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02/11/01: Sara Douglass:
Slaughtering Sacred Cows You've probably never heard of Sara Douglass.
If you're a fantasy lit fan, you probably will hear about her - soon.
Douglass, whose real name is Dr. Sara
Warneke, is a 43 year old Australian writer whose book regularly make
the best-seller lists in that country. In March, the first installment
in her Wayfarer Redemption series will finally see print in North
America. She holds a PhD in Early Modern English History, as well as
a nursing degree. The knowledge and experience she gained in her previous
careers in nursing and as a university professor are used to effect
in her novels.
Douglass was kind enough to grant an
inteview to The Guide, and was remarkably open and candid in
her answers. Without further ado - Sara Douglass...
The Guide: First, one of those
annoying two-part questions. You've acheived international fame
as a writer. First, what is that like? Second, does your fantasy work
incorporate anything which you feel makes it distinctly Australian?
Sara: Ah, the old "what does fame
feel like question". :) It doesn't affect me much at all. I still get
out of the bed in the morning,
have breakfast, sit down to work, tend the garden. It's just a tag that
people append to me, but it has
no real meaning to my daily life. On the other hand, I'm pleased to
have that 'tag', merely because
it means more sales, and as I need to pay off my mortgage and buy food
more sales are always nice!
I'm not distinctly Australian except
in the 'grittiness' - and perhaps even honesty - of the books. I
don't hesitate to call a spade a spade,
and don't hesitate to acknowledge that life is often unfair,
painful and troublesome to cope with.
My characters are real humans (even the nonhuman races!) in
the problems that they endure throughout their lives. There is no romantic
gloss. Australia is a harsh (but
beautiful) land, and as an Australian exposed from time to time to the
hard world of the outback that's
the way I see life - in a hard bright light that hides nothing. I think
that comes across in the books
from time to time. Nothing is perfect, there are no golden heros, and
even those who 'win' will also
'lose'. I don't shy from the tragic aspects of life yet still acknowledge
hope, and, of all the feedback
I've had from readers, those are the aspects (life is painful and tragic,
but if we can find the strength
within ourselves we can overcome the hardships) they appreciate the
most.
The Guide: Did the speed
of your success surprise you?
Sara: I do have to laugh at this
one! Let me see ... I spent some 14 years from the time my first novel
was rejected to the time a novel
was finally accepted. During this 14 years I was rejected by every
known publisher on this planet, some asking
me to NEVER EVER contact them again (most notably
Mills and Boon, who said my writing was far too 'dark')! "BattleAxe",
the first novel in THE WAYFARER
REDEMPTION, was first published in Australia in 1995, and it has taken
until 2001 to achieve publication
in North America (and even then it took an incredible turn of events
to get picked up). If that's 'speedy'
, then I pity writers who have had it slower. :) Like most writers,
I've not had overnight success, but have
had to work long and hard and patiently to achieve any kind
of success at all.
On the other hand, success (slow, speedy
or otherwise) has surprised me. I write only for myself in that
I write what pleases me, not what I think might please others. I'm very
surpised, and very, very gratified
to discover that so many people share the same dark recesses of the
mind as I do.
The Guide: According to
your bio, you started working as a writer after failing to find
your niche in the professional world. Was writing something that
you had previously considered at all?
Sara: I'm not too sure about this
'failing' at my professional careers (!) - I achieved splendidly, both
as a nurse and as a medieval historian.
It's just that neither was for me, so I moved on. I always wanted
to write, but was always dissuaded from
it (my family was conservative, and girls simply didn't waste
their time writing ... they became either teachers or nurses to fill
in those 4 or 5 years between school
and marriage, where they would settle down for the rest of their lives
happily dusting and grilling lamb
chops). I wrote avidly as a child, not much as a teenager, and started
writing seriously again when I was about
22. It took me until I was 36 to get something published.
I still am a medieval historian - it's
just that I'm not so ensconced within the university system (which
is what found so difficult to work within).
I don't consider myself so much a writer as a historian who
is madly and passionately addicted to medieval research and to the collection
of ancient and rare books, and
who write novels as a means to support her addiction. I still publish
within the medieval field, keep
up my contacts, even continue to do things like examine PhD theses.
I actually now classify myself
as an antiquarian (in that delightfully nineteenth-century definition
of the eccentric antiquarian huddled
inside a dusty library, following his or her own interests with no need
to satisfy university quotas or politically
correct lines of research, with neither the antiquarian nor his/her
reasearch never ever to see the light of day ...).
The Guide: Somewhat a related
question - why fantasy fiction? You've said you hate the term. Also,
what sort of literature did you read growing up?
Sara: Why fantasy? Because with
my background in medieval history I can write it well. (Many
successful fantasy writers have a scholarly
medievalist background lurking somewhere.) My earlier novels
were romances, thrillers, horror ... and then one day I decided to try
my hand at fantasy, and the glove
fit perfectly. I'm not actually a fantasy fan. I very, very rarely read
it, preferring crime or thrillers
when I read fiction (and I generally don't read much fiction at all,
preferring to stoop over my dusty
tomes in my dusty, dim library ... OK, so I'm overdoing the imagery!).
"Fantasy' I see as a degrading label.
What was once mainstream romantic epic literature has, over the
generations, been pushed into the realms of fairy stories and fantasy.
