The Valdemar Companion Read online

  My parents are great, my little brother was no more of a pain in the rear than any other little brother. I hated high school, and what else is new for a plain, brainy nerd-chick? I did have a few good friends, a couple pen pals who were a lot like me, and when I got to college I had a darned good time (maybe a little too good for my grades’ sake!).

  I think, on the whole, I tend like any other writer to use everything that’s around me, run it through my head, and turn it into stories.

  DL: Vanyel’s story is a favorite one of mine, because he cared so deeply for his country, because he sacrificed so much and so long to save it, and because he struggled so with his identity. In addition to its much-deserved commercial success and critical acclaim, this series was one of the first in the genre to feature a gay character whose sexuality was not the primary focus of the plot. The “Magic” books are important to the gay community for a lot of reasons, not least because they provide a strong, positive role model for people who‘ve discovered that they are gay. Those books were written fairly early in your career, and you had to worry that they’d be controversial. How did you get the idea for the character of Vanyel? Did you set out to write a story with a gay character, and invent Vanyel; or did you discover, writing the outline for the story, that he was gay? Once you knew what you were getting into, did the thought of writing

  his story give you pause? And did you have any trouble when the time came to pitch the series to your publisher? In your opinion, how do Vanyel’s sexual preferences and experiences fuel his development as a character?

  ML: Okay, now first of all, I really need to point out that Samuel Delaney and Marion Zimmer Bradley among many others in the science fiction field had already established positive gay role-models in their works. Gail Baudino and Elizabeth Lynn were taking things a lot further than I was, and of course there was Anne Rice’s Vampire series, which was topping the charts. Now, actually the genesis of Vanyel was that Elizabeth Woliheim read the first submitted manuscript of the Arrows books (which was about the seventeenth rewrite) and wanted more magic in it, right at the beginning. I didn’t want any magic in it, not “real” magic, I just wanted the psychic magic. So, to make her happy, I had Talia reading about some vague legend in the past that had “real” magic in it—that was Vanyel, and for some reason I made him gay.

  I finished the Arrows books, and the next logical thing to do was to take my Tarma and Kethry stories, which I had written for an obscure magazine, and turn them into a book. Two books, actually. Then, well, I went back and looked at the Arrows books, I thought about what Katherine Kurtz was doing in her series, going back into the Deryni history, and it seemed logical to work with the character who’d lived at the time that “real” magic vanished from Valdemar and explain why it vanished. From that point, knowing that the character was gay, I decided that I wanted to work with him in such a way that he was a sympathetic character that just happened to be gay, rather than making being gay the focus of his character—because, when you come down to it, that’s the way real people are. And being a subversive sort, I decided that I wanted to sneak his sexual orientation in on people—so what readers first got was a kid who is completely misunderstood by his father, who is picked on by his siblings, who is being forced into a life he is totally unsuited for, then sent off to a place where he’s a total stranger. And then, nearly a third into the book, when readers are pretty well hooked and engrossed in his story and maybe beginning to identify with him, they find out—along with him!—that he’s gay. Surprise! And it has come as a surprise to a lot of people to discover that gay people are… people. That was the reason why I wrote Vanyel the way I did—less for the sake of the gay readers (although that was a factor), but for the sake of the ones who weren’t. I wanted people who didn’t (consciously) know anyone who was gay to realize that sexual preference has very little to do with the worth of a person as a person. By the way, it worked. I got a fair number of letters (and still get them now and again) from people who opened their minds and hearts because of those books. Best of all were the ones who, because of Vanyel, reconciled with brothers and sisters who’d come out of the closet.

  Fortunately, my publisher already had an SF series with a gay lead character in it (Marion Bradley’s Darkover series) and she didn’t have any problem with Vanyel. In fact, I left my Lambda Award with Betsy Woliheim for her to display in her office for the first couple of years after I won it because of her support for the series. I figured she deserved it as much as I did.

