Teresa Patterson: Living the Fantasy
Mystery writers make lousy detectives. Witness Arthur Conan Doyle’s sad attempts to solve real crimes. And the only romance writer whose headline-grabbing personal life appeared to mirror her heroines’ wound up accused of plagiarism.
But it is possible to live the life fantastic. Teresa Patterson — Robert Jordan’s co-writer on The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time, balloon sculptor and president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) — thrives on it. Recently, Patterson took time out of her preparations for the DragonCon art show to discuss the art of creating a Renaissance life in a late 20thcentury world.
Crescent Blues: OK, how do you do it? How do you go about making creating a successful life outside of the mainstream of 9-to-5 corporate America?
Teresa Patterson: First, you need to understand two things. One is, my mother was a rocket scientist, and she was involved in more unusual aspects of thought long before it was something people did for fun.
My father was an engineer, and in school, he was one of the loonies who kept telling everyone that we were going to walk on the moon when to do so meant instant banishment from all the cool things. He was also a brilliant artist, although he became an architect as a hobby to deal with the art, because his dad said: “No, thou shall not be an artist; thou shall be an engineer.”
So my parents were already were of that mind-set to begin with.
Second, fantasy stories and science fiction were part of our life from very early on. One of my first models was a model of all the different rockets and missiles that were then in construction. Mom would tell me which ones she had worked on and all that kind of stuff. So we started with model rocketry fairly young.
We were always into fantasy. The books that we collected were all the different legends from around the world. My first and favorite book — as far as the ones that I’ve kept since I was a little girl — was the story of Pegasus as written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although I didn’t twig to the fact that it was Nathaniel Hawthorne until I was in college and picked up the book to use as a read-aloud book in one of my classes. Then I realized, Ohmigod, this is the same guy who did that dreaded Scarlet Letter.
When did you first get involved with medieval societies and the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)?
It started happening before college, but I’m not sure of the timing. My brother joined SCA, and a fellow who lived with us was a Knight in the society, and I had some other friends who joined. I didn’t join for a long time, because they kept telling me: “Oh yes, it’s so much fun, because you can go out wenching and play slave games and this and that and lots of drinking and partying!”
And I thought, “Well, that doesn’t sound like any fun. Nevermind.”
Then one day, they came and said: “Oh, there’s an archery tournament.” This I could get into. Where, when and how do I sign up?
So I threw together a costume — which wasn’t difficult — got my trusty bow and some arrows and went to the archery tournament. And proceeded to tie for first place, right down to the final round, despite misunderstanding the rules for two of the events and screwing them up totally. In the final round, I let my guard down just a hair and missed just enough to let the other guy edge into the lead. I came in second.
Apparently, it was unheard of for somebody to show up out of the blue with a good costume, authentic bow, good archery skills, and nearly take the (SCA) Kingdom’s lead archer by storm. The next thing I know, I have a Duchess and three Knights telling me, “You are going to join and show up more often, right?”
There’s another thread that ties into both Pegasus and your love of times past: horses.
The horse has always been a very strong symbol for me, ever since I was old enough to know what one was. As a matter of fact, working with horses is one of my favorite things, and I do it as a professional whenever I can. I’ve trained several Arabians up the level of Nationals. I’ve also trained hunter/jumpers.
When I was a kid I showed [horses] in the 4-H until I was too old, so they had to kick me out. I used to take horses that everyone laughed at, because they were not purebred or fancy, and win championships with them. That was a big deal for me, and I love riding jumpers, because it’s as close to flying on a horse as you can get.
Did you ever consider making it a career?
When I was young, I went up to Virginia to apprentice on a horse farm. I had a chance to stay and become a racehorse trainer. But at the time, Mother was very insistent that I come back and go to college, because college was the road to all great things. Part of me regrets that I didn’t do it, because college, for me, was one of those big fizzles. It didn’t lead to anything, in itself, and in my opinion, didn’t do a whole lot to prepare me for anything.
