Q&A With PC Hodgell

[Kivam]

I'd like to open the thread (way too early, she said she'd be around near noon-time  ) by thanking PC (Pat) Hodgell for agreeing to take the time to talk with us for a bit about writing, her work, and whatever else crosses her mind and ours.  I've been a big fan of her books since stumbling across them in the Science Fiction Book Club catalog a few years back - they're brilliant, creative and an absolute blast to read - so I'm pretty excited for this. I also know how lucky I was to find them.  Pat's fifth novel, Bound in Blood, is scheduled to come out in March 2010, and will be published by Baen.  But the first four in the series were published by much smaller houses - places like Hypatia Press and the recently out of business Meisha Merlin - and though I frequent many a bookstore, I'd never seen any of them until I read that SFBC catalog.  I'm glad to know that going forward, her work will get the PR support it deserves.

OK, introduction's out of the way, and I'd like to open the discussion with a few questions for Pat.  The rest of you feel free to jump in with any questions you have.

1) Since this place is centered around Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, I figured I'd open with a RJ related question.  Robert Jordan famously said that he knew how his series would end right from the very beginning - that he had the final scene in his mind before he started writing book 1.  Is that true for you, too - did you know how Jame's story would/should end before you were through with God Stalk?  If so, has the length of time it's taken to get from that book (which came out in 1982) to book 5 been frustrating for you?  If not - well, do you know where it will end now, and when did you figure it out? 

2) I know your father, Robert O. Hodgell, was a well known artist, and your website mentions an LP Hodgell (your mother?) as well.  How much does their work influence your writing?

3) Who's your favorite character to write, and why?  (And if it's Jame, tell us who your second favorite is, too, please  )

I think that's enough to get us started - looking forward to the answers!

[PC Hodgell]

Hi Kivam,

Thanks for inviting me to be on this forum.

To address your intro remarks, yes, I've had a patchy publishing history but now Baen has reissued the whole series up to date in trade paperback (soon to be out in mass PB), so hopefully people will have an easier time finding it.

To answer your other questions,
1) Yes, I have had a pretty good idea where the series was going since I started it some 30 odd years ago, which isn't to say that details won't change.  Some people write to find out what happens next in their own story.  I started out that way and produced nothing but a handful of fragments.  Now I can't write at all unless I know where I'm going.  Sometimes things develop that give the ending a new slant, but I seriously doubt that it will change in its essence.

2)Having two good artists for parents has been both a blessing and a curse.  To take the latter first, someone as talented and prolific as my father can be pretty intimidating.  Creativity seems to have come to him effortlessly.  For me, it's a struggle.  Comparing his body of work with mine makes me feel like a failure.  I also had him as a college teacher.  The moment that sticks in my mind is when I presented a series of collage bookplates for The Lord of the Rings to my class.  They were intricate, tiny things that took me about ten hours each to make.  He looked at them, then at me, and asked, "But is it worth it?"  I never took another college art class.  Mind you, he would be horrified if he knew the impact of his comment, and he may even have been right, but dammit I was proud of those plates.

On the plus side, I seem to have inherited some talent from both parents although I express it in different mediums than they did, namely in stained glass, fiber, and writing.  You can see samples of my work (and theirs) at pchodgell.com

3)As for my favorite character to write, that would probably be Lyra Lackwit.  She's minor and doesn't appear often, but something funny always happens when she's around.  More important, she's grown since her first appearance into an interesting person.  I'm always fondest of characters who surprise me, not to the extent of running off entirely on their own but in that they develop beyond their initial conception.

That's also true of Jame's brother Torisen, who was initially just a foil to his sister.  Then I started writing about him in Dark of the Moon.  At some point within the first few pages, he suddenly clicked into life.  I've since become very fond of him.  However, he can be a pain.  The man has a kind of post traumatic shock dating back to his rotten childhood, much of which Jame shared, but he can't seem to get past it even though he recognizes its roots and illogical nature.  It's tricky for me as his creator in that while he has to work out his problems, he can't do it too soon or he will screw up the story arc.  Meanwhile readers are getting impatient with him.  I sympathize.

[SamVimes]

Welcome to Dragonmount! Thank you for taking the time to come and visit with us. 

Have you started a book/series with an ending in mind, but then altered that ending as the book dictated? Or are you in firm control of that vision and keep the book in line with a strong hand?

Have you had any characters surprise you as you wrote them? Did this affect the story overall very much?

[PC Hodgell]

Mostly, I end up where I intend to, but characters can change some things by the way that they develop.  I've had several characters surprise me, usually ones that I meant to be villains like Bane and Gorbel.  I'd say that both of them definitely affected the story, especially in Gorbel's case.  I knew that Jame was going to become friendly with a Caineron; I just didn't expect it to be him, nor that he would turn out to the grouch that he is.

