Maine Author Spotlight

Lynn Flewelling

Lynn Flewelling grew up in Presque Isle, attended the University of Maine, Oregon State and Georgetown.  She currently lives with her husband and children in the Bangor area.

We spoke with her by phone

RR: Is this Trilogy your first published work?:

LF: It’s not a trilogy. It’s a series. The introduction to Traders Moon actually says, "This is not a trilogy, This is not a trilogy, This is not a trilogy!" Even if I never write another book, it’s still not a trilogy. That would imply that there’s a single story arc over the course of three books and there isn’t. The first two books Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness were intended to be one book originally and ended up being made into two, so the first one has a story arc that is concluded, but then a greater story arc which is concluded in the second book. And those two are a complete story. The third book is a freestanding book based on the same character and it is certainly referential to the first two books. But it can be read alone or with the others. I’d recommend reading all three, but of course I’ve got kids to put through college.

RR: When you meet people at parties and tell them you’re an author and they ask "what sort of thing do your write?" What do you tell them?

LF: Fantasy Adventure novels for adults. Because the supposition is often because it’s fantasy and because I’m female that I’m writing children’s books and I’m not. They have been read by children. I’ve had kids as young as nine walk up to me and tell me they did Luck in the Shadows for a book report and I’m sort of surprised. And I’ve had people in their eighties walk up and say they loved it. So I don’t think that there’s any particular demographic that I appeal to. I appeal to all of them I guess.

RR: This is book number three in this series. Have you published any books outside this series?

LF: No. But I’m currently working on a book outside of that series. It’s set in the same fantasy environment, but about five hundred years earlier. It’s going to be quite a different book

RR: Why fantasy? Why not mystery or romance or whatever?

LF: Why not fantasy?  I was an eclectic reader. There's no one type of literature that I always read. I think that’s like eating one type of food your whole life. I have a background in literature, and I think there’s value in all genres. These particular characters presented themselves in a fantasy environment in my imagination. The nice thing about fantasy is that it allowed me bring in a wide variety of things that I have either studied or experienced and put them into this world in order to create a more realistic environment. I was a history minor. That’s sort of a passion of mine

RR: Were you a fan of this genre before you started writing professionally?

LF: I grew up reading a lot of adventure literature, like Jack London, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck. And fantasy too, Tolkien, LeGuin, C.S. Lewis. I was also a tremendous Sherlock Holmes fan. Holmes was an especially strong influence.   If anyone knew what I had grown up reading I think you could trace back where my influences come from. The main character in this series Serigel is based in great part on Sherlock Holmes, on Jim Rockford, the Scarlet Pimpernel -- a lot of adventure/action types. He relies a lot more on cerebral wit than he does on hacking and slashing to get the job done. He does swashbuckle too

RR: In my previous life I would interview musicians, and a lot of them when asked about current music, would have no idea what was going on in the music world. Is that true of writers as well?

LF: Sometimes. I don’t think anybody feels as well read in their field as they ought to be. Because there’s just so much out there and if you’re actually doing it you don’t have time. I don’t have time to read like people who don’t write do. Because it consumes a certain part of your energy, a certain amount of attention that almost makes it difficult. I go thorough periods when I’m just not reading at all and I feel very strange about that because I grew up reading daily. Every night before I’d go to bed I’d read for an hour. And the more I write, the less that part of my brain seems to want to deal with it. But I’m making myself read. There’s a lot of things I have to read. I do a lot of research. I’m reading things on medieval medicine in bed at night instead of Raymond Chandler. But lately I’ve been trying to pick out what I consider to be the best in the fantasy genre, people who are really writing literary fantasy like Connie Willis, Ellan Kushner, a lot of people who are just expanding the genre beyond the basic sword and sorcery type of thing and saying ‘that’s the direction I’d like to go." I’m reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis right now, which is about Victorian time travel. And it’s splendidly researched and splendidly written. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner is one that I just finished that is just gorgeously written

RR: Do you ever find when reading other people that you start to pick up their voice a little and you have to force yourself to get back to your own style?

I think any writer would answer yes to that. Everything you read teaches you something as a writer. I tend to have my own voice no matter how much I would like to do something else. When I was in sixth grade I discovered Ray Bradbury and I thought ‘Wow, I want to write just like him.’ He's great, and I still admire his writing very much. But it was never my voice and it’s not going to be my voice. I think maybe I have some nice influences from him in terms of use of language. William Faulkner is another another great favorite of mine, because of his use of language. In mainstream fantasy you’re not going to get away with three page sentences like Faulkner does, he had a way of describing things which is so rich. There is a way of using language that freshens things up and gets people’s attention that I strive for. I don’t know if I’ve made it yet, but that’s certainly the direction I’m trying to go

RR: Frequently it seems to me the fantasy genre doesn’t get it’s due in literary circles?

