My first fantasy novel review ever was Emerald House Rising by Peg Kerr. That review rests in the "Tomes of Spellcasting" section of the Archive but you can follow this link to the review itself. Now, however, I have a special treat: an interview with the author herself!
Emerald House Rising is Kerr's first novel, but by no means her first published work. For a more complete list of her works, please visit a website devoted to her. Just follow the link at the bottom of the page.
The interview that follows comes from e-mail messages sent back and forth between myself and Ms. Kerr. I've filtered the interview down somewhat, but all with her approval. Enjoy!--XS
Note: cover graphic copyrighted by and used with permission from Peg Kerr.

XS: Is Peg Kerr your real name or a pen name?

PK: Peg Kerr was my maiden name, and it was the name I was using when I started sending out stories, although I made my first sale after my marriage in 1986. I continued to use it when I started selling. Kerr is easy to spell and recognize.

XS: If you don't mind my asking, what is your married name?

PK: It's "Ihinger," which is a rather rare German name. I changed my name when I married because I didn't like the idea of having a different last name from my children. Neither Kerr-Ihinger nor Ihinger-Kerr sounded good.

XS: What a dilemma!

PK: To compound the confusion, my first name is actually Margaret, so my real name is Margaret Ihinger. Legally I'm "Margaret K. Ihinger;" that is, I sign legal documents under that name. However, I sign books as "Peg Kerr." I don't object to pen names, but there's no point in my using one since I already have more names than I can handle.

XS: I once heard that people with miserable childhoods can only write about related topics, while those with pleasant childhoods can write about anything. Emerald House Rising has nearly nothing to do with miserable childhoods, so apparently your own was wonderful. What was your family life like as you were growing up?

PK: I hesitate to agree with your premise. There may be some truth to your observation, but remember, my job as a fiction writer is to make stuff up. Life experiences can influence a writer, but assuming a writer's life is plainly evident in a writer's work seems to imply a lack of faith in the writer's imagination.

XS: Still, I'd like to know what your childhood was like.

PK: I was the third of four children living in a suburb of Chicago. My childhood had its ups and downs. When I was ten my classmates started teasing me quite mercilessly; I'm still not sure why. I was serious, smart, academically minded and liked bringing thick books to school to read.

XS: Ah, a person after my own heart.

PK: It all went on until I entered high school. My family was immensely supportive, and I did forge a few good friendships. That gave me a strong foundation. I gained valuable experience in reading people, and an appreciation for people who were good to me. And, since I turned to books for escape, I learned early the pleasures of reading. My mother took me to the library every week, although I think she was baffled that I often checked the same books out again and again and again.

XS: I see nothing wrong with that. I know I borrowed Dracula many times until I bought my own copy.

PK: My father was actually the first to suggest that I might be a writer someday because he was impressed by a rather clumsy first attempt at poetry. Still, it took me almost eight years out of college to figure out that my life's work was to be a writer.

XS: Who was the biggest influence on your life as you grew up?

PK: My parents, of course. My church. A ballet teacher, Bonnie McCollough--I'm not sure about the spelling--who also taught drama classes, was a big influence. I had a number of gifted teachers (I just sent out thank you letters and copies of my book to the four really excellent English teachers I had in high school: Don Kerr, Lucy Wright, Steve Granzyk, and Robert Hunt), and of course there were always books.

XS: Since we're talking about school, what are your views on education?

PK: I received an excellent education in Chicago through the public school system. I think everyone who wants an education should pursue it. I also believe it's never too late to get or continue an education.

XS: I couldn't agree more. Did you go to college as well?

PK: I graduated from St. Olaf College in 1982, majoring in public speaking and psychology. College gave me wonderful opportunites, such as competitive speech. I studied at Cambridge University in England for part of my senior year. I didn't get a lot of career guidance--it didn't help that I graduated during the 1982 recession. As I said, it took me eight years after graduation to realize that my life's work was to be a writer, and I also knew I might not make a living with my life's work.

XS: Did you ever consider going back to graduate school?

PK: I did go back. I planned to get a doctorate in Engish, then teach professionally, writing on the side. I entered the doctoral program at the University of Minnesota, where I finished the master's work (English Literature, specializing in Science Fiction and Fantasy) and all the course work for the doctorate, but never finished the degree. I decided to remain in Minnesota, supporting myself as a legal secretary--I'd been doing that during the summers--and writing a novel instead of a dissertation.

XS: Are you sorry you went to graduate school?

PK: Not at all, and that's saying a lot since I'm still paying off student loans! It gave me a chance to concentrate on reading as a writer, since I didn't yet know I was a writer when I went to college. I like what Tolkien says, that the stories come out of the imagination, which brews in the artist's mind like a big pot of stew. That's what I was doing in graduate school with all that reading: stoking that stew pot.

