IGMS Issue 11 (22 page)

LEE:
In the beginning I had no idea I would ever be "allowed" to make my profession that of a writer. And in this sad mind-set I was encouraged to stay by a great many persons, for a great while. So, if I had a plan then, it was only for a wretched sort of survival, doing other work at which I was largely incompetent, and where my unhappiness was matched only by my confusion. When I was about twenty-one, this condition almost drove me mad -- I do mean that. Through it all, however, I kept on writing, since to me that was the only sanity and bedrock in my life. It was the only Real place to go. (I wrote
The Birthgrave
during this period). When finally I was rescued from my false "working life" by Don Wollheim and DAW Books, I had no sense of wildness or charging off any rails. I had none of the often reported fear of being unable to cope with my new situation. It was the former situation I had been utterly unable to cope with. Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clichéd dark and stormy night, I found the magical inn, its windows golden lit, and Summer was due to start tomorrow. I can only work at one thing well. Deprive me of that, and my "back-up plan," even now, will be the empty, stormy, darkened heath -- where, incidentally, even unpublished, somehow I'll still be writing.

SCHWEITZER:
Let's talk a little more about the Jane Gaskell influence. What most inspired you in her work? Was it entirely the work, or the fact that she published her first novel at fourteen? That I should think would inspire many teenaged novelists.

LEE:
When I was a child I found children largely uninteresting -- not as people but to read about. As a young adult I was a little less elitist, but not much. (Only David Copperfield and Pip in
Great Expectations
got past this barrier. But then, that's Dickens for you.) The fact therefore that Gaskell had published a couple of (fascinating) novels when very young would have held little allure for me, let alone been any sort of encouragement. (I read
Strange Evil
and
King's Daughter
after.) Of course, anyway, they are about adults, so even my intolerant child-persona would have liked them. But Gaskell had written with sensibilities far beyond her years.
King's Daughter
, precursor of the glorious path-breaking
The Serpent
, is an astonishing work for one that young (fourteen, fifteen I seem to remember). Who writes an ending like that, when so "immature"?

What I first read by her was
Attic Summer
, a then contemporary novel. I loved/love her humor and her cynicism, (apparent in all her work ) her play with color and every one of the senses, her take on -- not only sexual romance -- but sexual and romantic psychology, indeed all forms of psychology, for a "Romantic Novelist" is definitely
not
what Gaskell is. Also, I valued the fact that she wrote inside at least two very separate forms -- what I now know had been labeled Fantasy, and what is straight "reality," and mixed the two in the most cunning, witty and apt of ways.

So what inspired me most? As with any writer I love, all of it -
all
.

SCHWEITZER:
CS Lewis said he started writing fantasy because the books he wanted to read were not on the shelves? Did you have some of the same feeling? When you started to write, after all, fantasy was not nearly as widely-published as it is today.

LEE:
I only read the Narnia books (typically) when I was fifty. (I'd tried as a child, but the child heroes, as explained, didn't interest me much). At fifty, though, I did get a lot from the work. The books are intensely spiritual for me, though not religious in perhaps the sense Lewis might have wished to convey. His use of the Dionysian aspects of Jesus Christ charmed me, (I agree with them) and some of the sequences are wonderfully beautiful and profound. What a curious combination, adventure and laughter -- and cutting-edge visionary reports from the edge of the afterlife . . .

But to return to your actual question: I did and still do, in some way, write what I want to read. Perhaps that is true of many writers. Meanwhile there are hordes of authors whose work thrills me, so I got and get plenty of nourishment without scribbling it personally. On the other hand, too, when I started to find what was by then classed as Fantasy, I was shown that alter-worlds and otherwheres were completely possible -- by which I mean capable-of-being-recognized (and published.) And while, still, I had very little hope of that myself, I grasped that I need not shy away from something that had been internally beckoning me for quite some time. In retrospect I am both surprised and dismayed to see in this that I must have taken some (inadvertent) notice of all those who tried to wean me from my proper path. How odd. Thank God I found it anyway.

SCHWEITZER:
You have written some non-fantastic fiction, such as your French Revolution novel. Is the craft of non-fantasy any different for you? Would you ever want to write a purely realistic, contemporary novel, or is the whole appeal of writing for you to get away from that?

