Lucius Shepard Interview
A prolific writer of speculative fiction, Lucius Shepard has been entertaining readers with novels, short stories and novellas since the early 1980s. Many of his stories have gone on to win awards such as the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon awards. His novella, Stars Seen Through Stone, received a nomination for a 2007 Nebula Award.
Shepard often draws from his own life of extensive travels on five continents and several career and scholastic pursuits. For Stars Seen Through Stone, he drew from his past experiences performing in rock bands. In the story, Vernon, an ex-rocker who has an ear for discovering new music talents, brings home his latest “project”—a slovenly, yet gifted, singer/guitar player with a penchant for debauchery –- and attempts to turn the annoying slug into a bankable musician. After some strange sightings, several of the town residents begin to manifest their own unique talents. But talent comes with a price.
What was the original spark or idea for this story?
I was in a number of rock bands in the 70s, early 80s, and therein lies the inspiration. I’ve always wanted to write about rock and roll, but my early attempts…I was too close to the subject and included all sorts of minutiae in my stories that made a reader’s eyes glaze over. Now I have a proper distance from the material, and I’m able to focus on what’s important to the story. There was a guy in one of those bands who became the model for Stanky in Stars Seen Through Stone, so specifically I guess I always wanted to write something around him and my relationship to him as the band’s leader/dictator. I didn’t have to make much up in either regard.
Except for a small hint at the beginning of the story, we don’t really see any science fiction or fantasy elements until halfway into the story. Is this slow build deliberate? Why did you choose to write the story this way?
I didn’t really make a choice. I simply told the story the way it came out. Since the story was mainly a character study, I let the characters do the work, and they weren’t persuaded that anything science fictional was happening to them, so… But I reject the notion that there was nothing science fictional or with fantasy content until the halfway mark—there were tiny bits, hints, etc., which lent the climax weight when it came.
I see no reason why the plot must be set in the foreground of a genre story, unless the story absolutely demands it. This story did not demand it. We’re not in the 1950s anymore and the Golden Age is long since over. There’s no point in writing old-fashioned cardboard character, Johnny-Has-A-Problem science fiction unless, like the Republicans, you’re pandering to the base.
I was struck by the feeling of authenticity that you give the setting and characters in this story. How do you make fictional people and places feel so real?
Well, a good many of the people aren’t fictional, so that helps, and I’ve spent time in Western Pennsylvania. But how you make real people feel real is as problematic as it is to make fictive people feel real. You have to ground your characters in the familiar so as to make people believe they know them. All writing is sleight of hand, making the reader believe he’s seen something or knows something about the story that he truly does not. You can’t put a person down on a sheet of paper; you have to evoke them. A crucial part of that evocation comes from knowing how your characters speak, the rhythms of their speech, their use of colloquialisms, profanity, etc, and being able to reduce that to a credible shorthand. Settings are easier. The first paragraph of Stars Seen Through Stone is a writerly trick in which I attempted to focus the reader’s attention on a minor event, a strange gust of wind witnessed by someone who’s smoking a joint; by doing that, I hoped to make them comfortable with the narrator, to rely on his witness and believe he was showing them the town of Black William, even though he’s only giving them tiny pieces of a reality.
Throughout your career, you’ve won or been nominated for several awards. Does the experience change after winning or being nominated so many times?
The first time I was nominated for the Nebula, I was pleased—I was up for three awards and lost them all, but it was a cool weekend. I met Harlan and Mike Swanwick and a bunch of other writers for the first time. My girlfriend at the time was more excited than I was and that made it fun. But I haven’t put too much stock in awards or the awards process since I won the American History award in the eighth grade over better students because the teacher was the JV football coach and thought I was a prospect. The first convention I attended was a Worldcon, and I was in the convention center parking lot after the Hugos and saw this famous writer at his car—he was hopping mad, cursing out another writer in absentia for winning the Hugo he wanted to win. It’s nice when people think something you’ve written may be worthy of an award, but I don’t enjoy competing with other writers. The concept of Best This, Best That seems a little iffy to me—there are so many different types of stories and so many variables. I think it would be more reasonable to cite a certain number of people for having done good work and do away with awards. The moment of winning is nice, but it loses its savor quickly and doesn’t mean much in the long run. That said, it’s merely an opinion, certainly nothing I feel all that strongly about.
