Apple Podcasts
iHeartRadio
Spotify
TuneIn
Since her first published novel, Time of the Dark, in 1982, Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, media tie-ins, graphic novels, screenplays, murder mysteries, and Saturday morning cartoons. Her work has been nominated for numerous Locus Awards, and her novel Those Who Hunt the Night won for Best Horror Novel in 1989. She’s also an avid martial artist. Barbara joins me to talk about marital arts and how they influence her writing, how she plots her work, the joys of research, trying to choose her favorite genre, and more.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
04:20 Learning new skills for writing adventure stories: research hands-on.
08:37 Creativity exists beyond making a living; people pursue passions.
12:21 Encouragement versus discouragement shapes creative confidence in childhood.
16:27 Teased for writing fanfic, Hambly stopped sharing at school.
20:59 Martial arts experience improves fight scenes and knowledge in writing.
24:13 Hands-on weapon training reveals challenges for historical accuracy.
28:37 Martial arts philosophy influences character development and approach to life.
32:08 Aikido teaches problem-solving—step aside from incoming challenges.
36:27 Hambly outlines her novels; prefers clear goals in stories.
40:08 Timelining and detailed research ensure realistic historical fiction.
44:53 Exploring world-building, food, and logistics in fantasy and sci-fi.
48:22 Hambly’s favorite projects: historical fiction, fantasy, and vampire series.
52:02 Writing across genres, balancing commercial market and creative joy.
55:24 Hambly’s creative journey spans genres, driven by passion.
Show Links: Barbara Hambly
Barbara’s website
Subscribe!
You can subscribe to Follow Your Curiosity via the handy links at the top of the page for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, and YouTube. If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to tell your friends!
Transcript: Barbara Hambly
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Since her first published novel, “Time of the Dark,” in 1982, Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, media tie ins, graphic novels, screenplays, murder mysteries, and Saturday morning cartoons. Her work has been nominated for numerous Locus Awards, and her novel, “Those Who Hunt the Night,” won for best horror novel in 1989. She’s also an avid martial artist. Barbara joins me to talk about martial arts and how they influence her writing, how she plots her work, the joys of research, trying to choose her favorite genre, and more.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:55]:
Here’s my conversation with Barbara Hambly. Barbara, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Barbara Hambly [00:01:02]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:04]:
I start everyone with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?
Barbara Hambly [00:01:11]:
I was a very creative child. I was writing what I realize now was essentially fanfic about Sherlock Holmes when I was, like, eight. I was writing Oz fanfic when I was six and I was making up stories about my little my little toys before I knew the alphabet I would storyboard them. Wow. So I be I was very creative right from the start. My sister would have nightmares and have trouble going to sleep. And so from a very early age, I started telling stories. I started telling her stories after we after we would go to bed.
Barbara Hambly [00:02:06]:
So by the time I was four or five, I was learning how to organize plots, learning how to organize dialogue, and learning how to be a storyteller long before I learned the alphabet. And a very good friend of mine, the the, writer and producer Marc Scott Zicree, has a theory about types of writers, and he said one type of writer is the the writer for whom writing is your safe place. You go into your mind and you go down to the dark at the bottom of your mind and you have a wonderful time there. You know, you see all kinds of wonderful things. He said that type of writer usually starts out as a child. He said the other type of writer is the writer for whom writing is the dangerous place, and you go in the dark of your mind and you go down to the bottom of the dark of your mind and you see really scary stuff. But because you’re a writer, you have to write. You know, if you’re if you’re born a writer, you have to write or it hurts you.
Barbara Hambly [00:03:31]:
And he said those type of writers usually start later. And it was at least his theory that that was why many writers, many creative people get involved in substance abuse is because you’ve got to do it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:48]:
You don’t know why you’ve got to do
Barbara Hambly [00:03:49]:
it, but you’ve got to do it, but it scares the hell out of you. And I suspect that my late husband was the second type of writer, is that you have to do it, but it frightens you. And then you get into this push pull procrastination, you gotta do it, but you don’t want to do it. And fortunately, I’m the first type of writer. I’ve been doing this literally all my life,
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:20]:
but I didn’t know I could make
Barbara Hambly [00:04:21]:
a living at it. And I was I was just absolutely delighted when I discovered that, yes, I could make most of a living at it. You know, I always had to have a a a gig job on the side, and I spent my earlier life looking for a job that would let me have time to write.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:42]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Those those are an interesting thing to try to find.
