I met Dave Smeds in the early years of my writing career through the pages of the early volumes of Sword and Sorceress, in which we each had stories. We discovered a shared background in martial arts, as well. His beautiful designs grace the covers of many of the anthologies I've edited, including this one.
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you
come to be a writer?
Dave Smeds: One way to put it is that it was an entirely
natural thing. I did a lot of reading as a kid, and wanted to create my own
stuff. The only thing as alluring as writing fiction was to be a comic book
artist, but while I took some steps in that direction and still do make some of
my income as an artist, I just wasn’t fast enough or good enough to realize
that particular pipe dream. Your question, though, makes me aware of how
generational my choice was. I was born in the mid-1950s. In my youth I didn’t
have the distraction of iphones and cable channels and the World Wide Web.
Heck, at first, there wasn’t even any color on the television programs I watched.
My leisure entertainment came in the form of paperbacks, print magazines, and
comic books. Those outlets were a big deal back then to the whole society in
terms of providing sustaining creative entertainment and edification. I wanted
to be part of that big deal. I wonder if I would have headed in that direction
if I had been part of the millennial generation. I think the answer would
probably be no.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
DS: The theme of the series is along the lines
of “swashbuckling tales of romance” and of course I pointed my muse in that
direction, but when it comes to the Lace and Blade series, my muse has pretty
consistently been a contrary wench. I saw an image in my mind of the lone
adventurer wandering the land. That seemed pretty spot-on in terms of theme,
but when the fellow came completely into view I saw that he was the pilot of a
gondola on a river, à la Charon on the River Styx if only Charon had possessed
sex appeal and if only the river weren’t so singular of purpose. My plan of
course was for the story to involve a romance. That element is in fact in there
in the final draft, but to my surprise it is unconsummated, which is not one of
my usual modes.
Once I had the idea of
using a river as a setting, I’m afraid I had no choice but to go forward. The
Kings River of the southern San Joaquin Valley runs along the edge of the farm
where I grew up. I spent many an hour on that waterway, floating on tractor
inner tubes below the bluffs and oak trees. The water was snow melt from the
High Sierra so it was bracing even in July, but that was great because the air
temperature of a Fresno County day in July is usually above a hundred degrees
Fahrenheit. I also really appreciated the safety aspect. If you get a tired of
swimming when you’re in the middle of a lake, you’re screwed. If you get tired
on a river, just tread water for a few moments and the current will carry you
to the bank and you don’t have to drown after all.
DJR: What authors
have most influenced your writing?
DS: In the early days, I never thought of myself as deeply influenced by any particular author, except perhaps in the sense that I loved to write heroic fantasy, and back then, anyone doing that was standing on the shoulders of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien. In retrospect, I see L. Frank Baum's influence upon the way I structure a story. Joseph Campbell speaks of heroic fantasy as the so-called hero’s journey, as if all examples are like that, which is to say, they are tales in which a protagonist, usually a young man, pulls himself up by his bootstraps, stands alone, and takes full credit for completion of a goal. But Baum did not write that way. He wrote what is better described as the heroine’s journey, in which his protagonist, be it Dorothy Gale or one of the many others, does not fight battles, but instead makes alliances. That’s a more subtle, complex, and dare I say, meaningful process. I see plenty of works out there that adhere to the Campbellian mode. Many are about a female protagonist and many are written by female authors, but they’re still the hero’s journey. That’s fine, but I on the other hand will go on doing what Frank showed me.
DJR: What’s the
most memorable fan mail you’ve ever received?
DS: A letter from a man who had served as an
officer in Vietnam, thanking me for writing “Short Timer.”
DJR: How does
your writing process work?
DS: My process would drive any other writer nuts, I suspect. The ideas -- whether it is for a scene, a character, a setting, a plot, a premise -- bubble up and I go with what fascinates me at the moment. I see the whole story as a piece and fill in the pieces almost randomly as if assembling a jigsaw puzzle. I might write the ending first. I might write a little bit that fits two-thirds of the way along. Often I will start at the beginning, but it's just about unheard of that I proceed from page one to the end in chronological order. I think that's happened only three or four times in forty-eight years of writing, and only with very short pieces.
DJR: What have
you written recently? What lies ahead?
DS: Just shy of thirty-two years after I began
it, I have finally completed a full draft of The Wizard’s Nemesis, which completes the trilogy that began with
The Sorcery Within. As I jot down the
answers to this set of interview questions, the editing and proofing and
production phase of the novel -- and of the new editions of the first two books
-- is still to come, but publication is now officially “pending.”
DJR: What advice
would you give an aspiring writer?
DS: Forget about it. Quit right now. I don’t
need any more competition.
DJR: Any thoughts
on the Lace and Blade series or this
being its final volume?
DS: I’m particularly discouraged to learn this
is it, at least for now. It had barely started up again. I did four pieces for
the series, skipping only volume two. For whatever reason, be it the theme or
serendipity or faith or just the workings of that contrary-wench muse, I feel
as though those four pieces are among the ten best stories of my career, and I
was looking forward to having the chance to aim at that standard again.
Dave Smeds has authored novels (including The
Sorcery Within and X-Men: Law of the Jungle), screenplays,
comic book scripts, and articles, but is best known for his short fiction. His
work has graced the pages of Asimov's SF, F&SF, Realms
of Fantasy, and a plethora of anthologies, including most particularly the
Sword and Sorceress series and the Lace and Blade series. His wonderful short fiction piece, "The Wind's Kiss," first appeared in Lace and Blade 4. It's a marvelous story, exquisitely written, full of pitch-perfect heart. Now it's also available in Dave's collection Swords, Magic, and Heart (see the cover below).
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