Interview w/ Karen Miller
Here is another interview for all of you. Thanks to Karen Miller for taking the time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions. I look forward to finishing The Awakened Mage. Here it is: SD: Thanks for doing this interview with me. I was very glad to receive a response back from you. First, would you tell us a little bit about yourself, such as the basic history of how you came to be a writer, what you’ve written in the past and recently (fiction or non-fiction), and the like. This is sort of the typical first question just to introduce you to people reading the blog. KM: And many thanks for asking!Like a great many writers, I’ve been scribbling stories for years. Ever since I was a child. My favourite classes in school were English, Composition, Creative Writing. All that stuff. When I left high school I went to university and did a communications degree. One of my majors was Creative Writing. I also majored in Literary Studies and FilmStudies, basically wrapping up my three favourite past times — reading, writing and watching film/tv drama.I always always always wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to grow into the person I needed to be in order to achieve that goal. While that process was happening I did a lot of different things — I worked in the public service, the insurance industry, thetelecommunications industry, the publishing industry, I was a PR officer in local government, I worked professionally with horses, I was a college lecturer and I owned/managed by own sf/fantasy/mystery bookshop for several years. That was the last ‘regular’ job I had before making the leap to professional writing. And while it wasunnerving, not being able to settle, I did gain a lot of useful experiences over those years that have in turn helped my writing. My favourite mantra is: Nothing learned is ever wasted. Or, Who cares if you’re bleeding? It’s all good copy!My first professionally published work was in Australia. I wrote three YA light romances. Then I started working on my first fantasy novel, The Innocent Mage. In 2005/6 Innocent Mage and its sequel were published in Australia as the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology, and then went on to be published in the US and UK in 2007. They were followed by my first Stargate novel, Alliances, and my current fantasy trilogy –Godspeaker. Bks 1 and 2 are out in Australia, and they’ll be published this year in the US/UK. Bk 3 comes out in Australia in June, and in the US/UK next year.I’ve got a new series starting to release in Australia this April, under a pen name. That’s also been sold to Orbit, but I don’t have any firm release information yet. I’ve just finished my next Stargate novel, Do No Harm, which is due out in a few months. Once I’ve completed Godspeaker bk 3 I move on to the next in the pen-name series, and in December I’ll deliver the first volume of the sequel duology to the first Kingmaker, Kingbreaker books.On the whole, it’s a good thing I don’t mind my own company. *g*SD: Speaking of Stargate, what is it like writing for shared-worlds? For others out there that don’t know what that term means, a shared-world is basically one in which people other than the original creator are allowed to write stories within the world, provided some rules are adhered to. Prime examples would be Dragonlance and Star Wars. So, for you, what were some problems or issues you had in writing for Stargate? Was it hard? How much research did you have to do? KM: In terms of working with MGM, the parent company who licences the franchise, or with the editors at Fanedomonium — no troubles at all. My experiences to date have been wonderful. As far as the work being hard is concerned, yes. It’s hard work. There’s a school of thought in the genre community that says media tie-ins are by definition low-brow crap written by talentless hacks who are too pathetic to write ‘real books’. To which I say: really? Honestly — if you’re going to accuse someone of being a talentless hack because they write about worlds and characters they didn’t personally create then almost every single tv scriptwriter on the planet is a talentless hack. For the record? Not so much.I take the Stargate novels I write very seriously because I’m a fan of the show, and before ever I was a professional writer I was a fan. I try to the very best of my ability to get it ‘right’ in terms of characterisation and dialogue, because I feel my job is to give the reading fans an authentic ‘Stargate’ experience.Having said that, though, the single biggest problem with writing fiction based on a tv how is that while all us fans are watching the same show, none of us is ‘seeing’ the same show. We bring individual biases and beliefs and interpretations to the source material. Which means that for some people, I will never get it right. And I need to make my peace with that. I pretty much have. I’m sad if someone’s disappointed with what I’ve written, but I know I’ve been true to the show I see to the best of my ability. Whatever I do I make sure I can point to aired material in support of my story — and boy, I watch and I watch and I watch and then I watch again. I have the show on dvd and it’s my constant reference source. SD: Your biography on your website talks about your various moves in life. Could you talk about what the transition was like when you moved from Canada to Australia and then to England, etc.? What sort of cultural challenges did you face? Was it difficult to adjust? How did this part of your life affect your writing, if at all? KM: