Barbara Hambly

Once Barbara Hambly read The Wizard of Oz, there was no turning back. A love of fantasy and storytelling led inevitably to a career that combined the two, with occasional side-trips into horror and science fiction. To date she’s written over 40 books and scores of short stories. Open Road Media has recently begun releasing her older novels in digital format, and she’s currently hard at work on new entries in her popular Benjamin January series and her vampire series.

In this exclusive Horror World interview, the author discusses her vast body of work and gives readers a quick peek into the future.

HW: You've written books in a wide variety of genres - fantasy, romance, vampires, science fiction - why is it important for you to mix things up?

BH: There’s a million stories out there. I just want to tell so many of them.

I read all sorts of different stories: mysteries, fantasy, romances, science fiction… though these days it’s hard for me to have the time or energy to read fiction the way I used to. I get ideas for everything. The more I write in one genre, the better-known I am within that genre, so it becomes easier to sell stories of one type. I still have mainline historical novels I want to write, horror novels, at least one Western (and boy, is that a small genre these days!). The thing I don’t want to do is become bored, or to bore my readers by getting repetitious.

What's the common thread in your work, the thing (or things) that distinguish it as Barbara Hambly's work?

I’d say characters, and community. Friendship. More and more, I realize that my stories center around friendships. My heroes are surrounded by groups of friends and families. That’s what’s most important to me. When I read fiction, that’s what I’m looking for, the friends and sidekicks and what the villain’s butler thinks about all this. All the peripheral relationships that swirl around the main action.

We do the things we do in the context of the people around us, sometimes because we love them – and sometimes, they’re just there, irrelevant to saving the world, but entertaining nevertheless. 

You've written books set in a couple of very well-known and well-loved universes - Star Trek and Star Wars. What about those settings and characters drew you to them?

It’s hard to say what it is about the characters and settings of Star Trek and Star Wars that drew me to seeking out the chance to write tie-in novels. Why is anyone drawn to them? They’re cool, they’re fun, and the relationships are interesting. The worlds they take place in are generally rich and complex, and make internal sense. There’s a feeling that those worlds are real. I still have Star Trek and especially Star Wars stories I’d like to tell.

I will say that I’m drawn to what I think of as “bright heroes” – Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker. In a way, they’re more difficult to portray as real people, real men, than the darker and more checkered “dark heroes” like Han Solo and Mr. Spock.

What's tougher - satisfying Star Trek and Star Wars fans, fans of your own creations, or yourself?

“Satisfying” Star Trek and Star Wars fans? I’ve been told a number of Star Wars fans found my novels in that universe unsatisfactory because both of the novels – Children of the Jedi and Planet of Twilight (whose working title was Planet of the Disgusting Bugs) – centered around not using the Force. Sometimes I felt that Luke Skywalker as a hero came to be tangled up in the Superman Syndrome: if you can do anything with the Force, where’s the suspense? So the first thing I did in both novels was put Luke in a situation where he couldn’t use the Force: in Children, because he was severely wounded at the outset and unable to get medical backup, and had to use all the Force that he could muster, simply to keep himself alive; in Planet, because he was stuck on a planet where, if he used the Force, it would have disastrous and unpredictable effects on the inhabitants of that planet. It gave me a chance to look at Luke as a man, not a superhero.

And, in both cases, the central problems of both books were problems that cannot be solved by the Force anyway. Those we love die. Those we love change, and sometimes those changes take them away from us. The answer was acceptance and growth, not victory.

I’m told many found these stories unsatisfying. But, I couldn’t not tell those stories as I told them.

And, I’m told that I “do” the characters very well. I study the speech-patterns in the films and episodes, and try to reproduce in writing what I see on the screen: how these people act, what’s going on in their heads and in their lives, how they’d really react when confronted by poltergeists on the Enterprise or having to hitch a ride on a space-ship full of Pig-Guards.

You've recently released a chunk of your back catalog in digital form through Open Road Media. What's the experience been like? What kind of feedback have you received so far?

