Author Interview Week: Sarah Hoyt

We're still in Author Interview Week, and today I'm happy to introduce you to Sarah A. Hoyt, a writer who had a busy November, when she had two books -- entirely different in subject and tone -- released within days of each other. One is Death of a Musketeer, written as Sarah D'Almeida, in which the famed three musketeers and D'Artagnan use their minds as well as their swords to solve a mystery. The second is Draw One in the Dark, a contemporary fantasy featuring shape-changing characters who learn to deal with their special and disturbing powers.

Clearly, she covers a lot of ground in her work -- and that's without even considering her historical romances and fantasy novels. We also have a lot of ground to cover in chatting with her. So let's get to it:

1. Quick! Tell us a little about yourself and your books Death of a Musketeer and Draw One in the Dark.

They're very, very different.

Seriously -- Though they officially came out two days or so apart, they're worlds apart in both spirit and execution.

Death Of A Musketeer is an historical mystery with the three musketeers plus D'Artagnan as investigators. Lots of fun, as I got to write in four voices and in the heads of people likely to grab a sword and jump to the rescue.

Draw One In the Dark is a fantasy with shape shifters. It takes place in a (blissfully imaginary) small town in Colorado and centers on two young people whose lives have been distorted by their ability -- or penchant -- to change into animal forms. They have had trouble coming to grips with it, and are only now integrating these aspects of their personalities. As it happens, they're having to do this while dealing with a power struggle going on between more powerful and older shapeshifters, a struggle that will continue in subsequent books.

The series explores not only the "beast" inherent in everyone, but conflicting group loyalties, definitions of maturity and other... essential points of becoming fully human instead of simply homo-sapiens-by-birth.

2. Dumas is a tough act to follow, I would think. As a writer, what did you do to get into the world of the musketeers? Did you worry that Dumas was looking over your shoulder, wondering what you were doing with his characters?

As tough as Dumas is to write, it's not the first time I've perpetrated this sort of folly. My first book had William Shakespeare as a voice character and it ended up being a Mythopoeic Award finalist, so I can't have done it too badly. Either that, or I simply don't learn my own limits.

More seriously: Dumas is tough to follow, and not. He is, of course, one of those writers whose work belongs to the inheritance of Mankind. Seen that way, he's very intimidating. On the other hand, I feel he would fully approve of my efforts, no matter how pitiful. He, himself, had a rather easygoing approach to history and references. He used what was convenient, and left what wasn't. His whole attitude was summed up in his saying, "What's the good of raping history if you're not going to conceive a bastard?"

As I started researching the history of the period, I realized how much he'd raped history and how many incidents he had twisted around -- and what a tribe of magnificent bastards he begot.

On the other hand the sheer movement and grace of his prose -- particularly when read in French -- are something I'll never achieve. Fortunately I can come close to some of the -- worse -- translations, so it salves my ego.

I read Dumas as a child, and then on and off just about every other year. The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After are books I associate with winter and being cozy. Comfort books. I grew up in books to a great extent and some books are like going home.

Then I started researching for these books about three years ago, by reading history, most of it in French. Louis XIII, as far as historians are concerned, lived ONLY to be eclipsed by his son. So the time period is a little hard to research. But there are books. Biographies of Anne of Austria, or Cardinal Richelieu, memoirs of court personages. This is when I started getting a feeling for how much Dumas got the spirit right while often twisting the facts.

You can say I did the same; at least I tried to. Dumas's magnificent characters needed a little tweaking because mystery is more introspective than adventure and because times have changed. Porthos could not be dumb, for instance. Or rather, he could, but then I couldn't write him. So I made him an intensely physical, non-verbal man. That I could handle.

On the other hand, the times I'm writing for are also very different than the times Dumas wrote for. He had a certain undisguised elitism and his characters would refer to peasants as a different, subhuman species.

I didn't want to write that. So I took liberties with Monsieur Dumas's work and explained in footnotes how he got it wrong and how he was bending it to his time. I don't think the footnotes made it in the first book. They'll be in subsequent ones, though. They were lots of fun. In a subversive kind of way.

By design, the first book "steals" a lot of Dumas's plot elements. I found as I talked it over with my agent and editor that people expected those to be there. The Queen in peril; the stolen jewel, etc. These do not go on as the series continues. There are some elements still -- like the enmity with the Cardinal -- that continue. In fact, in the last delivered book, The Musketeer's Apprentice, I found myself dissatisfied with it until I realized there weren't enough duels with the Cardinal's guards and added those in. However, as the series continues the books become/will become (time travel of sorts, as I've written two more of the books and outlined three more, they just haven't come out yet) more standalone historical myteries and less Dumas pastiche.