"Fantasy' is a light and fluffy
label, meant to imply that the genre is lightweight escapism for those
who can't cope, but instead I think
modern fantasy has come to be one of the prime vehicles for moral debate
within modern society. Good fantasy
should challenge readers in a number of ways, and one of those
ways is forcing them to re-examine the
moral structures of their own society - it is certainly what I
strive to do ... take a sacred cow and
then offer it up for slaughter ... or at least to offer up to
people the possibility that they have
the power to take the knife in their hands! :) I'm not didactic,
but I do like to explore moral issues
- the incest theme throughout the Wayfarer books is a good example,
but there are many more (the power of the Church versus the power of
the individual being another common
thread through all my books) - and none of that is light and fluffy
and certainly not escapism. Not
'fantasy'. I write a good story, but I also like people to think about
what they're reading. A reviewer recently
wrote that I was one of the most extraordinarily daring authors
in the issues that I tackle head on, and that's one of the nicest things
anyone has ever said about me!
What sort of literature did I read as
I was growing up? Everything I could get my hands on. I was very
fortunate to grow up in a house quite literally packed with books and
I read them all back to back -
encyclopedias, science manuals, eigtheeenth-century midwive's manuals,
fiction of every kind, farming
manuals, you name it, I read it. There was never any one genre or kind
of book that I stuck to.
The Guide: Does real life
influence your work at all?
Sara: It influences every author.
For me, both my work as a nurse and as a medieval historian have
influenced me hugely in the way I write.
And, as every other author, I imagine, my inspiration comes
from daily life about me.
The Guide: What are your
thoughts on the fandom?
Sara: I don't think I've ever
quite recovered from it! As I said above, I am no fanatical fan of fantasy
myself (I've read it, and liked it, but
have never become an avid fan), so I was quite stunned when,
on BattleAxe's initial publication here
in Australia I came across fandom. I've never felt comfortable
with it, simply because I'm not a member
of it. I've also felt that the vast majority of my readers, as
all fantasy readers, come from outside
fandom.
I'm always uncomfortable about it because
I'm not fanatical about fantasy. I enjoy writing it, but it isn't
my life. Fanatical fans can become a huge problem (see answer to next
question) for me, and while most
people in fandom that I've met have been fantastic, really lovely people,
there have been others who have
made me very very wary of the fantasy fan scene.
So, basically, while the vast majority
of people within fandom are terrific, I'm always made a little
uncomfortable by the scene as a whole.
Give me a gardening convention, or a medieval historical convention,
and I'm right at home. I'm an eccentric gardening medievalist, masquerading
as a fantasist!
The Guide: Your website
contains a fair amount of personal information, as well as links that
allow visitors to chat with you directly. Do you enjoy all the attention?
Has there ever been a time when it has become unwelcome?
Sara: I've always been fairly
'available' to my readers, and, yes, that is a two edged sword mainly
because 'attention' is never what it was
about (no, I don't like 'attention' at all). Mostly the contact
is fun and rewarding (to both me and my
readers), other times it has become a bit hard. For instance,
I used to have a publicly available email address. For a while that
was fine, but then it became too
much in the sheer volume of the mail received. I used to lie awake at
nights feeling stressed about the
need to reply to every one (if I didn't, then a small percentage would
write back and abuse me for not
replying immediately, and who did I think I was and so forth); I was
also inundated by requests by children
writing school projects. Every day I'd get a couple of kids writing
to me, needing the answers to 65 questions
TOMORROW. Eventually, all my time was being taken
up with answering emails, filling in much the same 65 project responses
for school children, and I was
getting extremely stressed (I was also very ill over the period 1996-1999,
which added to the stress) and
I had to change my email address simply to manage to get some rest.
I was also getting some very nasty stuff
from fanatical fans of other authors who resented my success.
Not so much criticism of my work (which is fine with me, I don't expect
everyone to like what I do), but
death threats. Rape threats. Emails full of vitriolic hatred. It was
horrible, and it was frightening.
I had to draw back from it. I recently had a comment from a fan who
said that, as a famous person,
I had to learn to put up with the abuse. I resented that very much.
I'm a human being, and, as a human
being, I feel I don't have to put up with any kind of abuse. It upsets
me just like it would upset anyone.
So ... nevertheless, there I am on my
Bulletin Board most days! That also gets stressful from time to
time (generally when I have publication
deadlines looming), but on the whole it is great. It's developed
into a wonderful, friendly community that runs happily without me from
time to time (in fact, it runs
happily without me anytime!).
I also love web authoring (which is why
the Douglass site has grown so large ... I just can't help myself)
- the Douglass site is but one of about 6 sites that I've authored (mainly
medieval sites which were attached
to universities and which now no longer exist). One of my great projects
(which will likely never get off the ground
because of the amount of work involved) is to build a site devoted
to medieval London.
The Guide: What can readers
expect from your future books? In particular, The Wayfarer Redemption,
which is to be released in North America in March.
Sara: Well ... basically I do
like to keep my readers slightly off balance - they might think they
know where a character or a plot line is going, but I have a devious
mind, and few can predict its twistings and turnings! I love to explore
moral issues, which sometimes gets me into hot water, and I love to
take characters to the full limit of their potential. There are always
surprises. (I think my characters were profoundly relieved once I'd
finished the Wayfarer books ... finally, they could get some rest!)
My current trilogy is a historical fantasy set in fourteenth-century
Europe, something very different from the Tencendor books, and I've
done a stand alone book set in an ancient Egypt ruled by mathematician
gods as well a non-fiction crucifixion of the Arthurian legend. Next,
who knows?
Next month, Pieter van Hiel has no
idea who he will interview. He's still shaking the celebrity tree to
see who falls out.
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