Mining that 'believability' factor

 

“Family legends confirm that I'vebeen a storyteller pretty much from the moment I learned to talk. Iquickly learned that character, pacing and plot were important to any work offiction, but that nothing was more important than believability.” – Lynn Abbey 

 

Abbey, born on this date in 1948 inUpstate New York, brings a unique combination to her writing – being first acomputer programmer, historian and astrophysicist, then a writer.   With her background in history, she said, “Ilove to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.”

 

In spite of that, her own writingbegan and mostly remains in fantasy fiction. She broke into the field in 1979 with her novel Daughter of theBright Moon and the short story "The Face of Chaos," part of a ThievesWorld shared world anthology.  Shesaid she’s a big fan of anthologies because editors are interested in allcomers, and you have a great chance to be included even if you’re a beginningwriter.

 

Thus, In 2002, she not only returnedto Thieves World with the novel Sanctuary,but she also began editing new short story anthologies, beginning with TurningPoints.                                    

 

“For me,” she said, “writing a shortstory is much, much harder than writing a novel.  Short-story writing requires an exquisitesense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can havea dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.”

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