LF: You think? (sarcasm) EWWWW! You see the lips curl. I agree with you 100 percent  but, there are a lot of reasons for that attitude. Some fantasy is not very good. Fantasy is not everybody’s cup of tea. But, you know, if you take any literary form, nobody reads everything. And no literary form has a hundred percent following. I try to get people to read "Remains of the Day" and they won’t do it. I think that’s a splendid book. It’s all very subjective. Taste is totally subjective, even among editors and professional people in the publishing field. Other people see it as kid literature. They see it as Dungeons and Dragons based literature they see it as badly written. I stopped reading fantasy for a long time but picked it up again about eight years ago, and was astonished at how the bar had been raised. Magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction publish literary quality stories.  Your still have people writing old-school hack and slash. You also have people like Connie Willis and Charles de Lint who are blowing the genre right out of the water by mixing it in with modern-day setting and mythic themes. Others are rewriting fairy tales. A lot is going on now. I’m sort of in an odd place because on the surface I’m writing plain old sword and sorcery hack and slash. But the books themselves are written, I hope, on a more literary level, trying to pull in more archetypal figures and bend the mold. That was my intention from the outset, to take standard fantasy forms and tweak them and break them and stretch them; to take stereotypes and surmount them. Judging by reader feedback, I've accomplished that for many readers and I'm pleased. Because I’m not from a fantasy fan background, a lot of people who know me for in regular life have picked up my books and said ‘gee I don’t ever read fantasy. I would never read a fantasy novel, but I picked up yours because I know you and wow it was good!’ I’m sort of half offended and half pleased to hear that. Many of my fans appear to be people who’ve either not read fantasy for a long time or don’t normally read it.I don’t know why I attract that particular reader. I’m very happy that I do and I’m happy that I can surprise people that way.

RR: So often fantasy and science fiction get put into the same pot when there so different?

LF: I have this button that I picked up at a convention. It says "Law is not Justice, Sex is not Love, Fantasy is not Science Fiction" I love that. I specialize in this field and to me their very distinct.  But no, fantasy is not SF. A general rule of thumb is that anything that looks forward is science fiction. Anything that harkens back to the past is fantasy. But these days that's not absolute. You’re going to get blendings and mixings. People are mixing up the genres more and more, which I think is good.  Charles de Lint is given credit for inventing urban fantasy, where you’ve got fairies running around in modern Canada and it’s great. It’s great stuff. Fantasy is a much bigger world than it used to be. It’s a much bigger world than people realize.

RR: It seems to me that fantasy or science fiction cross over with other things, mystery, suspense, romance, just as often as they cross over with each other?

LF: My books are mystery crossovers though they have elements of other genres as well - horror, some romance, but essentially mysteries. My character is essentially a detective in a medieval setting with  magic available in limited quantities. They’re not magical themselves. I sort of shy away from that because it makes things too easy.

Buy Lynn Flewelling's Books at Amazon.com

Luck in the Shadows

Stalking Darkness

Traitor's Moon

RR: Correct me if I’m wrong. I have the impression that the Science Fiction Audience is largely male, and that fantasy audiences are more evenly split.

LF: That’s a good question. I think that used to be true ,but it is much much less so. Perhaps because there are so many more women writing Science Fiction

RR: So maybe you can tell me why all my favorite Science Fiction Authors are female?

LF: Really? (laughs) I don’t know. I don’t want to make any big gender distinction, but I think that a lot of women writers are more character oriented. Some men writers, particularly writers of hard science fiction are more plot oriented. You can overdo one at the expense of the other.  When I write I try to strike a good balance. You’ need good characters but they have to be doing something. There has to be some sort of evolution of personality in any book.  They start place a and end up in place z. How did they get there? That’s where your plot comes in.

I would say that women really are coming to the fore because we give a fleshed-out, rounded world. Some studies have shown that women tend to see more detail and men tend to be more focussed.You’re going to hear more about food and customs in my books than you will in others because that’s something that interests me. I don’t know if that’s because I’m female, or just because I have a sort of an anthropological mindset.

RR: Lois McMaster Bujold, are you familiar with her?

LF: Yes, we have the same cover artist.

RR: Her stuff is amazing.

LF: Yeah it is and it’s because her stuff is about a character. Miles does a lot of stuff, but the story is about him. You see him grow and change, and over the course of her many books, you get to explore so much about him.

RR: Now you grew up in Northern Maine. LF: Presque Isle. RR: Growing up in an essentially rural environment, has that given you an appreciation for the rural settings in your work?

I was a townie. And Presque Isle is a little island of culture, comparatively speaking. I didn’t grow up on a farm or anything. But I did spend a lot of time in the woods. My family hunted, and fished and camped. I certainly didn’t grow up in what That had a tremendous impact on my writing. When I describe someone gutting a partridge or building a shelter, it’s because I’ve done it. As I write, sorts of sensory details like how weather smells flood back in.  I owe a lot to growing up there. I don’t think I’d be writing the sort of things that I do if I hadn’t. Of course, I left there.I have lived in cities. I have traveled in Europe. And all of that comes into my work. When I was at Oregon State University doing some post grad work, I worked in a necropsy lab doing autopsies on large farm animals. That’s come in very handy for the nastier elements of my work. Write what you know.

Links:

Lynn Flewelling's web page Includes excepts from her first two books.

June 19, 1999