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Rebecca's Interview with The Brazen Hussies
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The Brazen Hussies Answer Six Easy Questions
Hi, Rebecca,
Easy questions? Ha! I suspect we won't all give the same answers.
Rebecca :
Who met whom first, where & when?
Pat :
For me, this is lost in the mists of time. We all met something like 20 years ago. I think I met Lisa first--probably at a convention. I didn't really get to know Mikey until I returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after a few years in the wilds of Southern California. I think that was back in 1982 or so.
Lisa :
I don't know what they're going to say, but as for me, I can't really remember. I met Pat at a convention somewhere and Michaela when she worked for Locus Magazine, but as for when and who first -- well, it was about twenty years ago, that much I do know.
MICHÆLA :
I can't answer for Pat and Lisa meeting each other, of course -- they knew each other well before me, I believe. And being the eldest of the three, my memory is kind of foggy about exact particulars, so maybe Pat's and Lisa's memories of where and when they met me are more accurate then mine.
I don't remember exactly when I first met Lisa. At the time, after I'd finished up going to the Clarion Writing Workshop in Michigan in the summer of 1980 and returned home, I got a job working as an editorial assistant at Locus magazine, which is a trade publishing magazine for the speculative fiction field. Charles N. Brown, Locus's owner, publisher, and editor in chief, often had parties that professionals in the area attended, and writers were always dropping by anyway. As an employee, I also worked helping to cover science fiction conventions, and met lots of writers and editors in that venue too. One way or the other I'd gotten to know her before the end of 1980.
Pat's a little clearer to me, partially because she wasn't actually around in the Bay Area at the time. She lived and was working in San Diego, but came up pretty frequently and was planning on moving up to the Bay Area, which she eventually did. I think I first got introduced to her and a couple of her friends from Los Angeles, Avon Swofford and Cherie Wilkerson, at a publishing soirée in San Francisco. Then I got to start knowing her somewhat when we all intersected at a Westercon (annual West Coast convention) in Sacramento.
Rebecca :
When did you all decide to join forces?
Lisa :
As I said, we've known each other for (good God!) twenty years, but
we only decided to join forces to promote our books in the last year or so. I think we were prompted to do this by the fact that publishers seem to have stopped spending money to promote anyone but best-selling authors, so we decided we had to do it ourselves if no one else was going to. None of us felt comfortable going out there and saying, “Hey! I'm a terrific writer!” -- we found out it was a lot easier to say this about the other person's work. And three people are able to do a lot more publicity work than one person alone. For myself, I'm not especially good at publicity and am much more comfortable just writing the books, so joining with other people certainly makes it easier for me. And as I said, publishers won't do it.
MICHÆLA :
We've done lots of things together off and on over the years. Pat and Lisa ran a writing workshop, in two different incarnations, at two different times, that I participated in. Pat and Lisa roomed together for a while in Oakland. Later on Lisa and I did quite a few book signings and autograph parties together, went to some conventions together as a team. Pat, in the meantime, though still writing and publishing short stories, got pretty absorbed for a number of years in her work at the Exploratorium and other things. Then she finally got going on her novels again -- she's the one who came up with the idea of actually packaging ourselves.
Pat :
That's an easier question. Fortunately my computer files are dated--and I can tell you that we first sent out fliers about our work in the Fall of 1998--which means we must have started conspiring that summer.
When I was writing the letter that we sent out with our fliers, I was momentarily stumped when I needed a closing signature. So I added a paragraph explaining who was sending this letter: “Who are we and why are we telling you these things? We are three, award-winning women writers of fantasy and science fiction. In an effort to introduce more readers to our work, we are overcoming our natural tendency to be modest and have decided to promote our work shamelessly like the brazen hussies we truly want to be. The enclosed fliers will tell you more about us and about our books.”
I made the return address “Brazen Hussy Promotions.” And so THE BRAZEN HUSSIES were born.
Rebecca :
How has each of you influenced each other in your writing?
Lisa :
I don't think we've been terribly influenced by each other. Michaela will probably say that I stole her idea of writing about mask-makers for my book A Mask for the General, and I have to plead guilty there.
Pat :
Mikey has some good stories about this. I'll let her tell them.
MICHÆLA :
I have a funny answer for you, which of course is strictly from my
perspective: not at all, on the one hand, and quite a lot, on the other hand.
I've always felt that if you workshop with a group for a significant period of time, that the people in the workshop will influence your writing one way or the other whether you're aware of it or not. Lisa, Pat and another writer, Richard Kadrey, were directly responsible for not only encouraging me to write my first novel, Walkabout Woman, but actually pretty much hounded me into it. I'd been struggling with the short story form and didn't have the confidence to tackle a novel until that point.
