Previous Interview by KC Heath - Originally published on Yet Another Book Review
Interview: L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
(publication list follows)
KC: What country and province / state do you live in?
LEE: For the last ten years, Carol Ann and I have lived in Cedar City, Utah, a university town in southwestern Utah that is the home of Southern Utah University and the Utah Shakespeare Festival, which won a Tony last year for the best regional theatre in the U.S. I'm originally from Colorado, via two tours in the U.S. Navy, 17 years in Washington, D.C., and five in New Hampshire. Carol Ann is from Kentucky, and has lived in even more places than I have. We ended up here in 1993, when she was offered a job at S.U.U. as a professor of voice and head of the university opera theatre program. Since I'd finally made the transition to full-time writer, and was portable, and university professors are not, we moved here.
KC: Tell us a little about yourself.
LEE: If I listed everything I've done and all the jobs I've held, or
failed to hold, it would fill more space than anyone would want to look through.
But the things I did which taught me the most were being a competitive swimmer,
a lifeguard, a Navy pilot, an economist, and the various positions in
Washington, D.C.., which included being staff director of a Congressional
office, head of Congressional Affairs for the U.S. EPA, and a consultant in
energy, environment, and communications.
I have a fondness for dogs, but not cats, and currently manage the chaos
occasioned by two dachshunds, a shih-tzu, and a spaniel of uncertain origin.
KC: Do you write full time? If not, what is your day-job?
LEE: It's fair to say that I write full-time, if not more upon occasion
KC: What got you into writing in the first place?
LEE: I'd never thought about being a writer until I was around fifteen and discovered poetry, actually through a French assignment where I was required to translate some of the work of Francois Villon. Then, I began to write poetry, which was published in scholastic magazines, both in high school and college, and went on to take what amounted to a minor in writing in college -- all poetry. I continued to write poetry while I was in the Navy and for several years after I got out and became an economist. I faithfully entered the Yale Younger Poets' competition until I was too old to be a younger poet -- and never received more than form rejections.
In my late twenties, a friend suggested that I should try writing science fiction, since I'd read it from the time I was 12 or 13. I wrote a short story and sent it off to ANALOG, not knowing any better, and it was eventually published there.
KC: What specific aspects of your past aid in your story-telling? You have such wonderful settings, please give examples.
LEE: Since writing is about people, and all experience helps in writing, it's impossible to single out any aspect of my past as being necessarily more helpful than any other. Certainly, being a Navy helicopter pilot helped in giving me a feel for writing about space piloting and combat, and the political and economic background has been most useful in ensuring that the structures of the societies I've created make some sort of economic and political sense. My time as a political appointee at EPA also taught me that, sometimes, those with whom you work are often more dangerous than your declared opponents. This comes out even more in my book that was justed released -- THE ETHOS EFFECT.
KC: Of all the books you have written, which one(s) is/are your favorite(s), and why?
LEE: Right now, I've completed something like 41 books, but to pick out favorites is like asking me to name a favorite child, and with eight children between us, Carol Ann and I understand that such choices are fair neither to the child nor the book -- and tend to be most unrepresentative. I've tried some very different things in different books. For example, the entire Spellsong Cycle is written from the female point of view. While women have been doing this for generations, I'm one of the few men who's been foolhardy enough to write an entire series from the viewpoint of the opposite sex. In ARCHFORM:BEAUTY, I told the story from the first-person viewpoint of five separate characters, and, in the process, took aim at one of fiction's most enduring -- and inaccurate -- conceits, the idea that one or two characters know everything that happened at the end of the book. In real life, this is almost never true, and in ARCHFORM:BEAUTY, the end mirrors life more than fiction. In the "Ghost" books, I wrote a series of alternate history books about an earth where ghosts were real, not sensationalized, but just part of the world.
KC: Your stories have wonderful characterization. Which of your characters do you identify with most? (&/or) What is it about you that brings certain characters to life?
LEE: All characters have to reflect either the author or the author's
observations or experience, or they won't be real. Human beings share the same
general set of appetites and desires, although the relative strength of these
varies from individual to individual. In a word, character traits and motivation
have to be in synch with each other. If I had to guess, I'd say that Johan
Eschbach of the Ghost books is one of the closer matches to me, although he's
not me, by any stretch of the imagination. He's politically far better than I
ever was, but that could be because he learned from my mistakes.
KC: Who were your writing mentors and what did they teach you?
LEE: My first writing mentors were my parents, who inspired the love of reading and language. My first formal mentor was Walter Rosenberry, my ninth grade English teacher. The writing teacher who most shaped my approach wasn't a writer at all, but a college English professor who told me that he couldn't teach me to write, but he could -- and did -- tell me whether what I wrote was good, terrible, or somewhere in the middle and why, and that was Clay Hunt. I've also been fortunate in having the same editor -- David Hartwell -- for more than 20 years. In addition, the years working as a consultant in Washington, D.C., helped to fine-tune the use of words. All of them, and others, taught me aspects of the craft, but to explain what each taught and why would take a book.
KC: What do you want to accomplish with your writing? What are your writing goals?
LEE: My writing goals are relatively straightforward. I want to tell a great story, while making people think and getting paid enough for it so that I can keep doing it.
KC: Have you published outside the genre?
LEE: I've had poetry published in small literary magazines, and a number of technical articles in various industry and professional publications, covering everything from the impact of environmental regulations on the petroleum industry to the economic impacts of telecommunications deregulation. THE GREEN PROGRESSION, which was a novel written in collaboration with Bruce Levinson, was essentially a Washington novel, although marketed as near future SF. It wasn't SF, because most of what was in the book had already happened in one form or another, and the names and exact events had been changed to protect the guilty -- and us.
