{"id":50,"date":"2008-08-12T03:36:39","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T03:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2009-08-19T06:51:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T06:51:21","slug":"author-interview-series-21-catherine-asaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/12\/author-interview-series-21-catherine-asaro\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview Series #21 – Catherine Asaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nebula Award-winning author Catherine Asaro is one of those writers who have made the transition from a career in hard science to writing hard science fiction. She blends strong female characters, romance, and hard SF into stories that have kept readers coming back for twenty novels to date.\u00a0 But even within the staunchly rational and quantifiable boundaries of her training and earlier profession as a theortical physicist and academician, there was a deep well of creativity that spans music and dance as well as a writing. That creativity quickly becomes evident in her books and in our conversation.<\/p>\n

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TH: Can you give a brief arc of your career thus far as a writer\/author?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> CA: I started to write seriously in graduate school, as a way to relax from doing my doctorate.\u00a0 I wrote the first version of Catch the Lighting, The Last Hawk, A Roll of the Dice, Aurora in Four Voices, Light and Shadow,<\/em> and Primary Inversion<\/em>, and I already had worked out the stories for The Radiant Seas, Schism, The Final Key, Skyfall<\/em>, parts of The Quantum Rose<\/em>, and various other bits. My first fiction publication was “Dance in Blue,” a novelette in a Christmas anthology edited by David Hartwell at Tor. He also had Primary Inversion<\/em>, and I think he wanted to see what I was like to work with before buying the book. I was very pleased with the story; he’s a good editor.\u00a0 I’ve been fortunate to work with excellent editors, all of them.\u00a0 My first story in Analog was “Light and Shadow.”\u00a0 The editor, Stan Schmidt, found it in the slush pile.\u00a0 Primary Inversion<\/em> was my first book, and I’ve had over twenty since then.<\/p>\n

TH: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?\u00a0 How did you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CA: Well, I tried<\/strong> to write when I was eight, but decided I didn’t know enough.\u00a0 I didn’t try again until my last semester in undergraduate school, at UCLA.\u00a0 It took over! I knew then I couldn’t write in graduate school, or it would take over again and distract me from my work. So I didn’t for a few more years.\u00a0 But eventually I did start writing again.\u00a0 And it did indeed distract me. I suspect it added another six months to the time it took me to finish my doctorate.\u00a0 The writing just grabs you by the shoulders and won’t let go until you let it have its way with you.<\/p>\n

TH: Are you a writer who puts herself out there, or one who stays in and scribbles in private?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CA: I write in private, but I always give my work to other people to get their comments.\u00a0 I’ve found it invaluable.\u00a0 I’m not one to think my work can’t be improved.\u00a0 Good readers can pick up things I didn’t see, didn’t know, didn’t make clear, or didn’t who-knows-what-else. A good reader is worth her or his weight in gold.<\/p>\n

TH: A lot of established writers seem to have a stack of writing somewhere stuffed in a shoebox.\u00a0 I’m talking about stuff that perhaps helped you learn and develop your craft, but will never see the light of day, like the five novels the author had to write before he could get to the good one. Do you have anything like this?\u00a0 What’s in your shoebox?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CA: Well somewhere packed away in some box is that story I wrote at UCLA.\u00a0 I’ve no idea where it is, though.\u00a0 It wouldn’t work as a book now because it was an earlier version of the Ruby Dynasty<\/em>, in a story that is at odds with most of what I’ve written since.<\/p>\n

TH: Of course, most writers want to have bestsellers or make some sort of artistic or literary impact, and you have numerous novels to your credit.\u00a0 Are there some unrealized accomplishments that you’re striving for in the near future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CA: Yeah, sure.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude00\u00a0 I’d love to have a bestseller. <\/span>I’ve been on some of the less well known lists, and I’ve skimmed the bottom of some of the bigger lists, but I’ve never made it high up.\u00a0 Yet! It’s important to me that my work be artistically satisfying. Some literary types scoff at science fiction, romance, and fantasy as genres, but I see absolutely no reason why genre fiction can’t be literary.\u00a0 Of course, what people define as literary varies a great deal. It isn’t just genre versus non-genre, either.\u00a0 I’ve noticed it with all types of groups.\u00a0 For example, women and men have somewhat different ideas about it.\u00a0 Men sometimes refer to what women consider literary as fluff, and women sometimes wonder what the heck is all the ado about with some works that appeal more to the male literary types.<\/p>\n

TH: What are some of the things that most inspire you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CA: I listen to music a lot.\u00a0 I like all kinds.\u00a0 This month I’m working on a book about a rock star in the future, so my June 2008 playlist has a lot of rock music in it.\u00a0 Here are some samples of what I’ve been listening to, mostly rock from current works in 2008 all the way back to the late sixties, but also with some other music I enjoy:<\/p>\n