Volume 7, Issue 10 – October, 2004
Susan Sizemore: Multiple Mythos
It never occurred to Susan Sizemore that she couldn’t write anything she wanted to — romance, fantasy, space opera, mystery. But she confesses a special fondness for vampires. Sizemore’s many fans feel the same about her two very different vampire series, the Laws of the Blood (fantasy) and the Primes (paranormal romance).
Sizemore relishes the challenge of exploring the varied facets of the vampire myth in two simultaneous series. But vampires represent only a small fraction of Sizemore’s fictional universes. Recently, she talked to Crescent Blues about those other worlds — from galaxies far, far away to ancient Egypt to basketball.
Crescent Blues: What first inspired you to write about vampires?
Susan Sizemore: I’ve always been a big fan of vampire novels — and all other vampire media. I read Dracula for the first time when I was 13, but I didn’t like it then. I had to rediscover it as an adult. It was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s St. Germain books that really got me into vampires. Then Anne Rice came along. I’ve read just about every vampire book out there, and what I haven’t read yet is on my tbr [to be read] pile.
I love the current crop of vampire romances, but I’m also very influenced by dark fantasy vampires, such as the books of Tanya Huff and P.N. Elrod. Vampires are wonderful metaphors for what we fear and desire and shouldn’t want, but do.
I think I always wanted to give vampires a try, but the first chance I had professionally was getting a contract to write a media tie-in novel based on one of my favorite television series. Forever Knight: A Stirring of Dust is based on the characters and setting of the Forever Knight syndicated vampire detective series. I went into that project because I was such a fan of the show. It was like writing fan fiction, but getting paid (very little) for it. After writing that book I knew I wanted to develop my own original vampire ideas.
What prompted you to start a second vampire series?
With the Laws of the Blood series I explore modern fantasy themes. These books have romantic elements, but are essentially about an underground culture. With the Primes series I concentrate on the romance element. The Primes books are romance books that happen to have vampires.
How does the vampire universe depicted in the Laws of the Blood series differ from the universe of the Primes?
In many, many ways. They are two separate and distinct universes. In the Laws of the Blood universe I never, ever want the reader to forget that the protagonists are monsters. The vampires and enforcers might be the good guys of the stories, but these vampires enslave their companions, and every few years they must kill and consume a mortal. They can put it off, they can kill only bad mortals, but they are still killers. The enforcers kill and consume the vampires, which is also taking sentient life.
The vampires exist by performing dark magic. The Laws vampires were created by a curse, and pass this curse on to the vampires they create. Now, one of the ways I plan on developing this universe is by finding a way for them (at least the enforcers) to be freed from this curse. Also, the Laws books are dark fantasy stories with romantic elements, and very much about the need for drastic changes in this culture.
The Primes books are fun. They are about romance and love and lust, and heroism. This is not to say that an equal amount of worldbuilding doesn’t go into developing the Prime cultures.
The romance is the primary purpose for a Primes book, with the fantasy element less emphasized. These books are about finding True Love, about the hunt for a soul mate.
There are three vampire cultures in the Primes books, the Clans, Families and Tribes. The Primes are biologically vampires — they’re born that way. The Clans abide by an ancient chivalric code and protect their mortal cousins. The Families tend to be more neutral. And the Tribes are the nasty bloodsucking fiends out of legend. In the Primes book, these biological vampires interact with, and find mates, among humans.
How did the different social structures evolve in your brain? Were they a response to the different needs of fantasy (Laws of the Blood) and romance (the Primes) genres?
I always enjoy worldbuilding. And face it, you can take the basic vampire ingredients — night-dwelling, blood-drinking, and long-lived — and take them in any direction that you want. Not only are they creatures that appear in many mythos, they are also (I hope) creatures of fiction.
Fiction is a very pliable thing. I have at least a half dozen versions of vampire cultures/origins/worlds in my head, and could probably come up with more at the drop of a hint. And, yes, the social structures of both universes did evolve in response to the type of vampire stories they are. The fantasy concentrates on the culture of the vampires. The romance concentrates on the people who are vampires.
