I believe I began telling stories as soon as I learned to talk. Sixty years later, I am still telling them.
As a child, I was a voracious reader with interests that were always changing as one book or series after another caught my imagination. But I was happiest reading tales of the fantastic and marvelous. Then and afterward, these...
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I believe I began telling stories as soon as I learned to talk. Sixty years later, I am still telling them.
As a child, I was a voracious reader with interests that were always changing as one book or series after another caught my imagination. But I was happiest reading tales of the fantastic and marvelous. Then and afterward, these were the stories that influenced my writing. However, it wasn’t until I discovered the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis that my true love affair with fantasy began. The Lord of the Rings was a life-altering experience from which I have never recovered.
Eight years and two small children later, I had made the decision to be a stay-at-home mother, and found myself — if not with much time on my hands — at least in easy reach of a typewriter. Although I loved writing for its own sake, we were living paycheck-to-paycheck, and writing seemed like a possible way out, while still allowing me to remain home with the children. In the end this proved to be true.
Once I had slaked my thirst for epic fantasy, my interests led me in a new direction, to write the dark fairy tale/ gunpowder & alchemy / fantasy-of-manners, Goblin Moon. It had a modest success at the time, and gained an enthusiastic following over the next two decades. Meanwhile, I continued writing.
After eleven books, the pressure of deadlines was making it difficult to maintain my creative integrity while still meeting the expectations of my publishers (they had already paid me to write the books, and one can hardly blame them if they wanted me to do so), I decided that traditional publishing no longer suited me. I’m now engaged in self-publishing my backlist, with plans to eventually release new books and new stories in the same way. This new phase of my career begins with the re-release of Goblin Moon.
As with so many other families, the collapse of the economy brought our own full-circle. My husband and I now share our home with four adult children, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law-elect, twin grandsons, and the obligatory pets — what fantasy writer doesn’t have pets? The house is full but everyone seems to have accepted the situation cheerfully ... though the books are beginning to feel crowded and are muttering threats of rebellion.
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