Now that we talked about your last novels, let’s go back to the beginnings : how did you come up with a passion for writing and for fantasy?
My passion for fantasy comes from a teacher in eighth grade, when I was fourteen, who challenged me to read a book. I share this story a lot, but I think it’s an important part of who I am. I didn’t enjoy reading when I was younger. I didn’t discover reading until I was given a fantasy novel. I had tried reading many other novels and had been bored by them. And it was the discovery of fantasy literature as a genre—the imagination, the power of it—that really changed me as a person and turned me into a writer.
I mean it’s really bizarre: the book that I read was called Dragonsbane , by Barbara Hambly. And this is an interesting thing, because when you know anything about literacy, there are certain things they say that you’re supposed to give to boys. You’re supposed to give them a book about a boy, and more specifically, about a boy who’s two or three years older than them, not their age but not too old. And it’s supposed to be very fast-paced, and it’s supposed to be very adventuresome. That’s what boys are supposed to like. Dragonsbane is about a middle-aged woman, who’s the main protagonist. She is not going on fast adventures—actually she and her husband are pig farmers. And he is the last living dragonsbane, a man who has killed a dragon. A dragon has come to assault the kingdom, and someone goes off to find him. And it’s a story of how unglamorous it is to kill a dragon; it’s like butchering a cow, just a really big one. And she is a witch, and it’s the story of her balancing her family life and her magic. She’s been told that she could be the greatest witch who ever lived if she would just dedicate everything to it, but she doesn’t want to because she has a family too.
And so here’s this book about a middle-aged woman, who is trying to balance her career and her family life, and that’s what I liked!
And I still look back at it as an academic and think: “Why did that work?” And actually it’s an illustration of what I think is great about the fantasy genre. I feel that fantasy can do everything that any other genre can do, plus can have this added layer of world-building. And that forces you as a reader to put together a puzzle; what is the world, how do things work here? It’s this wonderfully intellectual exercise and imagination exercise that a fantasy novel can give you, that other novels generally can’t.
And this novel worked for me, because of my own mother. My mother graduated first in her class in an accounting program. She was actually the only woman in the program; not a lot of women did that then. She got a very prestigious job offer, to go work for an accounting firm, and she turned it down because she wanted to have me, a kid. She still works as an accountant today, but at that time of her life she wanted to be a mother. And she has always balanced her career and her family.
And I read this book, which was about a man killing a dragon, and when I got done, I felt like I understood my mother better. That is weird, that is so weird, but that’s what fantasy can do, because it can have this beautiful and wonderful intellectual creative side. It can be adventuresome, it can be fun and have a story about killing a dragon, but it can also deal with real people having real situations, that help you understand the world better. It can do all of these things and be fun at the same time, so why would anyone read anything else?
But that’s what happened to me: I became a writer because of that book, and because of the books I discovered that summer: Anne McCaffrey, I mentioned Melanie Rawn, David Eddings, Tad Williams, and then Robert Jordan released later that year his first Wheel of Time book. Because of these authors I just fell in love with, I just wanted to be able to create those emotions in people, that they could create.
And so I started writing immediately. I’d found what was me.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.