XS: Do you enjoy living in Minneapolis?

PK: I enjoy it very much. My husband and I don't have any urge to move anywhere else, though we may revisit this question when we're both old and in danger of falling on the ice. Then, too, the only time I don't like living here is when it's -30° outside and it's my turn to shovel the walk.

XS: Why stay where you are, then?

PK: Oh, the city is very liveable with all sorts of interesting places to visit, including two of the best sci-fi/fantasy bookstores in the country. There's a chain of beautiful lakes and parks where you can forget you're in a city at all. But for me, the fan and writing communities are the best things about the city. Minicon, one of the biggest regional sf/fantasy conventions in the country, is always held here on Easter weekend. There are sf/fantasy book discussion groups, and I know plenty of working sf/fantasy novelists, short story wirters, and poets. I work in a local writing group with Lois McMaster Bujold, Elise Matthesen, Joel Rosenberg, and Patricia C. Wrede.

XS: What effect does "family" have on your career?

PK: It's definitely slowed me down. I have two daughters, ages five and two. When they were younger I waited until they were napping, or dumped a huge pile of Legos in the hallway and typed like mad while they were building things. As they get older, though, I can't simply ingore them. It either makes me feel guilty or gives them opportunities for mischief. So, I wait until they're asleep and work unitl I fall over the keyboard.

XS: How important is success to you?

PK: Writers measure success in different ways: six figure incomes, Nebula and Hugo statuettes, fan letters. I've decided that while I don't object to fame, money, or awards, I really want to write books that move people, thrill them, make them cry, and inspire them to live better lives. I want to write books that will last beyond my lifetime.

XS: That's a tremendous goal you've set for yourself. What are you most afraid of, then--not achieving your goal?

PK: I suppose I have the same ambition Salieri had in the movie Amadeus: you know, "Lord, make me a great composer." I think I have his fear as well: that I'll continue to have this thirst to write something great, and the ability to recognize the talent in other people, but I'll never develop the chops to pull it off myself. Or maybe I'll stop writing entirely.

XS: That's a pretty intense fear, but I think you've already conquered it. How did it feel to see your first novel in print?

PK: Finishing and publishing my first novel...boy, that was a biggie. What a thrill when I finally held it in my hand--even though of course it wasn't nearly as perfect as it seemed when it first flowered in my imagination. I felt...a combination of awe, excitement, joy, gratitude for all the help I'd been given, triumph, and a little alarm. Also the sensation that I was really entering a new stage in my writing career. My writing group sent me a dozen roses, and I must say, I think the occasion certainly deserved it.

XS: Since we're on the subject of writing, let's talk about it. What kind of topics do you prefer writing about? You've done a fantasy, of course.

PK: I've written both sci-fi and fantasy. My novels just happen to be fantasy. I write about whatever interests me and let the marketing people worry about what to call it. I have no qualms about trying other genres, if my interest takes me there, though I'm stil finding lots of fun places to explore where I'm at right now.

XS: When is the easiest time for you to write?

PK: I'm more of a morning person than a night person and would prefer to write early in the day, but realistically, I have to work around the kids' schedules, which means I write after they go to bed.

XS: Any particular place you write in?

PK: I've fixed up an office quite comfortably, and I'm quite territorial about it. I like listening to music as I write, something melodious, turned down rather low, often Irish/Celtic. Loreena McKennett is a favorie. Coffee and chocolate are also good. I type faster than I hand write, so I'm comfortably drafting on the computer. I can be patient about interruptions, but only to a point. Occasionally, when I hit a really hot writing streak, I'll get snarly. Nobody will see me for ten hours until I emerge, manuscript in hand. Then I find my husband and demand that he drop everything to read it.

XS: Emerald House Rising involved a great deal of detail about the jewelcraft. How much research went into the novel?

PK: I spent lots of time at the University of Minnesota, browsing through books no one had looked at in years. Patricia Wrede, in my writing groups, recommended The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini as a source. I talked with a gemologist, too. I used the Italian renaissance for a model, even though Piyanthia isn't our world. I even bought a $200 book about Renaissance design, an appalling amount of money, but worth it for the help I got from it.

XS: Yikes. It must have been frustrating doing all that research.

PK: At times, but it was also great fun. That my world was imaginary made it all easier. I didn't have historical details to worry about. I just picked and chose what seemed to work best. For example, Jena can do the brilliant cut, but if this book were set in the Italian Renaissance, it would have been an error since the brilliant cut was a later invention. I'm discovering now how easy I had it, because my current book is set in a real historical time.

XS: I guess research is part of writing. Did you take writing classes?

