Ask Nicola Archives
Nicola's Career
April 5, 1999
sorry to hear you have ms. take care of yourself! you mentioned in an interview that you taught writing. i was wondering where? i have read your books and just got the blue place and look forward to that one as well.
sending you good thoughts and all that kind of stuff!
I teach on a sporadic basis - when I'm asked, in other words. This year, I'll be teaching in Vermont, at the 4th Annual Post-Graduate Summer Writer's Conference at Vermont College in Montpelier. I'll be teaching speculative fiction writing in a small workshop setting. Other workshops at the conference will include Memoir/Personal Essay, Short Fiction, The Novel, Poetry, Poetry Manuscript (I'm not really clear on what the difference between the last two might be). There are also master classes: advanced seminars on craft, theory & aesthetics; issues forums: writing, publishing, editing, teaching; and individual consultation with faculty. (Other teachers there will be Francois Camoin, Ellen Lesser, Sena Jeter Naslund, Christopher Noel, Deborah Digges, Richard Jackson, Bruce Weigl, and Roger Weingarten.) The conference runs from August 18-24.
I've never taught at this conference (this is the first year they've included speculative fiction), so I can't speak from experience, but from what I've heard, it's a small, informal, intensive few days, with lots of cross-pollination between groups, and some fierce learning going on. Prices seem reasonable, with room, board, and tuition coming in at under a thousand dollars - and options for fending for youself room and food-wise to cut costs. For more information, contact:
Roger Weingarten
rogerw@norwich.edu
Phone: 802/828-8638
FAX: 802/828-8649
E-mail:
March 18, 1999
Nicola,
To be Honest, I have never heard of you until I received your novel Slow River for Christmas. I read it for this fact along. After I have read it, I must say you are a very talented person. I really enjoyed it and will recommend it to many of my friends. Now it is timefor me to get started on your other writings.
My question is, will you ever make it to the Washington, D.C. area for book signings, etc?
It's unlikely - at least in the near future. The Blue Place comes out as a trade paperback this summer (June or July, it's unclear to me exactly) and unless there's some sudden and huge demand, I don't think I'll be doing any signings or publicity for it; Avon, the publisher, has not apprised me of any such plans.
Who knows about a few years down the road? I'd like to think that at some point, someone will send me on a national tour <g>.
November 25, 1998
I loved Bending the Landscape-Fantasy and I am looking forward to reading the science fiction volume. I was wondering if you are still accepting stories for the horror volume, or is it already closed? I think the Bending the Landscape series is wonderful. Will there ever be a second volume of the series?
If you mean, "Will there be a second series, a fantasy vol. II, SF vol. II and so on?" the answer is "Probably not." There are several reasons for this.
First of all, once it's been done, it's been done. It doesn't need doing anymore. This series was designed to be a wall-buster, to destroy the artificial barriers between genre and category (etc. etc.), and between gay and straight. If I'd had my own way, we would just have done one volume of "speculative fiction" because I've never been very happy with putting things in little boxes. This is why I wanted fiction from gay, straight, bi, transgendered (etc. etc.) writers, all writing about gay characters. If I ever did another anthology, I think I'd like to do one on gender, and I'm not sure I would want to put any restrictions on it in terms of the author or the genre: mainstream, western, romance, SF, humour, suspense, whatever, would all be fine by me. For me, Bending the Landscape was and is essentially a piece of mischief, designed to stir things up a wee bit.
Secondly, there's the money. Editing anthologies doesn't pay very well if all you're interested in is the work itself, and not some high concept marketing ploy. The payment Stephe and I have received for this series is token money; just about all of it went to the authors.
Thirdly, and probably most importantly, to me, there's the time. I've found that I really like editing but, done properly, it's a very time-consuming job. It's marvellous to take a hopelessly muddy piece of work, to lift it out of the mire of prose and hose it down and see a gleaming, sharp-edged shape emerge; wonderfully satisfying, but not as fine a feeling as creating a whole novel from nothing but the ideas bobbing about in my head. I only have so much energy and I'd much rather spend it on writing my own novels (and hopefully some short fiction soon) than on honing the work of others. Selfish, I know, but that's how I feel about it.
None of this is carved in stone, however. If someone offers me a pot of money, if I get well and have more energy in the next year or two, if we're sent so many good stories that it would be a waste to not use them, then...well, who knows?
The horror volume isn't closed. We still need another 20,000 words. We have several stories in the Maybe category at the moment, but there's certainly room for something fabulous if it arrives in the next few weeks.
November 21, 1998
I walked into the office of this friend of yours who works with me. I thought he was reading a document, but, it didn't have any diagrams or tables. I asked him, what are you reading? He told me he was reading a short story of yours. I didn't believe him, but he showed me your name, and your site (you need a new layout, this one sucks), and now I do.
I was thinking. I knew there were writers, but I guess I never thought that I would know about one. Or that anyone I knew would know one, either. I guess if anyone was going to, it would be your friend. My question is, how is it to do something where everyone knows that it's you who did it? I mean, I write software that lots of people uses, but nobody knows that it's me who does that. But all these people know you. You have a web site, and people read it, and write to you, and you write back. How does it feel, everybody knowing who you are? It would be weird, to have all those people thinking about me who I didn't even know.
I like it. I like being able to point at a book and say, "I made that." I find that having my name on something makes me very, very careful to do my best, all the time.
About ten years ago, I was asked to do some work for hire fiction writing for Games Workshop (a UK role-play and gaming company). The pay was very good. I was advised by all and sundry to use a pseudonym. I refused. If I was going to write it, then it was bloody well going to be good enough to have my name on it--otherwise what was the point? Using my name kept me honest, it made me work hard to give the reader the best I could. (If anyone cares to look those stories up, they are "The Other," in Ignorant Armies, ed. David Pringle, and "The Voyage South," in Red Thirst, also ed. by Pringle. Bear in mind I wrote them ten years ago, a long time before any of my novels were published.) I can't imagine being in the software industry where writing is something of a conveyor belt process: lots of people churning out code that doesn't have to be elegant, merely workable; no one knowing who did what; no ownership.
In this sense, I think software is something of a pre-renaissance industry: the artisans don't sign their work. I'm more a post-renaissance person. I want people to know it's mine. I want the reader to know my name. Years ago, when I'd only had a couple of short stories published, I phoned the local library about something--a form of some kind, or a book reservation, I forget what, exactly--and the woman taking my information asked for my name, and when I told her, she said, "Oh, the writer!" It's one of my most cherished memories, right alongside the first time I ever saw a stranger reading one of my books (it was Ammonite, the first edition with the awful orange and red and yellow cover). Both instances made me feel like a god.
Sometimes, knowing that my name will be on a piece of fiction, it's hard to not self-censor. The first time I wrotea sex scene, for instance, I wondered if everyone I met would look at me and think, "Ha! I know what she likes in bed...." Maybe they did and do think that, but they don't know. They know what my character likes, not me. Still, it's hard knowing thatsome readers think that, even if they're wrong.
I'm toying with the idea of writing under a pseudonym at the moment--not because I would be ashamed of what I'd write, but because it would be freeing, to a certain extent. There are a couple of ideas I have that might not sit too well with the readership if it was known that the book was written by a white woman who's a dyke. Whether we like it or not, the author's identity often influences the way a reader interprets the author's work. A similar situation exists in Hollywood: out lesbians aren't given much film work as actors, because the studios believe the audiences won't buy them as the hero's straight romantic interest. The double standard is alive and well, of course: straight actors are quite happyto play dykes, and it doesn't hurt their careers. And I won't even mention the fact that when mystery writer Sandra Scoppetone decided to write some novels under the pseudonym Jack Early, her reviews (and sales, and advance cheques) were all much, much better than they had been when she wrote under her own name....
October 13, 1998
from Jill McMahon, mcmud33@concentric.net -
This is the geologist, again. I read Ammonite and enjoyed it, especially the description of the culture of the group that lived on the high plains. (I like cold climates and stark landscapes.) The Blue Place remains my favorite.
I chuckled at your remark about moving people bigger than you.
"Sometimes it can be rather humbling, but I keep going because it's important to try, because it keeps me in as good shape as can be expected, and because--against all the odds--I still sometimes feel exhilarated when something works even moderately well. It's a trip; there's nothing like using your body, of throwing some hulking person ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier to the floor with a smile on your face. Lovely <g>."
I'm not skilled with the martial arts, but I do know my physics. I was catching for a men's softball team in Maine, and a (male) baserunner on the opposing team thought he could score a run by charging me at homeplate. His mistake was going airborne. As he flew toward me, I blocked the plate and used his momentum to shove him over and past it so that he could not touch homeplate. He was out. Had he maintained contact with the ground and collided with me, it would have been a closer call. I enjoyed (extremely) the stunned look on his and his teammates faces.
Is there a projected date for the next Aud book? Whenever, I look forward to reading it. -Jill Mc.Good to hear from you again. I'm glad you liked the Echraidhe; I think they were my most carefully visualised community in Ammonite. They felt real to me for a while. Even now, when I see a particularly crazy, homicidal woman on TV, I think of Uaithne.
I've barely started the next Aud book. It will be at least six months (and probably longer) before I finish it, and then another nine to fifteen months after that before it appears on the shelves. So my guess would be not until the year 2000. Blimey, I should really get on the stick....
Will you be touring with The Blue Place? I should like to get my copy signed. Thanks
I won't be doing a national tour with The Blue Place. I will be reading and signing in the Puget Sound area (see Appearances for the latest details) and possibly in Portland and, later, the Bay Area. A lot depends on whether or not booksellers down there would like me to do stuff, and whether or not Avon will pay for me to go. If the answer to all those are "yes," then I'd be happy to get on a train and cruise down the coast for a couple of days.
I'd want to go by train because planes these days always make me ill: the overcrowding, the poor air quality, the awful, awful food. Ack. And I've never been on an American train. Kelley thinks they're wonderful, and we keep talking about doing a grand trip across country one of these fine days--pretending we live in the fifties, eating olives and drinking martinis in a glass-roofed salon hurtling along at fifty miles an hour while talking to just-met interesting people we'll never see again. But it would be good to start with a trip to California <g>.
I'm looking forward to getting feedback from readers of The Blue Place.
I just found your web page. Very excited. I would imagine you rank among the top five of my all time favourite public figures. I read SR and Ammonite a year ago and the Locus interview a bit afterwards. I reread it a few times when times were seriously hard and your bit about having choices was potent inspiration. I just wanted to say thanks and am thrilled I have the chance now. If I have a question it is what has happened to the Women and Other Aliens book? I called the publisher listed in BIP many months ago (because the info in it is flawed and has stagnated unchnged-often happens in BIP). Is the deal still on and will there eventually be that book available? Also, even though you're not so well in body I hope you are fine in spirits. You remain in my prayers. Thanks again.
What I said in the Locus interview about choice is something I believe very strongly. It's the realization that lies at the heart of Slow River, that there is always a choice, even if the choice is only whether or not to survive. Two people who appear to be in the same situation face very different choices, because they are different people with different skills and resources and backgrounds. I'm glad that h earing that was helpful to you.
Women and Other Aliens has gone through a massive seachange. Originally, I had a verbal contract with HarperCollins for a book that was eighty percent fiction, twenty percent essays. That fell through for a variety of reasons and I haven't tried to place it elsewhere. The m o re I thought about it, the more the project didn't feel quite right. It seemed a little thin and artificial. For a while Kelley (Kelley Eskridge, my partner) and I talked about doing a joint collection but that, too, seemed all wrong. We put it aside a nd concentrated on our novels. Then, after a recent trip to New York, inspiration struck.
In the last few weeks we've been talking to a third writer about a truly collaborative project. It has the same title, Women and Other Aliens, but it will be a three-way fiction and non-fiction work, that will be truly thematically coherent. There will be individual pieces, and three-way conversations, fiction and essays and thought pieces. I don't want to say anymore about it at the moment because the book is sti ll at the brainstorming stage, delicate as a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. It will be a while until we're ready to approach a publisher, and then at least a year after that before it hits the shelves. I'm excited, though.
nicola i'd really like to translate ammonite into polish has anybody asked you about it do you agree?
The person to talk to about this is my agent, Shawna McCarthy. Here's her contact information:
Shawna McCarthy
Scovil, Chichak, Galen
381 Park Avenue South
Suite 1020
New York NY 10016
212/679-8686 x.304 -- NY Office
908/741-3065 -- home office
ShawnaM896@aol.com
All rights and permissions are negotiated through her office. How foreign translation rights works is this. A publisher (such as Hayakawa in Japan, or Heyne in Germany) contacts my agent. She refers them to my international agent, Danny Baror of Baror International. He negotiates the contract on my behalf and receives an advance--an upfront fee, usually several thousand dollars--from the publisher, which he gives to me (after he and Shawna take their commission). The foreign publisher then contacts its own translator to do the job.
I've had my short fiction and novels translated into French, Spanish, German, Finnish, Japanese and--possibly--Chinese so far. Polish rights to my books have been negotiated twice to my knowledge and each time fallen through. I would love to see it happen. But talk to my agents. They are the ones who keep everything straight: make sure the rights don't get sold twice, that I get paid, that various legal considerations are observed.
DO YOU ENJOY WRITING??????????????
Yes. Not all the time, of course, but more often than not. Anyone who doesn't enjoy writing shouldn't do it. There are much, much easier ways to earn a living.
Writing is one of the great joys of my life. It's the only thing I know that uses my whole brain: analytical and intuitive, rational and creative, civilized and barbaric. Writing, for me, is the equivalent of long-distance running. It's real high. Just as when you hit the wall in running, and blow through, and float on an endorphin tide, when I'm at the keyboard, struggling with something, I'll suddenly...fall down the hole. Phht. I come to and find the CDs have all finished, my tea is stone cold, and I have six pages of writing that wasn't there before. It's a stunning feeling. There are other times, of course, when writing is terrible, when no matter how long I sit and peck at the keyboard it feels like someone jamming slivers of bamboo under my fingernails; I'm restless; I hate my job. And rewriting is just plain drudgery; going over the same paragraphs, again and again and again until I could scream (and sometimes do). But I always keep going, because there's always another sweet project, just beyond the horizon; there's always that other book, or story, or anthology that I just *know* will be the best thing I've ever done, a challenge, a mountain to conquer. The grass *is* always greener on the other side.
No question, just congrats on winning Nebula. Slow River is a great book and was up against tremendous competition. Looking forward to the next one ...
Hi Nicola! Congratulations on winning the Nebula award! I just finished Slow River and the award is well deserved. I'm sure you get many accolades, but let me just add that this is an important book. I'm so glad you wrote it.
not even a question. i just finished slow river and i just wanted to thank her for a purely great work of fiction. it was superb. and now hearing that you got the nebula i would like to congratulate you. great book. anyhow, that's it. good shit there.
Hello, Nicola Griffith, CONGRATULATIONS on winning the Nebula Award for Slow River!! You deserve it. I said to myself, "Ok, if Nicola wins the award, I'll know for sure that the world of science fiction writing has been made safe for women writers, including bi/lesbian women writers." And today I checked the web site, and you had won! Cool! Thank you for helping to wrest the landscape of science fiction from the intellectual and artistic domination of the Pale Males. If I sound overly excited, it's because I never expected this day to come. I really admire what you have done.
Nicola, I really didn't have a question, I just wanted to congratulate you for winning the Nebula Award for Slow River. This was a fantastic book and it deserves the recognition. Way to go!
Nicola is responding collectively to the congratulations with the text of her Nebula acceptance speech:
Wow, I'm a happy camper. Who would have thought it: Slow River, the little book that could.
You know, on the flight from Seattle to St. Louis, I tried to put together an acceptance speech--just in case. I tried again on the drive from St. Louis to Kansas City, and again last night. And I couldn't come up with anything, because I just couldn't really imagine that a book about sewage would win the Nebula.
Going back to something Jane said earlier this evening about censorship [Jane Yolen had talked at great length about the variety of books being censored in this country], I thought for a while that this book might never get published at all. When I sent the outline to my then-agent, Fran (whose last name will remain anonymous), she called me. "This is *not* a selling outline," she said. "Uh, why, Fran?" "Well, just take the sexual orientation of your main character, Lore. I mean, it was alright for the main character of your first book, Ammonite, to have a girlfriend--after all, she was on a women-only planet and what other choice did the poor, deprived things have?--but why does Lore have a female lover?" "Well, because she's a dyke, Fran." Needless to say, Fran is no longer my agent.
My new agent is Shawna McCarthy. Shawna, bless her, didn't bat an eyelid when I handed a manuscript about sewage and dykes disporting themselves. All she said was, "Gee, I don't know if Del Rey will go for it." Fortunately, my editor at Del Rey, Ellen Harris, really liked it, and she fought the good corporate in-fight to make sure that, eventually, everyone else at Del Rey really liked it, too. So I want to thank both Ellen and Shawna for helping to make this possible.
I want to thank, too, my partner, Kelley. I can be lazy: after rewriting a novel manuscript four times, I'm done. It's Kelley who reads it through and says, "Nope, you're not done yet," Kelley who persuades me to rewrite one, last time. Without her, my work would be much less than it is.
Lastly, I want to thank all those who read Slow River. And I do mean all--not just those members of SFWA who read and liked it well enough to vote for it (though I am of course *extremely* grateful!)--because what is a book without readers? It is just a sketch, a blueprint. It's people coming along, picking up that blueprint and reading it, building the house in their head, that makes it something. Winning this award means that many more people will see the book, read it, and build a Slow River house in their head, and for that, I just can't thank you enough. I really am *very* pleased about this. Thank you very much.
Do you enjoy writing short fiction as much as a novel and do you plan to continue to write short fiction to satisfy those of us who devour your work between novels? Do you still email your fans when time permits as you did when you were on delphi?
I like writing short fiction, but the joy I get from it differs from the joy I get from writing a novel. It's like the difference between creating a really interesting sandwich--hmmn, tuna and a bit of vinegar, butter the bread, cut some raw onion, slice some pickled beets, grind up a clove of garlic and add it to mayonnaise; then slather garlic mayonnaise onto both sides of bread, lay tuna on one side, add onions, add sliced beets, add ground black pepper, add lettuce, clap together, cut, eat--and a four course dinner. My stories tend to revolve around a single feeling, or need, or realization; the novels are more subtle and, ultimately, more satisfying.
I have noticed a tendency to write longer and longer short stories. I started out with pieces of four thousand, or two thousand, or six thousand, now I only seem to write novellas, probably because I want to get out of a story what I get out of a novel, so I try to meld the two forms. I'm not always magnificently successful, but that won't stop me from continuing to try. I have a 20,000 word novella sitting on my desk right now. I wrote it eighteen months ago and sold it to Century magazine, but they seem to have hit difficulties and it looks as though I'll have to find it a new home. The problem is, it's not really SF, and it's not really mainstream, and it's not really a mystery. Finding a home will be very difficult--Century, really, was perfect. Ah, well.
