teenager in Victorian England whose is sent to a boarding school after her mother dies. The school and most of its students may be painfully repressed, but the building also contains a great secret: a connection to a land of magic and free expression called “The Realms.”
Soon Gemma and her three friends are traveling back and forth to this place of wonderment, determined to save the world from its growing dangers, not to mention solving the mystery of Gemma’s mother’s death.
Oh, and Gemma is also having a steamy romance with a hot gypsy man.
I’m not at all surprised that these books went on to become New York Times Bestsellers. Audience know an enormously entertaining book when they read it.
But since the first book was published in 2003 (and the sequels followed in 2006 and 2007), I’ve wondered why these excellent books haven’t received more critical acclaim in the young adult book world — literary awards and the like.
I think the explanation is that the books are sometimes melodramatic and over-the-top, plot-wise.
But here’s the thing: they’re supposed to be over-the-top. The books seem to me to be very clearly a satire of — and an homage too — the genre of Gothic literature.
As satire/homage, these books succeed completely. It’s too bad that those in YA world seems to determined only to honor “literary” fiction and the like.
So why have I only given the series four torches out of five?
The frank truth is that Bray, as terrific a writer as she is, loses control of her story in the third book, which swells to over 800 pages (from 403 pages in for the first entry). There’s too much traveling back and forth to the realms in this book, and while she does manage — just barely — to cobble together a satisfying ending in the end, it doesn’t contain any real surprises, and it’s pretty far from seamless.
But the last book aside, these books should have become YA classics. I hope they still do.
Fantasy novels take a lot of work: it’s not enough to write a gripping story, you also have to create a new, intricate, consistent world to set it in. Last year I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, the first book in her Heir series (written for young adults, but accessible to all readers).
I was instantly hooked. Jack, a modern-day high school student, forgets to take the medicine he’s been taking since infancy. It turns out that he is the last of a dying breed, and a target of a group of evil wizards. A different group of wizards and enchanters has been keeping him safe all his life — but now he’s taking matters into his own hands.
Not only does Williams Chima have a compelling and interesting story, she has created a world that exists alongside our own — and it’s actually quite believable. The amount of work that went into the novels is clear.
When I added the series to my list of books at Goodreads.com, I found that Williams Chima also had a page there. After spending an hour combing through the books she has read (and adding quite a few of them to my to-read list), I decided to send her a message.
She was extremely polite, and when I asked about an interview, she took the time to answer some of my questions.
TheTorchOnline: What made you want to be a writer?
Cinda Williams Chima: It began with a love of reading and the habit of making up stories. I used to give voices to all our pets and stuffed animals, and I did a lot of live-action role-playing before RPG’s were invented. We would play spies and pirates in the woods, or be characters in our favorite TV shows or movies. My Barbies were always international jewel thieves or government agents, never teenage fashion models.
TTO: Who has influenced your work?
CWC: Ideas are everywhere, and many, many of my own experiences have been incorporated into my books. I have loved fantasy since I was in high school, and there are lots of fantasy authors who have influenced me and whom I enjoy today — Tolkien, Mary Stewart, David Eddings, George R.R. Martin, Tamora Pierce, Robin Hobb, plus lots of other young adult authors. J.K. Rowling gave a gift to all YA authors — she expanded the page count of YA books so fantasy writers could better fit in.
I read all kinds of books, though, not just fantasy. The other major influence was my mother, who instilled in me a love of reading.
TTO: What was it like when your first novel, The Warrior Heir, was published?
CWC: It was like Christmas. A dream come true for me. I’m still a bit giddy, after three books. That said, probably the biggest surprise for me is that getting published doesn’t solve all your problems! There are always new things to worry about and sweat over.
TTO: Out of the awards your current novels have won, which are you most proud of and why?
CWC: Wow, that’s hard to say. Different awards are special for different reasons. The Warrior Heir was a 2006 Booksense Summer Reading Pick. That was the first award I received, and so that was a huge confidence booster. One local recognition really touched me as well — I received a fiction award from the Lit Center in Cleveland. That is an organization of literary poets and writers, so that award meant a lot.