Barbara Hambly [00:04:48]:
Yes. Yes. Particularly if you also want to socialize.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:55]:
Yes.
Barbara Hambly [00:04:57]:
But for me, because very early I realized I wanted to write adventure stories, and I was very early drawn to either fantasy or historicals because, you know, who wants to read the actual adventures of someone growing up in a suburb in the in California in the 1950s? But I realized and people, you know, people said, write what you know. Nobody wants to read about a kid growing well, maybe they do. I certainly didn’t. So to me, that meant know what you write, which meant learn how to ride a horse, learn how to shoot a gun, learn how to use a sword, learn self defense, you know, learn hand to hand combat, learn how to use a toilet when you’re wearing a corset and a bustle. It can be done, but it’s not dignified. How to do the minuet, how to I was never very good at this, you know, how to light a fire with flint and steel. How difficult is it to light a fire with flint and steel? And, you know, one of my friends could usually do it on the first crack. Okay.
Barbara Hambly [00:06:27]:
How dark is it when there’s no artificial lighting? You know, all of this stuff that to me counts as research. Oh, yeah, having sex, which is necessary if you’re going to be writing any book in which someone has sex. You know, lots lots of stuff. Lots of stuff that I felt, yes, you need to learn this. You need to have done this.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:01]:
It’s interesting how writing can become and this isn’t the right word, but it’s the one that’s popping into my head. It it kind of becomes an excuse to learn all of the things that you might have wanted to learn but never had a good reason to learn. You know, a lot of those things that you just listed are things that a lot of people might wanna learn, you know, how to use a sword, how how to how to do a dance that they would have no occasion to actually use in regular life that, you know, most of us would say, yeah, I could go learn how to do that, but what am I what am I gonna do with it? You know? But when you’re writing, you actually have a genuine, legitimate reason to go out and learn all of those things because you are gonna do something with it.
Barbara Hambly [00:07:52]:
And yet the world is full of people who do not write, who take martial arts classes, who take horseback riding. So far as I know, none of the other people in my sword class are writers. They just do it because you know, it’s, it’s like cosplay. Mhmm. And you do it because you wanna do it. You know? Go to the Renaissance Faire any weekend in April and you find a whole lot of people who are not there because they wanna use this for something. They’re there just because they like to dress up. That’s true.
Barbara Hambly [00:08:37]:
So it’s which makes it easy if you do want to use this as research. Makes it easy to find these groups that can do this. The historical recreationists, wonderful, wonderful groups of people who they do it because they want to. They do it because it’s it’s a creative part of the mind that does not involve producing something Right. Except just some really dandy costumes. Mhmm. But it’s it’s like, you know, they say in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, don’t dream it, be it. Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:09:21]:
And all those people who would go to the to the rendezvous, you know, it’s don’t dream it, be it. Get out there and see what it’s like.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:32]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Barbara Hambly [00:09:35]:
And that is a form of creativity. That’s a wonderful form of creativity, that you’re not trying to produce anything. You’re not trying to make a living at it. You’re making your living so you can go do that on the weekends. The people who go to Burning Man and spend huge amounts of money to make weird vehicles to pedal around the playa with no purpose except to impress and entertain other people who like to do the same thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:11]:
It’s a good point. Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:10:12]:
So the world is full of creativity that is not trying to make a living out of that creativity. It’s you’re just creative because it feels so good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:27]:
Yeah. And that to me is is the point of creativity. I just feel like so many people think that if there isn’t a further reason to it, that they can’t justify doing it, and that frustrates and disappoints me.
Barbara Hambly [00:10:46]:
Well, yeah. Yeah. Because they weren’t given permission. At some point, when they were probably very, very small, they were not given permission. You know, nobody told them, hey, this is better than ice cream. Yes. I have a nephew who plays, tabletop miniature games. And, you know, having gone to one of these tournaments, as much as the joy of playing the game itself is painting those tiny little miniatures and, you know, going on to the the Facebook sites for the people who paint these these things that are smaller than my thumb just for the joy of, look at this.
