Dark Assassin

What's it called?

Tathea. It's the character. If it will come out in North America I don't know. I haven't got an answer from the publisher yet. It's not my usual publisher, it's a church publisher. I'm Mormon. And it's with the publishers there. I've got a verbal 'Yes, we like it,' but you don't know until you're there. When I've got someone's name on the contract, then I'll know where I am.

So, is it fantasy like Anne McCaffrey kind of fantasy?

No. Not at all like that. It doesn't really fit into anybody's sort of category. No dragons, no magic. No wizards. No sorcery. It's a spiritual journey back to the original question: who am I. It's the basic question that some of us ask at some time or another.

Was it fun to write?

If I tell you I had a wonderful Christmas… everybody I employ was away for a whole fortnight and I worked over 600-odd pages and did a complete re-write and I wrote every day except Sunday, even Christmas day I wrote for a while. It was one of the best Christmases I've had. Fun it was not. It was totally satisfying and absorbing and I was very happy.

Joyous?

Yes! That's a better word. I was totally absorbed in it. And I was happy to work every day from the time I woke until the time I went to sleep. I got right through the whole thing in two weeks. I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.

Is writing fun for you?

Oh yes it is. I love it. You couldn't pay me not to write.

So you enjoy the process as much as anything.

Yes. Almost everything about it is enjoyable for me. About the only thing I don't like is when the editor calls you from two books back and you've forgotten what it's about. And she says, 'On page 372 about half way down, did you mean this or did you mean that?' And you can't remember the story. And you've got to scratch through the manuscript and try and apply yourself and think, 'Well, what did I mean?' I don't think anybody likes line corrections.

You write 19th century London so well, would you like to have lived there and then?

No. Do you know anything about the medicine then? The plumbing? The dentistry? The clothes? The central heating and lack thereof? The dreadful restrictions on women? But just the medicine itself would be enough to put me off permanently.

You do write it so compellingly. I was reading a bit in Breach of Promise dealing with Gabriel's description of his war experience in India. And it's so real: you have to have done a lot of research to have captured the feeling so accurately.

I read quite a few diaries of the period. It was pretty appalling.

The detail was so fine. Readers could get the feeling that you dreamed yourself there.

Oh absolutely. I am there.

And you get to come back.

Exactly. I get to do it in the comfort of my own home. With a flush bathroom and a hot bath when I want one and if I need to go to the dentist I can have a nice shot to deaden the pain and if I get a problem I can go to the doctor and get sorted relatively painlessly. Relative to that, anyway. | November 1998

Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine. Her fourth novel, Death was the Other Woman, will be published early in 2008 by St. Martin's Minotaur.

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