An Interview with: Jody Lynn Nye

Wednesday, April 21, 1999

BA: Quite a few of your books have a strong element of humor to them, can we look for more of this in your upcoming works?

JLN: Of course! I feel humor is an important part of my writing, although it’s not well-respected when awards time rolls around. (g) I grew up in a family that liked to tell one another jokes, sometimes really old stinkers that make you laugh anyhow. I enjoy looking for the funny side of situations. I love puns. I love Mark Twain, the Marx Brothers, Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck, and all those wry observers of the human condition. There’s enough gloom in the world. I want to lighten things up a bit.

BA: What can readers expect to see in your current book "Waking In Dreamland"?

JLN: I hope they’ll enjoy the new world. The Dreamland has its own set of rules, and the chief two are Everything Changes and Form Follows Function. That means nothing has a fixed shape, but what things look like directly pertains to what they do. A house is a hovel is a castle is a yurt is a houseboat. A horse is a bicycle is a car is a flying carpet. Everything can be influenced by outer forces that control the base shape of the Dreamland (the Seven Sleepers) or by the people who live there, who change, too. Except our hero, who is a bit of a freak of nature. Roan never changes. He’s been persecuted over his stationary appearance, but he is sane, kind, intelligent, responsible and he has a good strong ability to alter the reality around him. His job is the King’s Investigator. Roan’s immutability makes him the best candidate to go look into a situation and emerge more or less unscathed. He is present on the day that the Ministry of Science declares that they want to wake up the Seven Sleepers and see what happens, risking the total destruction of the Dreamland in the name of scientific curiosity. Roan must stop them.

BA: I understand that you have a new book coming out, what can you tell us about it?

JLN: "School of Light" is the second in The Dreamland fantasy series. Our heroine, Juele, is a new student, entering into an exciting but bewildering way of life to learn the skills of illusion, which is the most respected art form in the Dreamland. She is surrounded by fascinating people, all of whom want to pull her in different directions. Her talent and her perseverance, which brings her to the attention not only of the elite of the school but of the royal family, are what enable her to thwart a threat to the Dreamland, but only at the risk of losing everything that she has strived so long to achieve.

BA: What book by another author is your favorite all time read?

JLN: There’s a show on BBC Radio called "Desert Island Disks," on which the presenter asks you to choose the three books you’d want to be cast away with. (They automatically start you off with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.) I’m afraid I’d have trouble chopping it down to three. "Gaudy Night," by Dorothy L. Sayers. Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books. "The Lord of the Rings," by JRR Tolkien. "Reaper Man," by Terry Pratchett. Whatever Lois McMaster Bujold has published latest. Lilian Jackson Braun’s "Cat Who..." books. "Huckleberry Finn," "A Connecticut Yankee..." and "The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain. "In the Best Families" and "The Black Mountain" by Rex Stout. "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. The Alice in Wonderland books by Lewis Carroll. "Oliver Twist," by Charles Dickens. "The Once and Future King," by TH White. The Merlin books by Mary Stewart. And, yup, Shakespeare. He truly understood human nature, and I love his sense of humor. Not just the broad stuff for the punters in the front row with the hazelnuts, but the deeper warmth.

BA: What book that you have written is your favorite? Is this the book you enjoyed writing the most?

JLN: I’m still fondest of Mythology 101, my first fantasy and my first solo book (I had done four game books, the Pern guide, and was concurrently writing The Death of Sleep with Anne McCaffrey). I love my hero, Keith Doyle, who is friendly, lively and funny, not afraid to make a fool of himself, and believes in magic. It may be the one I enjoyed writing the most, but I was very nervous about pleasing the editor. I have had fun with all my other books, too. The best part is the "Aha!" factor, when something tickles me, strikes me as funny. Chuckling madly, I leap to the computer and hammer at the keys to get the idea down before it goes away.

BA: Who do you feel has most influenced your work as an author?

JLN: That is a complicated question. My mother, because she encouraged me, giving my early efforts total acceptance. My English teachers, five in particular: three who loved everything I did, and two who goaded me to do better. (I rose, snorting and breathing fire, to the challenge.) My husband, Bill, who is supportive and patient when I’m convinced everything I’m turning out is garbage (this mood hits at least once a book). Writers I admire, a few of whom I’ve been lucky enough to work with, for challenging me to new heights in skill.