Barbara Hambly [00:11:40]:
Mhmm. Look at this. And, of course, when I was a child, I did the same thing, but it the I had, you know, tabletop games, but they had not tabletop games had not been invented yet. So I would have to draw all the little characters on paper and stick it to cardboard, and and I’d play my tabletop games in my room with the door shut. But there was, you know, there was no place where I could go to buy them. There was no play there was no commercial no commercial infrastructure. If if at that time there had been stores that did tabletop game stuff, I would never have written a word
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:17]:
because this was this was my telling stories to myself.
Barbara Hambly [00:12:21]:
Mhmm. But, my parents were baffled, of course, but they they understood that this was what I did, you know. And my my sister and I both did this, but I was the I guess I was the guiding push behind it and, you know, after she stopped doing it and I just continued to make those until I started writing more. You know, I would write and I would do this and I would draw and paint, but, eventually, writing reached a point where it it took over the functions of all of them.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:09]:
So was there someone who said to you, hey. This is better than ice cream, or did you figure that out on your own?
Barbara Hambly [00:13:15]:
Figured that out on my own. My parents had not the slightest idea why I was doing this, but they were kind of fascinated. You know, particularly my mom was just, wow, look at that, isn’t that weird? But they never hassled us to do something else, except join the church choir. We did we did have to, you know, go to church and join the church choir.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:43]:
Yeah. It it’s interesting. The the people that I’ve talked to over the last six or seven years, the people who were encouraged have had a much easier time doing what they love to do over time and, you know, turning it into a successful career or or successful hobby. The people who were discouraged have a much more difficult time, but it’s much better not to be actively discouraged even if you’re not actively encouraged. So in your situation, you are still better off than Yeah. You know, if they had said, what the heck are you doing that for? You should be, you know, doing calculus. Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:14:27]:
I was never actively discouraged. I think I was never actively encouraged because it was so far out of anything that they did or knew about. I learned very early not to tell anybody about it because I would get teased at school. Oh, wow. I got very seriously teased teased about it at school, and I quit talking about it. I didn’t tell anybody.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:01]:
Yeah. That would shut you up in a hurry, for sure.
Barbara Hambly [00:15:03]:
Yeah. It did. Yeah. Well, I was kinda kinda weird at school anyway.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:08]:
Yeah. I I often tell people, you know, when they’re starting something new, not to tell anybody about it until they’re sure that they have enough of it, that it’s it’s solid enough for them, that if they tell somebody about it and that person wants to look at it, read it, whatever, and comments on it and says the wrong thing, that they’ll still be able to keep going with it in spite of it. You know, if they’ve just written the first three pages and somebody looks at it and says, what the heck is this? That’s probably not enough. You know? And they’ll probably abandon it if they hear something like that. But if they have the first 100 pages, they’re probably gonna be able to withstand that and keep going.
Barbara Hambly [00:15:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. I know. Specifically, what I got teased about was, again, writing I didn’t the the word fanfic had not been invented at that time, but I would I was writing fanfic with the, Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series. Oh, wow. So I was writing, you know, Barsoomian fanfic, and I got teased really bad about it, and that’s when I just shut down. But I actually did write fanfic all the way through high school for the very I had a very few friends because I was pretty weird and but I did write fanfic. I remember writing Man from UNCLE fanfic and then once Star Trek hit, like me and two other Star Trek fans in the high school were, you know, trading fanfic, and actually the three of us, that’s when they steered me into they saw that they were gonna the local fencing club was going to be you meeting in the gym, in the high school gym, in the evenings, And so the three of us started taking fencing together.
Barbara Hambly [00:17:09]:
I was terrible at it, of course. But, you know, I was 15.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:14]:
Right. I love that, though. I love that you had your own little little group, and you did your own thing, and you went and you took fencing just because you could.
Barbara Hambly [00:17:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it was the start of my lifetime attachment to martial arts.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:39]:
Yeah. I’ve been wondering, you know, how how martial arts has influenced your writing.
Barbara Hambly [00:17:48]:
You learn how to write a fight scene. And if you’re writing adventure fiction, you need to know how to write a fight scene. There is one mystery writer whom I am very fond of that writer’s work. Wonderful characterization, wonderful background, wonderful plotting, cannot write a fight scene to save her life, cannot write an action scene.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:20]:
Mhmm.