PK: Yes. There are three things I'd like to tell you about. My career started with a class at the University of Minnesota via its extension program. A story I wrote in that class, "Free Day," was the first thing I ever sold. In fact, I sold it three times, netting back about fifteen times what I paid in tuition. I also met my husband in the class, and my classmates formed the nucleus of my first writing group.

XS: It was lucky you enrolled, then. How about the second experience?

PK: I went to Clarion in 1988, which was a fantastic experience. It's much more targeted towards a writing career than a standard college class, and has a good track record of turning out writers who go on to write professionally.

XS: And third?

PK: I wanted to take a writing class at the University of Minnesota while I was in graduate school. Applicants had to submit stories; I submitted a story I'd already published, "Debt in Kind." There were 25 applicants for 18 openings, and I was turned down. It turns out the professor didn't know anything about fantasy, which was what my story was. Moral: before taking a class, make sure the teacher knows something about the field you want to write in.

XS: I've learned that the hard way. Has writing become easier or more difficult for you since you started writing?

PK: Both. I know how to get words on the paper. I know how to structure a novel. But I'm continually challenging myself to master new areas in my craft. For example, in the book I'm writing now, I'm trying to master the difference between limited third-person viewpoint and omniscient viewpoint.

XS: What's the easiest thing about writing?

PK: When it's going well. There's an incredible joy in putting a perfect sentence down on paper, rereading it, and thinking, "Damn, that's good." It's even more fun when you can get someone else to read it and agree with you>

XS: Well, then, what's the most difficult thing?

PK: When it's going badly.

XS: Ahem. Where do you draw inspiration from?

PK: I start by thinking of something, then start writing to answer the question, "What is it about this that haunts me so?" I've drawn short story ideas from random thoughts, chance remarks, and newspaper articles. What starts the short story cooking is cross-fertilization of ideas. Both of my books, however, started from a simple image in a dream. Emerald House Rising came from a woman looking into a man's ring and falling into it. The book I'm working on now, The Wild Swans, comes from a woman dressed in black, sitting on a park bench in a city park on a cold, gloomy Novemeber day, watching swans swim on the surface of a pond.

XS: Those are very descriptive images, and that second one is haunting. How did you go about marketing Emerald House Rising? Did you have an agent to help you?

PK: I did it all backwards. I sent the book to Betsy Mitchell at Warner, a company that won't look at manuscripts by unrepresented authors. Betsy was willing to look at mine because she knew my work: she'd bought a novelette from me for Full Spectrum back when she'd been at Bantam Dell Doubleday. I was talking with Ashley Grayson about taking me on as a client, and told him that Betsy was considering my book. They talked about it--behind my back, no less--and she advised him to take me on as a client, which he did. Then she bought the book and he negotiated the contract.

XS: I think I'm getting dizzy. Why don't we talk more about Emerald House Rising? It started out slowly since you needed to establish the world, but soon I couldn't put it down. Was it difficult to maintain a high level of tension for so long?

PK: Imagine what it was like to maintain that level of tension for the two years it took to write it! Yep, it was hard. My writing group was very patient about listening to me moan, "I'm never going to get out of this book alive."

XS: What inspired you to create Piyanthia and adopt gemstones to mark out the noble families?

PK: I'd been thrashing around for two years trying to figure out how to start a novel, and I couldn't dream up the plot of an entire novel. Finally, I started writing about this girl, and I kept writing, just to see what would happen. I wrote about thirty pages before I stopped, at the point where she appears at Duone Keep (I added chapter 3 much later). After that, everything grew out of Jena.

XS: What about the gemstones?

PK: I had started writing about a gemcutting apprentice, and it was the method I hit upon that would put a gemcutter in the center of the political action: if gemstones were an important political symbol, the most important people would be constantly commissioning jewelry and interacting with gemcutters.

XS: That makes sense. Now, why differentiate between magicians and wizards?

PK: Impulse. It was an "aha!" idea I had as I went about setting up the magical system. I'd been talking with fantasy writers about what magic represented in their works: addictive power, a method of science, something that corrupted, etc. I was interested in exploring magic as something that could be used to improve people. One of the primary things I was interested in improving was the relationships between men and women. That's why I set up male-female partnerships.

XS: All your characters are "real" in a way that I and my classmates have difficulty producing. How do you bring your characters to life? I especially found Jena "alive" and real.

PK: Let's look at Jena. I ask questions about her. How old is she? Are her parents alive? Does she have any siblings or lovers? How do they get along? On some questions I'll draw a blank, but on others something will pop into my mind immediately. The more questions you answer, the more real your character becomes. This technique is useful because plot simultaneously starts to develop as you ask questions.

