Lace and Blade 5 Author Interview: Robin Wayne Bailey

From lands distant or nearby, familiar or utterly strange, historical or imaginary, from ancient times to the Belle Époque comes a treasury of luscious, elegant, romantic fantasy. Come with us on a journey through time and across boundaries, inspired by the longings of the heart and the courage residing in even the meekest person.

The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2PBzyj6
Print: here (Amazon) or here (Barnes & Noble)

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/bwYJwP

I crossed paths with Robin Wayne Bailey at various times in my early career, both as contributors to the very first Sword and Sorceress anthology, through GEnie, and later when he was outgoing SFWA President and I was incoming Secretary. I'm pleased to consider him a friend as well as a colleague.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?

Robin Wayne Bailey: Besides writing, I have a lot of unrelated passions, including body-building, martial arts, yoga and hiking. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “unrelated” because everything we are and do impacts our writing in some way, either by writing more realistic fight scenes or giving us the discipline it takes to actually write. I’ve been a dancer, a planetarium assistant director, and a college professor, among other things. Again, all these things get channeled into writing one way or the other.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. In grade school, I composed a poem, and my teachers insisted I read it at an assembly. My parents then insisted that I read it to relatives and visitors. I realized pretty quickly that writing was a way of getting attention. I sold my first story when I was eighteen. In the first couple of weeks of my freshman year as an English major, a handful of other stories through college, and my first novel on my thirtieth birthday.

DJR:  What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?

RWB: Interesting question. I don’t always know where a particular story comes from. Sometimes, I can say exactly that a painting or an image or a sound served as inspiration. But more often I just trust my subconscious to take over. I’ll sit down with no clear direction and type a page or a paragraph. Maybe I’ll throw that away, but as often as not what comes out on the page will inspire the next paragraph or the next page, and if I’m following basic story structure, the result is something workable. That’s the way this story emerged, piece by piece, one image following another from my subconscious, nothing planned out or plotted beforehand.

DJR:  What’s the most memorable fan mail you’ve ever received? 

RWB: Hard to pick, but some years ago I wrote an X-MEN story for an ACE Books anthology called X-Men Essentials. My story involved Jean Grey and Scott Sommers, Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, and a few other elements. I received the nicest, kindest fan mail from Stan Lee, himself about that story. I’ve kept it to this day.

DJR: How does your writing process work?

RWB: I sort of described this above. But my process changes from work to work. Sometimes, it’s very deliberate with everything plotted out in advance, all the research done. Sometimes, it’s more impulsive: “let’s start writing and see what emerges.” The second way is actually more fun for me because then the story or book becomes an adventure of discovery. But you also have more false starts and failures that way. You have to learn to tolerate those.

DJR:  What have you written recently?

RWB: I have a story coming up in the next Darkover anthology. My fiction work has slowed down the last couple of years while I’ve turned my attention to other projects. But that pendulum is swinging back. Stay tuned.

DJR:  What advice would you give an aspiring writer?

RWB: I’m always hesitant to give anyone advice these days, especially about writing. The publishing business has become too chaotic, and what seems like good advice now may not be tomorrow. There are the usual platitudinous things: read good books, study writing, and write. But those aren’t sufficient anymore. You have to have an aptitude for marketing yourself and your work these days. And then if you want a career, you have to have some plan for maintaining it.

DJR:  Any thoughts on the Lace and Blade series or this being the final volume?

RWB: I’ve been immensely proud of my involvement with the Lace and Blade series. It’s given me a home for a kind of story I probably would never have found a market for otherwise, stories like “A Touch of Moonlight” and its sequel, “Trial by Moonlight.” It is not true that a good story will always find a home. Sometimes, the right home has to emerge to justify writing a certain kind of story. Lace and Blade has been a near perfect home for certain of my stories, and I’ll miss it. I’m so glad to be part of this final volume.

Robin Wayne Bailey is the author of numerous novels, including the Dragonkin trilogy and the Frost series of novels and stories, as well as Shadowdance and the Fritz Leiber-inspired Swords Against the Shadowland.  His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies with numerous appearances in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress series and Deborah J. Ross's Lace and Blade anthologies.  Some of his stories have been collected in two volumes, Turn Left to Tomorrow and The Fantastikon: Tales of Wonder from Yard Dog Books.  He's a former two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a founder of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He's co-edited, along with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, the recent anthology, Little Green Men - Attack!