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mmerriamOver at the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lobo_luna community, I've completed a question and answer session. I thought I'd post the questions and answers here as well.
Please tell me about a book that had a great influence on how you write or what you write.
Just one?
As much as I love Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, that book probably affected me more as a reader than as a writer.
So I think the right choice is Charles de Lint's Moonheart. This book had a deep impact on how and what I write, though it would be years after I first read the novel before I started writing seriously again.
At the time I read Moonheart, I was writing mainstream and literary fiction (poorly) and literary poetry (publishable), but I was starting to wind that phase of my writing career down: I was not a good enough prose writer to craft sellable pieces (the problem I had suffered when I first tried to write SF/F/H back in the mid-1980s), and there was no money in poetry and--working outside of academia--not a lot of recognition for my efforts either. Add in the pressures of my life, and I set aside writing, convinced that I simply did not have the talent to be a writer, no matter the passion I might have felt.
But Moonheart, and later novels by de Lint and other emerging urban fantasy / mythic fiction writers, got into under my skin and into my system. I wanted to create that kind of story. I had started poking at magical realism as a writer, and urban fantasy seemed the logical extension, taking magical realism to the next, more fantastic step.
When I started writing again, I actually thought I would be writing Big Epic Fantasy. That was what I was reading at the time, and that seemed to be the type of story that sold the best in bookstores. I thought I would be creating a multi-volume sprawling epic.
But that wasn't the way it went. Those stories of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives struck a chord in me. The idea of finding the fantastic among the ordinary, of how those two things interact fit well with my love of small quiet tales of people going about their lives in the face of whatever difficulties they need to overcome.
Charles de Lint, his novel Moonheart, and other novels like it by de Lint and other writers showed me the way.
I'd like to thank![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xjenavivex and the lobo_luna community for inviting me to answer questions!
lobo_luna community, I've completed a question and answer session. I thought I'd post the questions and answers here as well.Please tell me about a book that had a great influence on how you write or what you write.
Just one?
As much as I love Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, that book probably affected me more as a reader than as a writer.
So I think the right choice is Charles de Lint's Moonheart. This book had a deep impact on how and what I write, though it would be years after I first read the novel before I started writing seriously again.
At the time I read Moonheart, I was writing mainstream and literary fiction (poorly) and literary poetry (publishable), but I was starting to wind that phase of my writing career down: I was not a good enough prose writer to craft sellable pieces (the problem I had suffered when I first tried to write SF/F/H back in the mid-1980s), and there was no money in poetry and--working outside of academia--not a lot of recognition for my efforts either. Add in the pressures of my life, and I set aside writing, convinced that I simply did not have the talent to be a writer, no matter the passion I might have felt.
But Moonheart, and later novels by de Lint and other emerging urban fantasy / mythic fiction writers, got into under my skin and into my system. I wanted to create that kind of story. I had started poking at magical realism as a writer, and urban fantasy seemed the logical extension, taking magical realism to the next, more fantastic step.
When I started writing again, I actually thought I would be writing Big Epic Fantasy. That was what I was reading at the time, and that seemed to be the type of story that sold the best in bookstores. I thought I would be creating a multi-volume sprawling epic.
But that wasn't the way it went. Those stories of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives struck a chord in me. The idea of finding the fantastic among the ordinary, of how those two things interact fit well with my love of small quiet tales of people going about their lives in the face of whatever difficulties they need to overcome.
Charles de Lint, his novel Moonheart, and other novels like it by de Lint and other writers showed me the way.
I'd like to thank
xjenavivex and the lobo_luna community for inviting me to answer questions!