I probably would’ve had a far different life. But my parents didn’t want me to do it, because my aunt had done it. I thought my aunt was quite clever, brilliant and wonderful. My parents thought she was somewhat of a deadbeat. She was a horse person, but she had trouble dealing with people. I never had problems dealing with people; I just wanted to be with the horses.
Because I didn’t do that, it has always been a struggle to keep horses in my life. At the moment, they’re as close to being out of it as they have ever been. I find that very disappointing and hope I can get to the point where I can have horses back as a major point in my life, because I’m happiest when I can work horses during the day and write in the evening.
How did science fiction conventions and fandom enter into the mix?
Conventions were kind of an accident. I didn’t know about conventions until, I guess, about high school. We watched Star Trek — my step-father was a really big Star Trek fan — and we watched it and became addicted.
I had a boyfriend who took me to a regular Nostalgia-Con, and I got to see fantasy art and that sort of thing, and that was interesting. But it wasn’t until there was an ad on television for a Star Trek convention… I called up all my friends and we went, “Did you see that? Did you see that?” We showed up and met all kinds of people with like interests. It was run by a fellow, now deceased, named Larry Herndon. His wife currently runs the Remember When Bookstore in North Dallas, which he started. Larry was instrumental in helping create Dallas fandom.
Are you a native of the Dallas/Fort Worth area?
I was born in Colorado, but I’ve spent most of my life in Arlington, which is smack dab in between [Dallas and Fort Worth]. I went to school there. My family’s there. Right now, I’m as close to Arlington as you can get and be in Fort Worth.
But for anyone in fandom you have to include the whole of Dallas as part of my home base. The way fandom is designed, everything happens in Dallas. Doesn’t matter whether you live in Arlington, Fort Worth or where. As a matter of fact, when I learned to drive, to get to the cons, the first thing I had to learn how to drive on was Central Expressway. Fortunately, I had a car that would do zero to 70 in five seconds, so I didn’t realize it was normally difficult to get on Central Expressway.
The irony is, I got tired of everything being in Dallas and wound up being one of the three people who created the Fort Worth branch of the SCA, which is now known as the Barony of Elfsea. People can tar and feather me later for that one. At the time we thought it was a really good idea.
This stuff is going through college with you, while you were pursuing a major in radio/television and studying voice and music on the side. From there, how do you get to balloons?
My friend, Karen Bogan (who’s also a writer) and I were looking for jobs. She was married, and my family was struggling. Mother owned her own business, she’d been recently divorced, and we needed more money if I was going to stay in college. So we signed up for a singing telegram company.
This company ended up being kind of a joke. They only hired women singers who looked sexy and could dress like Playboy Bunnies™; and bellydancers. But it was great training, because you had to learn how to look really good and walk up to complete strangers and sing to them and hopefully knock their socks off.
Audition training.
Teresa Patterson: More than that. I always had trouble singing in front of people. But with singing telegrams, you’ve got to get out there and sing to this total stranger after the stress of trying to find wherever the heck he or she is, making sure you got the right person, and stay in character the whole time.
The company ended up being one of those deals where it became a question of whether we would quit or would the company go under. But at that point, one of my friends from fandom, who also happened to be in the SCA called. “I know you’re working for that other company, but my boss, Leo Bary, needs singers. And he’ll pay you really well…” “Really well,” you understand, is a relative term.
I said, “But I already work for someone.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “Leo won’t tell them.”
So I went up to meet with Leo, and he said, “The thing is, you have to give them balloons.”
I had been screaming at the first company about forcing us to give people five little balloons on a stick. I thought that was just ridiculous. We’re performers, damn it. What’s with these balloons? But I said, “How many?”
“Oh, 24.”
Holy cow! How do we do this?
Leo said: “You carry a tank in your car and blow them up when you get there. Then you put them all together, and you go in and do the performance and give them the balloons.”
I thought that sucked, but it was money, and I needed it, and I’d do my best to deal with it. My first day, however, was Valentines Day.
Oh no. How many deliveries?
