... Janet und Chris Morris on writing, publishing, horses, »Heroes in Hell« and Tempus Thales

Janet Morris was in the eighties and early nineties, one of the leading female writers of SF and Fantasy. But she interrupted her career as a writer for Strategic Studies and a company for non-lethal weapons.

In 2010, she returned with her novel THE SACRED BAND and now she writes again together with her husband Chris. This is reason enough for some questions …

Janet Morris: Writing fiction, you can never be sure if your work influences the world for the better.  So we began creating the nonlethal weapons concept, identified the associated technologies, and worked with the international defense intellectual community, Congress, DOD and various MODs to mandate and implement the creation of nonlethal weapons programs.  As a direct result of our work, nonlethal weapons kits have been issued to war-fighters and nonlethal capabiities have been saving lives since the last decade of the 20th century, and are still saving lives today.  This was and is important work and must continue.  Writing fiction was once a way to influence world events, but changes to culture no longer were accomplished readily through fiction at the end of the 20th century.  Building our worlds and writing our fiction had showed us clearly that the next great step for western civilization was the adoption of nonlethality:  a new guiding principal for projecting power as nonlethally as possible, and that technology could help accomplish this goal.  Now the basic work on NLWs is done:  nonlethal capabilities and technologies are increasingly used and missions are evolving that demand expansion of their use, so a national, then international, nonlethality policy is inevitable.  To mandate and create a comprehensive nonlethal capability took a long time and work is still ongoing.  While the potential of nonlethality is not yet fully realized, and we still work in defense, we now have time to write fiction again.  And we have new things to say that can be said better in fantasy than as political books, for in fantasy you can be more direct about the human condition.  Also, publishing has changed for the better and we can now have more control over how our books are published, over their production – print size and covers and paper -- and how our books are presented.

Chris Morris: When we went on hiatus from fiction writing in the late 80’s editors at the major houses were asking for material that suited their narrow views of f/sf and asking for silly things like ‘blood on every page.’  At the same time our high tech thrillers (some under pseudonyms) were getting a serious and positive reception among military readers and made us realize we might be writing for the wrong audience.  We never stopped writing, just found a readership that was paying more attention and acting on what we were communicating.  Soon we were making a better living by helping the military develop its thinking about how to adapt to the post cold war security environment.

What has ‘brought us back’ is the change in the publishing business which eliminates the frustration of the slow moving traditional publishing apparatus and the meddlesome and pernicious influence of incompetent editors.  At last, we can simply tell a story.  Same with the music.

Zauberspiegel: In your literary career, Janet, you have often worked with others, your husband Chris, CJ Cherryh, and more. In such situations you give up the absolute control over your characters and one has to share, can’t be fully creative, can they?  What made you work in cooperation with others again and again? For example, how is the work distributed between you and Chris?

Janet Morris: In solo writing, the author has complete control.  And with that control come all the blind-spots of that author:  the plot and story are what one person decides.  This is often the right choice.  But unlike a playwright such as Shakespeare, or ancient poets such as Homer, most authors today cannot hear their words spoken aloud and then change the story to work better.  In collaboration with Chris Morris, I have the benefit of another voice and another mind to enrich the story.  Chris and I have a process where every drafted line is read aloud and the story is improved by this means.  In general, co-writing means incorporating other people’s ideas and demands; this causes lifelike plot twists and adds perspective.  Co-writing with Chris Morris, we talk about the stories during dinner and evening, exchanging ideas.  I write the first draft based on discussion and the ideas both of us evolve together.  He reads every line of the first draft aloud.  He is a brilliant editor with a ‘big picture’ perception that keeps the story on track.  We make changes together on the draft as he reads.  We can say that Janet does most of the typing but we cannot say who wrote what idea.  Everything but typing, we share.  With other writers, such as CJ Cherryh, we talk infrequently, but we understand each others’ characters and goals. For example, CJ and I agree what the characters will accomplish in a section; I tell her what I need her to do; she tells me what she needs me to do and what she will do.  And the characters do the rest.

