Deborah
J. Ross: Tell us a little about
yourself. How did you come to be a
writer?
Marie Brennan: I generally credit that
to Diana Wynne Jones, and specifically her novel Fire and Hemlock, which
I read when I was nine or ten years old. The main characters in it are writing
a story together, and when I put the book down, I thought, I want to be a
writer. It was the first time I recall thinking about making up stories,
not just for my own entertainment, but for other people to read. I got serious
about it when I was eighteen, sold my first novel when I was twenty-four, and
have never looked back.
DJR: What inspired your story
in Lace and Blade 4?
MB: Some years ago I bought
a pair of black-and-red beaded earrings from the jeweler Elise Matthesen, who
habitually gives titles to all the pieces she makes. The earrings are called
"At the Sign of the Crow and Quill," and like many authors, I pledged
to Elise that I would try to write something by that title someday. The mood
that evoked in my mind was very much a Lace and Blade mood, so when I
received an invitation to submit to the anthology, that turned out to be the
spark I needed to transform the phrase into characters and plot.
DJR: What has most influenced
your writing?
MB: Definitely my academic
background. In college I majored in archaeology and folklore; in grad school it
was cultural anthropology and folklore. I never took a single creative writing
course. I know that some people find them great; if you have a good teacher you
can grow enormously as a writer, and even without that, just having permission
to treat writing as something important, rather than just a hobby, can be
vital. But for me, the most effective thing was to take classes and read books
that gave me something to write about. The real world, in all its
multifarious historical and geographical and cultural glory, is an endless
source of inspiration to me.
