A Brief EMail Interview with Tina Jens and Jody Lynn Nye
Sunday, September 28th, 2008This week Twilight Tales brings you two strong voices in genre fiction. Both are award winning authors who have special ties to Twilight Tales.
Tina Jens founded Twilight Tales almost fifteen years ago. She saw it grow from a local reading and writing group into an organization with a national reputation. Her time and dedication have brought many respected authors to Twilight Tales’ microphone. After Tina stepped down as President and CEO of the group, she took on the task of guiding young writers to find their own voices while teaching at Columbia university in Chicago. We are pleased that she has found the time to fit a featured reading into her busy schedule.
Jody Lynn Nye has published a number of books featuring fantasy, mythology, and cats. Her last book co-authored with Robert Asprin debuted in March of this year. Jody has a large following of readers who not only enjoy her books, but cats as well. Jody has appeared a number of times at Twilight Tales, always with wonderful stories full of fun and mischief, and occasionally cats.
Let’s see what this week’s authors have in store for us…
Starting with the basics, what is your story called and can you tell us about it briefly?
Tina: I’m thinking about dusting off one or two of my shorties, stories that just beg to be performed and pair that with an excerpt from my novel in progress. But that’s just today’s plan. The show’s a whole week and a half away. I could change my mind six times between now and then!
I’ve got several novels in progress. One on the front burner, a couple-three on the back burner. I may go with one of those. It’s easier for an audience to enjoy a novel excerpt that either starts on page 1, or is a self-explanatory, stand-alone scene. The Twilight Tales (Ir)regulars have heard several segments of my primary novel-in-progress (THE PROPHECY WAR) at the open mics, and I’m not sure the section I’ve just polished stands alone, so I may go with the beginning of THE LEGEND THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN (the sequel to THE BLUES AIN’T NOTHIN’), INTERNATIONAL OHIO (starring a sleuthing waitress who works in a truck stop), or SEIZE LOVE (about a hitwoman who has seizures at really inopportune times and who has a crush on her newest assignment).
Jody: My story is “And So, Ad Infinitum.” It originally appeared in an anthology entitled Familiars Fantastic (DAW Books). It gives new definition to what constitutes a familiar and who can have them. (I was hoping to have my vampire orthodontist story finished, but life conspired against me, so I hope people don’t mind an old story.)
What inspired this story?
Tina: THE PROPHECY WAR sprung from a novella I wrote when Bob Weinberg & Marty Greenberg invited me to choose a Nostradamus prophecy and write a story based on it for THE SECRET PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS anthology.
The idea for INTERNATIONAL OHIO came while I was doing a bit of research for THE PROPHECY WAR. I needed a state with a town named “Memphis” but wondered if there were other options than Tennessee. That led me to look at a map of Ohio and I noticed that they have an Athens, Dublin, Liverpool, Gahanna, Lebanon, Lima, Macedonia, Madeira, the list just goes on and on.
SEIZE LOVE was an act of desperation. I was at the Borderlands Books Novel Writing Boot camp, and we were required to come up with a brand new, fully-developed novel idea and write the opening chapter in less than 12 hours (that included sleep-time). I didn’t come up with anything I liked until about 2 hours before the next session. But it turned out quite well, and I will continue developing it.
THE LEGEND THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN picks up a few months after the first blues book leaves off. Mustang, Ratman & Old George have struck out as itinerant blues musicians, hoping to raise enough money to rebuild the club. Mustang falls for a bad man, who happens to be possessed by Ratman’s long-dead rival. Bad, bad things happen. It’ll be a darker book than the first one.
Jody: No one will be surprised to learn that it has a cat in it. I enjoy having cats in my literature when it is suitable. I am inspired by two things: putting food on the table, and writing up the ideas that come to me. The fact that I can do one by doing the other works pretty well.
You have both been doing readings for some time, has anything interesting or odd ever happened at a reading that you would like to tell us about?
Tina: EVERY night at Twilight Tales is interesting & odd, and I say that after fourteen years of weekly attendance!
