Challenging Destiny #24: August 2007

by Crystalline Sphere Authors

The little cat comes bounding to greet her. He rubs against her legs, purring, ecstatic. He meows up at her and she laughs and picks him up; he seems inordinately heavy.

  She wanders farther into the house. Her heart has stopped pounding and she feels curiously at ease, becoming lighter and lighter as she walks, cat in her arms and she's obviously trespassing but she feels more at home than she's can remember feeling in ages.

  Living room, drawing room, somebody's office—maybe Eric's? Eric. The name resonates. Dining room, breakfast nook, kitchen. Up the stairs and it's as if she's drawn, moving along the front hallway to a room where a woman lies in a huge oak framed bed. The room's on the front of the house and faces south and sunlight streams through the windows. The woman is surrounded, connected to living machines, tubes and monitors and moving graphs and her eyes are closed, her chest barely moves, she's so far away Jess has to squint to see her at all but she's familiar somehow, someone she's seen before and there's a man in the room, he moves suddenly and Jess backs up a step but all his attention is on the woman in the bed.

  The cat snuggles tight under her chin, constant rumble of purr, and the man brushes one hand over his face, a gesture of despair as he looks at the woman in the bed, the woman he loves so much he'd do anything for her, anything at all if she'd just tell him.

  Jess takes another step back and the cat flies from her arms, jumps to the bed to knead the woman's legs through the blankets. The man makes an abrupt move toward them but the woman opens her eyes, slowly, as if not used to doing so, and says in a thin, tired voice, “I had the most curious dream that everything I loved was gone, that I was alone and lost within the city and no one could see me—"

  He reaches for her, and the cat meows, and Jess feels herself sliding and slipping, disappearing and becoming thin and stretched like a dream at the edge of waking. The little cat stands on her legs in the bed while Jess slips and slides and winds down back inside and opens her eyes and comes home.

  * * * *

  Jennifer R Baumer lives and writes in Reno, Nevada, where she lives with her husband and best friend Rick, three cats and an incipient dog. When not writing fiction she's writing business articles, lifting weights, running, growing herbs, baking, or procrastinating. Her work has appeared (or will soon) in On Spec, Talebones, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Jabberwocky 3 and many genre anthologies.

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  Interview with Michelle Sagara by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer

  CD: You've written under the name Michelle Sagara, Michelle West, and Michelle Sagara West. How did that come about?

  MS: When I submitted to Del Rey, I used my name, Michelle Sagara. That part was fairly straightforward. My first novel was published in 1991, by which time I was married. I was working full-time at Bakka, and when we decided to have children, I thought it would be fairly easy to transition to writing at home with a baby. Anyone who has babies can now laugh. The writing became necessary income when I wasn't working full-time, and the sales numbers for the initial book weren't great. When the third book was published in 1993, I had had my first child, and I was both tired and panicking.

  I wanted some peace of mind, and the only way to give myself peace of mind at that time was to try to secure another publishing venue—and I went to DAW because I worked with Tanya Huff, and I saw what they were doing with her books and her publishing identity. So I submitted 4 chapters and very sketchy outlines to Sheila Gilbert at DAW, and she accepted them. I asked that they publish them under my married name, Michelle West, because I still wasn't certain how the Del Rey books would do in the numbers game that is so crucial to publishing, and this would separate the identities for chain buyers.

  By the time she accepted them, the third Del Rey book had both been published and gone out of print—before the fourth book in the series had been published. Del Rey had bought the books that became Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, and after some discussions with my agent, we bought the books back and sold them to DAW.

  And then DAW had an unexpected slot open up in their schedule, so they filled it with Hunter's Oath, which was complete.

  The original proposed trilogy that DAW first accepted has never been written; my editor wanted me to write the 2 Hunter books, and then write the 2 books that I also had planned in the same world before moving to a different universe. The two books, however, became six books.

  The Luna books—published as Michelle Sagara—came after the eight books for DAW. I wanted to try something a little different with those. I think of them as my Tanya Huff novels. Tanya Huff says they're nothing like Huff novels.

  I should make something clear: I don't care what name I write under—I have stories I want to tell, but it doesn't matter to me if people know that it's specifically me who's telling them. I want consistency of name for particular stories so that people can find what they're looking for. I think the West novels are different; they're slower and more complicated. I wasn't sure that people who like the West novels would like the books I was working on for Luna, so I suggested using a different name. Because I didn't want my Luna editor to think I was writing something I was ashamed of, I suggested that we just use my real name. She asked what that was, and I said “Michelle Sagara.” And she said, “Oh my God, are you the same person?” She'd read the Del Rey books when they'd first come out, although she hadn't read the West novels. She was happy with the suggestion, and that's why I write those books under Michelle Sagara.

  The third name, Michelle Sagara West, came about with the reprint of the Del Rey books. The publisher had asked that they be allowed to use Michelle West, because they were comfortable with the bookscan numbers for that name (the first books have no history with Bookscan, which wasn't active then). I suggested that they use Michelle Sagara because I thought there would be more crossover for the reprints with Luna readers, and in the end, they decided to use both names.

