The Nebula Awards

Robin Wayne Bailey Interview

Interviewed by Leslie What on July 16 2008

Robin Wayne Bailey is a nominee in the Best Novellete Category for 2007 with his story, The Children’s Crusade, published in the Heroes In Training anthology. This is Mr. Bailey’s first Nebula nomination. He is one of only eight recipients of the SFWA Service Award.

In the pie chart that is your life, with generous slices carved out for fandom, reading, writing, service to SFWA and the SF Hall of Fame, music, activism, family, and martial arts, which slices claim the biggest holds on your life, and how do you manage to keep your life and writing in perspective?

That’s kind of like asking which of your children is most important to you!  Writing and family are, of course, paramount.  Writing keeps me sane.  It’s a cheap form of therapy, and almost anyone will tell you that I need lots of therapy.  My family says they keep me sane, too, but mostly I suspect they’re the reason I need lots of cheap therapy, particularly the members of my extended family, who drive me crazy.

Bodybuilding and martial arts are my passion.  I’ve earned black belts in karate and judo, and studied Yoshinkan Aikido, along with various forms of kobudo.  I currently study Shindo Jinen Ryu.  But bodybuilding is my true passion these days, and the gym is my second home. My therapist said I needed to get off the couch.

Why do you write?  What was your path to becoming a writer, and what are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

Does any artist really know why they do what they do?  I write for lots of reasons, and probably none of them are right.  I write to discover myself and to come to some sort of peace with who I am.  At its core, isn’t all art – writing, painting, music – a form of therapy for the artist?  We struggle, not just to express ourselves, but to make someone listen.  And I write to clarify the world around me, to come to some sort of understanding of the angels and monsters inside all of us.  And I write for money – that’s important, too.  Art’s important, but sometimes you have to pay the rent.

I sold my first short story when I was eighteen and a freshman in a college creative writing course.  I’ve been writing more or less full time for twenty-five years.  I’ve had some great mentors along the way – Wilson Tucker, Carolyn Cherryh, Frank Robinson, to name the important ones.  I’ve had a few bestsellers and a few books that solidly tanked, but mostly been happy in the midlist twilight zone of the “working writer.” They don’t tell you in classes and workshops, but writing is one gigantic gamble.  You roll the dice, and sometimes you win the big money, sometimes you crap out.  Some of us wake up one day and kind of realize we’ve been suckered, that we’ve won just enough over and over again to keep us playing and hoping.  I’m addicted to the gambling.

What themes tend to recur in your work?  How are ways the world might be healed besides magically?  And how do writers influence the everyday world through their work?

It’s a bit of a start to read this question, and my answer might be too strong for this forum.  But what the hell.  This past year brought me to the proverbial “dark place” where you either put the noose around your neck or seek professional help.  A lot of forces coalesced to bring me to that point, among them, post-traumatic stress from my adventure seven years ago with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  I’m cancer-free right now, but you don’t quite get beyond the fear of recurrence.  Every time you catch a cold the first thought is “it’s back.” There were other issues, too.  Childhood sexual abuse issues that resurged with a vengeance.

With the help of people close to me I got help, and during the course of beginning therapy, I reread almost my entire body of work.  I discovered that from story to story and book to book, I was having the same dialog with myself.  Themes of child abuse, broken families, distant parents, children essentially on their own emerged over and over again.  Even in the comedies.  Even in the serious works, novels or stories.  No matter how fantastic the story or otherworldly the setting.  Sometimes it was overt, as in the Frost novels.  Sometimes it was more subtle, even encoded, as in my novella, Toy Soldiers.  It was as if I was leaving messages to myself.

Sometimes, readers also pick up on these messages.  After Shadowdance was published a young gay man wrote to tell me the book had saved his life. Maybe that’s the only way we can influence the world with our writing - one reader at a time.  The Children’s Crusade won’t get us out of Iraq or erase the shame that foolish adventurism has brought on our country, but writing does give me a voice, and it’s important to me what I do with that voice.

Still, I don’t know how to heal the world.  I’m not certain the world wants to be healed.  Right now, I’m working on healing myself.

What are the risks you take personally or professionally when exploring religion and politics in your writing?

Any writer that worries about risk-taking is in the wrong line of work.
If you’ve got something to say and it’s worth saying, then you risk pissing someone off - a reader, an editor, a buyer, whoever.  And if you don’t have anything to say, why are you writing?