  Van’s sexual orientation doesn’t have as much to do with what he is and becomes as some readers (and even he) think. If you look at Lavan Firestorm, he’s a similar character in a similar situation. Both of their stories are more about misfits who acquire great power and use it responsibly than they are about sexual preference, which is just one aspect of very complicated characters.

  DL: Most of the major heroic characters in the Valdemar books come onstage as children, and grow up before our eyes. Clearly, since you deal well with adult characters, this is a choice on your part. Why do you do it, and what do you think it adds to your fiction?

  ML: I like having characters develop and change, and the most active time for development and change is from the age of ten to around twenty. Fully adult characters have to be forced into change; adolescents flow into it naturally. And characters that change are a lot more interesting for a reader.

  DL: In the character of Ma‘ar, you‘ve essentially followed a single villain‘s rather strange path down through the ages—his terrible actions and the destruction they leave behind. Why did you choose to use a serial villain, so to speak, and how did you decide what his incarnation would be in each time period of your Valdemar books?

  ML: Larry helped me develop Ma’ar out of Falconsbane, and it seemed to both of us that someone who was that powerful and that evil was not going to settle for a single lifetime, and would wrest some sort of serial incarnation out of the universe—to the detriment of all concerned. After that decision, the character followed logically. his own logic, granted, but it was logical.

  DL: Speaking of villains, how did you come up with the idea to reclaim the identity of one of the people subsumed by the villain, and thereby develop a sort of spy in the villain‘s mind? For what it’s worth, I thought that was a staggeringly original approach to the problem of understanding the villain‘s motivation.

  ML: At some point, given that Ma’ar was only following a bloodline, it would have to happen that one of the takeover victims would not only have the willpower to resist, but would be worthy of “divine intervention.” It was Ma’ar’s mistake to use, not a magic spell that could only be selfish in intention as a trigger, but a simple spell, that of calling fire. Granted, this would enable Ma’ar to take a victim when the victim was relatively young, but it also meant that sooner or later he’d claim an innocent. Actually, Ma’ar probably claimed a lot of innocents, but eventually he got one whose deity took a rather more active part in the material world than most—and at that point, Ma’ar was in big trouble, and didn’t even know it. (And there is nothing more satisfying to a writer than pulling off the downfall and destruction of a truly abominable villain in a clever and logical fashion).

  DL: You‘ve talked about what it took to become a full-time writer. How tough was it, giving up five years of your spare time to write?

  ML: Very tough. I wrote every waking moment I wasn’t working. I’d get up early and write before work, and on my lunch break, then I’d come home and write while I ate dinner, write until bed, and then I finally went to sleep. On weekends I wrote without a break. The only breaks I took were to go to science fiction conventions to promote my books, or visiting C.J. Cherryh to work on my books with her guidance. Even when I visited my parents over holidays I wrote. (I still do.) I wrote when I was sick, when I was recovering from a spinal operation, on holidays, on my birthday. If you want something badly enough, you make sacrifices for it, and I wanted to become a full-time writer that
badly.

  DL: Sometimes genre fiction is “ghettoized” by critics and academics. Although this has noticeably improved in recent years, it’s still a problem. If you had a chance to explain and defend Valdemar to a bunch of these nay-sayers, what would you say to them?

  ML: I wouldn’t bother, frankly, because I’m in no position to make a judgment, and they have already made theirs and aren’t going to change their minds. In the end, it all comes down to this: whether something outlives its maker (and quite frankly, I would rather that I had another century before anyone was in a position to find that out!). In their time, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain, the Brontës, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Austen, and countless others were dismissed as genre fiction writers, or as hacks. Their work has survived to be read and loved long past their own lifetimes. And countless more were dismissed as hacks whose works were forgotten. Meanwhile, writers who were lauded to the skies by critics have been utterly and completely forgotten. (If you want to prove this to yourself, go take a look at really old reviews from the turn of the century and try to find even a mention of some of those writers now.)

