Lois McMaster Bujold

I had a real treat at FenCon in Dallas this year because the author guest of honor was one of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold. Lois is the author of the Vorkosigan science fiction series, as well as two fantasy series, the Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.

The big piece of news for me was that there will be another Vorkosigan book coming in November 2010 from Baen. Lois said this one, called CryoBurn, puts our hero Miles in mystery mode on a new planet. I may have to start a re-read of the series to be ready for this new release.

One thing I found interesting is the way she approaches series, trying different kinds of series formats. The Vorkosigan saga consists of standalone books in the arc of a person's life. With the Chalion series, she took a thematic approach. Instead of following the same characters, each book in the series focuses on one of the five gods in that world. There are two more books needed to complete the pattern, but she said she isn't yet ready to write those books. The Sharing Knife series tells one story in bite-sized chunks. "People tell me they like the fourth book best because of its ending," she said, "but it's the one that has an ending."

One series structure she hasn't yet tried is the approach popular in romance novels, with a group of characters, each of whom has his or her own story.

Her early reading influences included The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, a children's science fiction book by Eleanor Cameron, as well as the British boys' adventure stories of authors like Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. On a family trip to Europe when she was fifteen, she found a used paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and finished reading it on the plane on the way home but was confused by the ending because there was no indication on the book's cover that it was part of a series. "I just thought it was one of those British books with an ambiguous ending," she said. She later found the rest of the series on a paperback rack in a drugstore.

Today, her "comfort" reading includes the work of Georgette Heyer and Terry Pratchett. To challenge herself, she's been reading The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, which is considered one of the sources for the fantasy genre -- a classic because it was the first of its kind. She's also discovered Jennifer Crusie's books from word of mouth on blogs, which she said are a good source of book recommendations. Her publisher set up a MySpace blog for her, which she mostly uses to post reviews of books she's read. To read her book and movie recommendations, visit http://blogs.myspace.com/loismcmasterbujold.

Shanna Swendson writes "Fairy Tales for Modern Times" and is the author of the Enchanted, Inc. series about a Texan in New York City, a magical NYC. Visit her website or blog for more information.