LEE:
The writing of my French Revolution novel,
The Gods Are Thirsty
, was in one way different for me, but not in any creative or artistic sense. Except I preferred to do two draughts. I was obsessed with it (as I always am with what I write), and wrote it in floods (also usual), having to pause only to do research. (This can happen even when dealing in fantasy or SF, or any type of other genre book/story. For example, if I have to describe a copper mine or glass foundry, I do some research on them first.) The main and very pertinent difference for me with
The Gods Are Thirsty
was not, either, to do with the fact that the people in it had historically lived -- were "real." My own invented characters seldom feel invented, to me. They're equally actual, and so are their stories and otherwheres. So, the one salient difference with
The Gods Are Thirsty
was that I had available to me from the start almost all the known facts and events. And -- I knew the
ending
. It was established, revealed, and unalterable. Sometimes pre-knowledge of many facts and scenes does happen when I use an "invented" plot. But it's rare, and always subject to great/slight change -- the work tends to metamorphose. While nineteen times out of twenty I don't know my book's ending, until it evolves or simply displays itself, occasionally shocking me.

On writing "purely realistic contemporary" novels -- well, I've done so. The problem was, and remains, getting publishers to look at them, let alone publish. They seem to have trouble accepting the books as valid, and might entertain others. Seemingly, someone writing outside their genre-ghetto is not normally encouraged to do so.

I have written as Esther Garber, a character not a pseudonym, (though such a unique voice her books were published as "Tanith Lee writing as Esther Garber"). These volumes --
Thirty Four
and
Fatal Women
are Lesbian fiction, set in our world, but inside a kind of floating historic vista, (ranging approximately between the late 1800s and the present day) and often also in France.

The novel
L'Amber
(written only by me!) is placed in 1980s-ish London and environs.
Grayglass
has a slightly earlier and later timeframe, and uses London generally, with a brief excursion to New York. Otherwise this book does operate within an underplayed yet intense supernatural twister.
Death of the Day
is a detective novel, influenced by and therefore in the tradition of Ruth Rendell. It resides in 1990s Kent and Sussex, England. There are two other novels --
To Indigo
and
God's Dogs
.
To Indigo
stays firmly in London during the 2000s, but contains a strange alter-motif concerning a Prague-like alchemical city around the late 1700s. Be warned though: the last is because the book's main character is a writer, and the alternate location represents his single (closet) fantasy novel!
God's Dogs
is set in 1934, mostly in England, but with flashbacks to a slightly earlier time in mainland Europe.
L'Amber
and
Death of the Day
were published, too, by the same small press (P.O.D.) that brought out the Garber books. None of these books is now available, however, as the firm packed up.
Greyglass
did nearly make it into print but had the door slammed in its face by the same outfit a couple of days before release. Meanwhile, both the Garber books got very good reviews in
Locus
, and so did
Death of the
Day over here, in the
Guardian.

Frankly though, when I first started to write novels, (about sixteen years of age, circa 1963-64) I did opt for parallel historical, and finally out-and-out Fantasy and SF venues, indeed in order to escape 'ordinary' fiction -- even though I still continued to enjoy, along with fantastical material, reading about the so-called everyday. With impressive geniuses like Graham Greene, Jane Austen (historical, yes, but still this world and the everyday for then), Jane Gaskell, J.B. Priestly and Richard Llewellyn, working in that area, my interest isn't surprising. But by now I find for myself no discrepancy that way when I write "ordinary world" novels. For me they're all part of a carpet I keep on weaving, in company, in a curious manner, with all dedicated writers, artists and composers, as with all I do of whatever leaning. I relish my contemporary books, cherish them, am obsessed by them. They flow or sometimes stick -- just as the fantasy ones can. It's all fiction, after all. And all real to me, or more real, than the world (beautiful or horribly cruel) that we physically inhabit.

SCHWEITZER:
I know you've written a few teleplays, including a couple installments of
Blake's 7
. Have you wanted to write more for the screen, big or little, or do you prefer writing for the printed page?