  The best defense is survival. If I’ve got what it takes, the work will survive, and if it doesn’t, well, hey, the critics will have been right! In either case, I won’t be in a position to worry about it!

  DL: You took writing courses in college. I did, too, and had to unlearn virtually everything I learned in college to write successful commercial prose. (Admittedly, I went to a pretty snotty college, so my experience may be atypical,) Do you feel that your writing experience in college was useful, and have you any words of wisdom for young writers searching for a good writing program when they’re headed to college?

  ML: The “writing course” that I took was pretty unusual; it was a one-on-one with a professor in the English department at Purdue University (note: this was a science/agriculture/engineering college—not a hotbed of Literary Activity!) who was already a science fiction fan. His sole advice and help was to show me how to analyze the books I liked, take them apart and see what made them work, and try to apply that to what I was trying to write.

  Writing courses at the college level have got to be evaluated individually, but from what most people have told me about their own experiences, I would say that you would be better off to invest the money in a Clarion workshop or something of the sort. Failing that, look for books about writing fantasy, science fiction, and other genre fiction by popular writers OF those genres. If you are in a writing class taught by someone with utter contempt for the genre in which you plan to write, you are obviously going to be wasting your time at the best, and may be setting yourself back, emotionally and in your craft.

  DL: Do you have a favorite book or series among the Valdemar books?

  ML: By The Sword. I love Kerowyn. She’s got chutzpah.

  DL: For new fans, how would you recommend they approach the books—in the order they were written, or in the order of Valdemar’s chronology?

  ML: It’s probably best to start with the Arrows books, but after that, it doesn’t matter until you get back to the Winds books. Winds and Storms should be read in order, I think.

  DL: You‘ve hinted pretty strongly that most Companions are reincarnated heralds in a spirit form. It’s one of the things that fans talk to death whenever and however they get together. Are we ever going to get deeper into who and what Companions are? A sort of creation myth and history, from the Companion‘s point of view? Or a Companion‘s Hall of Fame? Or will it all remain a bit of a mystery?

  ML: Hinted? HINTED? Okay, folks, for the last time. Grove-born Companions are the equivalent of archangels they never were human. Regular Companions are recycled Heralds. When a Herald dies, he’s usually got four choices: come back as an ordinary person or Healer or Bard (no past-life memory), come hack as a Herald (no past-life memory), come back as a Companion (past-life memory) or go on to the Havens (Bermuda) in which case you can always choose to come back as Herald or Companion after you get tired of sitting on the beach and drinking Piña Coladas. Companions have the same choices. Van, Stef, and Yfandes got another option, to come back as a bunch of trees, but that was an unusual case, and eventually they all went to Bermuda anyway. For the record, Stef prefers Mai Tais to Piña Coladas, and Yfandes goes for Bailey’s Irish Cream.

  Having totally destroyed my own mythos… I think it would he just too difficult to do the Companion point of view; I don’t have a lot of experience in the angelic viewpoint. Haven’t found any reputable sources, either (grinning).

  DL: Do you have any tricks to help you deal with writer’s block, or is that something that doesn‘t trouble you?

  ML: I work on something entirely different until the reason for the block becomes clear. That’s the reason why Elvenblood has taken so long. The book as outlined just wasn’t working and wasn’t going to work, Andre and I got together and changed it, and got it done.

  DL: I’m glad to hear that we’ll get a Collegium novel—the various guilds and divisions in Valdemar fascinate me. This was something you came up with very early on—it was present in the Arrows books. How did you decide what specialties to include when you set up the system back as a beginning writer?

  ML: Well, all I can say is, they’re in some part based on real-world medieval history and in part on what seemed logical to me at the time.

  DL: Do you ever struggle with rules or history or whatnot that you‘ve put into early work, and that now limits you as you‘re working on a current book? If that’s been the case, can you give an example, and tell us how you solved the problem?