The weirdest thing that’s happened to me was at a book signing. It was at a Borders Books in a mall in Burlington, Iowa, near my hometown. They had me set up at a table out in the mall in front of the store, hoping the mall zombies might notice me. A short woman, probably in her sixties, with calloused hands and weather-worn wrinkles that suggested a lifetime of hard physical work, approached the table, stopping about ten feet away. She crossed her arms and glared at me.
In a voice more timid than I’d intended I said, “Can I help you?”
She said, “I just wanted to see what an author looks like.”
A shaky laugh I hadn’t meant to let out escaped and finally I said, “We look just like anyone else.” (Alright, granted, I was in a three-piece black suit that had subtle beading on the knee-length walking jacket - not exactly everyday fashion in small town Iowa.
She stared at me some more then said, “You’re not so much,” and stalked off.
My dad was with me. He gave me a sympathetic one-armed hug then went off to get me a drink from the Orange Julius stand. Thank goodness for dads!
Jody: At a DucKon (local SF con) once, I was reading a story using about fourteen
voices. Afterwards, Fred Pohl, whom I had not noticed in the audience, came
up to compliment me. I floated around all day after that.
When wandering book stores, what sorts of books attract your attention?
Tina: I love all kinds of category fiction from paranormal romance to police procedurals, from dragon tales to British humor, from zany road trips to the mysterious blood rites of Haitian voodoo. I have a great fondness for genre fiction that includes humor; things you’d never find shelved in the humor aisle. Folks like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Janet Evanovich, Kinky Friedman, Tim Dorsey, and Carl Hiaasen. While they say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, books with humor are almost always packaged in garish colors, so as I browse the shelves, I keep an eye out for books that are lime green, Sunkist Orange and lemon yellow with the odd splash of goober purple thrown in.
Jody: Since I was just in The Strand bookstore in New York, I can tell you what I did. I went straight for the cookbook section. I’m an avid cook and baker. Then I browsed the early literature, history, then mysteries. When I’m writing SF or fantasy, I never read them, so I go through a lot of
mysteries.
Writers are always looking for advice, has any one ever given you great, or really out there advice you can share with us?
Tina: Bob Weinberg gave me the best piece of advice: Never stop writing at the end of a scene or anyplace that gives you a sense of closure. He said he often stops in the middle of a sentence. If you end your writing session at a natural break, you’ll feel all fuzzy and satisfied inside and won’t feel a sense of urgency to get back to it. If you stop writing in the middle of things, you’ll feel unsettled until you resolve the scene. Then of course, you launch halfway into the next one so you never feel complacent.
Jody: Learn your craft. Spelling and grammar count. Learn to write dialogue in different voices than yours. Don’t wait for permission from anyone to write what you want; it is always your privilege to use your talent. A dear friend whom I just lost said, “Never air your education.” What he meant was that no more than ten percent of what you studied to write that story should appear in the story itself. You should write FROM your knowledge, not of it.
Finally, is there anything exciting on your horizon, or anything else you’d like to share with us?
Tina: I’m really enjoying my retirement from the administrative side of Twilight Tales. I’ve got more time for writing, more time for teaching, and more time to play around with other creative projects.
Along with the novels outlined above, I’m adapting two short stories and a novella for radio-theater performances, polishing up a novella I co-wrote with Bob Weinberg that will be released as a signed limited edition hardcover, working on a poetry collection of American Haiku, and doing a ton of research on New Orleans - both for a novel and a new college course I’m hoping to teach at Columbia College - Chicago in January. And, in my spare time, I’m revising my curriculum and reading list for the next semester of the Fantasy Writing Workshop at Columbia. And hitting the blues clubs, of course.
Jody: New books coming up in November: Myth-Fortunes (Wildside Press), January:
Myth-Chief (Ace mass-market paperback), April: A Forthcoming Wizard (TOR
Books, second half of An Unexpected Apprentice).
We hope you’ll join us on Monday September 29th at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Tina’s and Jody’s fiction, and perhaps more discussion!