Kelley and I are still toying with the idea of putting together a collection of our best short works (in my opinion, she's far better at the short form than I am) together with a few essays. The problem with that, though, is finding the right way to publish it. Most chains (B&N, Borders, etc.) look at the sales of an author's last book before ordering copies of their new one: if Book X sold four copies, that store will only order four copies of Book Y, no matter how much more exciting or commercial or innovative or whatever Book Y might be. As single-author (or double-author) collections sell at something like a fifth the rate of a novel, the release of a collection at this time would kill sales of my next novel. One alternative is to publish the collection through a small press, who will only sell the book through independent and speciality book shops, thus circumventing the computer ordering syndrome. Kelley and I have in fact been thinking about this. As soon as we know what we're doing--and it might take a while--I'll let you know.
I respond to those who write to me. The more interesting the email I get, the more likely I am to start up a proper correspondence. I love talking about my work--but I also love to learn about the people who read it, and a myriad other subjects. Those who stick to one thing to the exclusion of all else tend to become very boring people. So, here's a test: if you think you're interesting, write.
First of all, I want to say how much I enjoyed Slow River. You have a very captivating writing style; I couldn't believe how rapt I was being held while reading about industrial effluent. Not many people can do that, but I'm glad to say you are one of them. I've just bought Ammonite, but have not had the chance to start it yet, though I am eagerly awaiting the chance. Okay, enough of my ramblings, on to the questions. I am aspiring SF writer (I'm sure you hear that all the time, sorry), and I was wondering, how long did it take you before you got anything published? Also, when, after that, did you start on your novels? I have been writing and submitting for about two years now and have gotten zippo, though I know the key to success is perseverance, so I'm still going. One last question, and you don't have to answer this one, it's kind of personal: there are many sexual themes in Slow River, and I remember seeing maybe one or two heterosexual characters in the entire book. How big a role does sexuality play in your fiction? For me, personally, it is a little more difficult to write about sex, but maybe just because I have had so little experience with it. Anyway, thanks for your time, and I look forward to your next projects!
I started writing when I was about twenty-two (that is, in 1982). I wrote a novel (it started as a short story and grew) which about two years later I sent to Malcolm Edwards who was then an editor at the UK publisher, Gollancz. He said: "Not bad, cut it by a third and I might publish it." I had no idea that this was good or unusual, but set about cutting it, anyway. In the process of doing that, I learned how to approach my own work critically, and what I saw appalled me. It was, I thought, a terrible book; really didactic. So I shoved it in a drawer and tried to get on with my life. But the writing bug had sunk its teeth into me, and I couldn't stop. I wrote another book. This one was better written but an even worse novel, so I put that in a drawer without even bothering to show it to anyone.
At this point, I decided I had better teach myself to write. The easiest way to do that, I concluded, was to write short stories. So I did. I wrote about five, and diligently sent them off to INTERZONE, the UK short fiction magazine. They rejected them with very kind notes. The sixth one, they bought. This was 1987. I was thrilled. (I can still remember the bubble of joy bursting up through my spine when I opened that letter. Ah, nothing like it.) Then I decided to apply for Clarion--the SF/F writers' workshop held annually at Michigan State University. To cut a very long story short, I went, met Kelley, fell in love, moved to the US and Became A Writer. I sold a few more short stories. Then in 1991, I got a letter from Malcolm Edwards, who had now moved on to bigger and better things and was the Editorial Director at HarperCollins UK. "Dear Ms. Griffith," he said [this quote, like the other one, is from memory, so if you're reading this, Malcolm, I hope it at least *resembles* the truth], "I've been enjoying your short fiction. If you happen to be writing a novel, I'd love to see it." I wrote back by return of post and said, essentially: Wow, actually I'm writing two, here's what they're about. This, incidentally, was a complete lie--I wasn't writing a novel at all. I still didn't think I knew enough about writing to try. But he wrote back and said: "Like the sound of both of them, when can I see them?" So I sat down and wrote Ammonite, and he bought it.
Clarion didn't teach me how to write so much as how to be a writer. If you have reached the stage with your work where you're submitting it, and are pretty serious, you might like to apply to Clarion, or to Clarion West (a similar, six-week workshop on the West Coast) this year or next. I don't know if this will be an incentive or not, but I'll be teaching the last week of Clarion West this year. You can get information on the workshop by clicking on the link somewhere in the News About Nicola section of this webpage.
