A Horror World Conversation with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
By Steven E. Wedel

 

When I got the assignment to interview Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, at least a dozen questions sprang to mind. I went to her Web site to poke around … and found the answers to most of those questions. She has one of the most thorough author Web sites I’ve ever seen. But then, considering the level of historical detail that goes into a Chelsea Quinn Yarbro novel, I suppose that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Chelsea is best known as the creator of Count Saint-Germain, an ancient vampire hero surrounded by the evil of humanity. Born in 1942, she began writing professionally in 1968, working in a variety of genres, including horror, science fiction, young adult and westerns.

Horror World: You’ve been at this writing game for a long time. What made you want to become a writer in the first place?

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: Reading . I learned to read at four, and when I found out there was a job called writer, I knew that was for me.

HW: What and when was your first publication? Did you know that was the start of a career for you?

CQY: If Magazine published my first sold story in September of 1969. By the time it appeared, I had sold two more short stories. I got $20 for the first, $60 for the second, and $180 for the third. With this encouraging trend (which did not continue), I went full-time in 1970. I certainly intended that this would be the start of a long career, so it’s lucky that things more or less worked out.

HW: You mention McCarthyism on your Web site. Tell us what you witnessed as a Berkley resident and how it influenced your life and career.

CQY: When I was in fourth grade, for a period of about two weeks I was followed to and from my grammar school by the FBI. Since I didn’t know it was the FBI – all I knew was an unknown man was following me – I reported this to the school principal, who notified the cops, who notified the principal that the FBI was investigating some of my family members (my aunt and uncle) for UnAmerican Activities.

Even at the time I thought the notion of following a school-kid ludicrous, but later came to realize that the FBI was putting pressure on family members to isolate Oscar and Beatrice. I found out about a decade ago that other cousins were followed at the same time, which confirmed my suspicions. It’s left me very wary of governmental motives, and politically inclined to the left rather than the right.

HW: Feminism. A great deal of your work is shown through a feminist filter. Was there resistance to that from the publishing community when you began writing?

CQY: What do you mean was? There still is.

HW: What do you think of feminism in speculative fiction today? Are we still too reliant on the weak female stereotype? Have we gone too far the other way with characters like Anita Blake basically being the female Captain Kirk of literature? Or have we found a good balance, something that reflects reality?

CQY: Boy Scouts with boobs or girls in s&m leather aren’t female characters, they’re just other male fantasy figures that have become popular in the present culture. I like strong women characters, no matter who writes them, or in what genre, but I prefer to deal with them in the real world, warts and all, with real problems that beset women, and the actuality of women’s experiences.

HW: You say you write for six hours a day, six days a week, and do three or four hours of research per day, five days a week. Tell us about your research. How do you go about it, and how much do you feel is necessary before beginning to write the project?

CQY: When it’s historical research about a period in history I’m not familiar with, I begin with The Time Tables of History, not only for the period of the intended story, but a couple of decades before my target years, for context. Then I see what information is available in my own library and start reading. If I don’t have the place or period covered, I head out to the used book store to find as much as I can as well as to get some idea of what’s out there on the subjects needed.

In terms of the Saint-Germain books, I try to find contemporary accounts of the period I’m researching, and from such accounts, I gain a sense of how the time saw itself, which gives me a handle on how the people interpreted their lives. When I’m inventing a whole new world, as in the Vildecaz fantasies, I work out the culture and history, then the geography, the evolution and current species, basic linguistics, the “what everybody knows” in the societies, the physics and metaphysics, the education and politics. I keep very detailed notes so as not to trip myself up, and on the lives of the primary, secondary, and tertiary characters, and then start to work.

As to how much of either is necessary – when I know I’m immersed in the environment and the characters start talking back, the basic work is done.

HW: You redefined the vampire and basically created the paranormal romance before Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton became household names. Did you feel like a pioneer at the time?

CQY: Nope.

HW: It’s sometimes hard to find an old-fashioned evil vampire preying on helpless victims these days. What do you think of the modern vampire? And, what does it say about modern (or post-modern) society?

CQY: Having written a two-part novel (Trouble in the Forest, Pts 1 and 2 as Trystam Kith) with really bad vampires in it, I know it’s not easy to find a new angle from which to approach the paradigm. As to the modern vampire, what troubles me is the number of writers who appear to have learned all they know about vampires either from Buffy and Angel or from splatter films, and have little or no knowledge of the underlying ambivalence of the mythic figure. But that’s what I’m interested in, so I’m hypersensitive to it. I have no idea what it says about the modern age, nor, I suspect will anyone else until the present is at least fifty years in the past.

HW: Saint-Germain has appeared in 20 books counting this year’s BORNE IN BLOOD (Tor, 2007). Has it been difficult keeping the series alive and fresh for so many books? What are the challenges and rewards of a long-running series?

CQY: Since I’ve kept a fairly complete chronology on him, I know what times and places are available to me, and that helps in finding new ground to work. Also, bouncing around in time rather than following a strictly forward moving time-line has been useful since it allows for many different views and types of experiences. The challenges are to find way of putting him in new situations that aren’t so totally different from others in the series that the readers have trouble identifying with him, but at the same time, show new dangers and social experiences. The rewards – other than the mortgage money, of course – are the opportunities to create multi-level characters in a variety of contexts, and the chance to continue to engage a long-time readership.

