I've known Kate Saundby longer than I've known almost anyone else online. We've shared three e-publishers so far, we've read each others work, I've even edited a couple of her books. We finally met at UncommonCon in Dallas, Texas a few years back and she was just as nice in person as she is over the Internet. That is to say, she's nice to me. But if you get on her wrong side, well, caustic doesn't begin to describe her. After witnessing a few squabbles, I vowed to stay on her good side.
My earliest memory of Kate is when she sent me a fan letter for my short story The Devil's Dawn. Surprised me, since I don't think it's even close to my best effort, but I was glad she liked it. Why? Cause even back then, before I'd published my first e-book, Kate had ten books of her own, including a couple in print. And I thought to myself, how could she compliment me?
But that's Kate. Gracious, supportive and encouraging. Not to mention a writer of no small skill. Check out what she had to say, when I asked her questions that go where no questions have gone before.
Steve: You can teach your parrot to say three short sentences. What are they?
Kate: Welcome home. I missed you. Thank you.
Steve: What is your worst quality?
Kate: With so many, I only get to choose one? Hmm. My terrible housekeeping,
probably. I firmly believe housework makes you ugly and need to hang on to everything in that department that I've still got.
Steve: If you could pick a single scene from all your work that deserves to be illustrated, what would it be and who would paint/draw it?
Kate: My son Nicholas Krueger has done so many beautiful covers for me, I'd pick him as the artist. Deciding which scene to illustrate is another story. For sheer drama, I'm fond of the climactic scene at the end of the Wages of Greed where the concubine's son and reluctant hero, Ephraim, holds up the streaming blue and gold Imperial eagle banner on top of Mount Phasga while the final battle for his people's survival rages across the plain below him
and in the skies above his head. The planet's Mother Goddess, in the image of his beloved wife, is coming through the fire and smoke of the battlefield to protect him while two enemy ships are getting ready to blow the top off the mountain, and him with it.
Steve: If you could resurrect a loved one, but knew the price of this would be the death of a total stranger, would you do it and why?
Kate: I seriously doubt that any of the people in my life whom I've loved and lost would accept resurrection at such a price. On the other hand, if the designee were someone I knew about and I got to choose.... Now, *there's* a lively thought.
Steve: Would you rather be early or late to a party?
Kate: Late, definitely. I mean, how else can one make a proper entrance? However, I don't want to arrive so late all the good stuff on the buffet is gone. In my political salad days, the Republicans always put on the best parties. While the Republican bashes featured free bars and fancy catering with boiled shrimp and live music, the Democrats, more often than not, offered Kool Aid, crackers and Velveeta. Like Wellington's army, I tend to travel on my stomach, (not literally, silly!), and always rated the parties I attended by their food. (Which way I vote is another matter, however, and I'm not even going to go there.)
Steve: What do people say about you that isn't true?
Kate: Plenty, and don't I wish some of it were. i.e. People tend to believe I'm a speedy, facile writer because I have so many titles out there. However, the Nublis Chronicles came about over almost a ten year period after I was hurt in a work-related accident and found myself alone with the walls closing in and unable to do much of anything else for over twelve hours a day. Nowadays, a novel takes me, on average, two years to complete and sometimes longer than that. Contrary to popular belief, I don't find writing all that easy to begin with and it's becoming even less so as I grow older. Especially fiction. I agree with Norman Mailer that, while non-fiction is easy because the story's already there waiting and complete, fiction is something else again. Fiction is hard, hard work and if anyone tries to tell you different, chances are they're either not a very good writer or they've never created any. Some people also believe I'm getting rich off my writing. Would that were true too. Unfortunately it's not.
Steve: If you were a fruit, what kind would you be? Why?
Kate: Being I enjoy complexity as much as I do, a pomegranate. While a
pomegranate is a thoroughly annoying difficult fruit, with its own ancient legend yet, it's also delicious and those jewel-like seeds are so-o beautiful to look at. Yes, a pomegranate, definitely.
Steve: If you knew you were going to be murdered, how would you like it done?
Kate: Painlessly, and without any advance warning whatsoever.
Steve: Which one of these questions do you wish I hadn't asked? Why?
Kate: The parrot. Properly cared for, they tend to outlive their owners,
especially macaws, and I'm ambivalent about that. Besides, they're scene stealers and I've got quite enough of those in my life already.