Chris Morris: Janet is the genuine article, a natural story teller.  She has the gene.  She is an immersion artist.  She does not write to an outline.  Janet actually ‘goes there’ in her characters’ personas, experiences and records what they experience as it happens; the ‘plot’ is predictable only in hindsight, an artifact of real experiences strung together.  She has said many times that her vision in those moments is 360.  She also says she is able to bring back about half the total experience.  ‘Control’ is not an issue; the viewpoint character or perspective is paramount and the author’s ego is necessarily in train to the story moment; it’s not about Janet at that point.  Collaborators, myself included, travel with this wave in a manner corresponding to their ability to do as she does, hardly diminishing her influence.  Indeed the net effect of Janet’s talent is inclusion, taking all – characters, collaborators, audience, and herself – places we can only go in this fashion.

Zauberspiegel: Even your participation in the Thieves World®  shows that you're always open to collaboration. Please tell us how you came to joine this project. What was the collaboration with the editors and the other authors like?

Janet Morris: Bob Asprin saw me at a convention and asked me to write for Thieves’ World®.  He said Thieves’ World ® was the armpit of the universe and he wanted a gritty story from me.  He said we could use other writer’s characters, but not kill them.  The first volume of Thieves’ World® had been published.  I read it.  Bob and I agreed that I would try a story for Volume Two, Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn.  I said I had characters from a short story I had written but not yet offered to publishers, and a place I had invented called Meridian, and Bob Asprin agreed I could bring those characters and that place, but they would remain my characters and my place.  I originally thought I would just rewrite that story, “An End to Dreaming,” (later published by Stuart Schiff in “Whispers“ and in the book “Tempus,“ which was published in German by Bastei Lubbe) with Cime and Askelon in Meridian.  But then Tempus showed up in my mind’s eye.  I started an entirely new story for Bob, called “Vashanka’s Minion,” (also later published in German in Bastei Lubbe’s “Tempus,“).  This story was about Tempus and the Sanctuary ® god of rape and pillage, Vashanka, who cohabited in Tempus’s body from time to time.  Many ancient kings were called “favorite of the storm god” and for Tempus, Vashanka was one of these storm gods and Tempus was the god’s favorite.  In “Vashanka’s Minion,“ Tempus rode down to the dock where Askelon was getting off a boat.  Tempus said, “Askelon, get out of my story.”  So I removed Askelon and saved him until later; I substituted Aspect, the archmage; I rewrote that page and kept going.  Whenever a character starts telling you the story, the writer needs to listen.  Cime, Tempus’s “sister,“ did appear later in that story.  Bob liked the “Vashanka’s Minion“  story very well, he said.  Lynn Abbey then wrote a story using Tempus in a ritual mating; Bob asked if he could write a story in which Tempus was captured by a vivisectionist; I asked Andy Offutt to get Tempus out of the vivisectionist’s clutches, and thus the collaborations began naturally.  At first, the collaborations among authors and editors went easily; later, they became more competitive and sometimes tense.  In Thieves’ World®, writer’s ended up protecting their characters from other writers’ characters.  This is the nature of storytelling and the tension produced some very good stories and some inventive plot twists that occurred when writers tried to do things in their stories to challenge other writers and other writer’s characters.  I found it great fun.

Chris Morris: I officially joined the Thieves World® project late, with the co-written story “What Women Do Best,” at Janet’s insistance that I get credit for my work.  This was the first story officially co-written by me and Janet that was published anywhere.   I later went on to write a solo story near the end of Thieves’ World ®.

Zauberspiegel: What can - especially German readers – expect from "Heroes in Hell"? What is it about? Can you tell us something about this?

Janet Morris: Heroes in Hell (HIH) is a shared-world book series based on the premise that man’s every idea of hell is true somewhere in the manifold hells of existence:  characters from all times and myths are in hell together.  All the hells of humanity and all the lords of hell and gods of hell are real.  If the damned die again in hell, they are reborn in hell on the Undertaker’s table.  Their punishments fit their sins.  No one thinks he belongs in hell.  Hell has a huge bureaucracy, demons, fallen angels, and damned souls of every description.  Some have made hell too comfortable.  In the newest volume, Lawyers in Hell, Heaven sends down auditors to hell to insure that Injustice is being properly administered.  The Hell series has had a Hugo award winning story and two Nebula nominated stories, and has sold very well all these years, even though long out of print.  Many people asked me for more new HIH novels and anthologies.  So we decided we would do more, using new writers and veteran Hellions from the old series.  The first of these new HIH books, “Lawyers in Hell,“ featuring twenty-two stories by veteran Hellions and new writers, goes on sale July 15, 2011 as a hard cover, trade paperback, and e-book.

