Sarah Zettel Quotes
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When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.
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I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.
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Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.
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I did not feel I could create a more beautiful or interesting Mars than Kim Stanley Robinson or Greg Bear had, so I turned my attention elsewhere.
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If I get blocked, it is generally because I don't know enough about some aspect of the story or the characters. The answer for this is generally more research, or making more background notes, so the place and person can be more fully realized inside my own mind.
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Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.
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Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama's kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.
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When I was in college, I spent a summer working in London. I'd enjoyed tea before that, but then I got actual, really good tea there and never looked back.
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I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Communications and left formal education behind.
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I'm told my SF is of the hard variety and my Fantasy is romantic but hopefully all the characters are strong and the plots are lively.
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All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.
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I think the diversity of authors and readers is expanding, which is wonderful, because it means the type of story being told is also expanding.
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I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.
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Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.
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Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.
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I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
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Fortunately, many people also enjoy a stand-alone as a sample of something new, like trying the special at a favourite restaurant one night instead of going for the usual.
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I feel SF is going through an experimental phase right now.
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I did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus.
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For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.
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Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.
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First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.
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My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.
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Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.
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I myself was born in Sacramento, California in 1966.
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I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.
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Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.
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I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character.
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The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies.
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I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.
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