What’s the best part about writing in two different, long-running (we hope) vampire universes?
Just being able to write in two very different (hopefully) long-running vampire universes.
The biggest challenge?
Remembering not to get too violent in the romances, and not to get too gunky in the fantasies, but having the right amount in each universe.
How often do you draw the physical characteristics of your heroes from actors and other celebrities?
All the time. Heroes and heroines both, and generally most of the minor characters as well. Having a physical image of the characters helps me to concentrate on developing the personalities somehow.
But I find that each reader comes up with their own image of the characters as they go along. We all do that when we read, don’t we? While I might write someone that looks like, say Keanu Reeves (come to think of it I haven’t done him yet) in my head, each reader will draw a picture of that hero from a combination of my physical descriptions and her imagination.
Who do you see when I describe: “he had a long face with narrow black eyes and an ageless, serious expression. His body was so long and lean that you didn’t notice the width of his shoulders at first?” Now, I see a character that looks like Keanu in that description (and I must remember to use that description in something), but a reader certainly isn’t expected to.
What prompted you to “cast” Vin Diesel and Alexander Siddig — or any of your physical models — in their novel roles?
Because I like them. Fortunately I don’t happen to like only one physical type, so I can use all sorts of folks for character templates.
Very unusual choices for vampires, by the way. Was that deliberate?
I don’t see them as unusual at all. If someone is “made” into a vampire then they should come in all shapes, sizes and ethnicities. If someone is born a vampire I’d expect a range of body types in the gene pool.
Which comes first for you — the physical description of the characters or their emotional landscape?
The physical characteristics. I tend to get to know the characters as I write them. After all, stories come out of people having problems. I learn about the characters emotional landscapes as I figure out how they deal with their problems.
Does this vary from genre to genre?
Nope. People are people. Genres are just the emphasis that’s put on a plot. The same plot can take place in any genre — what makes a story belong in any one genre is what elements the author concentrates on in the plot. There aren’t that many plots, but there are infinite ways of telling stories about people, and infinite settings for those people to dwell in while living their stories. You can set Hamlet in a medieval castle, a corporate board room, or in an alien space empire, but the dude’s still got to deal with the same stuff.
How hard is it to move from writing historical romance to fantasy to futuristic romance in a compressed time frame?
It can be difficult, but I enjoy the challenge. It’s the challenge that keeps me fresh. The real challenge of writing a lot is both mental and physical. After finishing a book I need to fill up on words, and rest my wrists and shoulders. It’s always good to read a few books and stay away from the keyboard for a week or so between writing projects.
Can your readers look forward to any new science fiction or historical romance titles in the near future?
Well, I just finished an historical romance, Scandalous Miranda, for Avon. I don’t know when it will be published. Sometime next year, I suppose.
I do plan on writing more SF set in the same universe as Gates of Hell, but the book I start next is an epic fantasy for Tor. The working title is Blue Death and it takes place on a fantasy world reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road cultures. It has romance, adventure, lots of magic — it’s going to be a big book, one of them Robert Jordanesque-can-use-as-a-doorstop tomes.
And there’s other stuff in the works, including a futuristic-set vampire story that takes place in a POW planet. I’m currently working on this for fun. It might end up in an anthology, it might end up posted on my website as a freebie. Right now I’m just having fun working on it.
To what do you attribute your wide-ranging writing interests?
My wide-ranging reading interests. And it never occurred to me that I couldn’t write anything I wanted to. There are some things I don’t want to write, and some things I don’t think I’d do well (hard techno science fiction, for example, or books for children). But I believe in writing what I want to read. One of the reasons I love writing short stories is that I can experiment with concepts and styles within a short framework. In short stories I’ve tried my hand at writing mystery, comedy, first person, I’ve told a story completely in dialogue. I need to keep challenging myself, and working in multiple genres helps with that.
Any genres or sub-genres you’d like to explore?