For German readers, who have a fine sense of dark humor and irony, and are well connected with their heritage, Hell is as they would expect:  the warriors are warring; the thieves are stealing; the cheaters are cheating, and not even the vast bureaucracy of hell can keep up with the new sins committed daily by the damned in hell.  We have many hells, including the ancient Hel or Helheim of German tradition.  In hell we have ancient and modern hells and people – the Old Dead and the New Dead:  heroes and villains and, most importantly, survivors.  And we have hope for better days, for release from hell, for reunion with our loved ones.  We even have some who seek forgiveness and others who have vowed to purge themselves of evil and find a way to heaven.  And, we have a “Get Out of Hell Free Card,” somewhere, which can be used to get out of hell if only you can find it...

Chris Morris: Theological chaos permeates contemporary society, dividing what it purports to unify.  Even so, matters of philosophical and religious significance merit exploration in a construct favoring no single belief system.  Heroes in Hell takes you to a manifold afterlife:  In all the hells ever named by mankind, including Hel, questions of punishment and suffering – deserved and/or undeserved – challenge the sensibilities.  Heroes in Hell is an environment for exploring the struggles of the damned, for whom the frailties and foibles of personality continue to be a self-engendered plague of torments.  Sound like somewhere familiar?

Janet Morris: The concept of hell:  Heroes in Hell (HIH) is the series title for a shared-world series of mine first published in 1986 by Baen Books, which has had a number of anthologies and novels published since (13, including the new Lawyers in Hell).  I wanted each volume to stand on its own and be adventures of people from all times thrown together in hell.  I didn’t want readers to be forced to read previous volumes to understand a current volume.  I didn’t want any writer to become too powerful or any single plot-line to dominate.  HIH was my idea of an improvement on the shared worlds concept:  we would write in a given locale – hell.  Hell IS the greatest shared universe of all human history.  Our hell would include every hell ever conceived by mankind, in layers and parallel dimensions that are permeable.  Hell’s geography and time are fluid, but the top layer of landmass is about the size of Australia.  Since 186 million people died in war alone during the 20th century, hell must be vast.  So we made it vast.  Souls from all of history and mythology may come together anywhere in hell.  And they do, for funny and frightening adventures of every sort.  Some writers have continuing characters, such as Satan, who appear in every volume.  Some characters appear only once, and vanish into the depths of hell.

In the hells of the Heroes in Hell(TM) universe, every hell is accessible:  We have New Hell, our melting pot where any citizen of any culture may awaken.  We also have Niflheim, Hel, Hades, Diyu, Arali, Gehenna, Sheol, Jahannam, and every other hell:  writers can write about a specific region of hell, or have characters from one hell visit others:  but all must be historically or mythologically correct.

Chris Morris: Hell is a multi-leveled universe with a surface about the size of Australia where anyone goes who has broken one of the hundreds of commandments.  All underworlds exist here and overlap and coincide in interesting ways.

Zauberspiegel: In July 2011 Lawyers in Hell will be published. Is this a revival or a restart? As a low-browed reader, what awaits me in “Lawyers in Hell”? “Boston Legal” with Devils?

Janet Morris: In Lawyers in Hell, you will be greeted by Satan, who is allowing himself to be interviewed by the New Hell Sinday Times Magazine.  You will then find yourself among hell’s landlords – yes, hell has landlords – and auditors from heaven, sent down to make sure that hell becomes more hellish.  Then you will ride on one of hell’s elevators.  Next you will visit the Roman enclave in New Hell, where the most powerful gather, such as Julius Caesar, Hatshepsut, Dante, and Machiavelli.  And from there, you go on a whirlwind tour of many hells and many of the damned, trying to keep their hellish bodies and souls together, and stay out of the way of the frightful auditors from heaven.