For better or worse, everything published to date has been under my own name. I don't have any pseudonyms.
KC: Tell us about your next project.
LEE: Actually, there are several. The next Recluce novel -- WELLSPRING OF CHAOS -- will be out in April. It takes place some 60 years after THE ORDER WAR and features a married cooper named Kharl who lives in Brysta and angers the powers that be by doing several good deeds.
The third book in the Corean Chronicles -- SCEPTERS -- will be out in hardcover next July, and is the third, and probably the last, book about Alucius and Wendra.
Next fall will be another experimental stand-alone SF novel -- entitled FLASH. It's set roughly 150 years in the future on earth and deals with a former Marine light colonel who discovers that, if he does what's legal, he's dead, and if he does what's ethically required, he's also likely to be dead -- if he's caught. Add in nanotechnology, a self-aware police AI, a different spin on the future of advertising, political machinations, global conglomerates, and everything gets even more complex.
I'm currently working on the sequel to WELLSPRING OF CHAOS, and since
I'm still working on it, the less said, the better.
KC: How can you write so much? --I mean, what keeps the ideas flowing?
LEE: The ideas, as I have often said, in many ways are the simple
part. Every book or story comes out of a simple two word question: What if?
Sometimes, a book requires a number of "what ifs," but coming up with those
hasn't been the hardest part for me. Making them real within a story is. Terry
Pratchett is reputed to have said that "writer's block is a singularly American
affectation." Whether he did or not, the underlying point is simple. If you're a
writer... write. We don't put up with lawyers who have attorney's block, or
surgeons who have surgeon's block. A writer's chosen task is to write well and
professionally. If you can't keep doing it, then you're no longer a
professional, but a gifted amateur.
KC: Which web-sites can readers go to when they want to keep abreast of your work in the future?
LEE: There really isn't a website that deals with future projects. The best site is the one Michael Sauers does, out of friendship and support http://www.webpan.com/msauers/modesitt
Herewith follows a publication list [but only of F&SF, not the reviews or technical stuff]:
LELAND E. MODESITT, JR. Publications
NOVELS
Scepters (C) TOR Books (July 2004)
Wellspring of Chaos (R) TOR Books (April 2004)
Ecolitan Prime [collection] TOR Books (November 2003)
The Ethos Effect TOR Books October 2003
Darknesses (C) TOR Books August 2003
Legacies (C) TOR Books October 2002
Archform: Beauty TOR Books July 2002
Shadowsinger (S) TOR Books February 2002
Ghost of the White Nights (G) TOR Books October 2001
Empire & Ecolitan [collection] Tor Books July 2001
The Shadow Sorceress (S) TOR Books June 2001
The Octagonal Raven TOR Books February 2001
Timegods' World [collection] TOR Books July 2000
Scion of Cyador (R) TOR Books September 2000
Magi'i of Cyador (R) TOR Books April 2000
Darksong Rising (S) TOR Books December 1999
Gravity Dreams TOR Books July 1999
The Forever Hero [collection] TOR Books July 1999
Colors of Chaos (R) TOR Books January 1999
The Ghost of the Revelator (G) TOR Books October 1998
The White Order (R) TOR Books May 1998
The Spellsong War (S) TOR Books January 1998
The Chaos Balance (R) TOR Books September 1997
The Ecolitan Enigma TOR Books July 1997
The Soprano Sorceress (S) TOR Books January 1997
Adiamante TOR Books October 1996
Fall of Angels (R) TOR Books June 1996
The Parafaith War TOR Books February 1996
The Death of Chaos (R) TOR Books October 1995
The Order War (R) TOR Books January 1995
Of Tangible Ghosts (G) TOR Books October 1994
The Magic Engineer (R) TOR Books March 1994
The Timegod TOR Books September 1993
Towers of the Sunset (R) TOR Books August 1992
Timedivers' Dawn TOR Books July 1992
The Green Progression TOR Books January 1992
[With Bruce S. Levinson]
The Magic of Recluce (R) TOR Books May 1991
The Ecologic Secession TOR Books July 1990
The Ecolitan Operation TOR Books June 1989
The Forever Hero:
In Endless Twilight TOR Books March 1988
The Silent Warrior TOR Books December 1987
Dawn for a Distant Earth TOR Books January 1987
The Ecologic Envoy TOR Books September 1986
The Hammer of Darkness AVON August 1985
The Fires of Paratime Simon
& Schuster October 1982
(R) = A "Recluce" novel
(S) = A "Spellsong" novel
(C) = A "Corean Chronicles" novel
(G) - A "Ghost" novel
STORIES
"Fallen Angel" Flights: Extreme Visions Berkley Books
of Fantasy [Anthology] [2004/2005]
"The Swan Pilot" Emerald Magic:
Great Tales of Irish Fantasy
TOR Books
[Anthology] [March 2004]
"The Dock to Heaven" Lowport [Anthology] Meisha Merlin Press
September 2003
"The Pilots" In The Shadow of Cumberland House the Wall [Anthology] April 2002
"Precision Set" ON SPEC Summer 2001
"Understanding" ON SPEC Summer 2000
"Power to..." ANALOG November 1990
"Rule of Law" ANALOG April 1981
"Iron Man, Plastic Ships" ISAAC ASIMOV'S
SCIENCE FICTION October 1979
"Second Coming" ASIMOV'S SF
ADVENTURE MAGAZINE Spring 1979
"Viewpoint Critical" ANALOG July 1978
"Reaction Time" ANALOG January 1978
"Came the Revolution" GALAXY September 1977
"A House by Any Other Name" ANALOG November 1974
"The Great American Economy" ANALOG May 1973
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