Barbara Hambly [00:18:23]:
And it’s like reading a sex scene that was written by a virgin. You need to have done it. Mhmm. It’s like sometimes I’ll be reading histories I I am very fond of Asian history and I’ll be reading, Chinese history or Japanese history, and the author will be talking about, you know, the local religions and go on about Buddhism. And I’m reading this and going you clearly have not gone into what Buddhism actually is. I’ll read this and go No, it is not what you’re saying. It is not a pessimistic worldview. It is not, oh, the entire world is is terrible, and I’m going, you know, for but it’s there’s a lot of things that you you don’t understand until you’ve done it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:41]:
Mhmm.
Barbara Hambly [00:19:44]:
And, you know, writing an action scene, writing a fight scene, it’s like, you know, reading a reading a fight scene and it’s a blow by blow description, and if you’re actually in a sparring situation, that’s not how it feels, is you’re not thinking about it until, well, then I did an upper rising cut block and, you know, this and that that’s at least in my for me, that is not my experience. That is not how I experienced when I was taking karate. That was not how I experienced a sparring match. But it’s different, and I can’t explain how it’s different.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:33]:
It makes sense to me, though, even though I’ve never done martial arts. It makes perfect sense to me that that’s the kind of thing that that if you’re not familiar with it, you’re gonna go by what you’ve seen on TV and in the movies. And what you’ve seen, you haven’t really understood while you’re watching it. You’ve just seen a bunch of things that look like a fight, and you’re gonna try to recreate that.
Barbara Hambly [00:20:59]:
Yeah. And I think the keyword there is seen. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:04]:
You’re
Barbara Hambly [00:21:05]:
experiencing it with, like, two senses, and there are some things that you need to experience with your body. Right. You know, martial arts, sex, and dancing. It’s there are some things that you just gotta do. And watching it doesn’t well, watching it I won’t say watching it doesn’t count, but you get a different perception One of my nephews does it’s a form of martial arts called buhert which is fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth century European combat in armor with swords with swords and shields, which just looks like a barrel of fun, but it’s you presumably, you learn how to deal with the weight of the armor, and you you would presumably fight differently if you’re in armor. And I’m I’m just fascinated that apparently a large number of people do this and they’re not all men. It’s when I was, I was in Spain last year at a convention and there was a group that did demonstrations and workshops with medieval weapons, so I took advantage of medieval and renaissance weapons, so I took advantage to take, you know, these little fifteen minute mini classes of how do you actually wield a broadsword? And so I did broadsword and, medieval and renaissance rapier and the weapons are heavy, which is one reason why you didn’t have a lot of women doing that type of combat because a large percentage of women don’t have the upper body strength to do that, particularly as you go back in time Before the perfection of steel, your weapons were iron and they were really heavy, and so the women who were doing that kind of stuff, the Joan of Arks, the, you know, the women who would go into the Viking women who would go into combat. You would have to build up your upper body strength.
Barbara Hambly [00:23:52]:
And many women did not have that training. So that that was a that was a wonderful learning experience. It’s just how heavy is a broadsword in combat? The answer is very, and I I wasn’t even dealing with a shield. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:13]:
If you’ve got heavy things in both hands, that’s even worse.
Barbara Hambly [00:24:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. So and, you know, for me, it’s it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also research. Mhmm. The
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:29]:
martial arts have such a philosophical side to them. Has that influenced your writing as well?
Barbara Hambly [00:24:37]:
I believe that everything influences my writing. The the martial arts have a philosophical and spiritual side for those who are looking deeper than, hey. I wanna learn how to kick ass. And, you know, particularly the Asian martial arts, it’s like this is to the goal of the martial arts is perfection of character, and you can’t lie in the dojo. You can’t I remember one of the fellows, in the the the sparring team at the dojo that I trained in back in the seventies, And one of the fellows said to another, you know, the difference between us is I try to pretend I’m an asshole and you try to pretend you’re not, which was a very accurate, description of the characters of both men. But when you’re working with someone in the dojo, it’s you can’t hide what you are. You can’t hide what’s inside because it’s nonverbal communication. And in aikido, I’ve taken aikido for about the past seven years, and I hope to take it as long as I’m physically capable of doing so.