Chris Morris: Lawyers in Hell is a resumption of the Heroes in Hell series created by Janet Morris.  Souls from all eras are convened to continue their careers under the watchful eye of HSM (His Satanic Majesty) and all the other gods and lords of hell from human history and mythology.  All hell awaits.

Zauberspiegel: For “Lawyers in Hell” you have gathered a series of writers (including Scott Oden and John Manning, who both wrote for Zauberspiegel international). Where did you look for these authors and how did you find them? And where and how do you coordinate such cooperation?

Janet Morris: The title “Lawyers in Hell” was suggested by Ed Mckeown, one of our hell writers, based on a comment I made on the Heroes in Hell page that Wikipedia created on Facebook.  I have been supporting the new novel, The Sacred Band, and the Sacred Band of Stepsons, on Facebook, and so the idea of doing more volumes in the Hell series seemed like a good one.  I called three of my favorite writers from the original hell series, CJ Cherryh, Nancy Asire, and Michael Armstrong, and asked them if they would contribute to a new series of hell stories.  They said, “Hell, yes.”  With the help of Ed McKeown and Rich Groller, we established a ‘secret’ work environment on Facebook, the “Lawyers in Hell Working Group,” and set out rules for participation.  Word spread fast.  We recruited from The Sacred Band Facebook page, and from there we got Larry Atchley, Jr.; Sarah Hulcy; and John Manning.  Writers were told they could nominate other writers they would like to have among us.  Our custom was always to have one or two previously unpublished writers in each volume of hell, and we have several in “Lawyers in Hell.”  When Michael Z. Williamson joined us, he suggested one new writer, Leo Champion...and other writers suggested more writers.  Our Hellions – people who have an accepted hell story -- brought in new would-be Hellions, and the writers group for hell is ever expanding.

We coordinate the writers through the mechanisms of posting synopses, snippets, character lists, and a writer’s chat group, all managed by our group Muse, Sarah Hulcy.  We have many background documents.  We approve a short synopsis and a list of characters, and the writers post samples of their work.  If other writers see problems or have suggestions, everyone listens.  We have only rejected three stories so far, and these were from people unwilling to put in the time necessary to learn the rules of our hell.  The writers’ group is a tight and cooperative group and the result is “Lawyers in Hell,” which has pleased us very well.

Chris Morris: Friends (and enemies) of friends (and enemies) have mostly been introduced through Facebook, which has also served as our coordination tool.

Zauberspiegel: What is the next step in Hell?

Janet Morris: The next hell volume, with many stories already submitted, will be “Adventurers in Hell,” and the volume after that will be “Visionaries in Hell,” and after that comes “Swashbucklers in Hell,” and so on.  Some writers have already written stories for many of these volumes; some are just beginning.  .  Just recently, two German writers have joined our ranks, and we hope to have stories from them in “Adventurers in Hell.”  The deadline for “Adventurers” is October 1, 2011.

Chris Morris: Adventurers in Hell is now well under way.  Ponce de Leon and Lysicles, Alexander, Solomon, Andromeda, as well the Babylonian plague-god Erra and his Seven, personified weapons, plus many modern personalities abound.  At the outset of Lawyers we asked whether hell might not be the native habitat of an ancient and indigenous race. The answer was the introduction of Kur and Eshi of Ki-gal, the territory surrounding the domains of Infernity (the legendary hells).  The Kigali are akin to ‘landlords’ of hell and preside over its boundaries, providing access and escorting visitors to and from the realms of the damned.

Zauberspiegel: Yet the comeback of Janet and Chris Morris was a Tempus novel, “The Sacred Band”. Why have you chosen him for the first book after all this time?

Janet Morris: Tempus and his Sacred Band are my favorite characters.  What Tempus says and how he sees the world and what he believes are very important to me.  His ethos and his viewpoint are unique in my experience.  Tempus chose me, from the beginning and now again, to tell his stories.  He is a fully realized presence that has been with me in one way or another for 30 years, since his first story in 1980:  After so many years, he whispered in my ear that he wanted to do another novel, and about what, and where.  And when I did not at first listen, the whispers became more insistent.  When Tempus speaks, it is better to do as he says.  I was in close contact with Tempus once again, and his Sacred Band:  Niko, and Critias and Straton and Randal and Cime and Jihan and the rest....  Their ethos and their power and their determination overswept me.  All my joy in them and concern for them and connection with them came back, and we were off on this adventure that became the novel, “The Sacred Band.”

