Interview with Elizabeth Moon, Author, “Kings of the North”

Elizabeth Moon is the author of over 30 novels, including works of science fiction, fantasy and military SF. This month will see the release of Kings of the North, the second part of a new series inspired by her celebrated Paksworld saga. Moon recently spoke with me about what it’s like to return to a much loved series, and what the future holds for the world that Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir made.

People love your Paksworld books, and I’m sure that they’re excited to see you return to the setting. Could you tell me a little bit about this new trilogy?

It’s turned into a five book group…the story is bigger than I thought it was when I started (not the first time it’s happened to me, either.) It follows directly on the original Deed of Paksenarrion, and shows how even a good influence (a paladin’s great deeds) can upset a lot of peoples’ lives. It will also solve some (not ever all) mysteries left open in the earlier books.

I’ve seen a few reviewers voice a little disappointment that Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir isn’t the main character in this trilogy. Could you talk about the decision-making process that led you to choose to set this book in the world that Paksenarrion made, rather than to return again to Paksenarrion’s story itself?

Not so much a decision-making process as the reality of storytelling: from Paks’s point of view, her story–the big crisis and change of her life–has been told. She is not available as a protagonist (even a POV character) at this time. If she lives to be sixty, she might come back to me with a different tale, but it’s very unlikely she’ll live to be sixty. The characters clamoring to have their stories told were those whose lives she changed, and those are the ones I went with.

A related question: how hard is it to return to a series of books you wrote years ago? How did you get back into the groove again?

To my surprise, it was easy. Once I started, it felt as if I had come home again. A great relief, since one book in this world had died on me, back in the early 1990s. Another surprise is that the books are so different from the books I thought I would someday write, shortly after the first ones came out.

Readers, I’m sure, are going to love this new story, but I’m interested to hear what you love about it. Are there some things with which you’re particularly pleased?

Writing from multiple viewpoints, with more mature characters, I’m able to show more than when everything was seen through the eyes of the naive young farm-girl and novice soldier. The Deed of Paksenarrion was very much a coming-of-age story, but life doesn’t stop (if you’re lucky) at age 25 or 30 (though, when I was 18, I thought it did.) Major challenges crop up all through life. So here are competent people in their late 40s to early 50s suddenly bumped right off the tracks they thought they were set in. A familiar scenario to many Americans in the past ten years. Their characters can be more complex, because they’ve had more experience.

It’s also been fun to explore the lands that were only background mentions in the earlier books (Lyonya and Pargun, for instance.)

“Dark fantasy” has been a trend lately, but your own work, while human and easy to relate to, is written in a high fantasy vein. Do you see yourself as working against trends or independent of them?

Independent…I write what appeals to me, as both reader and writer.

Can and should fantasy fiction reflect society?

Fiction is influenced by society and its writer’s relation to that society–and that includes fantasy. Fiction comes from the mind of someone who is–willingly or unwillingly–in a place, a time, a milieu. The influences are not always straightforward, though–not as clear as a mirrorlike reflection–and that’s particularly true of fantasy.

Should fantasy be written the intent to reflect whatever society the writer lives in? That’s a tricky one. Intentional reflection of society too easily becomes “problem fiction” and slides from fiction–true storytelling–to sociopolitical lecture. Writers are entitled to pick their own intents, but for me the more subtle social reflections work best, both as story and message.

Does yours?

Yes, in a nonlinear way. I’ve mentioned that the books involve the disruption of characters who thought, in midlife, that they were past major changes in occupation, location, etc. Most of the people I know have been adversely affected by the social, economic, political, and environmental changes of the past 10-12 years. Of course that experience–and earlier ones–colored what I wrote (it’s in the other books as well.) But that’s not by intent–in fact, I chose to make the pattern-breaking events ones that could be considered “good” and not “bad” to isolate the effect of major stressors on adults in midlife from specifics of our recent history. When I want to teach a lesson, I do it in nonfiction. If a lesson emerges from fiction, then it’s a resonance between a reader ready to learn that lesson and the situation in the book that evokes it. If someone looked closely at all the books, I’m sure they’d see flashes and ghosts and shifting veils of actual experience–sometimes closer to the surface, sometimes more obscured.

I’m always fascinated to hear about who writers read the most. Sometimes it’s very different from what they themselves write. For example, one of my favorite fantasy authors – a legend in his field – reads tons of P.G. Wodehouse. What do you prefer to read?

Fiction, nonfiction, poetry…but I can’t really say who I read the most. (Too many years of reading too many books…and re-reading some many times.) I’ve read lots of Wodehouse. Wodehouse was one influence in the first three Serrano books. Doesn’t fit in this fantasy group, though. Mysteries, mostly older British writers (Sayers, Allingham, Tey, and of course Christie). History both serious and fanciful (du Maurier, Shellabarger, Renault, Sutcliffe, etc.) Certain 19th c. novelists (Austen, Kingsley’s political novels, Trollope, Surtees, some Dickens.) Some YA/children’s books (Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, for instance.) British more than American writers. I do read in-genre, but it’s dangerous to start listing because I’ll forget and leave out someone I admire….but on the whole I read out of genre more than in-genre. Lots of nonfiction as well.