I don’t remember how many it was. At the time, it seemed like a million. It was probably only seven or eight…
Times 24 balloons…
Which now I could do with no sweat. But back then, trying to get between all these places and get the balloons done and be in the right make-up and spike heels and costume and perform and deliver and be on time was extremely stressful. I nearly quit right then and there. But it was performing, and the Barys, unlike the other company, did seem serious about working with everybody.
The Barys’ office was in their home — they didn’t have a fancy office like the other place — but they were really nice folks. I couldn’t tell the other company that I was working for two, so the other company had no problem about sending me through the entire Metroplex, or into South Dallas at midnight or into Plano.
Leo’s company was very careful to try to keep me in areas near my home. The problem was, since the other company didn’t, I was literally driving the length and breadth of the Metroplex two or three times every day. It ate cars.
Eventually, the other company went under, and I worked full-time for Leo’s company. Gradually we started phasing in the decorating. He found out I was really good at that.
Decorating as in…
Teresa Patterson: As in making balloon sculptures. It started out by people saying: “You have balloons. Could you decorate our birthday party?” And Leo would go and do that. Or: “Gee, could you decorate our apartment complex?” And Leo would go and do that — or have us do it. We ended up joining him in doing the balloon sculptures. Eventually, over the years, there became less and less singing telegrams and more and more sculpting jobs. At this point, it’s all decorating and no singing.
What’s the name of the company?
Balloons To You. We’re a little bitty, Ma-and-Pa, International balloon company. I’ll send you some pictures. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get pictures of one of the most interesting projects we did during the past year. We did four cowboys out of balloons, one of whom was over 20 feet tall. We’re talking lariats, moustaches, hats, ropes, spurs — the whole bit. Entirely out of balloons except for some felt in their hats.
This is not what you think about when you think of balloon sculptures, though. When most people think of balloon sculptures, they think of little dogs that you turn around.
No these are large sculptures made out of individual balloons. [In March], for example, we did four giant grape clusters for an Olive Garden™.
Is this something the company invented, or were there models out there, and the company said: “So-and-so is doing this. Let’s see if we can make it better.”
It’s a combination. Our style is something Leo invented. You can go to classes and learn to do balloon sculpting that looks pretty much like our stuff. But they teach a much different process. The difference is thatwe have a system. Skill is important. You cannot do it unless you really know what you’re doing. But if you know what you’re doing, you can do it five times as fast as the way the classes teach it.
This means that we can go out and, in one day, do seven or eight or ten parties or events. Or one really, really big one. As a result, we are now the official balloon company for American Airlines. They send us wherever to do balloons for their events, because they know we can go in there with two people and do an entire airport set up for them in a matter of hours.
In addition to the cowboys, what are some of the more unusual things you’ve done?
Tin soldiers, candy canes, Christmas trees. Basically, if you can draw it, we can probably build it out of balloons. Probably one of the strangest ones was a helicopter. We did have a frame for the helicopter.
Do the sculptures usually have a framework or armature, or are they usually just balloons tied or wired together?
It usually depends on whether it’s for a one-shot party or whether it has to last for several days. If it has to last for several days, it has to be done out of air or high float (liquid silicon) treatedhelium balloons. If it’s an air-filled sculpture, the easiest way to do that is to put it on an armature. If it’s for one day, we’re usually good enough that we can free-form just about anything without having to put an armature under it.
Who commissioned the helicopter?
It was either for Textron or something for Bell Helicopter or the helicopter show. I don’t even remember who the client was. But they wanted a helicopter. For that one we did do an armature, and the blades were made out of wood. The armature was wood and chicken wire, and the balloons were built on to it.
Was it built in situ?
Everything is built on the site where it’s going to go. We don’t bring anything in, because there is too much stuff that could happen to it. And everything we do is much too big to fit into anything but a really big truck. But a bag of uninflatedballoons fits into a little box very nicely. And my truck carries five or six or seven tanks of helium, depending on which way I’m rigging it. The big trucks carry 13 or 14 tanks of helium, plus plenty of boxes of balloons.
What kind of trucks are we talking about here — vans, panel trucks?
Full-size vans — three-quarter ton and one ton vans.
So we’re not talking container trucks.