TTO: When you’re not writing, what do you like to spend your time doing?
CWC: I’m always writing, promoting, putting together workshops, and answering mail. Until a year ago, I was a college professor as well as a writer. Now that I write full time, I’m hoping to get back to some of the other things I enjoy, such as reading, doing genealogical research, handweaving and other needlework, playing guitar, traveling, and cooking things that take longer than half an hour.
TTO: Since you’re always writing, is there somewhere special you like to write most?
CWC: I do most of my writing at my desk in the den; I plug my laptop into an awesome 24-inch video display and external keyboard. I also often write in a coffee shop in order to get away from the Internet. On vacation I love to write on a balcony overlooking the ocean.
TTO: Is there any advice you’d like to give to aspiring authors?
CWC: Focus on craft. The mistake many aspiring authors make is jumping ahead to how to write a query letter or pitch an agent before the work is really ready. I was as guilty as anyone. Learn from my mistakes.
TTO: What are your views on fanfiction?
CWC: It’s interesting, and it’s very like what I used to do in role-playing. I think it can develop writing skills, but I encourage young writers to find and develop their own characters and stories! Yours may be better than mine!
TTO: Your next book, The Demon King, is slated for release on October 13, 2009. What is this book going to be about?
CWC:The Demon King is set in the mountain queendom of the Fells, which is going through hard times. Han Alister, a reformed gang leader and thief, is trying to make a living for his family. The only thing of value he has is something he can’t sell–the magical silver cuffs he’s worn all his life. Meanwhile, Raisa ana’Marianna, the Princess Heir, is struggling to navigate the dangerous Gray Wolf Court. Wars rage to the south, the impoverished population is close to rebellion, and the ongoing feud between The Wizard Council and the Spirit Clans threatens to ignite into flame.
TTO: Where did you get the idea for this book?
CWC: I had previously written two fantasy novels set in this same world, which were never published. I took two of the characters and made them the viewpoints of this new series. So a lot of the groundwork was already laid–the magical system, the worldbuilding, etc.
TTO: What different ways do you advertise for this upcoming novel? Do you do a lot of work on your own, or does your publisher do most of the work?
CWC: My publisher has been very supportive of my books, and I am very grateful. I will be touring for The Demon King during October, and have quite a few author events scheduled between now and then — writing workshops, library and school visits, and conferences. My husband maintains my Website and I have blogs on LiveJournal, Blogspot, MySpace, and Facebook. I make it a priority to respond to fan mail, though it gets overwhelming at times.
TTO: Since you’ve had three books published prior to this one, do you think this was easier or harder to write this one?
CWC: It was easier to believe I could finish a novel, having had that experience before. I think one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s possible to make a major revision in your book. You can tear your book apart, and it doesn’t “break.” It’s very freeing.
TTO: How often have you had to go back and rewrite major portions? Does the end result resemble the original draft?
CWC:The Warrior Heir was revised over 4 years, so the end result was dramatically different than the first draft. I was learning more and more about writing during that time. The Dragon Heir was also greatly revised. My editor asked me to take a character out, and I did. The Demon King was revised very little, but that project had been fermenting for a long time.
On May 3, fantasy author Tamora Pierce’s latest novel, Bloodhound, debuted at number one on the New York Times Children’s Chapter Books Bestseller List — a sweet reward for the veteran author, whose first book came out in 1983.
That novel, Alanna: The First Adventure, was part one of four books in the Song of the Lioness quartet, a much-beloved series about Alanna, a girl who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight.
Ever since then, Pierce has written young adult fantasy novels with strong female characters, and her audience has grown steadily.Today, Pierce has more than two dozen novels to her name, and she has sold more than 3 million print and audio books combined. Bloodhound, her most recent, is the second in a trilogy about Beka Cooper, a young member of the Provost’s Guard, a kind of police force. The novels are set about 200 years before the time of Alanna, in the world of Tortall — a time when Lady Knights and female guards were, if not common, largely accepted.
