ConDFW rides into the
sunset – but what a ride it was!
How could I not have
realized that this year’s ConDFW, that grand North Texas science
fiction/fantasy convention would be the last of its 18-year run? But if all
good things must come to an end, ConDFW went out with a booster rocket of a
blast, including discussions by literary guests of honor Charlaine Harris and
Yoon Ha Lee.
Harris hardly needs an
introduction. Disdaining the epithet of “prolific” – ‘I’m not prolific, I’m
just old,’ she assured her audience. “When you’ve been writing for 40 years,
you write a lot of books.” Add, when you fearlessly tackle multiple genres –
and combinations of genres – you don’t easily run out of ideas.
Perhaps best known for
the Southern Vampire series that
mixed mystery and paranormal genres with a touch of romance, and inspired
TV’s “True Blood,” Harris described her
latest work, An Easy Death, to
moderator Melania Fletcher as “an alternate-history Western thriller with
magic,” noting, “I like to write about women who kill a lot of people, which
had to be set in an alternate-history universe.”
 |
| Charlaine Harris |
“My publisher surely
hopes so!” Harris replied.
She’s also written
multiple mystery series, urban fantasy, graphic novels (with collaborator Chris
Golden), romances, and short stories. Pressed once as to how many short stories
she’s written, Harris said she had to search her records to realize she’d
written at least 40. “Short stories are so hard. Every word counts and there’s
no leeway with character or description.”
Somehow along the way
however, she also managed to co-edit seven volumes of short stories, which
“really improved my own writing.”
“What do you do when
you’re not writing?” Fletcher asked. “I understand you have a houseful of
rescue dogs.”
“I’m down to two now,”
Harris said. “And I’m really involved with my family and – don’t look surprised
– I’m very active in my church. I’m very religious.”
“Have you gotten any
criticism from your church?” Fletcher asked.
“Not from my church –
I’m Episcopalian, and they’re often quite liberal,” Harris said, then
deadpanned, “but when we sold our house in Arkansas to a woman with a different
religious background, she was advised to have it exorcised.”
Aside from the
possibility of receiving divine aid, doesn’t a woman who writes so prolifically
have to be extremely well-organized, Fletcher mused, wondering if Harris
prefers plotting or winging things as she types.
“I blue-sky it,”
Harris replied. “People ask me what I wear when I write, and I . . . never
understand why that would cross anybody’s mind. It would never cross my mind to
ask Lee Child what he wears when he writes.”
(For the record, her
writing uniform usually consists of jeans and T-shirts. For whoever that may
inspire.)
***
And one more for
ConDFW, this post published February 20:
A last look at ConDFW
– Conversation with Yoon Ha Lee
 |
| Yoon Ha Lee |
“I’m queer, I’m
transgender, I’m bisexual,” Lee said, explaining why they foreswore a teenage
allegiance to Ender’s Game after
discovering the political opinions of its author, Orson Scott Card.
(For the record, Lee
is a native of Houston, Texas, of Korean ancestry. Also a former mathematics
teacher, bipolar, married to a quantum astrophysicist and parent to a
15-year-old daughter. Oh, and has a very spoiled cat.)
“I spent half my
childhood in Houston and half in South Korea,” Lee told moderator (and
planetologist and fellow cat lover) John DeLaughter. “We came home (to South
Korea) a lot for reasons my parents never explained, because they didn’t
explain stuff to kids.”
Lee originally started
writing science fiction with “all white characters and Western settings”
because these were the models they had grown up with. But after hearing about
the phenomenon of cultural appropriation Lee realized, “Yes, I’m Korean. I can
write Korean characters.”
They also, however,
love ancient Greek myths. After learning that Rick Riordan, author of the Lightning Thief series based on
classical mythology, was interested in writers immersed in other mythic
cultures, Lee decided to give it a try.
“I bet no one else is
going to pitch Korean mythology space opera,” Lee said. “And I was right!”
Still, Lee confesses a
yearning to write an Iliad as space opera. “But without Achilles, because he
annoyed me, particularly because he got Patroclus killed. When I was eight, I
thought Achilles and Patroclus were just friends. Then I read the adult version
and realized – oh, they didn’t tell me that when I was eight in Houston.”
“They still don’t tell
you that at age eight in Houston,” DeLaughter said.
Other themes of Lee
work include non-Homo sapiens
intelligences (ascribed to the influence of Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz
and the Chinese cultural hierarchies influenced by the Confucian culture
experienced during childhood years in Korea.
“We stole Confucianism
from the Chinese and then became more Confucian than Confucius.”
“Is that something you
would like to see go away in Korea?” DeLaughter asked.
“It’s not all evil,”
Lee said. “Teachers are very respected in Korea, so they are able to manage
their classrooms better than in America, but there are a lot of things that are
problematic.”
And then there are the
names, which often are based on jokes and numbers. “I know a lot of people say
numbers are dehumanizing, but as a person who majored in math, I find numbers
fascinating.”
Admittedly, what
everyone in the ConDFW audience wanted to know was the prolific Lee’s advice on
how to write.
“Finish your things,”
Lee said. “It doesn’t matter how awful a manuscript is, it can always be fixed
in revision.”
And given Lee’s mastery
of short stories, did writing them gain credibility for the novels, an audience
member asked.
“I did the
old-fashioned thing of writing short stories, which I did for 17 years, before
writing a novel. Which is not time efficient. Having that credibility from
short stories helps, but if you want to write novels, you must write that
novel!”
***
Tomorrow: Numbers 4
& 3 on readers’ list of 2019 favorite posts.
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