Well, we do use container trucks when we’re doing giant, inflatable balloons like the kind they use in Macy’s™ parade. We don’t make those kinds of balloons. But we do, occasionally get called on to be the inflaters and handlers.
So it’s more than just sculptures. Balloons To You offers a wide range of balloon-related service.
I am a team leader for the balloon sculpture shop. The company handles wholesale balloon supplies, delivery of balloon supplies, complete tanks of helium, printing services for balloons. Anything that has anything to do with balloons, we have a finger in somewhere. We’re one of the few companies that is wholesale and retail, and decorator. The good part is that Leo’s got all the bases covered. The bad part is that no matter how beautiful our balloon sculptures are, they will never be in any of the balloon magazines, because we’re considered unfair competition.
You’ve been involved with art shows for some time. Did this just grow naturally out of your involvement in science fiction cons? Or did it have something to do with the balloons and decorating?
The balloons and art shows had nothing to do with each other. Although currently, my only claim to doing art is balloon art, originally, I was entering art in art shows. I did paint and draw.
All the way back to college?
Yes. As a matter of fact, as a young person I didn’t know whether I wanted to be an artist or a writer or a horse trainer or a singer. So I was trying to work on all of the above at the same time. Eventually, they culled themselves out by lack of opportunity.
But I was an artist at the time, and some acquaintances of mine were running an art show at a local Fantasy Fair. Something happened — I don’t know exactly what — but it blew up on them. Whoever was supposed to run it disappeared, and the girl who was with whoever was supposed to do it was suddenly standing there at the opening hour with absolutely no idea what to do. My crew and I ended up jumping in and saying, “Let’s see if we figure out if we can do this.” We kind of invented a system on the spot.
Fortunately, before this happened, I had volunteered at a WorldCon art show and had seen what kind of paperwork they used for WorldCon shows and the kind of administration they did at that level. Therefore, at least I had a clue about what was required. So we went in, cobbled the show together, invented a system and made it run. After that, the fellow who ran the convention came up to us and said, “OK, you’re running it from now on.” And we were.
Then we got a reputation for doing it really, really well, because I’m very good at designing systems. I invented the “Do-It-Yourself Art Show Kit” which we still send out to art shows that are in need of a basic “how do we get there from here” instruction. People can email me to order a copy.
We ended up being really, really good at running art shows and being asked to set up more art shows than we could possibly do. Eventually, we devised a system where we got recompensed, so we could have some way of separating the wheat from the chaff, because there was no way we could do everything they wanted us to do.
Could we pause here for a little explanation for folks who’ve never been to a con art show, and might not know what’s involved here.
OK, a quick history: science fiction art shows started out as, “Gee, I have drawings of my favorite story, or I have drawings of Mr. Spock, shouldn’t we have a place to display those?” People would gather together tables and chairs, or set aside a room and put people’s pictures up so other people could see them who were attending this conference about the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
When media science fiction started becoming popular, the conventions started becoming much bigger and, eventually, so did the art shows. Now, at the larger regional and national shows they are very large, slick productions, where the average original can go anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000.
Currently, I’m the president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA), which is an international organization for artists who work in the science fiction and fantasy genre. Over the years ASFA has pushed to get the entire genre of science fiction and fantasy art recognized as more than pulp book covers and considered fine art.
We’re starting to achieve that with some of the brilliant artists that have come forward and successfully pushed the envelope. Artists such as Real Musgrave, whose collectible 3-D pieces and paintings are available throughout the world now. And Hap Heinrickson, who does incredible bronze sculptures that are prized throughout the world.
One of the newer bronze sculptors, Clayburn Moore, is fairly famous for doing game-related bronze sculptures, but he started out as a fine art sculptor and actually made his first science fiction and fantasy debut at one of our art shows. He runs Moore Creations and is best known for doing sculptures of famous comic book and game-related figures.
You know, I hate it when people denigrate those poor book covers, because half the time they’re why I buy the book.