The first novel in the trilogy, Terrier, takes Beka through her initial training to become a guard. In Bloodhound, Beka becomes embroiled in a complex investigation involving counterfeit coins and the criminal underworld.
I recently spoke with Tamora Pierce over the phone just before she set off on a monthlong book tour for Bloodhound; we talked about the inspiration for the series, gender and sexism, torture, and why she still can’t bear to look at the Alanna books.
TheTorchOnline: There’s so much young adult fantasy these days. Why do you think it’s so popular?
Tamora Pierce: Publishers discovered with Harry [Potter] that kids will read a lot of fantasy, and they’ll read big books. And rather than just publishing books like Harry, they just started to publish fantasy and take chances on unusual fantasy. So we are really having a golden age. Fairy tale retellings, urban fantasy, there are so many different kinds of things out there now. It’s absolutely wonderful.
I’m seeing so many wonderful new books coming out especially this year. Kristin Cashore has a new book coming out. Alison Goodman with her combination of China and something else for the Dragoneye books. D.M. Cornish’s Victorian [Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy]. China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, where all of our bad stuff breaks through into this city under London. … It’s just amazing what we’ve got coming out, and the reason publishers keep publishing it is because people are buying it and reading it.
TTO: I think all this fantasy is wonderful, because there’s so much young adult fiction for girls that I feel focuses almost exclusively on boyfriends.
TP: [makes pained sound] Oh, don’t remind me.
TTO: Your books have so many wonderfully complicated characters, I’m just wondering, do you think teenage girls are just boy-crazy?
TP: No. Well, they’re also girl-crazy, it’s the whole hormone thing. You’ve gotta just sit there and go, well, maybe they’ll get past it. [sighs] I don’t know what it is. I just sort of wince and move on to the good stuff. It’s just an area that has taken off — like romance — and maybe they’ll grow up and read romance that doesn’t involve girls backbiting each other and betraying each other for a guy that they get rid of two weeks later. I certainly hope so.
TTO: What the inspiration was for the Beka Cooper series?
TP: Partly, I had gotten to thinking that I had missed an opportunity with the Provost’s Guard in the Alanna books. … My fans had been asking, in any case, for something from the time of the Lady Knights, when they were still flourishing.
So I thought to go back then and see what I might find there. Somehow the strings tying George Cooper [a character in the Song of the Lioness quartet and a thief] to the Provost’s Guards got me to the point of thinking it would be fun to do George’s ancestress, who is in fact not a thief but a Provost’s Guard herself. And it sort of rolled on from there.
TTO: You’ve said that you borrow real-world elements to create your fantasy worlds. I’m just so impressed all the slang in Bloodhound.
TP: For slang, there’s a book [I use for reference]. … I can’t function without it: Slang Through the Ages. … Slang covers body parts, it covers crime, it covers specific insults for Jews and Chinese. Different kinds of prostitute, which is always useful. … It takes a certain amount of digging to find a word, and sometimes you have to piece stuff together, and sometimes you have to go a little more forward in time than your period. … But that’s mostly where I get my words from.
TTO: It lends a lot of life to it.
TP: It also enables me to say a number of quite naughty things without people realizing I said them.
TTO: Very tricky!
TP: Oh yeah, they don’t know the word I used is an actual word, and I would get in trouble if they knew what the word was! [laughter]
TTO: I want to ask you about a somewhat more serious element of Bloodhound. There is, as you know, a scene of torture in the book, and the techniques seem very similar to water boarding.
TP: Why, yes. How strange!
TTO: Why did you decide to do that?
TP: Well, I pussyfooted all the way around it in Terrier. … I didn’t like myself prettying things up, so I knew I had to tackle it, and that particular method is used quite frequently. It’s been used for centuries, and I figured that a good look at that might show people that it was a really nasty thing to do to someone. So, it was that or the rack or the thumbscrews, and I just felt that I would be getting into gore there.
TTO: Right. Well, also this lends the book a kind of current element.
