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Sasharia en Garde: Interview with Sherwood Smith

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Sasharia en Garde: Interview with Sherwood Smith	Apr. 15th, 2009 @ 12:27 pm

The novel Sasharia en Garde is a cross-world adventure full of intrigue and shifting levels of threat. It's sold in two very reasonably priced halves, Once a Princess and Twice a Prince, as e-books, from Samhain Books. The first half is now also offered as a physical book.

I thought I'd do a review, but then I thought--better than a review would be an interview! So without further ado, I present you Sherwood Smith!

Sartorias-deles, the world in which this story takes place, has been with you since childhood. Some of your novels of Sartorias-deles are ones you first wrote years ago. When did the story of Sasharia (Sasha) and her mother Atanial, who are the protagonists of Sasharia en Garde, come to you? Is it a recent story, or an older one?

Both. I got Atanial’s story first, but didn’t write it once I realized it “ended” unhappily.

(I was a teenager. Renaissance Faire, Spring of either ’69 or ’70. I was working our booth at the Faire with others in the then nascent Mythopoeic Society, and looking at all the cute guys in garb—appreciating how men look 100% better in Renaissance clothes than in modern suits, no matter what their build—and then I thought, “What if one of these guys really was a prince?” And then I saw Math, not handsome at all, but definitely attractive, kind of like a tall cross between Harpo Marx and Albert Einstein, with laughing eyes and a rueful grin, and Atanial twinned off me, became herself, with her own story that had nothing to do with me . . . and on the drive home, it all spun out.)

When I realized the daughter’s tale would take the story up, I began writing it in the mid seventies, but only the S-d part—for some reason the Earth portion didn’t come into focus. Then, oh, about five years ago, I woke up one day, and blink! It all came into focus. It took me a couple of years to actually get at it, but when I did, it pretty much wrote itself. (By then I already knew a lot about Sasha’s subsequent adventures—she shows up in several other stories. By now I was writing her backstory.)

Will Samhain be bringing out more of Sasha’s stories, then?

Those aren’t written—that is, stories from her POV, though I have one I really like in mind. But it feels like one of those impossible lengths, so far. The ones she’s in aren’t Samhaim’s kind of thing—they tend toward romance--and this series of stories is too long for them, and I guess would be labeled epic, though that term is a misnomer. I don’t write what I think of as epics.

The humans of Sartorias-deles are all descended from people who came to that world from Earth, generations ago. Most of your published novels of Sartorias-deles, though, don’t really touch on that fact much. But this novel begins on Earth—in Los Angeles, in fact—where Sasha and her mother have been living ever since Sasha was ten. At the start of the novel, Sasha’s abducted back to her birth world, and her mother soon follows. What are the advantages and disadvantages to seeing and experiencing Sartorias-deles through the eyes of characters who are familiar with life in the world we know here?

I don’t know what the advantages and disadvantages quite means . . . if storytelling, well, seeing the other world through someone’s eyes here means there can be “Let’s stop here and explain” bits, or some culture clash, or whatever. Clashes between assumptions don’t show up in this one much—Sasha is too light-hearted.

Yes, storytelling was what I was thinking of. The “let’s stop and explain” element is an advantage, and I think having a character who sees things as the reader might can also be an advantage. But do you see there as being any risks? Or any things that are harder, from that perspective? (Maybe not?)

It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around the question. Either I’m inside the story, so culture conflict is interesting, from whosever POV, or I’m outside the story, thinking, Uh oh, another data dump needed . . . how to get it in and not have the reader fall into a coma?

There is some yummy romance in store for Sasha, but she’s a good deal older than some of your other female protagonists—at twenty-five, she has nearly ten years on Meliara, from Crown Duel , and I get the feeling that Flian (The Trouble with Kings ) is also younger. Sasha has already had experience with attraction and relationships. What was it like writing a more mature heroine? Were there different issues?

Well, all these heroines were the same age I was when I first started writing about them. (Mel is close to 20.) So they just “were.” Rewriting, or finishing, these stories decades later meant trying hard to keep the emotional tones of those ages. If I’d written Crown Duel at my present age, Mel would barely have entered the story; the focus would have been broader, for example.

I think middle-aged readers of fantasy like myself appreciate characters like Atanial being in there, too! Atanial and Sasha are temperamentally quite distinct. I could see traces of real-life Sherwood (such as are revealed in your blog, anyway) in both. Who do you feel more similar to—or don’t you think in those terms?

I don’t think in those terms . . . others might perceive patterns in my expression and in characters—that’s inevitable, but so much of what we do, I think, is invisible to our eye. And maybe should be, or we’d be walking around with a mirror, navel-gazing so earnestly that we don’t have time to see the world.

So. What I perceive are the differences: Atanial has charm and courage, two qualities I utterly lack. She’s handsome, and I’m not. Things we share? Hot flashes and achy joints.

Trust. Growing up on the run, Sasha has learned that anyone might be an enemy, and she can’t trust the pirate who shows up early in the story, in spite of the attraction she ends up feeling toward him. Trust is an issue for heroines in many of your novels. What’s that all about? Is it purely circumstances? Something about relationships? Or something else?

I think themes show up in stories that are important in our lives. For me, trust is one, family dynamics another, time and age is yet another, authority is another. Love, humor, cultural change . . . ooops. Ahem. Rattling on there, aren’t I? Well, I learned very early you could not trust adults, so maybe I’d attracted to story wisps that explore this idea.

Not rattling on at all! I was going to mention the family dynamics one. Sasha’s story contains three notable parent-child pairs: Atanial and Sasha (mother-daughter), Canardan and Jehan (father-son), and, well, the third is an uncle-nephew relationship, actually: Randart and Damedran. In some ways I think the most interesting one to read about is the middle one, because the father’s assessment and appreciation of his son changes over time. Which of those relationships was hardest to write? Which was the most fun?

I don’t think any of them were hard to write—this was one of those projects that pretty much wrote itself. But the most fun? Definitely Damedran and his pals. I really enjoyed that thread a lot.

If you found yourself spirited away by a mysterious man who might or might not have evil intentions, how would you decide whether and when to trust him (or not)?

I wouldn’t let myself get into any situation where he had any control over my choices or life, for one! (I think I’d reserve judgment until I saw how he handled failure.)

Failure eh! A version of “see how they do under adverse circumstances”?

Yep! I don’t say that that is the one true way to, oh, lift the mask, but it’s a way.

I feel...:

chipper