Those covers are being taken much more seriously than they were before. But in the early days of the pulps, it was just something garish and splashy to sell the books. Still, it’s been a very long, hard journey for anyone related to science fiction and fantasy art to be taken seriously by the art establishment. It’s been only recently that collectors’ plate companies have been willing to deal with science fiction and fantasy art, or some of the fine art printmakers have been willing to work with science fiction and fantasy artists.
Has the explosion of games and cards — U.S. Games Systems publishing artists’ tarot, for example, and such companies as Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf putting out those really exquisite card games — helped the standing of science fiction and fantasy art?
Definitely. Right now, the gaming and products market is probably the biggest market in science fiction and fantasy. To the point that last year, ASFA voted two new Chesley Awards — one of them for game-related art to cover all those new pieces that are being created for the card games and video games, and another for product-related art to cover those fabulous movie posters paintings and box-top paintings.
What’s a Chesley Award?
The Chesley Awards are the awards given out once a year by ASFA to honor the best work of that year, plus a lifetime achievement award within the genres of science fiction and fantasy. The award is named after the famous astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell.
Do you still paint?
At the moment, the only art I do is the balloons, unless I have to doodle something for an ASFA Quarterly article. I do a regular column for the ASFA bulletin, and I’ve given up waiting for better illustrators to illustrate things for me, so I usually sit down and do it myself.
Ironically enough, although your short stories appear in several anthologies, you’re best known for your work on a project that combines both fiction and art, The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time. How did you come to collaborate with Robert Jordan on the guide to his Wheel of Time series?
I had worked with the packager of the book before. He needed someone he knew he could work with, who could handle the project and who wouldn’t get their ego involved, because this would have to be a no-ego project. It was all about Robert Jordan. You can’t put yourself in it anywhere. Finally, the packager needed someone who would be able to handle the non-fiction elements of the book and still make it interesting.
You say “non-fiction elements” as if there was more involved. Does this mean The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time originally included fiction?
It was supposed to include fiction by Mr. Jordan and me, working together. The fiction sections all got cut. We’re hoping there may be some way that in the future they will see the light of day.
An expanded “authors’ edition?”
No, it would probably be in a separate work. But whether that’s ever going to happen or not, I honestly don’t know. The problem was with pricing and space considerations. The book wound up being much longer than the publisher expected, and they decided that the only thing they could cut was the fiction, because anything else they cut would dilute the purpose of the book. Personally, I think they made a mistake, but I’m just one of the authors. [Laughs.]
How did it wind up being longer than anticipated?
When a World book is designed, the packager looks at the earlier books in the series. The other ones they’ve done include A Dragonrider’s Guide to Pern and The Guide to Amber, both of which were trade paperbacks. The packager was going on [those precedents]. So when he originally came to me about the project, he said, “If you get this, can you do it? We need about 60,000 words in three months?”
And not being a fool, I said, “Sure,” while having tongue firmly planted in cheek. At that point I had not read the books. I had only vaguely heard about Robert Jordan, and I had no idea of the depth of his world.
It’s over 20 books, isn’t it?
No, it’s actually eight books at this point. But each book is around 900 printed pages, which equates to somewhere around 1,500 manuscript pages, which is the equivalent of two or three regular books contained in each one. So you could say it might be the equivalent of around 20 books.
The thing is, Robert Jordan is a master world-builder. As someone who reads a lot of fantasy, Tolkien included, I can honestly say I have not run into anyone who does as diverse and detailed a job of world-building as Robert Jordan. Various cultures, various terrains, various ecologies. He uses the principles of physics, so his magic system actually has rules that make it more like a scientific system than magic. And all of these things, I think, are part of why he’s so popular with the readers.
But the downside was, his world is complex. It’s very easy to get lost and lose cohesion with what went before and what the world was really like and how this related to that over there. My job was to try to take all these diverse pieces and put them together in a book you could easily use as a reference. And in the book, we tried to put some things that were not shown anywhere else, so that there were surprises that won’t come out until later books.
Did everything have to be derived from the eight-times-nine hundred pages, or did Jordan have a master plan for his world?
He has a master plan for his world, most of which is still in his head. He does know exactly where it’s going and how it’s all going to end. What he doesn’t know is how many books it’s going to take to get there.