LEE:
When I first started to write at any sustained length, (about age twelve) I wrote plays almost exclusively. (Though I confess to writing a Priestly inspired novel at ten/eleven -- it was called
Forsythia Square
, a contemporary work [1950s] of curious type!) I loved/love live theatre, and radio drama -- which then was far more omnipresent than now -- though BBC Radio generally maintains a stunning standard in both acting and production. I immensely liked writing the two
Blake's 7
scripts. I'd watched the show from the beginning and was fascinated by all the characters. (My original hope, had the series continued, was to write an "in-depth" script for each of them. At least I got to tackle Cally, Avon somewhat, and Servalann.)

I can imagine, now, writing other radio plays. (I did actually write one years back, which I never submitted, finding it too dark -- it was called
Darkness
-- a consideration that I'm afraid wouldn't stop me today -- but my radio contacts are mostly gone. As for TV -- it's changed such a lot I'm not sure. While a movie, knowing as I do something of the paraphernalia and muddle that seems to attend all script-writes, (see F. Scott Fitzgerald if in doubt, and that was back then!) might not be a challenge I'd choose to take on. Luckily I'm spared that choice so far: no one has asked. Incidentally anyway, when I write for the "printed page" I personally see it as a movie, (aside from how the characters relay their inner thoughts and mental attributes). All within my head. It's all, for me, happened, or is happening. All on film.

SCHWEITZER:
And, what are you working on now? What might we expect to see from you in the near future?

LEE:
The Flat Earth books are due, all of them, to start being reissued in 2009, from Norilana Books, the established five to be followed by at least one more. And there are loads of my short stories and novellas either recently out or about to be, in anthologies and magazines such as
Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's
and
Weird Tales
-- see my website: (Also your own anthology on
Werewolves
.)

Meanwhile, my two main UK publishers, Hodder and MacMillan, have between them rejected three proposals from me for new work. These were the detailed proposals everyone now seems to need, and both firms rather oddly kept the two (Hodder) and one (MacMillan) packages -- and myself -- hanging on for six months in either case. (I had been publishing YA books with Hodder, incidentally, for ten years. Five for adult work with MacMillan.) That then was my main income gone, if nothing else. Neither company gave any encouragement that I should offer anything else, rather the reverse. Not, frankly, that I felt inclined to.

The small UK press as well, Egerton House, which was publishing other work of mine, such as contemporary novels, a detective novel, and lesbian fiction, had already folded, leaving many accounts unsettled.

I have since attempted to interest a number of other houses. Reaction here has been mixed, the smaller presses indeed seeming the least inclined, and -- in a couple of cases -- very cavalier. Other possibilities do exist, but unfortunately due, as they say, to circumstances beyond my control, at present, I have not been able to discuss any new commitments -- hopefully the new year will resolve this situation. Also there has been, as ever, a constant flow of openings for short fiction, which has been a real joy to do. Alas, it doesn't pay the bills. Altogether, that financial way, I am now in a nightmare scenario.

But, as said before, while able, I will always write. It's like breathing to me. My current project is a weird contemporary novel called
Ivorian
, which veers between a detective story and a supernatural -- or is it -- take on sibling hatred. Also, I have two completed contemporary novels and one collection of mixed lesbian, gay and heterosexual short stories, all sitting in the cupboard. Oh, and the rejected ventures? What they were to have been, and still may be, were: 1)
The Firesmith
-- a violently and erotically bronze-iron age adult epic, whose priest-mage-metalsmith-protagonist must survive in a dark age savaged by fire-blasting dragons. And for Young Adults: 2) a fourth pirate novel in the
Piratica
series --
War and Pieces of Eight
, the final saga of Art and her handsome husband Felix -- he is now consort of the Queen of Scotland, and featuring a more than guest appearance by Apolleon, the Napoleon of their history. Plus 3)
Glitterash
, or
King of Ghosts.
That being the story of a one-handed pianist gang-warrior, in an SF worldscape of blazingly ruinous cities and oil-slicked, wasp-infested seas, where the written word has been dumbed right out of existence, and reinvented "modern" Tarot cards have become the credo of Law, religion and power.