  CD: What's your process for writing a big series—how do you keep track of the characters and events?

  MS: My process for writing a big series is to sit down and write it. That sounds a bit flippant, and actually, it's not meant to be.

  I write structurally, and novel structure, for me, is almost organic. I know writers who can outline an entire novel from beginning to end, and then write that book. I can't. I've tried it once or twice, and it simply doesn't work for me. Nor does writing scenes out of order—they might be fabulous scenes, and I might love them to pieces—but there's no guarantee that the evolving structure of the novel will ever reach them. I have to start at the beginning—and by that, I mean start the book several times trying to find the way in—and then write straight to the end. I know what I'm reaching for at the beginning. I know the ends of the arcs or the books. But my understanding of the novel is largely intellectual when I conceive plot—the emotional complications become apparent only as I write real wordage.

  I work from a very emotional centre. For me, the point of a novel is the end. Everything is structured to give emotional weight to that end, to resonate with it.

  Do I care what colour people's eyes are? No. It was four years before I knew what colour my husband's eyes were. I just don't think about it. I started a list of character names and distinguishing characteristics—in particular, eye colour—and it's now huge.

  I know who the characters are—I know what they want, what motivates them. But there are still surprises.

  An example: You know when you have friends you think will love each other because you love them both, and you put them in a room together and they hate each other's guts? My characters are sort of like that. The chemistry that the characters will have when you put them together for the first time is entirely unpredictable. My mother thinks this is insane, because I'm writing it—don't I have control over it? Obviously, I do—but I don't want to over-control a book, to dictate everything. I want to be surprised.

  My favourite fan letter for Broken Crown was from a woman who said that it was the first
fantasy novel she had ever read in which the characters did things that were entirely in character, rather than things that read as if they were authorially convenient. And I thought, “Good, because it was bloody inconvenient.” You can go two ways. If you're really, really good—and I'm obviously not that good yet—you can probably do both things. Your characters do exactly what you want them to do and nobody notices. For me, sometimes they surprise me while at the same time being completely true to my understanding of who they are. My response is generally a lot of swearing, but I leave things as they are.

  I don't know how to separate story and character. I build the world, and I have a rough idea of where everything's going, and I know what the villains are doing. You can know all these things until you actually touch them. All the emotional engagement occurs when the words hit the page, and then all bets are off.

  I was discussing The Broken Crown—prior to actually writing it—with my husband, and something came up in that discussion that I want to mention. There was a section of the book that he said would not work. He said, “There's going to be no tension here.” And I said, “Well, yeah. I think this is what this character would do because he would think it would have this effect. And obviously it's not going to have this effect. But he has to try."

  So I wrote the section—which involved the killing of hostages from the Northern Empire in the Southern Court. It was hoped that the public deaths of those hostages would incur the deaths of the exchange hostages from the South in the Northern Court. The cultures of these two large countries are very, very different. I reached the section where he'd said “this won't be strong enough” and gave it to him. He came downstairs and he said, “Oh my God.” And I said, “Yes, I'm not actually sure how I'm going to get out of this without killing them all, which would make it a very short and almost pointless book."

  He had expected that everybody would be safe in the north. Killing hostages, of course, would be seen as barbaric. But if something barbaric has occurred to your people, your response is often barbaric. It's true and it's visceral and it's not you at your best.

  I remember telling my editor how Sea of Sorrows ended, just after I'd finished the last confrontation between one of the main characters and her cousin. It was not the ending I had originally envisioned when I had started the novel. The event itself, the necessity of it—that hadn't changed. But the emotional tone and texture of it was completely unexpected. For those who've read the book, it had never even occurred to me that Diora and Margret would become friends. They despised and resented each other, and I thought—when I first began to lay out the book—that this would continue; that Jewel ATerafin, travelling with both of these very different women, would become the cultural bridge between them to some small extent. But it was never going to be a large one and in the end, I thought that Diora would be both unmoved by a very necessary death and almost contemptuous of any sorrow felt over it.

  My editor knew that this was generally where I had intended to go. It was not where I went. When I told her what had actually happened she said, “That's not going to work.” By this time I was used to this, so I just finished the epilogue and I sent it to her. She read it and called me back to tell me, “That shouldn't have worked."

  I am often uncertain about what I write; I am often uncertain about whether or not it works. The few cases in which I'm entirely certain, I cling to. There are very few times I weep when I'm writing, and the end of this book—which I certainly hadn't expected when I started it—was one of them. I can think of four other times. I never change those scenes. When you are so much in character, when you are absolutely where the character is, there is no effort—it's all there; the emotion and the intellectual understanding are perfectly twined. Words are not magic. I understand how you use them. But there is something, sometimes...

  CD: It sounds like as you're developing a story, it's generated from the characters.