XS: I'm amazed that you managed to keep so many of the characters so tightly connected, especially since I as the reader knew so much about them! I've read books where some characters were constant, yet remained relatively obscure. You introduce the reader to many characters and give a great deal of information about these characters, yet the story doesn't suffer from having so many major players!

PK: It was tricky: I tried as hard as I could to work out a pretty intricate puzzle without relying too heavily on coincidence. It sounds as though you thought I pulled it off.

XS: You did!

PK: Good! The question-and-answer technique was useful in accomplishing this.

XS: Do you have any plans to revisit Piyanthia in the future? It needn't be solely about Jena, but other authors hae created worlds and made them their own. Maybe you could have Jena investigating the powers of the Sunburst and Starburst.

PK: Possibly. As I wrote Emerald House Rising I thought I might like to do more books in a series, each revolving loosely around one of the Diadem houses. Major characters in one book might reappear as minor characters in others. I also thought, if I do a Piyanthia series, it would be a good idea to alternate books in the series with stand-alone books. At this point, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I'm close to finishing my second (unrelated) book, but I haven't yet discussed future possible projects with Warner, and I don't know yet if I will come up with an idea about one of the other Diadem houses that would lure me back to Piyanthia. I did think of a scene I'd love to write: Lady Rhuddlan and Bram having a beer or something together and comparing notes.

XS: Mabye you could have one that suddenly produces a horde of magicians and wizards. I can't say more without giving away too much about the book, but I'd like to know how you create your villains. You threw in so many possible villians that I found myself holding my breath. It was almost like a murder mystery--or maybe a game of Clue.

PK: It's actually an anti-murder mystery since the good guys are trying to let the Diamond die and the bad guys are trying to make him live. That was another convention I thought would be interesting to turn on its head.

XS: Now, about Kett...

PK: I created him by asking another question: "Okay, given this magic system, in what way can you screw it up?" Arikan answers this question in chapter 3: "The mistake is to ask only 'Is it possible?' without asking 'Is it right?'" So I decided to show a character who failed to ask that question. Kett grew out of that.

XS: What about Rinelle? She wasn't really a villain, but you can't really excuse her from all blame, can you?

PK: She grew out of another thing that interested me about wizard relationships. Remember, I wanted to create a magical system which would improve people. I thought that if wizards were doing it right, working in harmony, then they would be able to draw upon both their experiences, thus pooling their knowledge. Since wizard pairs are always male-female pairs, then experienced and successful ones would meet in the middle of a male-female continuum moving toward androgyny. Male wizards would become empathetic and female wizards would become assertive. Conversely, I decided, magical partners who screwed up their relationship moved farther apart along the male-female continuum into gender stereotypes. The result? Kett becomes arrogant and unempathetic, and Rinnelle becomes submissive and indecisive.

XS: What was the hardest thing about writing this novel?

PK: Figuring out how to write a novel at all instead of a short story.

XS: How about the easiest thing?

PK: The easiest thing was...um...nothing quite comes to mind about it as easy. I suppose the best thing about it was that it was terrific fun when it finally started to take off on its own.

XS: What lies in store for you now?

PK: I'm within three chapters of completing The Wild Swans, which is based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale by the same name.

XS: I think I've read that one. Isn't it about a girl and her brothers that were transformed into swans?

PK: That's the one. I hope to finish it in time for its May '99 release date, but I'm running a little late. I'm unsure what comes next, but I do intend to keep writing novels.

XS: What advice would you offer to anyone thinking about becoming a writer?

PK: There are many people who have talent to burn. What's really rare, and what will take you the farthest, is persistence. Keep writing. Keep sending stuff out. Keep trying to learn. Don't give up.

XS: Any parting comments?

PK: It's been an interesting experience to examine my creative process in order to answer your questions. This is really my first interview, and it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your interest.

XS: Wait, wait! Before we finish, I just have to know. At the end of all the e-mail letters you sent there is this Latin phrase: "Sola plura verba hic liber requiret." What does it mean?

PK: It's my writing group's mantra. It means, "Only more words, this book needs." We repeat it whenever one of us gets anxious about a book we're working on.

XS: "Sola plura verba hic liber requiret." Got it. Thanks!

PK: Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about this outstanding author. I know I did. Please visit the site devoted to her by following this link. You'll find out more about her at this site. Also, look for The Wild Swans to appear on the shelves from Warner Books. Remember: the planned release date is May, 1999, so watch for it!

Comments? Suggestions? Just click here to send me e-mail.
Also, if this interview prompted you to read Emerald House Rising, then let me know. I appreciate knowing I made a difference in somebody's life.

You are the th visitor to this page since August 10, 1998.

Back Home Back to Starfire Reviews Back to Corridors of Communication

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page