Barbara Hambly [00:26:07]:
Because aikido is not punching and kicking, it’s using the opponent’s weight to get them down so you can run away. You know, you don’t it’s it’s more it’s a little bit like wrestling. It’s a little bit like jujitsu. But so it self selects. You know, it it I believe it literally means, you know, the gentle art. It self selects for people who are not in into or who are less into just proving what a badass they are. And so there is much more of an emphasis on the developing your character. You know, it’s it’s still very much a a combat sport, but it’s the emphasis is different.
Barbara Hambly [00:27:04]:
But in any martial art, because I took karate all through the seventies and I’m in aikido now and I did weapons for a while and I did belly dance for a while, you learn how to learn. You learn that there’s always even no matter how hot you think you are, there’s always somebody better out there. And aikido is very different a very different experience for me than karate was, but it’s, you know, you learn how to learn and you learn principles. The The guiding principle of aikido is step out of the way. If somebody’s coming at you, step out of the way. They’ll go right past you. How do you use someone else’s violence? You’re not behaving violently, the other person is behaving violently, and you just redirect their energy and dump them on their butt. And that kind of philosophy, that approach to dealing with an attacker, is it goes from being physically how do you do the technique into mentally, what are you trying to do? How do you approach other problems? And it’s, was it Anne Rice who wrote in Interview with the Vampire, Let the Body Instruct the Mind? You know, you learn things for one purpose, but at some point you start going, okay, this is a good approach to life.
Barbara Hambly [00:29:00]:
It’s a good way to approach life. Yeah. I’m of the opinion that children should learn martial arts and also I’m of the opinion that children should learn dancing. You know, it’s a way of connecting with your body. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:30]:
Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:29:30]:
You know, of course, I never did as a child. I was a very as a child, I lived completely in my head. I still kind of do, but, you know, I’m I’m a great fan of getting children into, you know, martial arts or, you know, something to just to just use your body. Mhmm. Just get used to, you know, what you’re what you’re doing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:00]:
Yeah. Because an awful lot of us spend all of our time in our heads. Yeah. And and I I hear you about things you learn in one place turning into a a way to live your life. I’ve said that so many times about improv. You know, yes, and is a great way to live your life.
Barbara Hambly [00:30:20]:
In a way, in a way the martial arts is improv. Somebody comes at you, which is, you know, somebody comes at you, what do you do? Mhmm. And particularly when we get particularly young women coming in girls who are, you know, 14, 15, 16 you don’t get a lot of them. But I look at this and I go, other than learning the techniques, a lot of it is if a guy grabs you by your arm, you don’t freak out You go, I know what to do And I think particularly with girls, it really helps to not to get freaked out Mhmm. In a in a in a situation where somebody you don’t know comes up and grabs your arm. Yeah. It’s like, what do you do? And it’s like, oh, I okay. We I’ve I’ve done this in class.
Barbara Hambly [00:31:37]:
Yeah. It’s not a completely unfamiliar experience.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:41]:
Right. Because as soon as you freak out, you lose your ability to Yes. Do anything sensible in the situation.
Barbara Hambly [00:31:49]:
Exactly. Exactly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:53]:
Yeah. And I love what you said too with with Aikido about, you know, step out of the way. So many times, that’s the obvious solution to something coming at you, and we don’t even think about that.
Barbara Hambly [00:32:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just step out of the way. Don’t engage or engage in a way that the other person isn’t expecting.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:20]:
Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:32:23]:
And it, you know, it comes back to improv. Mhmm. I’ve I’ve never been good at improv. It’s a it’s something I’d be interested in in trying, taking an improv class, but that’s not something that has come come my way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:49]:
I think you’re right though that you’ve probably got a decent amount of improv out of martial arts.
Barbara Hambly [00:32:54]:
Yes. Yeah. But again, it’s it’s physical rather than mental. So it’s it’s it’s training a different, a different aspect of your reactions. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:09]:
So when you when you write, do you plot everything out in advance, or are you doing more by the seat of your pants? Are you more following the flow?
