Hello and welcome to our latest author interview with science fiction and fantasy author, Steven Piziks (also writing as Steven Harper)!
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.
I started my first novel when I was nine years old. It was about a boy who was kidnapped by aliens living under the sea, and I worked on it assiduously. The manuscript disappeared a long time ago, and I sometimes wonder what I'd think of it if I read it now!
When I was thirteen, I sold an article about raising rabbits to THE MOTHER EARN NEWS. My first professional sale! Ten years later, I sold a short story to one of the SWORD AND SORCERESS anthologies, and I've mostly stayed in the F&SF provinces since, though I've also written mysteries, thrillers, media books, steampunk, and romance. Twenty-six books and several dozen short pieces in all.
My fantasy trilogy The Books of Blood and Iron (IRON AXE, BLOOD STORM, and BONE WAR) came about because my editor at Penguin Random House, who had edited my steampunk books, said she would love to see a fantasy series from me. I pitched several ideas at her, but she rejected all of them. I finally remembered a short story I'd written years earlier about a teenaged boy who was half human, half troll. I'd always thought Trollboy would make a good series protagonist, so I pitched that. My editor loved the idea, and the series was born.
The books were initially meant to be historical fantasy set in the Viking era, but my editor said, "Vikings don't sell," so I moved the story to a world of my own creation and modified it. You can still see the Viking influence. Tolkien and I swiped from the same sources!
Most recently, I wrote a short story called "Eight Mile and the City" for WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, an anthology put out by Zombies Need Brains. It's science fiction noir story about a hard-boiled detective set in near-future Detroit, and it won the Washington Science Fiction Association award for small press short fiction last year, so now I can call myself an award-winning author!
Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?
This is a hard one to answer. I read everything I could get my hands on when I was growing up. My small-town library didn't have much fantasy or science fiction, so I read everything else. I was finally able to get Edward Eager and CS Lewis on inter-library loan thanks to my school librarian (thank you, Mrs. Hoerger!), and they stayed with me. I still have a copy of HALF MAGIC somewhere. I'd like to list Octavia E. Butler as an influence, but while she's my favorite writer, I can't say that I write anything like her. Who could?
My writers group—the Untitled Writers Group of Ann Arbor—has had a tremendous influence, though. They're my beta readers, and they include everything from full-time writers to Nebula finalists to short story writers to newcomers. We meet twice a month and critique each other's work. Without them, it probably would have taken me ten years longer to get published than it did!
How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?
Oh, man! How has it not? There's so much wild history, anyway—stuff that you can't put in a fiction book because fiction has to make sense. I've put material into my work that got an editor to say, "This isn't believable, so you'll have to take it out" when it was based on an actual event. Like dressing a pig up in a hat and coat and putting it on trial for witchcraft. Or that in Germany, a married couple could get a divorce if they fought a few rounds of public combat, but the husband had to stand in a hole with one hand behind his back and the wife's weapon was a sack of rocks. I'm sure the people involved had reasons that made perfect sense to them, but now we laugh and point fingers. It makes me wonder what people will laugh at when they look back at us.
To me, the fun and interesting parts of medieval history are the ordinary things. Historians love to write about monarchs and wars and explorers, but I want to read about John, who built a house under a beech ("bacchan") tree and became known as John Bacon. What was his day like? What was his relationship with his wife like? Did they marry for love, economic reasons, or both? What kind of bed did they sleep in? How did he decide what to plant on his farm? But the ordinary stuff rarely got recorded. Why write down how to make bread when everyone knows how to do it already? That kind of stuff I have to hunt for.
But the more I read about history, the more it becomes clear that people haven't changed one tiny bit. They're kind and cruel, loving and hateful, proud, and self-effacing. Most love their children and want what's best for them, while some are shockingly abusive. They fall in and out of love. They keep secrets. They squabble with their neighbors. The technology changes, but people don't. It makes it easier to write, really—the people in the Middle Ages are us!
Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?
Tolkein paved the way for the trilogy. Yeah, I know he wanted five books and the publisher persuaded him to make it three, but still. As a result of Tolkein, the trilogy is still the main way publishers want to package fantasy and science fiction, and it means that I plan stories assuming I'll write three books.
This means, of course, that I get asked to write four.
When I finished NIGHTMARE, the second book in the Silent Empire series, my editor abruptly offered me a two-book contract instead of a single. Suddenly my carefully-planned story was in disarray! I had to conjure up a fourth book without making it feel like it was just tacked on to the third. When I finished THE DRAGON MEN, my third Clockwork Empire book, I was knackered. Exhausted. Dead. I couldn't even write blog entries. Then my editor said, "I'd really like a fourth book in this series."
I said, "Whu—?"
She said, "That's right."
I said, "But I'm done! I finished the story. It's all over. No more plot left."
She said, "We'll give you a bigger advance."
I said, "I'll have you a pitch by Thursday." This became THE HAVOC MACHINE.
Despite the above, I still planned my Books of Blood and Iron fantasy series to be a trilogy. This time, I wrote exactly three books.
Tolkien didn't think small. His books cover big, world-wrecking events. Dragons that decimate an entire country. Wars that cover an entire continent. Magic that affects entire millennia. But his books always start small. A hole in the ground. A country village. A wandering ranger. As we move through the story, the world—and the events—get bigger and bigger. Immortal elves. A dark kingdom of orcs and goblins. A mountain full of vengeful spirits.
The Book of Blood and Iron start with a slave—thrall—in a small village who is best friends with a girl born in a foreign land. But the story moves forward and outward to encompass a kingdom of trolls, a city of merfolk, a kingdom of wyrm-riding orcs, a continent cracked in two. Death herself.
Tolkien pushes us all.
What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?
Afrofuturism is the current big one. It has opened up an entire new world—worlds—of storytelling. My friend Nisi Shawl has been one of the pioneers in the field, and I've been thrilled with the attention her work his getting now!
What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?
Gay lead characters. Mainstream fantasy and science fiction still usually put LGBTQ characters into secondary roles, if they appear at all. It's getting better, but nowhere near parity!
What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?
The prejudice against e-reading. It's strange—you'd think that fantasy and science fiction readers would thoroughly embrace e-books, but it's really been the romance readers who have flocked to it. F&SF readers are, a bit oddly, old-school when it comes to books. I flipped over to e-books when I had to move unexpectedly, and I saw how many books I had. There wasn't room for them in the new place, and I realized that most of the fiction books I would never read again, and nearly everything in the non-fiction books was available online, so I ruthlessly pruned my collection and donated most of it to the local Friends of the Library organization. Now I'm a firm e-book reader. They're convenient and take up zero storage space. Yet I get criticized for reading them, as if I'm somehow a traitor to reading! I don't quite get it.
Is there anything else related I didn't ask a question about that you'd like to add?
Keep reading, keep reading, keep reading! Now more than ever, we need readers. Read those odd books, those quirky books, the ones that are different. Publishers have lately become gun shy about anything controversial, so read those books, too! The more books that sell, the more books that get written.
Where online can our readers find you and your work?
Check my website: http://stevenpiziks.com/ And any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore.
Steven, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and experiences on Post-Tolkien and Post-Middle Ages influence!