Tempus looks at the world from a rarefied viewpoint.  He sees all the failings of humanity and all the failings of their gods.  He brings me into each moment and connects me to the natural world in its most primal sense.  Like Niko, though he would never admit it, Tempus loves the world and everything in it; his anger is aimed at mankind’s imperfections, yet he treasures the lives of his people above all else.  He is the most perceptive character I have ever had.  What he says about life and how we steer through it cuts to the essence of leadership in the face of reality.  He is as relevant to the modern world as to the ancient world.  Sometimes he is Herakleitan; sometimes he is one with Enlil, the storm god of ancient times; but always he is completely and absolutely himself, and that self looks at the world, sees it for what it is, but never quails.  He loves life with a fierceness that overcomes even his ancient intellect.  His viewpoint is his own, unique in my experience of the world and of literature.  I get strength from him that I can get no other way.  When I am writing him, I am empowered as I can be at no other time.

Chris Morris: Tempus is timeless (hence the name) and always present, at times pushy.  As we grow older his perspective becomes more and more intuitive and his observations more pertinent to modernity.  In short, his time is now and he – and we – know it.

Zauberspiegel: Tempus and Conan of Cimmeria have something in common. Both of them can not really be described, but lead the author’s pen. How is it to work with such individual character?

Janet Morris: Working with Tempus is exhausting but more exciting than writing any other way.  Although I do know the nature of each adventure, I often don’t know what the resolution of some of his conflicts will be.  So it is very exciting for me to work with him.  He pushes through the adventures, and I follow, keeping up as best I can.  The experience of his reality is complete for me and I try to share that with the reader.  I go where he is; I can see, feel, hear, smell, taste that world completely, and see 360 degrees of it.  There is no doubt who controls his stories:  he does.  Sometimes what he thinks or does or says is unlike what moderns would think or do or say, but that is what makes him unique.

Chris Morris: Robert Asprin once asked Janet why her characters “have to be so big?”  To have a full-blown personality eagerly waiting to get on with it is a blessing for a writer.  Following such a character for a while can train one to recognize those qualities in other characters, until one’s total conception of characterization grows and benefits.

Zauberspiegel: Tempus has its roots in ancient Greece, right? Where does he operate and how he got into the Thieves World? Where is he going? What else did he do? (Do not worry, we will ask him afterwards, just to make sure)

Janet Morris: Tempus is very connected to 7th-4th century BCE ancient Greece; the Sacred Band concept is one discussed by Plato in his Symposia and implemented by ancient Thebes in 379 BCE.  Tempus‘s ideas  and ideals resonate with ancient Greek culture.  Yet in some ways, Tempus connects to ancient Akkadian/Sumerian/Hittite thought as well, through the storm god Enlil.  Tempus came to me in a period when I was reading pre-Socratic philosophers and spending much time with the intellectual adventure of ancient man:  he is deeply parallel to and connected with parts of the history and philosophy of Herakleitos of Ephesos.  These parallels begin with their early history, and Tempus often uses Herakleitan quotes as his own words.  They share epithets and experience:  both of them were called The Obscure, The Riddler, The Black.  Tempus says in his first story that the god pushed him through a dimensional gate, and so he arrived in the world that contained Sanctuary®, after petitioning the storm god to protect him from a wizard’s curse.  Over the series we call the “Sacred Band of Stepsons“ novels and stories,Tempus ventures beyond Sanctuary, out of the universe of Thieves‘ World®, and even to New York City.  When Tempus took possession of Lemuria, he reconstituted his then-scattered Sacred Band of Stepsons.  He now has a base in Lemuria from which he and his Sacred Band can venture to many places and times.  And he is building a new, bigger force for an undisclosed purpose.

Chris Morris: Tempus encompasses antiquity.  His female companion, Cime, enjoys a similar orientation in time/history, as does Askelon of Meridian.  Tempus is comfortable with classical Greece’s accomodation to improving warmaking technology and prescribes pairbond to strengthen the core of his fighting cadre.  Although hesitant to describe his relationship to Herakleitos of Ephesos, Tempus’s observations on the relation of man to the Infinite place him squarely in the pre-Socratic school of thought.