HW: Do you foresee an end to Saint-Germain’s adventures? Do you think you could stop writing about him?

CQY: I’ve stopped writing about him before, so I suspect I’ll do it again one of these years. But keep in mind, he is my bread and butter.

HW: Even though this is Horror World, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about your work in other genres. What is your favorite genre to write in, and what inspires you to write in other genres?

CQY: The need to earn a living inspires me to cast a very wide writing net, but given the current market, that’s getting harder and harder to do. I don’t have a favorite genre, although I would agree many of my books have a horror element in them. I think I’ve had the most fun – qua fun – doing the two westerns, but that’s really a flat market, and the economic realities mitigate against doing more of them.

HW: Who is Michael? How did his series of messages come about?

CQY: Michael is/are a collective consciousness who provides answers to all manner of questions. When I’d been in the group a couple of years, an editor with whom I was discussing another project, knowing I was interested in esoteric studies, asking if there were enough material in the transcripts for the book. I said I’d have to ask the group and the mediums, which I did. They agreed, with some ground-rules including that I preserve the group’s privacy. The editor agreed, and I ended up doing four books on the various things Michael has/have said.

HW: Tell us about your alter egos and pen names. Why and when is it a good idea for an author to use one (or more)?

CQY: If I had my druthers, I’d never use a pen name, but in the current world of publishing this is a non-option. There is so much emphasis on “branding” a writer that if I want to shift genres, I have to switch names. In my opinion this is folly, because I believe readers read across genre lines, particularly if they like a writer’s work, and imposing name-changes loses more cross-over sales than a new name creates. But that said, at the moment, I have three pen names going: Trystam Kith, T. C. F. Hopkins (non-fiction socio-military history), and Camille Gabor. Who knows – I may have to come up with more of them.

HW: The Saint-Germain Cycle not only has extended across three decades, but has been published by different publishers, starting with St. Martin’s Press, then Tor, then Warner Aspect and now back to Tor. Are all the books in the cycle still in print? Was it difficult carrying an on-going series to new publishers and different editors?

CQY: The editors are the trickiest, and Saint-Germain has had a lot of them: Joan, Julie, Marcia, Hilary, Dave, Ellen, Beth, Greg, Bryan, Melissa, Betsy, Larissa, Jaime, and Melissa again. After so long a series what is most difficult is dealing with an editor who is unfamiliar with the whole cycle, and is not sensitive to the essential consistency of vision that shapes the cycle, making it a coherent (albeit long) narrative line. This becomes more difficult if the editor isn’t interested in history, or in historicity.

HW: The publishing world has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. Is it harder for a new author to get published today? What advice would you give to him or her?

 

CQY: It’s much harder to get started now, and it wasn’t easy back in the mid-60s. I’d recommend voracious reading, and learning as much about the business as possible, including professional expectations on both sides of the writer/publisher equation. Then I’d make sure I kept writing. I wrote stories for almost three years before I started submitting them, and I submitted over fifty stories before I sold my first one, thirty-two months after my first rejection. The early ones were pretty awful, but you have to do the awful ones to get to the good ones.

Right now is a difficult time in publishing for everyone, with more take-overs and mergers resulting in ever-fewer and more narrowly defined marketplaces, which seems to me as if the major houses are shooting themselves in the foot. What it means is many fewer places for writers – all writers – to sell their work commercially. In addition, driven by demands from the chains, publishers are putting length-caps on what they buy, and no longer want books much more than 100,000 words in length. Shelf-life, like shelf-space, is shrinking. Advances are down, and so are print-runs. Everyone is feeling the pinch. This could prove an opportunity for mid-sized presses to expand their selling-base, and many of them are doing that, but it’s a long -term gamble, and one that will take some years to develop, which makes for a hard time for mid-list writers especially. Electronic publishing is also becoming an important factor, especially for reprints, and in the next five years may take some of the current slack off the market. I don’t want to be gloomy or discouraging, but being aware of the current state of the marketplace can help in making realistic strategies for getting into the market and staying there.

HW: What new projects can we expect from you in the next several months?

CQY: There are a few more titles due out this year: The Dubioous Oracle, the second Vildecaz book is due out from Juno this summer; sometime this summer or fall, an anthology The Lord Ruthven Assembly Presents Forgotten Gems of Horror Fiction, edited by Sharon Russell and me, from Wildside Press; Saint-Germain: Memoirs, (#21) the second story collection is due out in the fall from Elder Signs Press; Twilight Tales will bring out my non-fiction book Fine-Tuning Fiction in the fall, as well; Saint-Germain #20 Borne in Blood, Lost Prince (a reprint of The Godforsaken) from Borderlands Press, and the trade paperback of Roman Dusk should all be out in December. Right now, I’m into the fourth chapter of Saint-Germain #22, A Dangerous Climate, and I’m waiting to hear on a couple of projects – that now takes up to six months, as compared to the three months that was the norm my first decade in this business, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I’m contracted for Saint-Germain #23, but that’s for ‘08.

HW: What should I have asked but forgot to ask?

CQY: Check out my website, www.ChelseaQuinnYarbro.net for news and upcoming events – and thanks to Paula Guran for her handsome design and capable webmastering.

Next year marks forty years since my first sale. As a long-time professional, I’d have to say that writing is a wonderful way to live, but a nerve-wracking way to make a living.

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