  ML: The biggest problem was finding a reason why there was no real magic in Talia’s Valdemar, and then creating a way to get it back. Problems generally create books as long as you set your mind to asking questions instead of seeing blockages in the road.

  DL: I’ve seen Valdemaran dream cast lists floating around the Web for years—do you have your own private mental casting list for some of your major characters? Or do you visualize your characters without the aid of Hollywood?

  ML: I generally visualize them without actors in mind, but there are some fairly obvious choices. Lucy Lawless for Tarma, of course. Johnny Depp for Vanyel, though I don’t know who I’d pick for “young” Vanyel. I’d like the boy from “Sixth Sense,” Haley Joel Osment, for Lavan Firestorm. I think that David Bowie would make a fascinating Falconsbane, and Sting would be good for Firesong. I don’t know how Cher would feel about going blonde, but she sure has the attitude for Kerowyn!

  DL: Has there been interest that would result in seeing Valdemar on the big or small screens? If so, do you plan to encourage it or nip it in the bud?

  ML: Not so much as a nibble, and I don’t really think it would translate well, to tell you the truth. There’s too much concentration on what’s going on internally with the characters. Possibly the only books that would work would be the Tarma and Kethry books and Silver Gryphon. I would be very reluctant to discover what Hollywood would do with any of the others. For now, I find that it’s more than satisfying enough know my books live in the minds of my fans.

  By the royal command of Her Majesty, Queen Selenay, I have been commissioned to write a practical travel book, one that will serve as a guide for those who wish to visit Valdemar and her allies. The Queen has seen that, with the wars against Karse and Hardorn finally over, traveling is not only popular but fashionable. She does not wish harm to come to her subjects because they are ill-prepared for their journeys or ill-informed of the hazards on the way. Nor does she wish worthy visitors to miss a pleasant interlude merely for lack of knowledge.

  Therefore, she has asked me to compose a useful treatise on this subject. She feels that my fifty years of experience as a roving Bard will help to advise others of the joys and perils of travel in and around Valdemar.

  Before I begin, I would like to point out that change is constant, and that the land of Valdemar is not immune to that powerful f
orce of progress. Laws change, people change, and governments change. So do not despair if an inn or tavern I mention here is no longer in existence. Such surprises are part of the joy of travel, and the traveler who forgets this does so at the peril of spoiling his delight in journeying.

  I wish to begin with a word about traveling in general. As the land of Valdemar and its environs open up to casual exploration, always remember that the best way to be welcomed anywhere is to have an educated mind, a joyous heart, a patient soul, and a grateful smile. These homely virtues will smooth your path as little else will. Though a healthy application of the coin of the realm never hurts.

  Speaking of the coin of the realm, if your talents lead you to offer a song or musical accompaniment to those you meet along the way, it is customary to ask permission before performing, to make sure that you are not depriving local musicians of their livelihood. If you wish to perform in the inns you seek shelter in, you should share the money you earn with any resident minstrels or musicians that you displace from the stage. Also, I recommend asking for requests before launching into your newest song or original melody; the sound of well played old favorites will earn you more pocket change, and whet your audience’s appetite for more adventurous fare.

  If you tell a good story and know the latest news from wherever you have just passed, be sure you survey the room carefully before launching into a recitation for others. Travelers have found themselves in dire straits because they accidentally offended someone with a story or tale. I have personally witnessed a young man tell the tale of “The Bitter Wench” to an Earthwitch who felt it degraded the Goddess Agnira. The young man was lucky. He was asked to leave by the innkeeper, and so escaped the nasty fungus curse the Earthwitch was preparing to cast upon him. She may have mistaken the moral of the young man’s tale, but it was still a foolish thing to tell it at an inn that sported the design of the Ladytrine. Agnira is the Crone aspect of this triple Goddess, and bears a strong resemblance to the Wench in the tale. It is always better and safer to ask the innkeeper if your story is appropriate when you are not sure of local customs.