I seem to recall reading that Jordan didn’t realize it was going to take this long to tell the story.
No he didn’t. He planned to whip this out and go back to writing history, which is his real love. That’s why he wrote under a pseudonym. His real name is James Rigney.
What was his area of history?
Military history, but what area, I’m not actually certain.
But I should add that the Wheel of Time universe is a joint creation of Mr. Jordan and his wife, Harriet. Harriet is his editor. Harriet is very much involved in her husband’s work, both as the nurturer and the editor helping him to bring it to life, and part of the creative energy.
This is interesting, because from reading “The Gift” (in Time of the Vampires), I get the feeling that you have a certain penchant for historical research yourself.
I honestly feel that if you’re going to tell any kind of story, you have to be able to make it feel real to the reader. When you’re doing either science fiction or fantasy, you have an additional challenge — you must be able to cause the reader to suspend their disbelief. In other words, you must make them able to easily believe in what you are telling them.
To me, the best way to do that is to have enough reality involved in your background and your universe, so that the parts that are created or fictitious or magical make sense, because the rest of it is so obviously grounded in what is known and real. And even if the readers themselves aren’t experts in horsemanship or firearms, I think they can tell the difference between something that is real and true, and something that you’re making up out of whole cloth.
As a writer in fantasy or science fiction, the more of it you can pull from reality, the less likely readers are to spot where you had to go sideways and invent stuff. And the more they will be drawn in where you want them to be and become involved in the lives and thoughts and feelings of your characters. And that means research. Writing fantasy usually means research into whatever areas of history most closely resemble your fantasy world, as well as studying cultural dynamics so that you understand how the changes you’re proposing would affect the culture.
Physics is important, because the best stories involving magic are those where the magic has real rules just like science and technology. In fact, it’s been said that one man’s science is another man’s magic. In my opinion, you have to write fantasy to that end. And especially so in science fiction — you can extrapolate stuff that isn’t real, but it only, really, solidly works if it is plausible. If it feels like it’s real. It does that best if you’ve done enough research so that the beginnings are real.
Did you approach The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time in the same way?
It was very much a research project, because since I didn’t write it, I didn’t know the world the way he knew it. He gave me a big stack of notes for me to review. So I was researching it as if it was a real place, real history, real time. That’s how I approached the whole project — just as if I was researching something real and historical and as if I was writing a history book or a geography book on it. But I tried to make it interesting, because I find that dry books bore the heck out of me. And I certainly don’t want to write anything that’s boring.
Aren’t the World books are designed to be both literary and artistic projects?
They’re designed to be elegant coffee table books, where anyone, whether they read the series or not, can open them up and be transported to a fantastic world. For a lot of people that’s entertaining enough. They don’t need to know the stories. Just seeing the pictures of the people and reading about what the places are like and what the people are like is, in itself, an adventure. These books are designed to create an adventure all on their own.
Do you find that fantasy and science fiction are more visual genres than mystery or romance?
There’s a very good reason for that. We already know what just about everything in your average mystery looks like. We already know what just about everything in any kind of modern day story looks like. We can visualize all the pieces very easily. We don’t need help. All we need is something that gives you some kind of emotional feeling for the story you’re about to get into.
But in fantasy and science fiction, very often the art is desperately needed to give you some kind of concept of where you’re going and what you’ll be seeing, because it’s not about things that we know already. And we don’t have preconceived ideas for some of these concepts. Therefore, it is the artist’s job to try to convey an impression that matches with what the author is trying to create — or sometimes their own vision.
That’s why science fiction and fantasy are so strongly visual — because they are about things that fascinate us, but we can’t just call up a file in our heads and go, “OK, floating city, file number… Wait a minute. I don’t have one up there. What does a floating city look like?”
I’ve always been fascinated by the way some of the stuff that is created for the literature becomes part of the reality. The famous example is how the space suits created for the pulps in the Thirties became the model for NASA space suits of the Sixties. Or was it the artists were able to conceptualize what they needed to do certain things, and the designers were following a different track to get to the same place?