Zauberspiegel: The name of Morris has started with SF and then came to Fantasy. Wasn’t there sometimes a desire to try a thriller or horror novel or do Janet and Chris feel at home where they are in a way, that there is no reason to try other genres?

Janet Morris: We did write some other novels, outside the sf/fantasy tradition.  Sometimes there were under pseudonyms, sometimes not.  We did a rigorous historical novel called “I, the Sun,“ by Janet Morris, and a book called “Warlord“ which today would be called a high-tech thriller.  We did several novels under pseudonyms. “I, the Sun“ is a biographical novel of Suppiluliumas, Great King of the Hittite Empire at the time of the Amarna pharaohs.  Along with Tempus’s books, it remains a favorite of ours and my time with Suppiliumas foreshadowed or was parallel to the evolution of Tempus.

Chris Morris: Thrillers (high tech), yes; horror, no.   Our non-sf/fantasy output included The 40-Minute War, M.E.D.U.S.A., Warlord! (C&JM), COBRA (Daniel Stryker).  Asset in Black (Casey Prescott) was published purely as a ‘novel.’  Janet Morris’s I, the Sun was published as  an ‘historical novel.’  These are our first attempts to escape the sf ghetto.  The 40-Minute War caused a problem for Baen Books because it got wonderful reviews but S&S maintained it was not sf (despite a time travel theme) and S&S decided to punish Jim Baen for crossing the line into mainstream with the titles we did for him.  M.E.D.U.S.A. (1985) predicted the reunification of Germany – to the amusement of former Dir. of Intelligence, Ray S. Cline, who told us our story was “…a good yarn, but it [reunification] won’t happen in our lifetime.”  When the wall came down soon after, Ray had us predict what would happen next and what would replace the doctrine of the containment of communism.  That was the start of our appointments as research directors and senior fellows at a Washington think tank, and of Nonlethality and our defense business.

Zauberspiegel: Your breed horses. In Wikipedia it says that Janet is a “horse women”. Looking now to fantasy, horses can accomplish incredible things, as can barbarians who ride bareback while clad in nothing but a loin cloth. What do you say to such nonsense? Where can we get useful knowledge about horses, so that an author can protect himself from such errors? Only by dealing with them? Should authors who recommend saddle-less riding with bare thighs be placed on a horse to give it a try?

Janet Morris: In fantasy, horses can sometimes do incredible things.  In The Sacred Band of Stepsons series, Abarsis, the Slaughter Priest, brings Tempus two of the mythological “Tros“ horses, bred by Zeus and given to Tros, the founder of Troy, as a consolation after Zeus took Ganymede, Tros’s son, to be his eromenos.  Tros horses were said to be so fast they could run on water; Diomedes and Odysseus in the Iliad tried to steal them from the Trojans; another myth tells of the mares of Diomedes; also, Herakles fed his Tros horses on human flesh.  Achilles‘ horses, Xanthus and Balios, could see the future.  Some horses in the Iliad could speak until the gods struck them dumb. But these writers knew and understood horses.

In modern fantasy, horses can be given impossible attributes.  Writers sometimes do things with horses that no horses would or could do, even if they are especially gifted. I have been riding since I was four years old, and I was in my first horse show at the age of five.  I have cleaned my own stalls, groomed my own horses, done my own breeding, swum with horses, jumped them.  I have ridden for as much as a year at a time exclusively bareback:  horsemanship is a lifelong study.  If you want to write about horses, it would be good to ride a few, take a lesson, clean a stall or two, groom a horse, wash a tail, see a breeding close up.  If you cannont do this, then at least read the ancient experts:  read Kikkuli, the Hittite/Mitannian expert who gave us our first horse-training manual, on training the chariot horse; read Xenophon’s book on advice to The Cavalry Commander.  Read some books such as Warhorse, Cavalry Operations in Ancient Greece; read Hippeis; read a book called Early Riders.