I’ve done epic fantasy in collaboration, but now I’m working on one on my own. The working title is Blue Death and it takes place on a world that has a Central Asian influence. I want to write a lot more space opera. I always shied away from trying anything Arthurian, but after visiting the ruins of a Roman villa at Chedworth on a trip to England last year I’ve gotten the ghost of an idea for a King Arthur story. I want to write a novel set in ancient Egypt. It would be about the pharaoh Horemheb. I’d like to write more urban fantasy. I’d like to try my hand at mystery/suspense, both modern and futuristic. While not all of these books would be romances, there would be romance in all of them.
How did you become involved with Stepping Through the Stargate?
An email from my friend Jody Lynn Nye (read her stuff, she’s great!) asking me if I was interested in writing an essay for the Stargate book that she’d been asked to write an essay for. I said SURE! Then the editors of the book contacted me. Then I had to pick something about the show I wanted to discuss.
I decided to point out what I think is the reasoning behind the show’s frequent use of pop culture references. I’d only discovered Stargate a few months before the invite and was eager to write about it. I’m so hooked on that show! And find the new one, Stargate: Atlantis equally engaging.
How hard is it to play in someone else’s playground? Does the nature of the collaboration play a role? Does it make a difference if the subject is a themed fictional anthology or a critical analysis of a television, for example?
It’s actually almost too easy to “play in someone else’s playground,” especially when it comes to writing fiction. The worldbuilding is done for you, the characters already exist. All a writer has to do is come up with a plot.
I started out writing fan fiction, and played in the worlds of Star Trek, Dr. Who, Star Wars and other universes for the fun of it for ten years before I got the itch to write original fiction. Writing fan fiction is a great hobby and an excellent way to learn writing. It’s not a place where I want to go back to (though writing stories based on the Riddick universe and Stargate is mighty tempting…but who has the time?), unless I’m getting paid for writing media tie-in material (which my agent strongly discourages when I whine that I wanna, ’cause the pay is terrible, the royalties non-existent, and I do write for a living).
But writing an essay on an aspect of a television series is very different than writing fiction based in that universe. The essay is an analysis of some aspect of the show. It involves doing research and stating opinions. Writing the Stargate essay made me think about why I love the show, and that was a lot of thoughtful fun.
How did your collaboration with Marguerite Krause, Children of the Rock, come about?
Well, Marguerite is not only one of my very best friends, she was also my first editor. Long ago (sometime in the late 1970s), in a galaxy called Urbana, Illinois, she was the editor of a Star Trek fanzine. Meanwhile, in another part of Illinois, I was writing Star Trek stories for fun (hadn’t ever heard of fanzines) and sending them to a friend in Urbana. This friend knew Marguerite, and showed her the stories. Marguerite wrote to ask if she could publish these stories. Fine with me.
This was my introduction to a new world, and a wonderful friend. Marguerite also wrote wonderful fan stories. After about ten years we ended up living in the same town in a different state and were both getting restless with writing fanfic. So were other fan writing friends. We all formed a critique group and started writing original fiction. Among this group were people who wanted to write mystery, cyberpunk SF, scripts, and fantasy. Marguerite and I were interested in fantasy, and in working together.
We sat down and decided what sort of fantasy we wanted to write while in that critique group. We decided we didn’t want to do anything Tolkienesque. We didn’t want to do high fantasy with fancy royalty and wizards (though we wanted royalty and wizards, just not high-falutin’ ones). We wanted lots of characters and storylines that wove together into a whole world. We ended up writing what I think of as a “working class” fantasy about some wonderfully ordinary people who do what needs to be done to save their world. And much to our surprise it really turned out to be about the importance of parenting, both good and bad.
Now, Moons’ Dancing (it was published as the duology Moons’ Dreaming and Moons’ Dancing, but Mar and I will always think of it as only one book) took us four years to write the first draft of this book, learning along the way, as this was our first original story. When we printed out the final draft the page count ran to over 1,000 pages. This was in the days before Robert Jordan’s success made that sort of page count almost mandatory for your average epic.