As for the sex in Slow River, L. Timmel Duchamp has written some excellent commentary on the novel's sexual economy. There are in fact many straight characters in the book; I just don't show any straight sex. This makes it seem--especially to straight readers--that there *aren't* any straight characters. It was my way of pointing out (in a not too heavy-handed manner, I hope) the kind of assumptions many straight people make in every day life.
Writing about sex is hard, technically and emotionally, but given the nature of my work, I would find it dishonest to not write about it here and there. Slow River of course was all about sexual economy (well, amongst other things like class, and the nature of Self) so it had to be very present. Ammonite only had one sex scene--and that was to show the love between two of the characters. The nature of my novels (and two of my last three stories) have demanded that I include sex. I doubt that future novels will have so much as Slow River, but wouldn't swear to it: if sex is what the book needs, then that's what I'll give it.
What influenced your decision to change publishers? I am interested because I think that Del Rey has done a nice job getting the word out about your books. I read the sample chapter (online) from Slow River and went the next day to find the entire book. I feel lucky you had a publisher that got the word around [about you] in places I check. Thanks for your works- Best wishes.
Imagine a straight married couple with two kids. One day, the woman discovers she's a dyke. Oh, she still *likes* her husband well enough but they no longer fit. She leaves. Given the nature of the legal system, the husband gets custody of the two kids. It's all very amicable; she visits every now and again. The children are well treated. She finds the perfect woman and falls in love.
That's the story of my publishing career so far. I wrote two SF novels and sold them to Del Rey, publisher fantasy and science fiction. When I decided to write a mainstream novel, the partnership was no longer possible. I tried. I gave them the outline of Penny In My Mouth; they sighed, said no, and passed it along to their parent company, Ballantine, for consideration. Ballantine turned it down. "Not sufficiently interesting," they said. I'm expecting them to be embarrassed when Penny In My Mouth is published by Avon.
Del Rey did an excellent job with Slow River: great cover, great on-line publicity. On the other hand, they did a terrible job with Ammonite when it first came out. It's my feeling that if it had not won a Lambda Literary Award three months after publication it would have gone out of print two years ago. Any publicity you saw for that novel in 1993 was the result of work done by me, Kelley, and my editor at Del Rey, Ellen Harris, on her own personal time. When Ammonite first came out, Del Rey didn't at that time even *have* a publicist for first-timers like me. (Things are changing there now, though. Among other things, they are getting a dedicated publicist.)
Del Rey and I still get along. The various individuals I've dealt with have, without fail, been very nice to me personally. They did (and continue to do) their best, but they and I simply no longer fit together.
How do you see your work fitting into contemporary lesbian fiction? Which lesbian authors do you read and like, if any? What haven't you done in your writing that you've wanted to? Ammonite was engaging. Slow River was enthralling. I read Slow River when it came out in hardcover and only b/c it had a) a great cover design--the only one that compares to it is the cover of Empathy and b) because Dorothy Allison gave it a good blurb. How do you want the marketing of your novel(s) changed or improved? I think a lot of people miss out on good novels (lesbian, queer, straight, other) because the work isn't marketed well by the publishers and because word-of-mouth and Lammy awards can't do it all. Talk about your experience with the marketing of your books, if you would.
P.S. K. works for Wizards of the Coast--the one and only maker of Magic cards??
