Gabrielle asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Thank you ma'am for responding My question us who/ what inspires you to make stories? and what can you say to the people who read your stories?

Lois McMaster Bujold The "what inspires" question was asked and answered generally elsewhere in this batch from your classmates. The not-quite-facetious answer is that I think writing fiction is a dissociative disorder; the more economic, my need for a job I could blend with care of my two preschool children in the middle of the recession of 1982 in a small town in Ohio. After that, there was a reward feedback loop -- people like this thing, do more.

What I want to say to the people who read my stories are the stories themselves. Anything else, including all PR (publicity -- like this blog, for example), is, as one of my characters quips somewhere, persiflage, camouflage, or just plain flage. It's why I prefer, when I'm forced to write anything, to write Afterwords not introductions. Some writers want to be famous. I want not to get in the way of the stories.

That said, a minimum amount of fame is required to sell anything; people at least have to be able to remember and spell a writer's name in order to find their books. (For the record, again, Bujold is my surname and B is the letter my books should be shelved under. The McMaster is my maiden name that I use as my middle name. No hyphens.)

Ta, L.

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