Barbara Hambly [00:33:23]:
I am not a seat of the pants writer. Okay. Generally well, generally, when I write a novel, I turn in an outline to the publisher. You know, when I’ve got a contract, I’ll write the novel. Every now and again, I’ll write a novel just for the fun of it and then try to sell it later. And but even when I’m when I’m writing these novels that I don’t expect are going to go anywhere, I’ll very early in the process, I’ll write the first couple of scenes just to get an idea of who the characters are, but generally I will write out an outline because personally I need to know where I’m going. I know that there are some writers who they’ll just start and they’ll write whatever comes up for them and those are not the writers that I tend to read. I tend to prefer a story where there is a clear goal.
Barbara Hambly [00:34:39]:
A story about what the hell are we doing here does not hold my interest if we don’t at least figure out what the hell we’re doing here fairly quickly. There was a television show on, God, it must be fifteen years ago, that by the second season, you know, it’s a group of people in an unusual situation and by the second season, I was going, you guys are making this up as you go along. You know, this is like the stories I told to my sister when I was five years old. I know what it looks like when you’re making this up as you go along. You know, if you’re pretending that there’s something happening behind the scenes, be a little clearer or it does not hold my interest in spite of the fact that one of the actors in that show was really hot. But I need to that’s that’s one reason why I write murder mysteries. And even the fantasy novels that I wrote, they were all puzzle stories What’s going on? What’s happening here? When you discover this clue and then you discover that clue and you go, there’s something really weird happening here. What is it and how bad can it get? And that’s the type of story that holds my interest.
Barbara Hambly [00:36:27]:
Other people, different things hold their interest, but I like to have a clear idea and for me, that’s I need to have what happens first, what happens next, what does that lead to In between those events, we put in the character development, we put in the B story, we put in why the heroine does not trust this guy, we put in what kind of damage did this person take as a child that is causing him to act in this fashion, we put in history, we put in if we’re writing a fantasy, we put in history, we put in, you know, what kind of monsters are lurking in the forest, but I need to have a clear sequence of events so that I can move the story a lot.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:26]:
I think with TV, it’s even harder to get away with not knowing where you’re going than it is when you’re writing a novel. At least with a novel, you can go back and you can revise it when you’re done writing your first draft Yep. And figure out all of the pieces. But with a TV show, you don’t have that option.
Barbara Hambly [00:37:46]:
Yeah. It’s like if you’re making it up as you go along, you know, suddenly in season three, you have to explain that polar bear in season one.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:55]:
Yeah. I would never wanna try to do that with something like TV.
Barbara Hambly [00:37:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. Which, of course, is probably one reason why I gave up watching TV in 1972.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:12]:
Oh my. Well, since you do outline everything, have you ever had a situation where you were part of the way through, you know, fleshing out your outline and suddenly something happened that you didn’t expect according to that outline?
Barbara Hambly [00:38:27]:
The closest I’ve come to that was when I was writing Star Trek novels, and there was one Star Trek novel that got tangled up in the approvals loop, and then they fired the guy who was in the approvals loop, and then so it was like eighteen months between the time I turned in the outline and the time I got the approval. So I’m starting to write this novel following the outline, and then I reach this point in the outline that says, and then these four guys take over the enterprise. I’m going, how the hell did they do that? My goodness. That was clever. So that’s the closest I’ve come to that is that taught me that when I have that idea as I’m writing the outline, please write how that happened Generally I try to have a clear idea how stuff happens. And one way that I do this is timelining. And, of course, if you’re if you’re writing a murder mystery, you have to timeline. It’s like when you find out this clue and then you find out clue number two, how many days is it before particularly historicals? How long does it take for a letter to get from New Orleans to England and get a reply back? And what happens in those six weeks? You know, there’s technology lags.
Barbara Hambly [00:40:08]:
Mhmm. And, you know, and and that’s where you get into research. You know? How long would it take a steamboat to get from New Orleans to Vicksburg, and what happens during that time? How fast how how how long does it take to ride a horse from point a to point b, which is something I’m running into in fantasies all the time. And, of course, you you try to look this up and well, that depends on how strong the horse is and that depends on the condition of the roads and that depends on this and that. There’s a couple of wonderful books that people have written. One of them is, and I’m not coming up with the names of the authors at all, One of them is called Medieval Underpants, which is about stuff that people don’t think about or write about or research. It’s like, yeah, okay, what did you wear under those robes? Yeah. Another one is called What Kings Ate and What Wizards Drank, which goes into food logistics.