By this time I knew enough about the business of writing to know that our first child wasn’t sellable. Not that we didn’t try. Besides, it needed rewriting. And over the course of another decade or so, we refined and improved it and finally got it just right. Then we sold it at last — our eldest child found a home with Five Star Press (though it was out as an ebook for a while before we sold it to a print publisher). I’m very proud of this collaboration with a life-long friend.
Was that related to your work with Speculation Press?
Not at all. Both my and Marguerite’s association with Speculation Press (trade size paperback SF/fantasy books, for excerpts and info check http://speculationpress.com) came about because the press was started by another life-long friend, Winifred Halsey. Winifred wanted to publish the sort of books she wanted to read. She was rather discouraged by the state of SF/fantasy publishing, and decided to do something about it by starting her own small publishing house.
She asked me for a book, and I was overjoyed to finally write one of the stories from a space opera universe that I’ve had in my head for a very long time. Gates of Hell was the first novel in what I hope will be many books in the United Systems universe. Marguerite’s fantasy Blind Vision was also accepted by Speculation Press.
My role as an editor for Spec Press has been more as an acquiring editor than as an actual editor editor. Editing story structure of other peoples’ work is not one of my talents, but I’ve enjoyed finding stories to recommend to Winifred, who makes the actual publishing decisions.
How did the writing collaboration work? (For example, did one person outline and the other write, did you write alternating chapters?)
This book was written and rewritten so many times I don’t remember who did what anymore. It all came out very coherent, and it very much came from both of us.
What influence does fan culture — whether for a television show, a sports team or a musical group — have on your writing?
Well, I learned a lot about how to write while writing fan fiction. I met a lot of my friends through fandom, and I’m grateful for that. I still like to go to science fiction conventions several times a year.
A con isn’t like a writers’ conference, by the way, though some cons do have programming tracks for aspiring writers. Conventions are a combination of party, film festival, gaming, educational panels on various aspects of books and media, costuming competitions and workshops, shopping in dealers’ rooms.
Sometimes there are professional guests — actors, writers, editors — sometimes it’s a gathering of like-minded friends. Fandom is a community, a multi-generational one at that. There’s a fandom for everything as well as just general SF/fantasy/media fandom. I haven’t been to a media con for a while, but I hope to get to Gatecon (annual Stargate SG-1 convention held in Vancouver) sometime.
A lot of my stories have been inspired by songs, and though I don’t write to loud head-banging, ear-bleeding music as much as I used to, I really think I should.
I NEED basketball. Watching the game being played is like vicariously taking part in a physical chess game. It’s a smart, fast game that just watching is good for my brain.
When did you first realize that you wanted to write for a living?
Oh, sometime in junior high, I guess. Then I spent years writing just for pleasure. Sometime in my mid-thirties I was bitten hard by the need to actually write something original to try to sell. When I overheard a conversation at a con about a fan story that had been written based on a story I’d written, I went ballistic. If I’d still been in the fan-writing mindset I would have been flattered that someone liked something of mine enough to build a story around it. Instead I was furious — and it showed me how George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry felt about Star Wars and Star Trek fanzines. Besides, I wanted to make up worlds of my own. I sold my first original book, a time travel romance Wings of the Storm, when I was forty, but didn’t start doing it for a living until a few years after that.
Who were your first literary inspirations and what made them special to you?
Well, I discovered the art of description and settings from reading Mary Stewart mysteries. Dialogue came from Roger Zelazny. From Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert came the discovery that science fiction could have fully developed characters and worlds. I actually learned about romance from Andre Norton, she put wonderful romances into her SF/fantasy. My introduction to historical romance was Kathleen Woodiwiss, and Regency was Georgette Heyer.
My favorite books of all time are Jane Eyre, A Girl of the Limberlost and Good Omens. I’ve loved The Lord of the Rings since I was 19, but I think I’m more influenced by Tolkien’s source material than his books — but my love of Aragorn is forever.