What kind of mark do you hope to leave on the genre?
Truthfully I have no ambitions or expectations as regards a potential legacy. I can detect a little bit of a me-influence in certain writers’ work and that’s gratification enough.
Who or what were the biggest influences for you in developing your craft – both in literature and in life?
My father, who educated me to become a writer, and Avram Davidson, one of the best fantasists ever, who made me believe I was a writer at Clarion.
How does your writing process work?
I get up early and try to start before I’m fully awake, because that way I don’t think about what a nice day it is and all I might do otherwise. I work on one project in the morning, another in the afternoon, and if I feel frisky I’ll work on a third at night. I write very tight first drafts, lots of rewriting as I go, which isn’t the most efficient way, but it suffices for me. I have a heavy bag in my apartment, and whenever I’m stuck I go over and punch it for a while. That usually shakes something loose. I try to do about six or seven pages a day in total.
How much research do you usually have to do for a story?
I avoid stories that require any kind of research other than travel. I abhor doing traditional research—libraries make me sleepy, and I don’t like reading non-fiction, although there have been exceptions. On occasion I look up something on the Internet and sometimes I’ll call up a friend who’s a science geek and ask him a couple of questions. That’s about it.
What drew you to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre?
It was accidental. My band broke up, and I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I had written half a story, a piece with a light fantasy element set in Chiapas, but really more of a character piece, and my wife sent it in to the Clarion workshop, mostly to get me out of the house. I was accepted and as a result I became a genre writer. I’d read only lightly in the genre before Clarion and had no idea that I’d ever be any kind of success at it.
How much of your stories are taken from your own personal autobiography?
Quite a bit. Some more than others. Larissa Miusov, a story I had in Eclipse
Do you travel to find stories, or do stories find you when you travel?
I travel to travel. Stories are a natural by-product of the kind of traveling I do, which is cheap hotels in out of the way places that don’t get too many of my fellow countrymen. I like desolate places, unbeautiful islands, unpopular tropics. In such places, the processes of life seem very clear. Staying in Hiltons and Westins and what have you tends to cut you off from the people who might be prone to tell you stories… the best stories, at any rate.
In your travels, you must have been exposed to stories from dozens of cultures. Have you noticed any common thread through these stories from culture to culture? Or are we all different and distinctly unique?
Oh, I don’t know. There’s a common thread that runs through folktales, but then I had to go to Azherbaijan to find out that there were sturgeon poachers who harvested caviar from fish in the Caspian Sea and carried automatic weapons and used submarines to transport their contraband. I suppose you could say that we’re all the same but different.
If you could give new writers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Writerly advice? Well, this is personal, but in workshops and so on over the years I’ve read an awful lot of stories by people who either are not using their life experience in their work or else have very little experience to draw from. I believe you can tell the difference between stories that arise from experience and those that do not. So I might suggest that novice writers try and live a few stories before they essay to write one. Career advice? Take the cash and flush the credit cards.
What do you have in the hopper for your next project?
I’m working on a long novel about a peculiar South Carolina family and a batch of shorter pieces, one entitled, “I Got Those Way-Down-Below-The-Himalayas-In-A-Secret-Cavern-Burns-A-Flame-Brighter-Than-The-Sun Tibetan Blues.” The title’s a short story; I have little hope that the novelette will be as good.
Lucius Shepard was born in Lynchburg, Virgina and raised in Daytona Beach Florida. His fiction has won the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon, the Locus, and others. His latest book is The Best Of Lucius Shepard, a career retrospective. He currently lives in Neuchatel, Switzerland. His blog, a group effort he shares with Paul di Fillipo, Liz Hand, and Paul Witcover, can be found here. He is the author of Softspoken
By day, JEN WEST runs the corporate rat race working in women’s wear design and merchandising for an upscale clothing manufacturer. By night she’s a mild-mannered freelance writer in constant search for the next interesting character or story.
Her interviews have appeared in such venues as Shimmer and Fairwood Press’s interview collection, Human Visions. She has degrees in Journalism and French from the University of Oregon, and remembers fondly the pressure of meeting deadlines at the Oregon Daily Emerald as a staff writer. She currently resides with her writer husband, Ken Scholes, two pudgy cats and a box garden in St. Helens, OR. Drop her a note at .