[Kivam]

OK, glad you brought Gorbel up, because he leads me to another question.  Some of your stuff is fairly easy to source - rathorns are unicorns with a twist (though carnivorous, armored and near immortal is a hell of a twist), haunts are zombies with a twist (love the zombie potatoes, btw), Jamethiel Dream-weaver is a sort of Eve, with her fall impacting the treatment of women in society.  But there's so much that is so wonderfully weird and idiosyncratic - where does it come from?  Migrating trees with spores that can root in Gorbel's foot?  A fog that can carry buildings off to distant locations?  The brigand in Bortis' band whose hand turns into a mushroom (well, sort of).  How do these ideas find their way into your stories, and is there anything that you've come up with and then said "no, that's just too crazy to work"?

[PC Hodgell]

A lot of my ideas come to me in the course of research.  To give an example, I wanted a way to foreshadow that there was about to be an earthquake.  I was lucky enough to find a wonderful book in the library called When the Snakes Wake, about animals sensing quakes (the title comes from the fact that hibernating snakes will crawl to the surface before the shaking begins and likely freeze there; same thing with worms).  One example they gave was how the Chinese forecast quakes by the behavior of catfish.  I went to college in Florida where one finds that odd creature, the walking catfish, which can migrate from pond to pond overland.  So.  On Rathillien one knows there's going to be an earthquake when the catfish leave the river and head for the hills.  They come back following the last after-shock.

As for "just too crazy," I was researching the New Madrid quake in a gray little book put out by the government and found such details as islands in the Mississippi sinking, the river flowing backward, bells ringing in Boston, the earth quivering like freshly killed beef -- all details that I did in fact use in Seeker's Mask except for Boston.  My mind goes blank:  I know there were other bits I didn't dare use and some that I probably shouldn't have.

Bottom line: the real world is full of impossible things, some of which are fit to use in fantasy.

[SamVimes]

How long was it before your first book was published?

Did you write short stories before that or was the novel your first form of storytelling?

[PC Hodgell]

I assume you mean after I wrote it.  About two years.  I was very lucky, and it was a very good time to be telling such stories.  I submitted it to two publishers and it sold to the third.  An editor, dismissed from #2, took it across the street to Atheneum, a YA press.  It wasn't a YA book, but for some reason they bought it and its sequel.  Then they dropped me.  It was ten years before a small press stepped forward to carry on.

I wrote three short stories before Kate Wilhelm talked me into writing God Stalk, which is just as well considering that I'm not really a short story writer.

[Kivam]

I wrote three short stories before Kate Wilhelm talked me into writing God Stalk, which is just as well considering that I'm not really a short story writer.

OK, I need more detail on this    How did Kate Wilhelm "talk you into writing God Stalk"?

And what were you doing, writing-wise, during that 10 year gap?

[PC Hodgell]

I was visiting Kate after Clarion and we were walking through a grocery store.  I said something about being hesitant to write a novel and she said, "All you need is something to say, and you do." Or words to that effect.  God Stalk was meant to be an experiment, a stand-alone, just to see if I could really do it.

During the ten year gap I wrote and rewrote Seeker's Mask more times than I can tell you.  I couldn't finish it until it sold to Hypatia.  That's been rather a pattern:  I need a publisher -- affirmation that what I'm doing has worth -- before I can finish it.  All of this time, mind you, I was trying to find a publisher.  Editors would keep the manuscript for a year or more before they rejected it.  I was in deep depression at the time and didn't have the sense to ask for help.  Looking back, it's a miracle that the book got written at all, or that I didn't resort to the vial of styrinne (sp?) that I knew was in the medicine cabinet.

[PC Hodgell]

Well, it's after 10 pm now and I'm about to call it a night.  Thanks to all who listened in.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Let's get some promo work in on the thread!

Here's a link to Amazon with a listing of the books: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_7?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=p.c.+hodgell&sprefix=p.c.+ho

Here's the Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._C._Hodgell

And a link to the official website: http://www.pchodgell.com/site/

Now, I'll add another hearty welcome for Pat, and a big "thank you!" for visiting us!

Pat, do you have any thoughts or predictions as to what direction the publishing industry is headed in? There is  a lot of speculation over the cost of traditional publishing (books) vs. digital formats, but there seems to be some hesitancy over whether or not people actually want to read a book from a kindle type-device. Have your publishers approached you about publishing in a digital format?

I have a second question that pertains to a topic we've discussed on Dragonmount a few times: How do you feel about posting chapters of your work, or entire versions of your work on the internet for free?  Some writers feel that it increases their sales. Some writers feel like it is a violation of their work and it's a waste of time. What do you think? Are you happy with the responses that you have received from the excerpts that you have published?