The characters are there, and the sort of atmosphere where a man can fight for an hour while wounded, but there will be fewer plot points in common with Dumas.

By the way, as far as I understand it, Death Of A Musketeer has sold to the Mystery book club, so there will be a hardcover edition.

3. Draw One in the Dark is one of a wave of paranormal thrillers that
include shape-shifters, with, of course, its own unique take. Why have readers (and publishers) been eating up this category of books recently? Is it because it's new and novel? It is because there's something deeper going on in our society now that makes it crave stories with these themes?

Well, I don't think it's particularly "recent", at this point. They've been in fashion for -- what? -- ten years? And I don't think they're even unique. Well -- at least not from a psychological point of view. In a way they are the equivalent of spy thrillers which were all the rage a few years ago. They put you in a world of high danger where all sorts of sexual things are permissible/possible/likely/guiltless. It's something that appeals intensely to people.

Of course, that was in a way part of what I was doing when playing with the genre. I was poking holes at the genre archetype. Because I simply can't understand why shapeshifting would absolve you from whatever your normal moral bonds and strictures are. Or why you shouldn't at least try to control yourself.

Perhaps part of this is the way my mind is set up? I can't believe in damnation from birth, in the same way I can't believe in being born noble or peasant and having inherent characteristics come from this. Tendencies, sure. Challenges, definitely. But predetermined characteristics? Never. In my mind -- in the way I see the world -- we're all works in progress striving to become truly human.

There are other reasons for the popularity of shape shifters, though -- other than their being good escapist fantasy most of the time. I read Future Shock when I was eight and I've found it not so much an accurate prophecy -- so far -- but a useful roadmap for the future. One of the things Alvin Toffler identified way back then was the tendency of the "unified" society of mid twentieth century to splinter into lots of smaller identity groups. More than that, he identified the tendency of people to belong to several smaller identity groups which don't necessarily overlap. It's a sort of having a social life "in parts". Parts of you are friends with parts of other people. For instance, for a long time my Austen-fandom self wasn't even out as a published author. I was afraid it would freak out the other fan writers/readers. (They bore it with considerable fortitude when I was more or less accidentally outed as having novels in print.) Also, the fandom playing fulfilled a function in my life that the "real" writing couldn't. I was free to experiment with things that would embarrass my professional self. I kept them separate as long as I could.

I think all of us have that kind of separate identities going on, though more commonly without deliberate secrecy. And the shape shifters are a good mirror for that. The multiple identies, not always on display.

On the other hand, I enjoyed writing Draw One In The Dark because I got tocombine fantasy, mystery, adventure and almost-sf (to the extent that the changing is assumed to be natural.) There is also -- growing stronger through the series as it continues -- a hint of conspiracy, secret societies, hidden plots, all of which are lots of fun to play with (provided one doesn't think they're real.) And I got to hang out in a diner, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Interestingly, the one genre that's more or less absent from the book is horror -- even though several people/things die in horrible ways, it's done in a very non-horror way -- which is why the cover is an annoying miscue. I know how it happened, and it was no one's fault. I'm also fairly sure it won't happen again. However, anyone looking at that cover, should be aware it has nothing or close to nothing to do with the book, either scene or feel.

4. Share a piece of advice you've been given about writing.

There are so many. I've been blessed in having SO MANY established and professional writers talk to me about writing. If I had to pick one piece alone, though, I'd go with the one that started all this:

When I was newlywed, I was telling my husband I'd love to write, but there were all these obstacles in my way -- say, the fact that English was my second language (acquired at 14) or that I'd just moved to the States from Portugal and was still adjusting to different ideas of the dramatic or the interesting.

My husband Dan comes from a musical background. His mother is a music teacher and he enjoys playing the piano and has been known to compose. I think this informed his response to my whining. He looked at me and asked me when I'd written last. I was at a loss. He said, "Writers write. Every day. Or at least every day they can. If you're writing every day, you're a writer. Whether you ever sell anything or not is immaterial."

I think that's the best advice possible. Write. Perfect your art. Write early and often. By all means, submit. Writing JUST for the drawer is stupid and, I can guarantee, you'll be the worst possible judge of your own work. Always. BUT even if you never sell, if you write and work at it, you're already a writer.

