Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Heather Rose Jones: I’ve
been writing in some form or another most of my life, whether stories, songs,
or poetry. I’ve always loved working with language. So it’s hard to point to
any particular time point or process of “becoming a writer.” It’s a bit easier
to talk about how I came to be a published writer. For that, I got a solid push
by getting to know various other published science fiction and fantasy authors
in the SF Bay Area, whic got me used to the idea that it was a possible thing
to move from having written something to getting it published. My first short
stories appeared in the Sword and
Sorceress anthology series back in the 1990s. I was working on some novels
at that time that still sit in file folders, but my first published book series
is one I didn’t start working on until after I’d finished my mid-life PhD and
decided I needed an entirely new approach to my fiction writing.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Lace and Blade 4?
HRJ: “Gifts Tell
Truth” is set in the same world as my Alpennia series: a mildly alternate
Ruritanian early 19th century with magic. One of the things I love to do when
exploring characters it to make offhand references to events in their past. Events
where I may not know all the details of what happened, just that it shaped them
in some way. One thing that is very clear about Jeanne, Vicomtesse de
Cherdillac, one of the protagonists of The
Mystic Marriage and a continuing character throughout the series, is that
she is a “Woman With A Past.” The more I write about her, the more fascinated I
am by how she came to be the person she is in the novels.
The events in “Gifts Tell Truth” haven’t been specifically referenced
in the books, other than a passing comment about how the stories of her youth
aren’t appropriate for innocent ears. But I knew in a general way that during
the French occupation of Alpennia, just after Jeanne’s unexpected marriage to a
much older French aristocratic émigré, she led a wild and scandalous life,
spurred on by a tragic event in her coming-out season (which will be told in a
later story). The current story grew out of wanting to explore the origins of
some of her later attitudes and reflexes, with the added bonus of showing the
start of an odd but enduring friendship that features in the novels.
DJR: What authors
have most influenced your writing? What about them do you find inspiring?
HRJ: I always
have a hard time talking about influences. It’s not that I don’t think I have
them, or that I think I’m a “self-made” writer, but I spent so many years
simply devouring so many good (and not so good) books that I don’t know that I
could identify my conscious influences. It’s a bit like the majority of my
historic background research: I’m constantly tossing material into the compost
heap, and when I need the fertilizer to grow a story in, there it is, but it’s
digested and changed. If we’re talking about stylistic influences, the only ones
I can point to with any certainty are the short stories I’ve written in
imitation of various genres of medieval literature.
But I can identify some writers who inspire me in terms of the
shape of their career. Writers who are being a direct inspiration by
encouraging me when I feel like the publishing world doesn’t have a place I fit
into. That would be people like Kate Elliott and Beth Bernobich and Melissa
Scott. I’m going to stop with the first three that came to mind because
otherwise I’ll worry too much about who I’m leaving out. The non-author who
most inspires my writing is the proprietor of the website People of Color in
European Art History. Just as she is doing with people of color, I’m trying to
write queer stories back into the history they were always present in.
