Interview with Daniel Abraham

Q: You've got two or three comics projects in the pipeline. What's the status on those?

Two of them, the scripts are in. One of them, the artists is cranking away, the other I think we're between artists at the moment. The third, I've turned in the first script of six. I should have the last of those done by January. Then it's up to the artist.

It's a really fun gig, though. Comic scripts are much more fun than I'd anticipated. It was hard to change gears, though. The way comic books deal with narrative voice is *very* different than prose. Most of my tools didn't apply. Thank God for Scott McCloud...

Q: Honestly, do you believe that the fantasy genre will ever come to be recognized as veritable literature? Truth be told, in my opinion there has never been this many good books/series as we have right now, and yet there is still very little respect (not to say none) associated with the genre.

Not in our generation. But that's always the way it is. Hard-boiled detective novels were crap, and now Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler are taught in college. Science fiction is making its way in -- Ursula Le Guin and now Philip K. Dick. Tolkien is still sneaking around English departments like a guilty pleasure.

But let me ask you this: what would we do with respect? Would it make us better writers? Better readers? Does it add to the pleasure you take in a good story, well told? I've known people who were bent on creating Real Literature, leading caps and all. A lot of them were pretentious gits who were so busy being authors they couldn't tell a story.

And I also know from experience that there is nothing that can suck the juice out of a good book like being put on a syllabus. I loved Camus, and I was damn lucky that I found him before my high school English teacher assigned him.

Let's not get respectable. Let's stay the guilty pleasure than all those English professors and High Literature wonks sneak in when they think no one's watching. If I spend my life as a kind of literary back-door man, it'll be a good time for them and plenty of fun for me. If I hit one out of the park and tell a story that changes the way someone lives or looks at the world -- all that stuff that Capital-L Literature is supposed to do -- and I don't get respect for it, who cares? I'll have changed someones life, or the way they look at the world. What's respect next to that?

Q: Anything you wish to add?

Well, at the risk of sounding like a suck-up, I'd go back to the previous question about the internet. I appreciate the time and effort that folks like you and Jay Tomio over at Fantasy Book Spot and Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic do. It's a lot of time and a lot of effort, and I get the benefit of it. You folks are the ones who are making this community. The writers are here because you made a space for us. Go you.

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Interview by Patrick
fantasyhotlist.blogspot