Interview with Katherine Kurtz

1 comments /

- DERYNI RISING was first published in August 1970. How rewarding is it to realize that you're still around and that interest for the Deryni saga remains to this day?

It’s immensely rewarding-and having had the chance to go back and tweak it for the hardcover edition was a real eye-opener for me, looking back at where I started and contemplating where it all has gone. Who would have thought? One can definitely see that I was not only learning my craft but defining my genre-indeed, helping define the whole historical fantasy genre that now exists. And they’re still damned good first novels. But I’d started to hit my stride by Camber of Culdi; and the rest, as they say, is history. What’s particularly gratifying is that the early books, in particular, got a lot of kids to start reading. A fourteen-year-old protagonist is very attractive to kids in junior high-and Harry Potter was still far in the future.

- What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller?

I would have to say that it’s characterization, and the ability to evoke richly textured visual images. And I suppose I do have a devious mind for convoluted plots.

- Have the plotlines diverged much since you began writing the Deryni series, or did you have the entire plot more or less figured out from the very beginning? Were any characters added or further fleshed out beyond your original intention? Have you made any changes to your initial plans during the course of the writing of the series?

When I first started out, I had no game plan beyond the first three books-though by the end of that first trilogy, I certainly had Camber firmly in mind, and knew I had to write a book about him. Of course, that one-book notion lasted about two thirds of the way through CC, when I realized that all of Camber’s story wasn’t going to fit into a single volume. And I think I only got about halfway through SC before I realized that I was going to need a third book about him. Even then, his story wasn’t really finished-which was when it became clear that I was actually telling an ongoing saga. For me, at least, writing is an evolutionary journey, and where you think you’re going may not be where you actually end up; sometimes characters have better ideas than the writer does. This is not to say that one ought to let characters run away with the story, but it is a good idea to listen to them from time to time.

- Characters often take a life of their own. Which of your characters did you find the most unpredictable to write about?

It wasn’t characters so much as incidents. I would have to say that there have been several characters who have occasionally done things that I hadn’t planned-though in hindsight, the incidents have always been ones where, after I’d written that passage, I’d say to myself, "Of course that’s how it had to happen. What was I thinking before?"

One of the most striking examples is when Cinhil opens that chest in his room, after an assassin has tried to kill him, and we learn that he’s been squirreling away vestments and other Mass accoutrements, that he hasn’t really given up his priesthood as he was instructed to do-but of course that’s what he was doing. How could he have done anything else, and still been true to himself? But as I was writing that scene, I didn’t consciously know that. As he’s walking across the room, looking at the chest and then kneeling to open it, I’m thinking, "Why is he walking over to that chest? What is in that chest that’s so important?" But he knew-and when the chest opened, all became clear. Another example is when Teymuraz suddenly turns on Morag and kills her, toward the end of KKB-whoa, I hadn’t seen that coming! But how else could that scene have played out, given the two individuals?

- Were there any perceived conventions of the fantasy genre which you wanted to twist or break when you set out to write the Deryni series?

LOL, good gracious, no! I just wanted to tell the kind of story that I liked to read, because in those days, there wasn’t enough out there to my taste. (The old adage of "Sometimes you have to do it yourself" is certainly true.) In the first book, I thought I had to follow certain conventions, like rhyming spells, and magical beasts, and the like, for it to be fantasy-but by the time I’d done the first three books, and they were selling well, and I was finding my voice as an author-I decided that maybe I didn’t have to follow the "classic" guidelines. There was a whole universe out there to be explored.