It’s a little early to tell. The feedback I’ve gotten has been excellent. A lot of those books have been out of print for years, and I’ve heard from many fans, delighted that they’re easily available again.

Open Road has been delightful to work with (and the promotional video they made of me is really cool – actually much cooler than I am!); they’re leading and instructing me in the interesting world of on-line publicity and “presence,” which I truly think is not just the “wave of the future,” it is the future.

But, it is the future… and for many months yet, I don’t think it will be possible to even speculate where that road will lead or what the scenery will be like.

You recently wrote on your website (www.barbarahambly.com) that you prefer your vampires "dangerous." Do you find contemporary vampire fiction has become too soft, too focused on the romantic angle?

I wouldn’t say that contemporary vampire fiction has become “too soft” or “too romantic.” I read Twilight (and watched the movie) and found it not to my taste. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good – it just means that it isn’t appropriate for me to judge it. Obviously, lots of people love it. And good for Ms. Meyers, for making a lot of people happy! As I said above, I don’t have the time or the emotional energy to read a lot of new fiction, so I’m way behind on much of the vampire fiction that’s come out. I understand that a lot of it is erotic, but again, I haven’t read it myself, so can’t judge.

Any plans to revisit your vampire series?

The third book of my own vampire series – Blood Maidens – just appeared; I’m currently at work on the fourth, and I’m contracted for a fifth. So yes, the further adventures of James Asher and Don Simon Ysidro are very much alive!

Are there other horror characters you'd be interested in taking on?

I’ve had a series of ghost-stories on the back-burner for a couple of years, which I simply haven’t had the time to bring up to submission quality. In Blood Maidens I introduce – very glancingly – what could be interpreted as zombies, and they play a larger part in the fourth of the vampire series; I’m not sure how I’d handle a straight zombie story (and what is “straight” when applied to zombies anyway?)

What other books do you plan on releasing digitally? And what do you make of this new direction in publishing?

I’m hoping that Severn House – the U.K. publishers who are bringing out both the Ben January series and the vampire series – will open up a digital publications arm in the near future. I’m not sure how many of the earlier January novels from Random House are available digitally, but I don’t think all of them are. I’d like to see them appear.

I’m sort of divided about digital publication. I suspect that digital publication is eventually going to drive out print altogether, and I’d be sorry to see that happen. I personally like actual books – they’re easier to flip through in search of favorite passages or important bits of information. And, a huge problem with digitalization is that the stuff that’s available digitally isn’t usually the stuff I want to read. These days, what you can find in digital is either new bestsellers, or stuff that’s in public domain (and I really enjoy being able to get things like Bleak House and the unabridged Tale of Genji for cheap, instantly). But, many of my favorite authors wrote during the 1940s and ‘50s, and their stuff either isn’t available at all (people like Manning Coles, Mary Renault, and Josephine Tey) or only a fraction of their books have been digitalized (as is the case with Georgette Heyer and Dorothy L. Sayers).

On the upside, I think that the increasing use of e-readers – and I see more and more of them on the campus of the college where I teach – makes it easier for writers who can’t break into an increasingly difficult print market, to get their work out there, using places like Smashwords for self-pub. I am delighted that I can – and do – write original short fiction (short stories and novellas) about the characters from my old Del Rey fantasy serieses, and sell them digitally over my website to fans who still want to read stories about the people they met in Time of the Dark or The Silent Tower. (That’s in the section of the website called The Further Adventures Of…)

What are you currently working on? What new material do fans need to know about?

Asher and Ysidro #4. I just turned in Ben January #11 – Ran Away – and it should be out early next year. I continue to do short stories for The Further Adventures website. I’m hoping to pull together time to start work on a horror screenplay, and/or a graphic novel series. Since I teach part-time at the local community college, things are pretty busy this time of year, but come summer, I hope to embark on a new venture of teaching and coaching writing on-line – keep an eye on my Facebook and web pages for details!

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