BH: What is the basis for suspense in my books? I think good characterization, but I actually have no idea; I’m on the inside looking out. What makes them such fast reads? Beats me.
I overwrite terribly. I need to be edited with a whip and a chair. I like the sensuality of dense description, but I’ve learned to cut and balance, particularly lately, since I’m writing for a publisher who establishes a rather strict word limit on submissions. I need to look at every sentence: How much of this does the reader NEED, to feel what I want them to feel, and to know what I need them to know? One of my editors told me once, “Use only two descriptive details to establish time and place in a scene.” Any more, she says, would run the risk of the Dreaded Expository Lump.
SRM: What’s especially interesting to me is that you’re equally descriptive in your fantasy and in your historical fiction. It seems to me that each milieu presents unique challenges: in historical fiction, you have to be true to a setting that no longer exists but also invest it with a texture beyond anecdotal details culled from history books; in fantasy, you have to invent details about a place that has never existed and make them feel substantial. How do you approach those challenges?
BH: In both cases it comes down to: What would it be like if I were there? In Bride of the Rat-God I looked up in old issues of the LA Times what the weather was like between Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year of 1923-24. In fantasies, I’ll pick a year in the Real World and use the calendar to figure out where the moon would be—Would it be bright enough for my heroes to travel at night? I try to avoid having things be like a movie, where everything is pretty well-lit and you can’t smell anything, and the ground is flat.
For both historicals and fantasies, I have to keep in mind the sheer amount of labor it took to do ANYTHING in a pre-industrial society, particularly if you were female. I try to take that into account. It takes imagination beyond simply coming up with a plot and conversations; and it takes travel—going places, gathering real-world details. What does the air feel like when it’s two degrees? How sore DO you get, riding a horse all day? Since the time I was in sixth or seventh grade, I’ve tried to gather experiences—using a sword, shooting a gun, walking around in deserts and snow—to use in writing.
SRM: When I think back to your wonderful Sisters of the Raven, it doesn’t surprise me that you have experience with real-world deserts—and yet, unlike the pseudo-Nordic and pseudo-British worlds one typically encounters in fantasy, your Realm of the Seven Lakes setting isn’t merely a pastiche of real-world cultures. At times it suggests ancient Mesopotamia or pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, but it’s largely sui generis. How do you prepare for this kind of worldbuilding, and what kind of real-world research, if any, does the process entail?