Barbara Hambly [00:41:23]:
How much food do you need if you’re gonna walk to Mordor? What a good question. Yeah. Well, they were gathering berries on the on the way. What season of the year was it? Were berries in season?
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:37]:
Mhmm.
Barbara Hambly [00:41:38]:
Well, they’d they’d hunt, they’d snare rabbits. Do you know how long it takes to snare a rabbit? What happens if you’ve got a troop of orcs following you? You don’t have time to hunt. How much water do you need before you start to pass out? If you’re marching an army, where do you need to camp that the horses who were pulling your artillery wagons are gonna be able to have water. And all these logistical things that twenty first century, we don’t think about. Right. Things like, you know, all of those TV shows in the sixties and seventies where the entire episode, our hero is trying to get to a telephone to call help. Use your cell for god’s sake. Yeah.
Barbara Hambly [00:42:35]:
What happens if your cell phone connection is out? You know, in Star Trek, they oh, there’s an ion storm and we can’t contact the ship. It’s like, you know, there there was another TV show, wonderful British TV show, where in order to use the transporter, you had to have a transporter bracelet. So, of course, if the guys writing the show wanted to put a ticking clock in there, first thing that happens is you you you lose that transporter bracelet. Mhmm. And so you gotta find the thing before you can get off the planet.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:10]:
Right.
Barbara Hambly [00:43:13]:
So these are all writer tricks, you know, but they’re all they’re all stuff you have to think about if you’re writing a fantasy, if you’re writing a historical. Which is why it’s so much fun.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:29]:
Oh, absolutely.
Barbara Hambly [00:43:32]:
One of the one of the things I’ve had tremendous fun when I was writing Star Wars novels, I wrote two Star Wars novels, and in both of them, I went into the cuisine of that world. You know, what what kind of food are they eating? I wrote a story about the chef in the palace of Jabba the Hutt, which has to be the most terrible job in the galaxy. Absolutely. The stuff that, yeah, we’re gonna save the galaxy, but, you know, we haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast and we’re we’re what happens when you have not had anything to eat since breakfast or maybe since lunch yesterday, how is that going to affect your reflexes in a fight? How is that going to affect, you know, if you’re dehydrated, how is that going to affect the story? So that’s that’s one of the directions that my creativity takes me in, which is one of the things that makes it so much fun, that makes creativity so much fun.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:53]:
Yeah. It is like putting a puzzle together out of all of those little details.
Barbara Hambly [00:45:00]:
In a way, except I’m really terrible with puzzles. It’s it’s all world building. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:09]:
And you’ve you’ve written in so many different genres and fandoms and everything. Do you have a favorite? Or is that, like, asking you to pick your favorite child?
Barbara Hambly [00:45:24]:
I have opinions about parents who say, Oh, I love them all equally. One of my favorite novels that I’ve written was the one called The Bride of the Rat God, which takes place in Hollywood in the 1920s, and it’s about a silent film starlet who is being pursued by a giant Manchurian rat demon who was only visible to her three Pekingases. And of course, nobody bought this novel. Much later, I was able to start work on a series of murder mysteries that take place in the same place and time, 1924 Hollywood, but there are no fantasies, straight murder mysteries. I really enjoy doing those. I really enjoy the the series that started with the Silent Tower. The wizard is Antrig and his computer, computer nerd partner is Joanna. And one of the things when I switched from because I started out writing fantasy and kind of the bottom fell out of that market, and that’s when I switched over to writing historical murder mysteries.
Barbara Hambly [00:46:50]:
But a lot of people who were fans of the fantasies, you like the people, or at least I do. You know, you get involved in the lives of these people and wonder, okay, what happens after the end of the story? So about fifteen years ago, I started writing you know and there’s all these old fantasy series that I wrote in the eighties and nineties. No, no publisher is gonna pick up a a busted series. But I started out on a website and then I switched over to selling these on Amazon of writing short stories and novelettes about the further adventures of these people, And I’d sell them for $5 a pop because, you know, if I was not if I was not gonna sell them for at least something, I knew that I would not have the impetus to write them. Mhmm. So these are, you know, there’s a whole bunch of these on Amazon and I also, they’re also up on Draft2Digital. And it lets me go back to because I loved all my fantasy series. I love my historical murder mystery series.
