Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Layla Lawlor interview
This week’s interview is with Layla Lawlor.
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1.) Tell us about yourself.
I’m Alaskan, born and raised, and I even had the stereotypical Alaskan upbringing: yes, I really did grow up in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere! I still live in Alaska, but I’ve grown to enjoy such conveniences as electricity, running water and the Internet. My husband and I own 11 acres on the highway north of Fairbanks, in a quiet semi-rural area surrounded by forested state land. I blog at http://laylalawlor.com/wordpress/.
2.) Why do you write?
I write to tell stories, because my head is full of them and I have to get them out somehow! I have been writing ever since I could pick up a pencil. I also write and draw comics. I spend most of my spare time daydreaming about the lives of fictional people. I’m not sure what could ever stop me from writing, honestly.
3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?
I think the qualities that make a “strong” female character are exactly the same qualities that make a strong male character — or a good character in general. A character needs to be well-rounded, with flaws and virtues and strong, clear motivations for the things she (or he) does. And she needs to be an active agent in her own life, rather than sitting passively and letting the events of the story happen to her. I’ve never written women any differently than I’ve written men, except to the extent that their society’s expectations and the different social forces acting on them shape them into different people (but that’s also true of writing rich people versus poor ones, or the old versus the young).
4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other kinds of fantasy?
To me, sword & sorcery is to fantasy as space opera is to science fiction — a subgenre that is characterized primarily by its sense of escapist fun. Which is not to imply in any way that it’s less thoughtful or less well written than other kinds of fantasy, and it can still be insightful and mind-expanding, or grittily dark with a downbeat ending. But I go to sword & sorcery (or to space opera) looking for stories that will take me out of my ordinary world for an hour or three, and sweep me up in exciting, swashbuckling events far beyond the everyday. Like any other question of genre, however, I suspect that it is very much in the eye of the beholder.
5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?
I know that for me, they already have. Living in an isolated area as I do, the Internet makes it possible for me to network with other writers, to research my stories, and to discover new books and new writers that I would otherwise have never have heard of. It brings the world to my fingertips. I think it’s doing that for everyone. The world is simultaneously smaller and more vast, for each of us, than it has ever been before. And as well as broadening all of our personal horizons, it’s also brought an explosion of new options for writers (and readers!), from serializing fiction online, to ebook self-publishing and print-on-demand. It’s an exciting time to be an author.
6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.
“Netcasters” is a story that was inspired by macramé, the art of creative knot tying. Which doesn’t sound very interesting as a basis for a sword & sorcery story, does it? However, the idea came to me one day when I was studying a piece of ornamental macramé on my desk — as a lot of writers do, I keep all kinds of unusual, beautiful or intriguing items around my desk for inspiration. I thought it would be an interesting idea for a story to include a magic system that uses knots as a spellcasting medium (rather than, say, a spoken spell, a scroll or potion, etc). Then I started wondering what sort of people might find magic knots useful, and what instantly came to mind was “Fishermen!” So that’s what this story is about: a fishing village in which the fishermen (and women) have a closely guarded talent for tying very special knots, and a thief who stumbles onto their secret.
7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?
A waxing crescent moon rode low over the marsh, throwing down a glittering trail from tidepool to tidepool and out into the wide dark ocean. The village’s hill cast a black shadow across the whispering sedge. By the slender shell of moon, Zair tapped her way around back of her house, past the middens and privies to the goat pen, where half the village had gathered.
“What are you fools doing?” Zair demanded, pushing her way through the crowd. More people trickled out of their houses, drawn by the noise. Someone said “Pirates!” in a hushed whisper, and Zair rolled her eyes. Oh, there were always tales of raiders up the coast, and there had been that one time with the smugglers in the marsh… But pirates weren’t known for sneaking into goat pens.
“We caught a thief, Auntie!”
She might have known: her nephews Rig and Orrel, along with a few of their equally thickheaded friends. Someone held up a lamp, and Zair could see that the boys were sitting on somebody, a stranger to judge by the long coat of colorful patches that was spread in the mud around them. No one in the village had a coat like that.
“Let him up,” Zair said.
The boys, looking disappointed, let the accused thief rise to his — no, her knees. She wiped mud off her sharp cheekbone and smiled brightly at Zair: an angular, long-legged scarecrow of a woman, with a mess of short dark hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a dull knife.
“Hello, honored mother. I’m sure we can work out this tiny misunderstanding like civilized people.”
8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.
At this point, the work I’ve written that I’m most proud of is my self-published science fiction webcomic KISMET. It’s space opera, one part action/adventure and one part political intrigue, with a dash of humor. It’s available online for free — the first book, “Hunter’s Moon” is located here: http://www.kismetcity.com/huntersmoon/hmchapterindex.shtml. The second book, “Sun-Cutter”, is currently on hold — I’ve been focused on my fiction writing the last few months — but it will resume in 2013, and it can be found here: http://www.kismetcity.com/suncutter/.
9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.
THE YEAR 1000: WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE AT THE TURN OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM, AN ENGLISHMAN’S WORLD by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. History is one of my most passionate interests, but I’m much less interested in the broad strokes of history — the wars and treaties and lists of kings — than I am in the little details of how people lived in past eras. It’s very similar to my writing urge, I think; I love imagining other places, other eras, and getting a feel for what people’s lives were like in those places and times. This is not the most historically rigorous book — that is, I’m not saying it’s necessarily inaccurate, but it contains a lot of speculation and a view of history that’s more through a novelist’s eye than an academic’s … which is probably why I like it so much! It’s a light and very readable look at the life of the common man in England at the turn of the previous millennium, a great resource for a writer, or for someone who is simply interested in the lives of people in the past.
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Thanks, Layla, for the interview.
Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.
And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.