Steve: Promote yourself, dammit, it's an interview!
Kate: One of my colleagues at work asked me recently why I write novels. After I thought a bit I said, because I want to leave something behind me after I go. I would like my grandchildren to know something about their grandmother as a person, give them something to be proud of even. So much of what we do, as the poet said, is 'writ on water.' I didn't sell my first novel until I was sixty ,and, because they didn't write much of anything, I know almost nothing about my immediate forbears, more's the pity.
Because I'm consciously writing for the future as well as the present, I give a great deal of consideration to content and what I'm really trying to say. Lately, I've received a few comments that my books tend not to be sexually explicit, as if that's somehow a bad thing.
I don't do graphic violence or four letter words either, nor do I deal in hopeless despair. While these may be fashionable right now, they're not what I care to read and the prevailing wisdom is that you should always be your own first customer. This doesn't mean I avoid adult themes or horror--far from it--but there are other ways to approach them besides the obvious.
In the Felix trilogy, my hero has endured a horrific childhood of endless physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of his monstrous father which has left him emotionally scarred for life. In Golden Silence, my deaf-mute protagonist was deliberately mutilated then tortured after the fact by his sadistic guardians. Someone told me, after reading the first chapter of Golden Silence he wanted to kill Adrian's guardians in the worst way, yet there isn't any graphic description of what they actually did. Instead I described Adrian's feelings and memories, and if that reader's reaction was typical it got the point across.
Encouraging the reader's mind fill in the blanks can create a far more
powerful image than a detailed physical description and this, in my opinion, is every bit as true of sex as it is of violence. The old-time movie directors understood the power of the imagination better than anyone. This is why classics like Casablanca, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Maltese Falcon, and even Chinatown, have stood the test of time, while far more graphic
stuff that came along later has disappeared into well-deserved oblivion.
The current SF/Fantasy writer who best typifies this approach is, in my
opinion, Lois McMasters Bujold, and it is for this precise reason that I believe her books will outlast those of many of her comtemporaries. The great Roger Zalazny was also a master of the 'less is more' approach. Both show respect for their readers and neither violates their desire not to be betrayed by a bad ending.
As I said, I write for the future as well as the present and have to think seriously about how I want to be remembered. Will my own stories stand the test of time? I sure hope so. In the meantime, I'm having the most fun I've ever had in my life with all my clothes on and standing up.
My earliest memory of Kate is when she sent me a fan letter for my short story The Devil's Dawn. Surprised me, since I don't think it's even close to my best effort, but I was glad she liked it. Why? Cause even back then, before I'd published my first e-book, Kate had ten books of her own, including a couple in print. And I thought to myself, how could she compliment me?
But that's Kate. Gracious, supportive and encouraging. Not to mention a writer of no small skill. Check out what she had to say, when I asked her questions that go where no questions have gone before.
Kate: Welcome home. I missed you. Thank you.
Steve: What is your worst quality?
Kate: With so many, I only get to choose one? Hmm. My terrible housekeeping, probably. I firmly believe housework makes you ugly and need to hang on to everything in that department that I've still got.
Steve: If you could pick a single scene from all your work that deserves to be illustrated, what would it be and who would paint/draw it?
Kate: My son Nicholas Krueger has done so many beautiful covers for me, I'd pick him as the artist. Deciding which scene to illustrate is another story. For sheer drama, I'm fond of the climactic scene at the end of the Wages of Greed where the concubine's son and reluctant hero, Ephraim, holds up the streaming blue and gold Imperial eagle banner on top of Mount Phasga while the final battle for his people's survival rages across the plain below him and in the skies above his head. The planet's Mother Goddess, in the image of his beloved wife, is coming through the fire and smoke of the battlefield to protect him while two enemy ships are getting ready to blow the top off the mountain, and him with it.
Steve: If you could resurrect a loved one, but knew the price of this would be the death of a total stranger, would you do it and why?
Kate: I seriously doubt that any of the people in my life whom I've loved and lost would accept resurrection at such a price. On the other hand, if the designee were someone I knew about and I got to choose.... Now, *there's* a lively thought.
Steve: Would you rather be early or late to a party?