Dorothy Dunnett is a goddess. If I could create characters even a tenth as amazing as the ones in her Lymond Chronicles, I’d be a happy woman. Mary Renault sparked my love of historical fiction, and since she wrote a lot about characters out of Greek mythology, that helped get me into fantasy and science fiction. I was really into epic poetry when I was young — the hard stuff like The Iliad, Beowulf, Gilgamesh — all that stuff that modern day fiction comes from. Though I didn’t know it at the time, loving those ancient stories helped me become a writer.
And I’ve always been inspired by movies. Modern genre fiction has a cinematic feel to it. I recently saw the amazing Chinese film Hero, and my thought while watching it was, “I want to write like that!” But I was watching a movie!
Who currently rocks your literary world — and why?
Susan Sizemore: I’m really hot for Wen Spencer’s urban fantasy books. Totally hooked on Terry Pratchett‘s funny, wise Discworld. Love Susan Grant’s romance and worldbuilding in her romantic SF. Addicted to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden universe. Jacqueline Carey amazes me with her deep, dense, ever so kinky epic fantasy. Thomas Harlan is great, his alternate history with magic Rome has great multiple storylines, and his Wastelands of Flint, which is SF, is even better. John Ringo does fine military SF. Catherine Asaro manages to combine romance, politics and physics in wonderful ways. I’m hooked on JD Robb — oh that Rourke!
And I’m really into downloading romantica ebooks from Ellora’s Cave. There’s some really hot stuff going on over there. I love futuristic romance, and found the good stuff hard to find until I discovered EC. In historical romance, [Christina] Dodd and [Connie] Brockway can always be counted on. I’ve been collecting the new Bombshell and LUNA lines from Silhouette, but haven’t had time to actually read many of them yet. Everybody I know is into Laurie King’s mysteries, so I plan on giving them a read real soon now.
Do you have any writing rituals you’d like to share?
Is spending too much time online a writing ritual?
Could be. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Finish the damn book. It’s the advice I give myself every time I start one. Writing a book is scary. There’s stages to it — like the stages of death. There’s always a point where I panic and do the “I can’t do this! Whatever made me think I could do this?” It happens with every book, and I’ve written a bunch of books and short stories. The point is to get past the panic attack and finish the damn book.
And by the way, there is no one correct way to write a book. Do whatever works for you. If you need a detailed outline, fine. If you write in bits and pieces and then connect them up, fine. If you do character arcs and flow charts and such, fine. If you just sit down and start writing and keep writing until you get to the end, fine. Do what works for you. As long as your method takes you to the end of the story.
And have as many points of view as you need. And use those points of view any way you have to. As long at the transitions between points of view are clear do what works to move the story along. I hate the proclamations that some writers and writing instructors make about thou shalt have only one point of view character. Or two at most, but only one point of view per scene/chapter. Story telling isn’t about rules (except grammar, and even those rules don’t necessarily apply in dialogue), it’s about telling a story.
Care to give our readers some teasers about upcoming books?
Let’s see — well, the next thing in print is a novella (“A Touch of Harry” in The Shadows of Christmas Past, out in late October/early November 2004) based in the Primes universe, but featuring a missing persons detective who happens to be a werewolf. It’s a fun Christmas romance. And the other author in the anthology is Christine Feehan!
In March 2005 comes I Hunger for You. The hero of this third Primes vampire romance is Colin Foxe, who’s been a minor character in the first two Primes books. I’m looking forward to feedback on several of the Primes that are minor characters in I Hunger for You.
Excerpts from all my stuff get posted on my website. So does the occasional freebie story. So check it out at http://susansizemore.com but not before the beginning of October, ’cause I haven’t updated it since July, but plan to in the next couple of weeks. To join my mailing list for updates on upcoming projects send an email to sgsizemore@msn.com.
Anything else you’d like to talk about (soapboxes provided free of charge)?
Vote. I don’t care who you vote for — that’s no one’s business but yours. But vote. Take part in the process.
Jean Marie Ward
In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006..