The relationship between horse and man is ancient and nonverbal.  Connecting with a horse intellectually is as close to connecting with Nature as a human can get.  Horses partnered with humans have powered the development of civilization.
As far as riding bareback with no saddle:  the ancients did this, before the surcingle and pad were developed; you can see this on wall paintings and carvings and early statues, but it is not easy:  the horse will sweat where you are sitting, and your skin will get sore and then toughen up.  The bareback rider keeps his toes down, not up like the saddle rider.  He often sits farther back on the horse.  Fighting from horseback with swords or spears or bows is a very complicated topic on which much as been been written because balance while riding bareback is involved, but before stirrups were invented for leverage, warfighting and riding techniques were different than after stirrups.

So we would suggest that a writer using horses n a story understand a few basic things:  it takes less calories to trot a horse than to canter or run him; horses need food and water; horses don’t like to charge a solid object; horses go where your eyes are looking; horses can get sick and die if run too hard or fed the wrong things or watered too much after getting hot; horses are living beings to whom we best communicate our desires with our bodies, not with words or brutality.  Horses are stronger than we are, but have two basic modes:  flight or fight.  Once a relationship is established between horse and rider, this relationship is lifelong.  Horses have abilities and personalities:  every horse is different.  When you are depending on a horse to save your life or do a job, that specific personality is as important to you as the personality of any human ally or adversary.

Chris Morris: Mastery of horsemanship is a path to mastery of self.  Horses symbolize, among other things, that part of the human pysche which can be overwhelming and nonverbal, dramatically empowering or catastrophically unmanageable – our emotional nature.  Astride a horse one is increased, empowered, ennobled…for better or worse.

Appreciation of the horse’s beauty, strength and nobility is universal, perhaps a result of eons of the domestication and selective breeding of both species.  In the Sacred Band novel they serve as war engines, vehicles of deliverance, and partners to the fighters who ride them.

A writer attempting to portray horses should go and meet some horses and dare to interact with them (under supervision), hopefully to experience the exhilaration of linking with them to achieve some objective.  Horses have distinct personalities and are capable of developing behaviors specific to each of their human acquaintances.  Simply leading a horse can produce a vivid impression of the potential of the bond.  If possible, run your hands over the horse and let yourself map the extent of the body and its textures.

If horses are not available to you, I would recommend going to Youtube.com, searching for “Doug Sande,” and watching two videos entitled ‘Privilege Part 1’ and ‘Privilege Part 2.’  In the videos Doug rides a stallion we bred (named ‘Privilege’) and narrates, describing what he is asking from the horse as he rides it.  You should also watch Stacy Westfall’s videos where she performs in reining competition using no saddle OR bridle.  Be sure to notice Stacy’s loincloth.

Zauberspiegel: Since we're talking about mistakes. All various kinds of stupid stuff happen. Egelschiffe drive out of a bay like boats against the wind. Poul Anderson wrote a beautiful essay on the topic. Writing Fantasy, do you pay attention on embedding the story in a realistic environment to avoid such errors?

Janet Morris: We try very hard to make our fiction as realistic as possible.  To that end, we research detail and use the natural world and the technology of the day, and the cultural assumptions of the characters, correctly if we can.  In fantasy, the rules may be different for the physical world than in purely historical fiction or a modern novel, but the world should still work according to the rules of the construct – especially if you are going to change the rules from the rules of physics as moderns understand them.  Ancients understood physics completely differently than moderns and their world was built on their assumptions of the nature of the universe.  We always try to use observation and logic to drive the stories through the construct.  For example, the loud noises we see in movies during space battles are purely impossible:  sound does not propagate in a vacuum.  As for horses, in a story in Thieves‘ World, one writer stole Tempus’s stallion for an evening and put him in a pen with a mare and they mated sucessfully.  Tempus got the horse back, but the mare eventually produced an offspring.  For that to work, the mare’s heat would have to be perfectly timed:  horses are not always ready to mate, and when they are not, they fight if they are put together.  This careless use of reality ruined that story for me.  My characters have cultural norms, customs, and the physical reality of their world to shape thier behavior.  I pay great attention to detail, to how the world works, to the weather and the temperature and the effect of those on the characters.  My characters experience what the natural order requires.  I research the technology of the period, if it is fantasy or historical or a mix (as I like to do, combining ancient real-world and ancient fantastical and sometimes modern together).  I tend to write fantasy with the assumption that the gods were real to the people of the time, and that sorcery appeared real to them, and that different levels of technology were available to certain people.  The more realistic you can make your character’s surroundings – and the behavior of other characters – the better the story will be.

