Warren Rochelle is a novelist, essayist, teacher of
creative writing, fantasy, science fiction and Utopian texts at the University of Mary
Washington in Fredericksburg,
Virginia. He is the author of
three novels, The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), a
Spectrum Award nominee, and The Called
(2010), nominated for the Spectrum Award and the Lambda Literary Award—all
published by Golden Gryphon Press. He has also published several stories, including
the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award Finalist, “The Golden Boy.” His short fiction
has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Icarus, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Romance and Beyond, The Silver
Gryphon, Collective Fallout, and Queer
Fish 2. His short story, “Bath,”
most recently was published in Jaelle Her
Book: A Memorial.
For more information, please visit his website: http://warrenrochelle.com
And the questions:
When I was very young, my mother, who was a secretary at Duke University,
would bring home stacks of used typing paper and I would draw stories on the
blank sides. But, it wasn’t until I was in the third grade and read The
Chronicles of Narnia that I knew I wanted to be a writer.
2) What is your writing process? When
do you write?
Good questions. I’ll start with the
simpler one: when do I write. When I have the time. I used to think that I
could figure out an ideal time—and on days when I didn’t have to be anywhere,
getting started writing would often be 9 or 10 in the morning. I still try to
write in the morning, but that doesn’t happen very often. Rather my goal is to write every day and to
make that a priority. That doesn’t
always happen, but I do make it a daily goal: writing is always on the list of
things to do.
What is my writing process? I have
to know the ending before I can start. This is not a specific ending, but
rather more the lines of, for example, there has to be a beach. What beach and
where, I don’t have to know (and usually don’t). I like outlines—but as long as
they are flexible suggestions, as it were. The beginnings I find myself
spending time on—trying to set the right tone, find the voice, the POV, and may
start several times. Once it feels
right, I know it and the story begins. Then, those outlines—or as they have
already revealed themselves to me—via the Black Gang, as Sylvia calls
them.
Once I get going, I find myself
writing in the shape of expanding loops. Write, write, go back, reread, some
revision, then out again, and go back, out again. Sometimes this involves a restart, or a
massive rearrangement. Sometimes there
is a shift from first to third or third to first. Then, after a few
interruptions like this, things settle, and I am in the world of the story. I
try to get out of the way of the dream telling itself to me.
I hope that made sense.
3) How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing
to/for a particular audience or audiences?
In broad terms, I write speculative
fiction—science fiction and fantasy, and more of the latter of late. Given some of the events in my fiction,
perhaps a dash of horror, too, but dark fantasy would work as a descriptive
term.
Am I writing to or for a
particular audience or audiences? I would like to think that a well-told story
would be of interest to most readers of any particular genre, but things don’t
seem to work out that way, do they? Readers are often drawn to stories in which
they can find some part of themselves, or in which there is a character, often
the protagonist, with whom they can identify in some way. Readers can find a
home in stories in which they can say, Here is someone like me, or I’m not the
only one, or, People like me are not invisible. Writers are drawn to such stories
as well. As Lewis, I believe, said, he wrote the kind of stories he wanted to
read.
All of this is sort of an around
the barn way of getting to answering the question about audience. For too long gay characters have been missing
or in short supply in speculative fiction. Often, if present, they were Bad or
Weak, and they came to Bad Ends. Or they were good and noble and Examples to us
all. I want to write stories in which there are gay characters who are human
beings. Like McKinley said about her heroines, she wanted them to be Girls Who
Do Things, yes, I want my gay heroes and heroines to be Doing Things. But more
than that, I want them to be present and active and engaged human beings, who
sometimes happen to be werewolves or princes or beanstalk climbers.
So, yes, I think an audience, or
audiences, for whom I am writing at the moment, are GLBT people and their
friends and allies. And yes, I believe
that someday those people who identify as friends and allies will be quite a
large audience indeed.
But, the story, not any social
message, is what comes first. I want my readers to be lovers of stories and
storytelling.
4) What writers have been major
influences in your work and why?
Aiiiieee!
I feel I have learned so much from so many different writers, but the first
three that come to mind as major influences are:
C.S.
Lewis, J.R. R. Tolkien, and Ursula K. Le Guin. And I would add Madeleine
L’Engle.
Why?
Briefly:
C.S.
Lewis, for showing an eight-going-on-nine-year-old boy the way into Faerie.
Tolkien,
for showing that same boy, as a twelve-year-old, that Faerie is a place where
the mythic is given its power, and that it is a place for adults as well.
Le
Guin, for giving the language of story style and grace and intelligence and
beauty, for populating her worlds, the fantastic and the science fictional,
with human beings, and for making these worlds in which I could live, and for
writing stories in which I found people like me.
L’Engle,
for gawky Meg, gifted and brilliant Charles Wallace is who still a little boy,
for Calvin and his red hair, who was able to see how beautiful and intelligent
Meg truly was, for love and declaring that
love and to love and be loved is strength.
I
could also add as influences …. But that would be a long list.
5) What is your most current project?
I have two most current projects, actually. I am
completing a collection of gay-themed science fiction and fantasy short
stories. I am working on the last two stories: a gay retelling of
Rumpelstiltskin and a science fiction tale about a young man whose lover turns
out to be an alien graduate student, here to study our culture. The tentative
title of the collection is Happily Ever After and Other Stories.
I am also completing a novel about a gay werewolf and his
godling boyfriend, The Werewolf and His Boy.
I also just finished revising one other novel, The
Golden Boy. This one is under review at the moment.
6) What was the inspiration for the
project?
The inspiration for The Werewolf and His Boy actually first came
from a dream my partner had of a monster, a supernatural beast of some kind,
haunting Lowe’s (a US chain of home improvement stores) at night, living in the
rafters. This became the short story,
“Lowe’s Wolf,” published in Icarus about 2 years ago. I kept wondering what had happened to my two
heroes and that led to this novel.
The inspiration for the gay-themed story collection was
the sense, after having read all the “color” fairy books of Andrew Lang and
Grimm and Andersen and a few others, that GLBT people were missing. They didn’t make it into Faerie, as it were. Now,
I know they are there but for all kinds
of reasons have been rendered invisible behind some kind of glamour. I wanted to remove that glamour. I also
wanted to explore these old, old stories, these expressions of cultural
metaphors and myth from a gay perspective, and to find out what happens when these
stories are retold from this perspective, with a gay sensibility.
7) What one book would you save from
a burning fire, and why?
Wow. All of them, if I could. Something about burning a
book seems so wrong at such a deep level. True, not all books are of equal
worth or importance and there have been some that have caused really bad things
to happen, like Mein Kampf … but
I digress.
What one book? Fahrenheit 451, because of what it represents.
8) If you could talk to any writer
(living or dead) what one question would you ask, or what one thing would you
say?
Actually this has already happened. I met Ursula K. Le Guin at a SFRA (Science
Fiction Research Association) conference back in 2005. I waited in line with my stack of Le Guin fav
novels and collections (The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The
Birthday of the World, Language of the Night …) and when my turn came, I
took her hand and I told her that she had changed my life.
9) Favorite planet or fantasy world
you'd like to live in?
Favorite planet: Anarres.
Favorite fantasy world: Narnia.
10) What advice do you have
for new and aspiring writers?
A writer reads. Read everything, not just things in your
preferred genre. A writer writes. Make
it your goal to try and write every day. Don’t give up. Write. Find your story,
your worlds, your place, and write. Write.
Many thanks for the
opportunity to be interviewed and for sharing it on your blog. Great questions!
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