Fiddler Fair (anthology)

How do you work with a collaborator?

Working with collaborators depends on the collaborator. If possible, we work on the outline together until we’re both happy with it, then one of us starts, passes it off to the other when s/he gets stuck, and gets it passed back under the same circumstances. It goes incredibly fast that way, and it is the way Larry and I always work, even though he is not always on the cover as a co-writer.

Have you ever encountered any censorship?

I haven’t encountered any censorship at the publisher/editor level on any of my books. I have heard rumors of fundamentalist groups causing problems with the Herald Mage series because of the gay characters, but I have never had any of those rumors substantiated. There are always going to be people who have trouble with characters who don’t fit their narrow ideas of what is appropriate: I have perfectly good advice for them. Don’t read the books. Nobody is forcing you to march into the bookstore and buy it. Actually, I have been considering borrowing the disclaimer from the game Stalking the Night Fantastic  by Richard Tucholka—“If anything in this book offends you, please feel free to buy and burn as many copies as you like. Volume discounts are available.”

What’s Larry like?

I’ll let him answer for himself!

Misty and I met on a television interview just before a convention in Mississippi; we were both Guests of Honor there. By the end of that weekend, we had plotted our first book together (Ties Never Binding, which later became Winds of Fate), and have been together ever since.

I am an alumnus of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and while there I made some fairly respectable inroads into the world of Fine Arts. However, my basic trouble with galleries was that regardless of the content of my work, it would only reach that segment of the population that went to galleries. I was “preaching to the converted.” Couple that distressing truth with an irrepressible irreverence, and my days of wearing black and being morose for my art were limited. I needed giggles, I needed money, and I needed to accomplish something. I had been an sf and fantasy fan for years. When I saw the other people who were also fans, I knew that here was a place to be welcomed, serve an audience, and make a difference through entertainment. Ever since, it has been a matter of matching the message to the ­medium. Some lend themselves well to text, others to paintings, others to satire or dialogues.

I have been introduced to folks as “The other half of Mercedes Lackey,” and there’s a bit to that. I’ve been working with Misty on prose since and including Magic’s Price, which I co-plotted and alpha-edited. Incidentally, it was accepted by DAW exactly as it is printed; there were no revisions or mispe . . . misspel.., uhm.., words spelled wrong. Since then I’ve worked on them all, with heavier co-writing on the subsequent trilogies. I’m not about to steal any of Misty’s thunder, though—she is a mighty fine writer without me! Our styles, skills, and areas of knowledge happen to complement each others’. I also get a kick out of hearing old- fogy writers grousing about female fantasy writers, when I’ve been one for years now. The Black Gryphon was about my fourth or fifth co-written book (silently, with Misty), but was one of the first with a cover credit. Go figure. My future is inextricably linked to Misty, and I would want it no other way. High Flight Arts and Letters is flying strongly, and the best is yet to come.

You may have noticed that there is not a lot of really personal information in all of this, and that’s on purpose.

Larry and I tend to be very private, and frankly, we find all the self-aggrandizing, highly personal “I love this” and “I hate that” in some Author’s Notes kind of distasteful. We’ve included some historical notes on the various stories, and while I will be the last person to claim I’m not opinionated (see the note to “Last Rights” for instance) just because I think something, that doesn’t mean you should. Go out, read and experience everything you can, and form your own opinions; don’t get life second-hand from a curmudgeon like me!

Aliens Ate My Pickup

I thought it might be fun to start this off on a lighter note.

This is an entirely new story, never before seen, and was supposed to be in Esther Friesner’s anthology, Alien Pregnant By Elvis (Hey, don’t blame me, this is the same lady who brought you the title of Chicks In Chainmail by Another Company). For some reason it never got printed, and none of us understand why. Must have dropped into the same black hole that eats alternate socks and the pair of scissors you’re looking for at the time the anthology was put together.

Anyway, here it is now. Any resemblance to the writer is purely coincidental.

Yes’m, I’m serious. Aliens ate my pickup. Only it weren’t really aliens, jest one, even though it was my Chevy four-ton, and he was a little bitty feller, not like some Japanese giant thing . . . an’ he didn’t really eat it, he just kinda chewed it up a little, look, you can see the teeth-marks on the bumper here an’ . . .

Oh, start at the beginin’? Well, all right, I guess.

My name? It’s Jed, Jed Pryor. I was born an’ raised on this farm outsida Claremore, been here all my life. Well, ’cept for when I went t’ OU.

What? Well, heck fire, sure I graduated!

What? Well, what makes you thank Okies tawk funny?

Degree? You bet I gotta degree! I gotta Batchler in Land Management right there on the wall of m’livingroom and—

Oh, the alien. Yeah, well, it was dark of the moon, middle of this June, when I was out doin’ some night- fishin’ on m’pond. Stocked it about five years ago with black an’ stripy bass, just let ’em be, started fishin’ it this year. I’m tellin’ you, I got a five pounder on m’third cast this spring an’—

Right, the alien. Well, I was out there drownin’ a coupla lures about midnight, makin’ the fish laugh, when wham! all of a sudden the sky lights up like Riverparks on Fourth of July. I mean t’tell you,