5. You display quite a writing range between Death and Draw. Speaking as a professional writer, what advantages do you get out of being able to write in such widely-removed fields (aside from, of course, having two different books published)? Are there any drawbacks to having such a wide writing skillset.

Is this the place I mention I also have written -- under a house name, as it was write for hire -- historical romance? And, not so long ago, what was considered literary fantasy? (I never considered it that. I think it was the fact Shakespeare was a main character that gave people ideas.) Or that my series with Bantam, which I'm working on as we speak -- it's set in a parallel magical British Empire at the close of the nineteenth century -- will almost certainly be classed as 'literary' as well? Or that there will be a space opera, almost for sure, sometime in the next few years?

The romance was Plain Jane, under the house name Laurien Gardner. It's one of a series about Henry VIII's queens. My first published series was a fantasy reconstruction of Shakespeare's biography -- or alternate biographies -- Ill Met By Moonlight, All Night Awake and Any Man So Daring. The series with Bantam Spectra will be Heart of Light; Soul of Fire; Heart and Soul.

And no, I'm not trying for shock value. Oh, fine, maybe I am, just a little. It's always fun to see people's eyes widen and it's hard to resist doing it even when I can't see it.

In my defense, though, I don't think of it as something to be particularly proud of. Or particularly ashamed of. It's just who I am and how I work.

I think the reason I do it is a combination of my having grown up unaware of genre (I read whatever I could get my clutches on) and of my having a very low boredom treshold. In my younger days, this manifested itself as finding more complex ways to get in trouble and out of it again and getting up to unbelievably stupid stunts. Nowadays it manifests itself by my allowing my characters to get in trouble then out of it again in wildly varying worlds.

I honestly don't know if it's a liability or an asset. I can make cases for both. I often borrow techniques from mystery for sf/f or vice versa. On the other hand I'm never sure whether these are perceived as fresh or whether they just irritate the reader by being too strangeand unexpected. I suspect it all comes out in the wash-- i.e., number of captivated readers more or less equals the number of repulsed readers. At least I hope so, because if I had to work in only one genre I'd fall silent. I know because I tried when my former agent(s) convinced me I had to write only literary, historical fantasy. And, as you can probably tell from the length of my answers, I'm not a happy woman when I can't speak.

6. Death was written under a pseudonym. Talk a little about the decision to do this; is it purely a business decision, or does taking another name help put you in a different mindset?

The house wanted me to have a different name for mystery. D'Almeida -- well, my dad spells it "de Almeida", which is how it is on my birth certificate, but my grandfather spelled it D'Almeida which I thought was a good way to obviate the shelving dilemmas of bookstore clerks -- is my maiden name.

I understand what you mean by a different mind set, and yes, I often need to ... change heads, so to put it, when I'm switching between books/genres. It reminds me a lot of when I was a multilingual translator. If you're in the middle of translating a report from German and get a phone call in French there's a minute of unique disorientation. I used to call it -- and I'm showing my age -- switching tapes. (I no longer speak most of the languages I once spoke with any degree of fluency, by the way. I can read comfortably in French, but speaking it would take massive effort.)

Well -- with switching between novels, it can take months to manage the transition.

All the same, the name doesn't matter -- has nothing to do with it. I don't think of myself as a specific name, if that makes any sense. In fact for the second Musketeers book, The Musketeers Seamstress, I forgot and put my name on the manuscript. They caught it on copyedit.

The name at the top of the page is just a name. The voice is the book's. In fact, if I'm writing in a new world/new characters, I can be downright impossible to live with till I've found the voice of the novel. The first three chapters are the hardest part of any book. Once that's done and has clicked, the book is half done.

-----

If you'd like to read more from Sarah Hoyt, start by checking out her LiveJournal. And if you're intrigued by the her latest books, Sarah's posted excerpts of both Death of a Musketeer and Draw One in the Dark. And here's another interview of the author, from the Baen Books Web site.

Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry

This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)

#3 Comment from monponsett
12/7/06 7:29 PM | Permalink

My bad... Cabral
#2 Comment from monponsett
12/7/06 6:23 PM | Permalink

The Almeidas were the first Europeans to see Brazil.
#1 Comment from lurkynat
12/7/06 12:25 PM | Permalink

Wow ~ I adore Dumas Ms. Hoyt! So I better look you up!
Thanks John! how fascinating! (smiles at Mavarin, Lori , Dawn, Bea,and Fred)
natalie

By The Way... Public Journal
Back to Journal	Archives \| Alerts x Entry Alerts Comment Alerts \| Feeds

By The Way...

Author Interview Week: Sarah Hoyt