Chris Morris: We strive for hyper-realism to achieve the suspension of disbelief in the reader.  As a rule of thumb we try to know about ninety percent more detail than we use in a scene, so that the narrative implicitly transmits the setting without distracting the reader with gratuitous detail or digressive wandering. We minimize techno-babble.  We don’t show off how much we know, which is boring.  We try not to date the book with so-called ‘new’ theories in science. We do homework to make sure that the physics are right and what is happening is plausible and logical.  If the story is fantasy, we nevertheless have rules for what can be done in the physics of the world.

Zauberspiegel: Did you even once only read fantasy?

Janet Morris: If I ever read only fantasy, it was when I was just learning to read and my mother would read to me at night.  Because she had a Masters degree in education, when I was three and four and five, she read me Spenser’s Faerie Queen, Bullfinch’s Mythology, Midsummer Night‘s Dream, and Bible stories, as well as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Arabian Nights, and Kipling’s Jungle Book.  So at that age my exposure to story was strictly in the context of fantasy.

Chris Morris: Only as a young child.

Zauberspiegel: How do you see the fantasy genre today, compared to the time when you yourself have turned to other tasks and to the time when you yourself have only read fantasy?

Janet Morris: Fantasy today has taken the path of most fiction today:  it is deconstructing itself.  And a novel, whether a fantasy novel, a mystery novel, a historical novel, or a horror novel must succeed first as a complete novel:  a novel must have all the elements of suspense, tragedy, romance, adventure, comedy and philosophy that should be included in any story claiming to be a novel.  Writing genre fiction should not exempt the writer from the requirements of writing any other fiction.  It is important to be literate and to be cognizant of great fantasy writing that includes mythology and legendary tales (by giants such as Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dante, Milton, and including moderns such as Kafka).  Today many writers seem to have lost their connection to what makes fantasy important to the human mind.  Perhaps these writers are only reading successful current fiction in their genre:  genre is death to quality fiction:  a marketing tool that is deconstructing fiction.  Fiction should be the carrier of common values in an evolving society.  Too many stories in fantasy now are unsuccessful as stories partly because they depend on elements made transiently famous by other modern writers, and thus are derivative in the worst possible way.  Fuzzy-eared elves recruiting undiscovered princes to save a world singlehandedly may have worked commercially occasionally, but works far less often artistically.  For example, zombies and vampires (both of which I used sparingly in my Sacred Band and TW stories), cannot, by themselves, illuminate the human condition, unless a talented writer uses them in an inspired context.  And illuminating the human condition is what fantasy does at its best:  freed from political constraints, a fantasy writer who is talented and has a broad palette can often say more about humanity and its struggle than a writer limited by political correctness or obsessed by problems of his day.

Chris Morris: The novel at this time is just in the first stages of recovery from the efforts of the old publishing paradigm to deconstruct it.  The novel of previous generations contained adventure, romance, mystery, comedy, suspense, flights of fancy (fantasy) and horror all in one (usually epic) tale.  Over-categorization, the insistence on breaking down storytelling into its component parts (genres) to suit  bookstore floorplans has done immeasurable damage to the reading public’s desire to have as complete a reading experience between two covers of a book as the experience taking place between their two ears.  Good writing should make you care, period.  How it is dressed is in distant second place.  Bad writing – writing without scope or maturity or craft or consistency or respect for the readers’ credibility and enjoyment – can be foisted on the consumer as categoric specialty fare, delivering endless derivative remakes of formulaic non-nutritive pablum.  With e-pub, the walls of the store are falling away and everything old is new again – the complete Kittredge Shakespeare for 4.95 on Kindle on my Droid.  The eagles of literature are back, flying beneath the radar of the trendsetters straight into the unsophisticated minds of young readers who just happen to be surfing through freebies looking for something to read.. Hallelujah!

Our forays into public writing, defense policy, technology integration initiatives, op/eds, long term strategic planning studies – all rely on the same basic skills and techniques inherent in storytelling.

Zauberspiegel: Many thanks for the interview.

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