Who were some of the greatest influences on your writing, and would that list of writers differ from the authors of your favorite books?

I mentioned Tucker, Cherryh and Robinson earlier.  I’ve learned invaluable lessons from all three, and all three have influenced, not just my writing, but my career choices at some point.  In the sf/f arena, there are almost too many influences to list - C. L. Moore, Philip Jose Farmer, Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison -- these are all writers whose work admire and who I’ve sometimes tried to emulate.

In the broader literary sphere, I love the great Greek playwrights and the Romantic poets.  Steinbeck is a favorite.  So is Flannery O’Connor and lots of others.  I’ve got a master’s degree in literature, and I think the diploma says that entitles me to lots of pretensions.

What might Fritz Leiber think about your novel Swords Against the Shadowland (inspired by his The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser novels)?

Fritz Leiber was unique.  I met him on several occasions.  Call it charisma or personal magnetism - he cast an aura of magic.  To say I was stunned would be an understatement when I was invited to collaborate on a new Lankhmar novel.  I’d read everything by him, not just the Lankhmar works, and revered his writing.  And I was no less stunned when he died before the ink was dry on the contracts.  Patrick Nielsen Hayden took me aside just before the Hugo ceremonies at some Worldcon and gave me the news.  I remember nothing of that ceremony.

Contrary to the promotional material, I wrote Swords Against the Shadowland on my own, honoring Fritz’s material as best I could, but bringing my own voice to it.  I expected to get killed by the critics, but they were kind.  Science Fiction Chronicle named it one of the seven best fantasy books the year of its publication.  And the book will be re-published by Dark Horse Books later this year.  I hope Fritz is smiling – I think he is.

Science Fiction or Fantasy? Where’s the place for realistic writing?

Why choose?  Both have strengths and advantages, and in terms of techniques, they have more in common than not.  Most of my novels have been fantasies, but lots of my shorter works have been science fiction.  My collection, Turn Left to Tomorrow , is all science fiction.

The place for realistic writing is in the characters.  No matter how fantastic the setting or the situation, if the characters aren’t real then everything falls apart.  And that’s true no matter the genre.

Your novelette, The Children’s Crusade was a Nebula nominee.  What’s your favorite piece and is it different than what you think of as your strongest piece and why? What one piece would you want a reader unfamiliar with your work to read as an introduction to your work?

Ah, back to the “choose your favorite child” tactic!  Okay, I’m extremely proud of The Children’s Crusade but I’m also very proud of Keepers of Earth which was selected for Silverberg’s first Best SF of the Year anthology.  Also of The Terminal Solution an alternate-history story about the emergence of AIDS into Victorian England with David Livingstone as Patient Zero, Drs. Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Bell as medical investigators, and Jack the Ripper thrown in for good measure.  I did more research on that story than I’ve done on some of my books.  I’d throw in Toy Soldiers as a very favorite child, too.  These are all available in my collection.

For novels, Shadowdance is my crown jewel.  It’s a very dark fantasy novel and earned a mention in the massive coffee table book, Art Of The Imagination.  And in a very different vein, my young adult Dragonkin books.  Those were immense fun to write.

What are you working on now and what can we expect to see soon?

I just set aside the Big Honking Fantasy novel I’ve been working on for the past year.  Too dark and lacked humor, my agent said.  I’ll rework it later.  Meanwhile, I’ve been playing in other genres.  I’ve done a western story and a fantasy romance, and I’m umpty-chapters into a mystery novel that’s proving great fun.  Particularly in the current market climate, I’m a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one genre basket.  As Heinlein said, “Specialization is for insects.”

ROBIN WAYNE BAILEY is the best-selling author of the Dragonkin books and the Frost series (Frost, Skull Gate, and Bloodsongs) along with numerous other novels and shorter works. He has served on the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Board of Directors as a regional Director and also as president. In conjunction with the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society and James Gunn and the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, Robin founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Hall of Fame. In 2004, the Hall of Fame merged with Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Enterprises in Seattle and became part of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Robin continues to chair the Hall of Fame’s induction committee.

LESLIE WHAT’s new collection, Crazy Love received both Publishers Weekly and Booklist starred reviews.  She teaches writing at UCLA Extension the Writers’ Program and is still looking for the perfect pair of shoes. She previously won a Nebula for her short story The Cost of Doing Business

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