BA: Is this person the main reason you are writing now, or is there another major reason?

JLN: I’d be doing it anyway. Writers have to write. I was telling stories before I could write.

BA: Where do you get your inspiration for the characters you write about?

JLN: Funny, but never from people I know or see. They have their own reality, their own personalities. Sometimes I know everything about a character right away, and sometimes it takes a while to get to know him, her or it. If I ‘Tuckerize’ someone, it’s on purpose. Once I met a lady who looked exactly the way I pictured one of my heroines. It was stunning to see a person from my head in the flesh.

BA: Where do you see yourself going from here? Are you planning on going off into any new directions with your writing?

JLN: Like every writer I know, I’m working on ten books at once. Most simply, I just want to write them and see them published. I’ve been dabbling with mystery fiction. You can tell by the list of my favorite books above that I read those as often as I read science fiction and fantasy. I’d love to break into that field, too. I’d like to write for television or the movies. I was a cinema major in college.

BA: More than one person I have talked to who is a fan asks: "when are you going to write more of the Mythology series books"?

JLN: I’ve got a fourth one in the works. Watch this space for further developments. And thanks for staying with me, folks.

BA: What do you see as the most challenging problem or opportunity facing authors today?

JLN: Market. Big corporations are buying up the publishing houses. Most of them do not understand how to build a book market or create loyalty to authors. It’s not like the instant gratification of shoes. They have to make books available and should keep them in print when the subsequent books come out. Otherwise readers get frustrated and turn to alternate forms of entertainment. TV shows seldom go ‘out of print,’ because small markets pick them up and rerun them, but try to find books three and four of a mid-list series! The big bookstores contribute to this by deliberately ordering the second and subsequent books of a series in numbers only a fraction of the sales of the first book. They don’t have room to keep displaying them, so those few are further decimated by being ripped and returned to the publisher. (This is why on-line booksellers like Keith’s are great, plug, plug. There’s an infinity of display space on the Internet, with books only a day or so from your hands.)

Publishing houses are also merging to survive, leaving fewer places to sell to. Internet publishers are stepping into the breach. How or if those will prosper depends upon readers learning to look for them there, and if they like the way literature is presented to them. Most people I know want a book or story they can hold, and don’t like to read off the screen (It’s hard to read a novel in the bathtub if the novel’s on your hard drive). Publication-on-demand may also fill the gap, meaning that a book never really goes out of print, even if it sells three copies a year (this will necessitate a change in the timeframe for the grant of rights in the current contracts). They tell me the technology is coming. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out. Any bookstore could become a publisher.

BA: What one piece of advice would you offer to aspiring authors?

JLN: I have three: Write. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission. Treat writing like a business: learn your craft. That includes spelling, grammar, and business etiquette. When you get paid, remember you have to save enough for your taxes. Even experienced, long-time authors fall into that trap.

BA: What do you like most about writing as a career choice?

JLN: Although it’s a business - and I treat that part with respect— there’s room to experiment and work creatively. I can do my job without worrying about office politics. I didn’t understand the game, and I didn’t think it was necessary, so I got left out of the loop by the cliques. And now I don’t have to commute.

BA: Do you feel that there is one common denominator with fans of your work, or do you feel that they have little in common?

JLN: Like Keith Doyle, I feel they want a piece of the magic they sense is out there. I hope I am giving it to them.

BA: If you had to synopsize your work for a potential reader, what would you say about it?

JLN: Strong characters, compelling situations, strong touches of humor, mostly happy endings. I also leave my fantasies "clean" so young readers who can manage them will not run over any land mines, but my science fiction may contain "adult" situations. That is not to say that the fantasies are written for children, but are what the romance writers call ‘sweets.’ It’s a decision I made consciously so that young readers have books they can use as transitions to our field. God knows when I was ten I would have enjoyed books like "So You Want to Be A Wizard," by Diane Duane, but there was little equivalent.

If anyone wants to join my personal, not-to-be-shared-with-anyone mailing list to hear about upcoming releases, they can write to me at jodynye@poboxes.com or PO Box 776, Lake Zurich, IL 60047.

Thanks for the opportunity to be the first author on your new web site!

BA: Thanks for talking with us, we bookworms appreciate your candor and insight!

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