We've also used each other as resources and sounding boards off and on. Pat and I drove down together to a convention in San Jose one time, and she pumped me for information about visual arts the whole way (visual arts are my background.) She was getting ready to work on “Art in the War Zone, which later got lengthened to her novel The City Not Long After. Of course, I wasn't her only research source, or probably even a particularly important one. I was quite envious, however, at her finished product. She came up with a lot of brilliant ideas for the artwork on her own.
Lisa used me as an arts resource in a similar way when she wrote her novel A Mask For The General. She was also a little chagrined -- I'd told her that I eventually wanted to write a novel about a mask maker, and she beat me to it. On the other hand, one of my masks ended up as an inspiration for the cover to Lisa's book. We both had the same editor at that point, Shawna McCarthy. Shawna knew where some of my masks were being exhibited at that time (in New York City), and sent the illustrator down to look at them and use them for ideas.
Some of my most serious ideas germinate from completely frivolous fleeting notions. Both of their novels that I mentioned above are post-apocalyptic themes set in the Bay Area. I felt that they'd started a mini-trend that I was the first to be intelligent enough to notice and therefore could jump right in on: Women authors writing post-apocalyptic Bay Area science fiction novels. So that was the initial idea for my second novel, Vanishing Point, which is set in San Jose, mostly in the Winchester Mystery House.
So there's obviously been a lot of back-and-forthing between us over the years, just as we've back-and-forthed with other writers. That said, however, when we actually sit down to write, I'd say that we have nothing to do with each other. Our writing styles are radically different. Lisa and I have looked at each other's novels in early drafts, to give each other feedback. I think it's been useful for both of us, but sometimes leaves us scratching our heads in bewilderment.
Rebecca :
Considering the difference in all your styles, do you write together?
Pat :
Nope, we've never collaborated. But we share an enthusiasm for speculative fiction, fine writing, good food, and good gossip. And we all like each other's work--and believe that anyone who loves the work of one Brazen Hussy would probably like the work of the others as well.
Lisa :
Not so far.
MICHÆLA :
No. And maybe it's just as well because our styles are so different. We work so well as a team doing THE BRAZEN HUSSIES stuff that I'd hate to risk spoiling it and turning ourselves into The Brazen Hissies.
Pat has done collaborations with other writers, and last year I did a four-way collaboration on a novella for Ellen Datlow's eventhorizon site, Tauromaquia, with Daniel Abraham, Sage Walker and Walter Jon Williams, that I was extremely pleased with.
Rebecca :
Have you ever thought of writing a trilogy by the three of you?
MICHÆLA :
No! I'm finishing up a trilogy right now. Though I've loved doing it, I hope NEVER to write another trilogy again, by myself or with anyone else, even though one should never say never.
Pat :
Not likely! I'm busy enough collaborating with my imaginary friends: Max Merriwell, Mary Maxwell and Weldon Merrimax. No sense dragging my real friends into it.
Lisa :
Not until you mentioned it, no. But I don't think our writing is similar enough for this to work.
Rebecca :
Where do you see THE BRAZEN HUSSIES going collectively?
Lisa :
I hope we'll keep doing what we've been doing, until we achieve our final goal of world domination, or whatever. What I like is that we come up with wild ideas that publishers would never in a million years think of themselves (see THE BRAZEN HUSSIES blimp on the web page, for example) and I hope we'll continue to do that.
MICHÆLA :
What's great about being a Brazen Hussy is that we get to have actual fun doing the stuff that almost all writers dread: going out and schilling the finished work so that people will buy and enjoy your writing so that you can afford to keep on writing. When we're sitting around and stuffing our newsletters into envelopes -- that kind of activity -- it allows us time to socialize, gossip, talk about writing . . . whatever we want. Which sure beats doing that kind of chore on one's lonesome. So I'm hoping that we'll just keep coming up with zany ideas that make it an enjoyable process for us. And keep an open mind for the future. Who knows what might occur to us?
Pat :
World domination, I think. In the nicest sort of way, of course.
Rebecca :
My dear Brazen Hussies:- Thank you for stopping by for a cuppa with me, my life has been enriched by your emails & I have enjoyed your company immensely!
Pat Murphy's Interview was post 08/06/00
Lisa Goldstein's Interview was posted 08/13/00
MICHÆLA Roessner's Interview was posted 08/20/00
Do check out Authors Sightings for events where The Brazen Hussies can be met.
You can reach The Brazen Hussies at there website: http://www.brazenhussies.net/
(Published August 27, 2000)
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