Thursdays of Sword & Soerceress 27 – the Jonathan Shipley interview
This week’s interview is with Jonathan Shipley.
###
1.) Tell us about yourself.
I’m a speculative fiction writer in Fort Worth, Texas, who writes
novels and short stories set in a vast story arc that includes
fantasy, horror, and space opera. Although my stories have been
published in two dozen anthologies, it’s been slow marketing the
novels.
2.) Why do you write?
I have so many stories and novels in my head that they keep pushing
their way out into the world. Then their place is taken by the next
story forming in my head. Once I tried to track my dreams and
resolved to keep a journal where I would record the night’s dreams
every morning. In reality, I never had time in the morning, so I
would carry the dream around all day until I had a chance to write
them down. Then I would miss a day or two and have multiple dreams
that I was trying to keep track of as they faded and jumbled together.
Writing fiction is a more controlled process, but similar in that I
have many threads to track until the ideas are transferred to the
page. Because I’m constantly jettisoning old ideas to make space for
new ones, reading my older writing is almost like discovering
completely new work.
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 challenge of a strong female protagonist for a male writer
is not to write a man in a skirt. I’ve used opposite gender stories
as a springboard for classroom discussions of gender stereotyping in
writing, and the girls cite two things the boys fail to incorporate in
a female viewpoint: strong internal emotional responses to situations
and an emphasis on eyes as a physical attribute. I try to avoid those
two pitfalls as I write my female characters.
4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other
kinds of fantasy?
Sword and Sorcery tends to be more overt with conflicts coming to
physical blows (the sword part) whereas others types of fantasy may
have conflicts of endurance or belief or discovery that don’t involve
so much physicality.
5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?
I think ebooks will speed up the process from conception to reader and
allow readers to access what they want to read on a smaller-than-book
scale. The ability to download a single short story instead of an
entire collection makes reading more like music, where there’s always
been a strong tradition of buying single songs instead of albums.
6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.
“Grave Gold” is a tale of a barmaid who works in an inn at the bottom
of hill that also hosts a notorious barrow. The barrow is known for
two things — hidden treasure and unquiet dead. So treasure hunters go
up the hill and never come down. The situation intensifies when very
much against her better judgment, the protagonist Jenna is forced to
deal with the barrow firsthand.
7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?
He arrived in full armor when the moon was as its peak. The few
people in the common room noticed, but not the right things. They saw
a helmeted soldier, an unwanted authority figure. They didn’t see
that the armor was outdated, that the crest on his breastplate was
that of a long-dead clan. They didn’t notice that the common room
grew chill when he entered.
Jenna gathered her courage and went to meet him just inside the door.
“This way, sir,” she said, beckoning to a corner table where they
could talk without being overheard. There were more secluded places,
of course — the rooms upstairs, the stableyard, the cellar — but she
didn’t want to be that private with a revenant spirit. It seemed
prudent to have help within easy screaming distance.
“Can you take ale?” she asked as he lowered himself into the chair.
An odd question for a dead man, perhaps, but bread and salt seemed to
have some appeal.
“Not really” — his voice was fuller, not longer a whisper, but
surprisingly light — “but a mug before me would bring back pleasant
memories.”
She hurried to the counter to draw a mug and set it before him. Then,
hesitantly, she took the seat opposite him. He reached up a gloved
hand to loosen the strap of his helmet, and she tensed. She really
didn’t want to face whatever skeleton animated the armor, but there
seemed no choice in the matter.
The helmet lifted, and she held her breath, expecting the moldering
worst. Then she exhaled in surprise. Several surprises, actually.
Not only was the face perfectly intact with piercing blue eyes and
aristocratic nose, but it was also the face of a woman.
8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.
“Credo” was first published decades ago in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s
Fantasy Magazine, but it just came out again last Christmas in the
ebook Past Future Present. The protagonist, a church organist, must
banish a foul-mouthed imp from the organ before Sunday services. It’s
a more humorous take on the same theme of exorcism that “Grave Gold”
explores.
9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.
Death in the Dining Room by Kenneth L. Ames (1992) sounds like a
murder mystery but is really a social history of Victorian times when
dining was the center of family life and carved representations of
slaughtered game animals often embellished the sideboard as a reminder
of the balance of life and death. This book gets points for an
intriguing title and also for bringing back to life vanished concepts,
such as back staircases, hallstands, and card receivers — all part of
the “ceremonies of daily life” that the Victorians firmly believed in.
###
Thanks, Jonathan, 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.
-JM