I’m not certain I know which way it went on that. A lot of times it comes down to the same process. An artist who is creating a science fiction or fantasy image first has to ask themselves: “How would this work?” A lot of times artists use models to get a better idea of how this would work. Of course, sometimes they throw it out the window and paint what they feel like, and you look at it and go, “That’s pretty, but it wouldn’t work.”
Back to The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time. Do you feel that the art for the book performed this function? You wouldn’t think that a fantasy world, where people are walking on terra firma, would need that much visualization.
Actually, there are a lot of fabulous visualizations in Mr. Jordan’s works. I was rather disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to explore more of them in the book. And I was rather disappointed that there wasn’t time to do a more detailed job on the artwork in the book. I was a little disappointed, but I’m not the artist, so all I can say is that it could’ve been a little more impressive. And a lot of the readers have indicated that they were disappointed with that factor too.
I suspect that for many of the fans of the Wheel of Time series, much of the pleasure in the Worldbook is seeing some of their favorite characters brought to life.
The good part of it was that all of the drawings were actually sketched in Mr. Jordan’s home under his direction. So the character sketches were actually done while he was describing what that character looked like. And he looked at the sketches and gave the final approval, which is something that normally does not happen in any of the processes between artist and writer.
Normally, unless they make an extreme effort to do so, the artist and writer of a book never get together or see or talk to each other. This is one of the advantages of the entire World series. Each of the World books has been artistically created under the control of the creator of the story. The writer can’t control the caliber of the final artwork, but they can control whether that image looks like the character they created — hair color, eye color, shape of face, that kind of thing.
Would you like to do another World book?
As a matter of fact, I have been signed to do a World book for Terry Brooks — the author of the Sword of Shanara series — focused on his Shanara world. David Cherry will be the artist and the art director, so it should be a fantastic looking book! I do not know yet when we will actually get to begin it or when it will be out, but it is now official. Mr. Brooks signed his contract yesterday.
Do you prefer writing non-fiction or fiction?
I always prefer writing fiction. My favorite kind of writing deals with passion. It’s very difficult to create passion in non-fiction unless you’re writing to someone who’s already in love with the subject. In which case, they bring their own passion to it.
At its best, fiction helps us explore who we are, what we are, and how we deal with our environment. Non-fiction can do that, but it lacks the intensity of fiction, and it has to be much more direct and straightforward. Fiction can change people without them being aware they’ve been changed. I don’t think non-fiction can really do that.
Are you planning more short stories?
I’m supposed to have one in by July [for one of P.N. Elrod’s anthologies] if I can get my butt in gear and do it. The working title for the anthology is Dracula’s London, and all the stories in it will revolve around the things Dracula gets involved with during his time in London. So much of Dracula’s time in London was not dealt with in the original Bram Stoker story. And we’re not limited by Bram Stoker’s vision of the guy either. We can treat that as a “fictitious work about a historical character.” I’m looking forward to creating something for that, but I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do.
Have you done any research yet in late 19thcentury London?
Actually, yes. The last time I was in New York, I found a lovely bookstore that had a number of fabulous reference books. One of them was The Way It Was a Hundred Years Ago, and another was The Encyclopedia of Victorian Times. And I intend to delve thoroughly in both of those and in Sherlock Holmes, which is heavily laced with Victorian stuff.
As someone who created a Renaissance life for herself, are you glad you were born in the latter part of the 20thcentury, or do you ever wish you had been born in some other time?
That’s kind of a loaded question, because on one hand, there are aspects of earlier times that I am very fond of, but the fact is, in order to have been able to enjoy and make use of those times, I would’ve had to have been a guy. And I’m kind of fond of not being a guy. It’s one of those Catch-22s. There are earlier times and places that fascinate me, that I could deal with all the primitive aspects except for the fact that if I were a woman in those times, most of the things I most enjoy would’ve been barred to me. And the only way to be a dominant person under those circumstances would’ve been to be in a nunnery. Or to be a courtesan. And neither one actually appeals to me.
Jean Marie Ward