TP: I took a chance with it, but I figured it was something that really had to be done, because they would have applied it automatically to anyone that had information that they wanted in centuries past. … And the fact that I chose waterboarding was just me being mad.
TTO: This brings me to the issue of historical accuracy in fantasy novels. At The Enchanted Inkpot, there was recently a discussion about gender in fantasy. We were debating whether it’s necessary to include gender discrimination in fantasy novels set in historical time periods. You’ve just said that in Beka Cooper’s time, they would have used torture — however, unlike the Middle Ages, I was really surprised by how equal men and women were in Bloodhound.
TP: In that case, the universe I’ve built is one where there is a certain amount of equality. This particular time is more equal, actually, than the time that my other books are set in. …
But the thing that makes my world different from the real world — and the thing that I think makes a lot of it possible — is you have the equalizing effect of magic. It’s really hard to keep an entire sex down when they can turn around and do all kinds of nasty things to you with magic. … If it were the real world I wouldn’t be able to get away with it, but this is a world where women as well as men can apply magic, so that tends to even the playing field.
Also, this is a world where the gods are very much present. There is a kind of monotheism on the other side of the world that I cover in a couple of stories … but by and large it’s a pagan world, and it will stay pagan because the gods are very much present and very much part of people’s lives. So you don’t get this thing of people turning to the idea of a single masculine god. That’s never going to happen because the real gods are going to come in and put their feet down.
We partly turned into a sex discriminatory society because the pagans decided to concentrate the bulk of muscle power in a male god, and as many of the world’s religions turned into monotheism, the embodiment was usually a male god. So it made it easier to say women are second-class citizens, because if they weren’t, we would be following a female god.
I don’t do monotheism well. I don’t like it; I’m ham-handed when I try to write it, so I don’t.
TTO: I was really struck by why you just said about the equalizing effect of magic. There are so many other fantasy novels with magic in them in which women are less than equal to men.
TP: I don’t see how they worked out that equation. The only way it works is if women acquiesce into being second-class citizens. And frankly, all it takes is one pissed-off 10-year-old with a lightning bolt in her hand to overcome it. … The only way, with [magic] in the equation, that you [could] have an entire sex being oppressed is if they consent to the oppression. Actually, the only way it ever happens is when people consent to that oppression.
TTO: Over the years you’ve included gay and lesbian characters in your books. With each successive character, he or she has been more out than the last. You said in an interview that in earlier years, you were sort of afraid to do this.
TP: I was afraid I wouldn’t do it right — I’d screw up somewhere.
It was in either First Test or Page … Joren says to Neal, “So you can have her anytime you want,” or to Seaver, “She helps you with your homework, does that mean you can have her whenever you want?” And Neal says, “Vinson, Joren’s so pretty, does that mean do you have him anytime you want?” And Joren tries to break Neal’s head for him. And Kel stops Neal and she says, “You know, in the Yamani islands, nobody cares if you go with someone of your own sex,” and Neal says, “It’s very different here.”
People started coming up to me at my appearances and saying to me, “When I read that, I realized you were all right with people being gay, and I just wanted to tell you that really meant something to me,” and some of them would actually start crying. And I’m there [thinking], “Of course I don’t care if you’re gay or not!”
I realized if they take that much comfort from that teeny tiny line, then I owe it to them to try, whether I think that I’ll fall on my butt or not. I owe them better than one line. And that’s when I began to try and stretch a little — not try and write the gay experience, but have people there who [are gay].
TTO: In Bloodhound, I’m pretty sure that the character Okha is one of the first — if not the first — transgender character I’ve ever encountered in young adult fantasy. In the book, you use the male pronoun to describe Okha. Is that right?
TP: I couldn’t really say “she” because that’s an artifact of our time. However Okha feels about it, Beka is still going to refer to him as “he,” because that’s what she sees. Okha knows that she’s a she, but Beka doesn’t.
So I had to look at it and go, OK, there are things I have to do to fit the time and the characters, but as far as Okha is concerned, the Trickster messed her up when she was born, and she’s female. And yeah, as far as I know, I can’t recall any other transgender characters in fantasy.