Kate: Late, definitely. I mean, how else can one make a proper entrance? However, I don't want to arrive so late all the good stuff on the buffet is gone. In my political salad days, the Republicans always put on the best parties. While the Republican bashes featured free bars and fancy catering with boiled shrimp and live music, the Democrats, more often than not, offered Kool Aid, crackers and Velveeta. Like Wellington's army, I tend to travel on my stomach, (not literally, silly!), and always rated the parties I attended by their food. (Which way I vote is another matter, however, and I'm not even going to go there.)
Steve: What do people say about you that isn't true?
Kate: Plenty, and don't I wish some of it were. i.e. People tend to believe I'm a speedy, facile writer because I have so many titles out there. However, the Nublis Chronicles came about over almost a ten year period after I was hurt in a work-related accident and found myself alone with the walls closing in and unable to do much of anything else for over twelve hours a day. Nowadays, a novel takes me, on average, two years to complete and sometimes longer than that. Contrary to popular belief, I don't find writing all that easy to begin with and it's becoming even less so as I grow older. Especially fiction. I agree with Norman Mailer that, while non-fiction is easy because the story's already there waiting and complete, fiction is something else again. Fiction is hard, hard work and if anyone tries to tell you different, chances are they're either not a very good writer or they've never created any. Some people also believe I'm getting rich off my writing. Would that were true too. Unfortunately it's not.
Steve: If you were a fruit, what kind would you be? Why?
Kate: Being I enjoy complexity as much as I do, a pomegranate. While a pomegranate is a thoroughly annoying difficult fruit, with its own ancient legend yet, it's also delicious and those jewel-like seeds are so-o beautiful to look at. Yes, a pomegranate, definitely.
Steve: If you knew you were going to be murdered, how would you like it done?
Kate: Painlessly, and without any advance warning whatsoever.
Steve: Which one of these questions do you wish I hadn't asked? Why?
Kate: The parrot. Properly cared for, they tend to outlive their owners, especially macaws, and I'm ambivalent about that. Besides, they're scene stealers and I've got quite enough of those in my life already.
Steve: Promote yourself, dammit, it's an interview!
Kate: One of my colleagues at work asked me recently why I write novels. After I thought a bit I said, because I want to leave something behind me after I go. I would like my grandchildren to know something about their grandmother as a person, give them something to be proud of even. So much of what we do, as the poet said, is 'writ on water.' I didn't sell my first novel until I was sixty ,and, because they didn't write much of anything, I know almost nothing about my immediate forbears, more's the pity.
Because I'm consciously writing for the future as well as the present, I give a great deal of consideration to content and what I'm really trying to say. Lately, I've received a few comments that my books tend not to be sexually explicit, as if that's somehow a bad thing.
I don't do graphic violence or four letter words either, nor do I deal in hopeless despair. While these may be fashionable right now, they're not what I care to read and the prevailing wisdom is that you should always be your own first customer. This doesn't mean I avoid adult themes or horror--far from it--but there are other ways to approach them besides the obvious.
In the Felix trilogy, my hero has endured a horrific childhood of endless physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of his monstrous father which has left him emotionally scarred for life. In Golden Silence, my deaf-mute protagonist was deliberately mutilated then tortured after the fact by his sadistic guardians. Someone told me, after reading the first chapter of Golden Silence he wanted to kill Adrian's guardians in the worst way, yet there isn't any graphic description of what they actually did. Instead I described Adrian's feelings and memories, and if that reader's reaction was typical it got the point across.
Encouraging the reader's mind fill in the blanks can create a far more powerful image than a detailed physical description and this, in my opinion, is every bit as true of sex as it is of violence. The old-time movie directors understood the power of the imagination better than anyone. This is why classics like Casablanca, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Maltese Falcon, and even Chinatown, have stood the test of time, while far more graphic stuff that came along later has disappeared into well-deserved oblivion.
The current SF/Fantasy writer who best typifies this approach is, in my opinion, Lois McMasters Bujold, and it is for this precise reason that I believe her books will outlast those of many of her comtemporaries. The great Roger Zalazny was also a master of the 'less is more' approach. Both show respect for their readers and neither violates their desire not to be betrayed by a bad ending.
As I said, I write for the future as well as the present and have to think seriously about how I want to be remembered. Will my own stories stand the test of time? I sure hope so. In the meantime, I'm having the most fun I've ever had in my life with all my clothes on and standing up.
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