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- Meet Prolific Author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Meet Prolific Author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
- By Norm Goldman
- Published November 19, 2014
- AUTHOR INTERVIEWS- CHECK THEM OUT
Norm Goldman
Reviewer & Author Interviewer, Norm Goldman. Norm is the Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com.
He has been reviewing books for the past twenty years after retiring from the legal profession.
To read more about Norm Follow Here
Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest today, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. A professional writer for more than forty years, Chelsea has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music.
Her first professional
writing - in 1961-1962 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct
children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to
writing stories and hasn't stopped yet.
After leaving college
in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked
as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her
books, and occasionally for the books of other writers.
She
has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects,
everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to
religion and law.
She is constantly
adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and
culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and
places that might provide fodder
for stories.
In 1997 the
Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary
knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association
presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International
Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman
to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life
Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award
from the World Fantasy Convention.
A skeptical occultist for
forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and
in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card
reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.
She
has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an
experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can.
Divorced,
she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the
irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not
busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.
Norm: Good day Chelsea
and thanks for participating in our interview.
When did
you first consider yourself a writer? As a follow-up, what was
the first story you ever wrote, and what happened to it?
CQY:
I never thought about it; as soon as I knew there was such a job as
writer, I knew it was what I would do. I wrote my first story when I
was six --- a fantasy story, as I recall, about twelve pages long
with illustrations --- and fortunately it has vanished.
Norm:
Did you read any special books on how to write?
CQY:
This probably sounds arrogant, but I didn't have to: I knew how to do
it from the first. I read eclectically and compulsively all through
my youth and into my adult years. Still do. However, I wrote a book
on writing fiction based upon a series of seminars I gave at the
Writers Connection in Cupertino twenty years ago. It's called
Fine-Tuning
Fiction
and anyone interested can order it online.
Norm:
Why have you been drawn to horror stories? As a follow-up, are there
aesthetic advantages and disadvantages peculiar to horror stories?
Does it have a form?
CQY:
My original publishing was in science fiction, and I still write it
from time to time. My first award nomination was for a mystery story,
but that was back in the 60s and early 70s, when the horror market
was flatter than Westerns. My first novel sale was a mystery; my next
two novels were science fiction. But to answer about horror stories:
for most of my life folklore of all sorts has fascinated me, and it's
a short hop from folklore to horror. Over the early years I read a
lot of Victorian literature, and that meant a healthy helping of
horror: Stoker, of course, LeFanu, Collins, Nesbitt, Shelley,
Polidori, and the turn of the century guys like Saki, Blackwood,
Kipling, James (Henry and M. R.), and Wilde. I like the kind of
emotional punch those stories deliver, and so I began to shift in
that direction.
Since there are only seven basic plots,
I think you're asking about style and story line, and there probably
is, but horror by its nature, being fear of the unknown, usually has
a high level of ambiguity in its storylines, which makes the genre a
very adaptable one, and that's convenient for a writer like
me.
Norm: What's the
biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
CQY:
I've made a lot of them over the years, and it's difficult to
say which is the biggest. Just at present, I think that being drawn
into a ghostwriting project that was supposed to be six months long
and was still on-going after twenty-three months is high on the
list.
Norm: What is the
worst advice you hear authors give writers?
CQY:
I don't know how to answer this, since I don't know what other pros
give to beginning writers. And from doing seminars, I know that what
is bad advice for one aspiring writer is good advice for another.
Sorry.
Norm: What helps
you focus when you write and do you find it easy reading back your
own work?
CQY:
When I write I usually have music on, opera if possible, symphonic
music otherwise; it helps me pace my story-telling. When you say
"reading back", do you mean a work in progress, or
something completed some time ago? If it's a work in progress,
that depends on how demanding the story is and what I am trying to
achieve; for the most part, it's a factor of writing, and it comes
with the job. If you mean reviewing years after publication, it
depends on the book or story in question. Some books wear well for
me, others don't.
Norm: What
do you think of the new Internet market for writers and where do you
see book publishing going?
CQY:
The Internet is a very useful adjunct to print-and-paper
publishing, but it is also very easy for beginning writers to post
on-line without going through the editorial process, which, if you're
writing for anyone but yourself is necessary. Too many of the books
I've seen on the Internet need a good editor and a really good
copyeditor. That said, I also think that the Internet is the savior
of the backlist, and those Internet publishers --- particularly those
coming out of traditional publishing --- are performing a wonderful
service to mid-list writers as well as small press writers.
Publishing is in such a state of flux that I don't think anyone knows
where it will end up, but I do know that it isn't ever going back to
the way it was before the Internet.
Norm:
Your most recent work, Sustenance,
will shortly be available. Could you tell our audience a little
about the book?
CQY:
I'll be glad to. Sustenance
is
Saint-Germain #27, and it takes place in Europe and America from
1949-1952; it deals with a number of American academics who have fled
McCarthyism in the hope of finding employment in a less dangerous
academic environment. Saint-Germain, being a publisher, befriends a
group of these academics and attempts to help them get around the
machinations of the newly established CIA.
Norm:
Which fictional character in Sustenance would you most like to
have a drink with, and why?
CQY:
Although my characters are very real to me, we don't have that kind
of relationship --- I may be deeply involved with them, but for them,
I do not exist except as a means to tell their story. I do not
function in their universe. Frankly, I think it would be a bit creepy
to have a drink with a figment of my imagination.
Norm:
Where can our readers find out more about you and your
books?
CQY:
Try my WEBSITE or my official Facebook Page
Norm:
What's next for Chelsea Quinn Yarbro?
CQY:
I need to finish Saint-Germain #28, Orphans
of Memory,
and a couple of short stories, and then it will depend on how sales
to publishers go, which is in the hands of my agent. I have a couple
of portion-and-outlines out, and we'll see which one sells.
Norm:
As this interview draws to a close what one question would you
like me to ask you?
CQY:
I'd like you to ask about what is currently available in the way of
e-books: there is a reprint of my first Western, The
Law in Charity,
out from Oakledge Press. Open Road has fifteen of my titles, eight of
which are currently available, with more to come. This is includes
the first three Saint-Germain novels. I have a high-fantasy trilogy
up as well, The
Vildecaz Talents,
and a young adult fantasy called Arcane
Wisdome.
Tor has a number of Saint-Germain books and the companion Madelaine
and Olivia books available as e-books. And, of course, my first three
e-book originals, Magnificat,
Alas,
Poor Yorick,
and In
the Face of Death.
There are links to more information on ChelseaQuinnYarbro.net. Thanks
for letting me mention all that.
Norm:
Thanks once again and good luck with all your future
endeavors.