  MS: Yes and no. Well, mostly yes. When I started writing Hunter's Death I stopped really early on and I wrote 250 pages of world building. I wanted to create a society in which our contemporary values of Right and Wrong would also be true—and the one big advantage to a fantasy universe is that you can actually do this. I built the rulers and I built the guilds and everything else, and I thought about how they would interact. The minute that you're writing about people who have any power, you're dealing with people who understand the power structure. And if I have to constantly stop and struggle and make stuff up on the fly, then I don't understand what they understand. My characters are actually usually smarter than I am but that intelligence needs subconscious time to come to the fore. So in this case, the world is created to contain the characters, to explain them.

  Things have evolved but the basic structures have stayed pretty much the same. As I get older it's harder to write things. There are deficits I hadn't really thought of earlier that I recognize as problems as I learn more about the way the world works. When I started writing the second book in that six-book series I realized that because these two nations have been at war for a while, and because the armies are riding to the south, there's a very good chance that the generals of the army will not want the rightful heir to the southern throne to be travelling with them. Because he will see the logistics operations that they probably don't want seen. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea how to feed 50 000 soldiers. I said to my ever-helpful husband, “Tom, how do you feed this many people in this tech level? Or any tech level?” And he said, “Good question.” That's one of the things that's not published very often. You get a lot about strategy but very little about logistics. I'm of the firm belief that if you can't feed your soldiers, they die. I don't actually care about the strategy—that'll take care of itself. But I do care about how you feed these people. I can't just assume that it's known, because I don't know. It might be important. As it turned out, it wasn't important.

  I want there to be enough play in the knowledge that I have that it can come up organically. You plant everything and you see what grows. Some of the stuff will never come up. It is stuff the characters would know. If I know it, it serves to make them stronger or smarter.

  CD: Have you received any interesting letters or emails from fans?

  MS: I have had a long time to accumulate email or letters from readers of the DAW Michelle West books, and I have to say that I universally adore them. I've never gotten a huge amount of mail about those books. There's a Yahoo group that I read when I have time; I also try to answer non-spoiler questions when they're asked there.

  I've heard a number of fan-mail horror stories—but I haven't personally experienced anything negative. People who are too bored by the books probably don't finish them, and certainly aren't enraged enough by boredom to seek out a way of communicating this to me. Maybe the West novels don't attract the type of reader who really takes things personally. I got some slightly peeved letters when Shining Court came out from people who were not happy with the way the trilogy ended, and I had to write back and apologize—I wasn't aware that it had been called a trilogy, and this was not in fact the last book. Even then they were really polite about it. They said, “We really love the way you did this. We hope you write more in the series.” I mostly read between the lines.

  My West readers will wait for at least a year until after the previous novel was published before they begin to email me to ask me when there might be another one. They always wait a realistic publishing time. Which makes me wonder if they're not all writers or people who work in the book industry.

  I had one person write to me when I was working on Sea of Sorrows. DAW had said on its web site that I was working on the last book now. And he said, “Don't do it. There's no way you can tie up everything that you started. You'll ruin the entire thing.” And I wrote back and said, “You are probably the first person in the history of Big Fat Fantasy series to write to the author to tell them to make it longer. As it happens, I was trying to tie things up but...” It ended up being the
longest of the books to that point and clearly did not end the series.

  I corresponded with somebody on Amazon. He'd written a review, clearly traumatized by Broken Crown. He really did not like the book—although he gave it three stars, which was funny. He also posted two one-star reviews of the last two books. I said to my husband, “I don't understand why he read the last books if he hated the first one so much.” And my husband said, “He didn't read them.” I said, “Why would you post something if you didn't read them?” And he said, “Trust me, he didn't read them.” I was curious about it. I emailed him and I asked him. He was shocked. He said, “I didn't read them. But I was so upset that no one was upset about the things that upset me. I couldn't understand how they could all like your work so much, when so much was unpleasant.” It turned out that everything that he hated I had done on purpose—and this surprised him enormously. He hated the fact that the main character didn't hate her society. I said, “It's the only one she knows.” He hated the fact that it was an incredibly misogynist society, which it is. I would say it's a misanthropic society, because everybody's out to get somebody. Everybody wants power.

  This particular reader was upset that a baby is killed. He was upset at a large number of things. He wanted a particular character to be a spunky, courageous American Girl, and he wanted her to save the baby. I said, “First of all, I would not recommend that you read anything else that I've written because I have a feeling you won't like it. Second, I didn't do this to upset you. I did it because she is a product of her culture. Not only that, but she is important politically because of who she is. She understood when it all started that she could die or she could wait. But she could in no way influence the outcome."

  The only other book that he ever finished that upset him was Shadow of the Torturer. So I'm in good company. He said, “Obviously your writing can't suck, but why did you do these things?” It hadn't occurred to him that you could try to write somebody who was completely true to their culture. If you have a culture and the people don't act as if they're part of that culture—then you don't have a culture.