How did growing up in a small Texas town impact your development as a writer?

Two things: a small Texas town at the end of the state, before we had television, gave children time to make things up for themselves as well as read. It was a very…relaxed, I guess you could say…time. We kids played made-up games–sometimes based on books, sometimes based on pure imagination. As an early reader, I was often the one creating the scenario we’d play out. My mother worked full-time; I had plenty of time to read, draw, write, and just think.

Second, with another chunk of that time now spent on TV or internet or video games, we kids had more time around a variety of people in different occupations: up through third grade, my mother worked at a hardware store and I spent hours in that store as well as roaming around the other stores on Main Street. So small town retail is deep in my blood. Then she went to work for an oil company as a draftsman and I had some unique experiences going with her on business trips. It was possible even for a girl to overhear and observe farmers, plumbers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, pilots, lawyers, etc, etc. A large stream of practical information flowed in one ear and not quite out the other.

But though I was a voracious reader as a child, I did not consider being a writer as a way to make a living–I wrote, from an early age, but I had no idea how writers made a living at it. If there were professional writers in town, other than newspaper reporters (which I knew I didn’t want to do) I didn’t know it. My sights were set on science; I expected to write on the side.

As a follow-up question, where do you see yourself in the pantheon of great Texas writers like Robert E. Howard and Fred Gipson?

You know…I’ve never even thought about that. For one thing, I wasn’t aware of any Texas writers until college. (I had read Old Yeller, yes, but didn’t know Gipson was a Texan.) We did not study Texas writers in school. They were not shelved separately in the town library. When I did become aware of Texas writers, it was J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Web, Roy Bedichek, Tom Lea, Elmer Kelton, John Graves…and the lone woman, Katherine Ann Porter. None of them wrote what I wrote, so there was no place for me in their pantheon. I admired some of them a lot, but they were in a different world, or so it seemed. Howard didn’t write the kind of fantasy that appealed to me–so I didn’t read him and didn’t know anything about him. I was well out of college when someone first mentioned he was a Texan.
I suspect that science fiction and fantasy writers are often perceived as less regional than other fiction writers, because our subject matter is more universal. In my own case, the parts of Texas that show up in my work are not those familiar to non-Texans–or even Texans from another part of the state. .

Did your experiences serving in political office affect the way that you write about nations and leaders?

Not very much. I’d grown up around politically active adults who discussed politics, and I’d been active in politics myself, attending precinct, county, and state conventions. And of course there’s the history side: I was familiar with a lot of political thought from Plato on up. What being elected and attending those local meetings gave me was more psychological insight into the people who do the politics. Including myself.

When I mentioned that I was going to interview you I received a number of questions from followers on Twitter and friends of Facebook. I promised that I would ask you these. Here they are:

What are the challenges and opportunities writing in a subgenre (epic fantasy) that is usually more male-oriented?
@PrinceJvstin, Twitter.

I didn’t really think of that when I started. I don’t think of it much now. The resistance I ran into initially was to a woman writing military fiction (whether fantasy or other) and that’s now much less.

Will there be more Vatta novels? Or is there another MilSF series she’s contemplating?
@heronymus, Twitter.

I don’t know yet. I’m in the middle of this one and my mind is focused on it. The story I’m writing sucks me in and eats my brain until it’s very close to the end. Two factors will determine what comes next: what story comes to me, and what the publisher will give me a contract for. When this story releases its grip on my mind, and I begin to have ideas outside this one, I’ll write them down and show them to my agent and something (I certainly hope!) will come out on top.

Who inspired Paksenarrion (or how did she come about) and as her creator how hard was it for you to write her through her torturous moments, both inner and outer? (Paks is the only Paladin to date I’ve ever understood and liked/loved – You totally get what it means to be a Paladin – for better or worse).
Anne B., Facebook.

Paksenarrion came about from several competing pressures. My husband was DM for a group of kids playing D&D (later, and briefly, other adults got involved), and naturally one kid wanted to play a paladin. When I found out how the paladin class was designed, it annoyed me. A lot. I muttered about how stupid it was until my husband said “Fine–write up a plan for a real paladin class.” So I did. Before that, a character very much like Paks (but not a paladin) had been in a science fiction story that I couldn’t get to jell. When I put that character into a fantasy context, suddenly…she turned into Paksenarrion. She has traits–both physical and personality–borrowed from a variety of friends – the traits people like) and me (the ones people don’t like.)

Writing Paks was a wonderful adventure ride except for the bad parts, and those were, yes, difficult, requiring many drafts and sometimes very firm correction by early readers who were willing to tell me when I’d taken the easy way out.

Ask her about the time she was stopped at the airport because she set off the bomb detection devices.
Warren L., Facebook.

Who knew that a little horse manure residue on your shoe would set off a sniffer? Not me–and not the first person using the sniffer, either. So much for running out to feed horses before driving to the airport. The shoes didn’t look dirty. When they started asking about fertilizer, the penny dropped and I said “What about horse manure? We have horses.” A supervisor confirmed that horse manure would indeed set off the sniffer. (You’d think, in a state full of ranches and farms, they’d think of that sooner and ask if you lived on a farm or ranch…)