I've read much of Sarah Schulman's work (wasn't the cover of Empathy great?) but I don't know whether I could honestly say I *enjoy* her work. I think it's necessary, and she writes very, very well, and she's saying some quite interesting things, but her work--by its very nature--makes me tense and uncomfortable. Then there's Dorothy Allison, whose work I definitely like. Mary Renault's historical novels (she's dead, of course--how are we defining contemporary?) are stunning. I found Rita Mae Brown's first two or three books engaging and energetic but her latest efforts are awful. Jennifer Levin is a bit patchy. I *hated* Lisa Alther's Five Minutes In Heaven; ditto Matricide by Carla Tomaso. Come to think of it, there are quite a few contemporary lesbian authors whose work I dislike intensely. I like fiction that is emotionally true. I don't care for polemic and I *really* don't care for those self-referential, nihilistic, volumes about Bitter Young Women. As to how I fit in, well, I have to say I've never spent much time thinking about how I fit in *anywhere*. If pushed, I'd say that, technically, I'm as good as many of the women I've mentioned and better than some. The rest is all a matter of taste and public opinion. I have no way to gauge that. At least not when I'm writing SF and the others are not. It's not a level playing field. Ask me again in five or six years.
There's publicity, and there's marketing. Ideally, both should be done by the publisher. The first place to start, for both, is the cover. With regard to the artwork, the author should be able to have input. I got to have my say with both Ammonite and Slow River. Del Rey listened to what I had to say about SR but not Ammonite (that jellybean spaceship on the first edition was not *my* idea). Then there's the cover copy. I wrote a draft for each but the tone of the SR copy was destroyed somewhere along the way. Thirdly, there are the Famous Author blurbs. I got a quote from Ursula Le Guin for Ammonite, but Del Rey forgot to put it on the cover. Sigh. However, they did much, much better with Slow River--I think the Dorothy Allison quote did me a lot of good. (They've surpassed themselves with the SR trade paperback--it's plastered with "Winner of Lambda Literary Award" decals, blurbs, and fab reviews. I have to say, I love the look of that book.) Selling a book to readers is a question of making sure that the right people know about it. The "right people" vary in number from several hundred to several million, depending on budget. If the budget is minuscule, then the way to go is to persuade a couple of hundred independent retailers that the book is so good they will hand sell it to their customers. If the budget is huge, then you take out half page ads in The New York Times Book Review, send colour-cover advance reading copies to half the universe and *all* the review journals, and offer the chains those big display stands. All that is well and good, but you also have to position the book, you have to find a way to let these potential readers (and sellers) know what *kind* of novel it is. Will it induce revolutionary fervor or reinforce the status quo? Is it a Good Read or a brain-twisting examination of the human psyche? Urban nightmare or a bucolic romp? Most publishers will try to pigeon-hole the book as much as possible: it's funny, or it's frightening; it belongs to this particular genre; it's Important, or it's a Good Read. Books that are easy to categorize are easier to deal with and generally sell better than, ah, eccentric work like Slow River.
The cover of SR screamed mixed messages. The artwork (which I love) said: sexy, hip, urban. The copy said: clumsy SF. Booksellers had to make up their own mind. Some shelved it with the lesbian fiction, some with mainstream literature, some with SF. They needed to be *told* quite clearly what the book was. I think the trade paperback, with all those cool quotes (saying: hip, urban, sexy, near future, important) instead of that confusing cover copy, will do much, much better than the hardcover. We shall see.
Yes, Kelley works for Wizards of the Coast, the one and only manufacturer of Magic: The Gathering (and a bunch of other products, one of which--Netrunner--is particularly cool). She's been there about a year--loves the job, but wishes she had more time for her writing. Our Five Year Plan is for me to get rich and famous (gotta have ambitions) so that she can leave her job and write full time. She's very good.
I was very sorry to read on your page that you suffer from MS. Is this why you only write a book every few years?
No. If I didn't have MS I think I'd do more, like teaching and travelling and editing, but I don't think I'd write more than a book every couple of years. It's not the writing that takes the time, it's the germination: of people, places, perspectives. I sometimes feel a bit envious of those writers who pump out two books a year, and it would be tempting to blame my production rate on my MS, but I suspect I'm just a slow writer. (If you get sick of waiting for my next novel, the first of the anthologies I've co-edited will be out next spring. Look for BENDING THE LANDSCAPE: FANTASY in March 1997.)