TTO: There are so few transgender or gay characters in general. I’m kind of curious, do you have any opinion on why this is so?
TP: I have no idea. I guess cause we’re kinda like turtles, we only stick our necks out of the shell when it’s safe. …
I think those of us to whom it’s a real issue tend to write contemporary, where it’ll have the most effect and the most impact. We want to get the biggest audience possible. Very few of us in fantasy are addressing that as our primary issue.
Other than that, I don’t know. I just know that I have friends and I have fans, and I try to depict as much of the world as I can. So I don’t know why other writers don’t [write gay or trans characters], but I’m sure they will, because the generation that’s coming up now is a lot more accepting and a lot more “Yeah, that’s part of life” than mine.
TTO: You’ve been writing for a long time, and it’s been 26 years since the Alanna books were first published. Has your writing process changed over those 26 years?
TP: Oh, yeah. It used to be that I would write five to six pages a day to start, and seven or so a day in the middle, and 14 to 20 in the end. With this last book, I’m happy if I can get three pages a day. It’s moving slowly.
TTO: The sequel to Bloodhound?
TP:Mastiff, yeah. Also … when I neared the end of a manuscript I’d print it out and go over it by hand, and then if I had time I’d read it aloud to catch the things I missed by hand and on the screen. These days my friend Bruce Coville — My Teacher Is an Alien, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, Dark Whispers — we have readings; he’ll come over here and we’ll each read five pages of our current project and give each other notes and commentary, and that’s how I do my drafts.
TTO: So this three pages a day, is this unusual, do you think?
TP: Highly unusual. I don’t know why I’m dragging along. Bruce says that we reinvent how we write each book we do. I also hope that it’s just that I’m struggling to get a lot of very complex ducks in a row.
TTO: With the plot?
TP: Yeah, and that once I get everybody on the road and out there in the middle of the countryside dealing with things like wildlife and camping grounds —
TTO: Oh, they’re going camping?
TP: Oh, yeah.
TTO: That’s exciting.
TP: [dryly] Beka’s going to be ever so thrilled. They’ll be in way houses a lot, but yeah, they’re going up into the mountains. She’s going to really, really love that.
TTO: Another crime to investigate — another hunt?
TP: Yep, this is gonna be a big one.
TTO: Sounds very exciting. I won’t ask you to reveal any spoilers. [laughs]
TP: That’s OK, I’m good at not giving spoilers. It’s a big one. Terrier was because when she gets her teeth in something she won’t let go. Bloodhound is you can’t throw her off the scent. And Mastiff is when she brings down the really big game.
TTO: So I have to ask you — do you have a single favorite character out of the all those you’ve created?
TP: [thoughtful sigh] I don’t really, or if I do, it’s an affection that lasts only for a minute. I mean, anybody who’s [taken up] more than a couple of lines, I have to love them, because I put some portion of me — everybody does — into that character.
It’s obvious that I love my heroes, or I couldn’t have written entire books about them. And what I’ll say in schools is: If I absolutely have to pick, my choices are Kel [Keladry of Mindelan, from the Protector of the Small quartet], my second knight, because she’s so calm and easygoing and wonderful to work with. Or there’s Tris [Trisana Chandler, from The Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens quartets], who looks and sounds very much like me. I can’t do the lightning thing, but that’s not for lack of trying.
There are also characters like the darkings, who are just plain cute and pop up in the darnedest situations. There’s one little guy, Secret, who gets caught in things and then tries to lie its way out of them, even though it doesn’t really lie very well.
But there’s also the pygmy marmoset, Zek, from Emperor Mage, and Daine’s dog Jump, and the sparrows from the Kel books, or there’s someone like Neal, Kel’s friend who just cannot help himself from saying something that he shouldn’t.
TTO: Wow, you need an encyclopedia.
TP: [laughs] Actually —
TTO: Do you have one in the works?