Barbara Hambly [00:48:22]:
So the further adventure stories let me go back to when I have time and right now I’m always working on something and I’m frequently behind a deadline and sometimes it’s as I have aged, my writing has slowed down and it takes longer to produce things. But so I guess the short answer to the question is I’m not sure which is my favorite because I love so many of them. Oh, and I love the vampire series. I love doing my vampire series.
Barbara Hambly [00:49:07]:
I do this stuff because I love it. I can’t really say such and such is my favorite because, you know, I love working on all of them. I did three, I guess what you’d call women’s historical fiction, these big, big cinder block books. One of them was about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln that was suggested to me by a publisher. One of them was about they suggested doing the first three first ladies Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and I said, I’m not going to talk about the first three first ladies without talking about Thomas Jefferson’s black mistress. And the weird thing was when I started researching, I discovered that both Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams knew Jefferson’s mistress, and Dolley Madison knew Martha Washington. It’s like these ladies knew each other, you know, they interacted, and that was a fun book to write. I don’t know whether it did well or not, but it was a fun book to write.
Barbara Hambly [00:51:13]:
And then I did a novel about the home front on this during the Civil War when when all the guys are away at at the war. What’s going on with the ladies at home? And what happens if you have two of them who are friends and who are living on opposite sides? And it’s an epistolary novel, it’s an epistolary novel of the letters they’re writing back and forth to each other. They’ve only met once or twice when the brother of one of them
Barbara Hambly [00:51:13]:
no, the the one of the lady’s husbands was formerly in love with the sister of the other lady. Okay. And that’s how they these two women met and then it’s an epistolary novel of going through the war and what’s happening in each of their lives. I have no idea whether that one did well or poorly, but again, I really enjoyed writing it. But, you know, they were very respectable women’s fiction, and then I went back to writing murder mysteries. Because, you know, there was not in all those three books, there was not a single fight scene.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:59]:
Well, we can’t have that for too long.
Barbara Hambly [00:53:21]:
Well done. And in fact, because of writing the the second one about the, the first ladies, you know, there’s a genre of murder mysteries, of historical murder mysteries, the famous historical sleuth genre, where it’s like, you know, the murder mystery is being solved by Cicero or, Charlemagne or Abraham Lincoln or whatever. And I thought, nobody’s done one of these about John and Abigail Adams. And because John Adams was stationed over in Europe during most of the revolution, we have a whole pile of letters that he and Abigail wrote to each other, and Abigail was a very intelligent, well educated, sarcastic, entertaining woman, and I thought, let’s do some murder mysteries with John and Abigail, particularly Abigail, as the sleuths. So I did three of those under another name, and those were a lot of fun too because we knew those wouldn’t sell. So I I did them under another name. But you did that anyway.
Barbara Hambly [00:53:23]:
It’s like Harry Turtledove writing, four you know, the old style, historical fiction, like period pieces. And, of course, Harry being a scholar of Greek, he wanted to write the old the old style kind of things that L. Sprague de Camp used to write, so Anna Harry knew they would not sell. So he wrote a series of four wonderful novels about Hellenistic Hellenistic Greece, about these these two cousins who have trading ships and they go go on trading voyages through the Mediterranean, and, you know, have adventures and get into fights and it’s just they’re wonderful books, but he knew nobody was gonna buy them. And actually, they’ve had a pretty good market, I understand, but it’s it’s not bestseller material. Right. And the business part of creativity is if you’re going to be selling your books, and again, this was different this was different twenty years ago, but you if you’re selling, you know, if you want to get, large sales, you have to be a little careful what your market is. No.
Barbara Hambly [00:54:55]:
Don’t don’t write a book about Abigail Adams.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:03]:
Yeah. But, you know, if if you have written as many things in as many different genres as you have, and you have so much trouble coming up with a favorite because you love them all, I think you’ve done pretty well.
Barbara Hambly [00:55:23]:
Well, I hope so.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:24]:
Yeah. I think so. I think so. And I think that’s a great note to end on. So thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation. That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Barbara Hambly and to you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:43]:
Barbara’s links are in the show notes. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and it is super, super easy, and it really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thank you so much. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at The Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:18]:
See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.