TP: Well, yeah, my editor’s talked to me about a companion volume, and what I said was [anguished squeal]. But they said somebody else could work on it, so I’ve got some people talking to my editors now about working on a companion volume.
TTO: Oh, that’s great.
TP: Yeah. All my fans will be happy.
TTO: So maybe this will be in the encyclopedia — I’ll ask you here: What happened between Beka Cooper’s time and Song of the Lioness to make the Lady Knights disappear?
TP: Remember those allusions to the Cult of the Gentle Mother [in Bloodhound]?
TTO: Yes, I was wondering if that is what happens.
TP: Yeah, the Cult of the Gentle Mother digs in. You’ll see more of it in Mastiff. Partly it’s that the realm is coming into a peaceful period, and they have more knights than they can reasonably employ. … So it’s partly a function of, you know, here’s this belief that says that women are delicate, they should be nurtured and kept safe, and if it’s not put on the women themselves, certainly their daughters.
A lot of women go along with this because they want their daughters to be safe. And slowly it becomes a more and more overpowering force, and within 100 years, there will be no more Lady Knights or female sailors or female Provost’s Guards.
TTO: Until Alanna.
TP: Until Alanna starts the whole game over again.
TTO: Wow. So I remember reading in an interview that you can’t bear to look at those books — the first four books.
TP: Oh, yeah.
TTO: Is that still the case?
TP: Let me ask you: Have you looked at stuff you’ve written recently, even the book you’ve got coming out?
TTO: The book I have coming out [Ash, coming in September] I have looked at, because I have to correct things in it. [laughs]
TP: And you’ve been doing a lot of corrections where you thought you were tired of it and it was perfect as it was, right?
TTO: Oh, yes.
TP: Well, it’s the same thing, only if I tried to correct anything in those first four books, my fans would have me for dinner. Because they love each and every word as it is. So I would never dare mess with it.
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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!
Anyway, I wasn’t too impressed with most of his reasons for the popularity of fantasy: because the future has caught up to sci-fi, because we’ve grown up on fantasy films, and because “literary” writers like Margaret Atwood are cannibalizing sci-fi sales with their own speculative fiction.
Traditionally, of course, both science fiction and fantasy gave women only ridiculously passive and stereotypical characters. (Depressingly, even some female writers still do this today **cough** Stephanie Meyer **cough**).
Speaking of sci-fi movies, earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced that they’re increasing the number of Best Picture Nominees from five to ten — which has some folks speculating that a genre movie could potentially get a nod.
Full disclosure: there are still a few movies I haven’t seen yet (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Zombieland), movies I refuse to see out of principle (New Moon), and movies that haven’t opened yet (The Princess and the Frog, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes).
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Fantasy novels take a lot of work: it’s not enough to write a gripping story, you also have to create a new, intricate, consistent world to set it in. Last year I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, the first book in her Heir series (written for young adults, but accessible to all readers).
TTO: What was it like when your first novel, The Warrior Heir, was published?
On May 3, fantasy author Tamora Pierce’s latest novel, Bloodhound, debuted at number one on the New York Times Children’s Chapter Books Bestseller List — a sweet reward for the veteran author, whose first book came out in 1983.
TTO: What the inspiration was for the Beka Cooper series?
TTO: I want to ask you about a somewhat more serious element of Bloodhound. There is, as you know, a scene of torture in the book, and the techniques seem very similar to water boarding.
Also, this is a world where the gods are very much present. There is a kind of monotheism on the other side of the world that I cover in a couple of stories … but by and large it’s a pagan world, and it will stay pagan because the gods are very much present and very much part of people’s lives. So you don’t get this thing of people turning to the idea of a single masculine god. That’s never going to happen because the real gods are going to come in and put their feet down.
TP: I was afraid I wouldn’t do it right — I’d screw up somewhere.
TTO: You’ve been writing for a long time, and it’s been 26 years since the Alanna books were first published. Has your writing process changed over those 26 years?
TTO: Sounds very exciting. I won’t ask you to reveal any spoilers. [laughs]
