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TOM MERRITT: Coming up, find out the secrets of author
Robin Hobb.
Or is she Megan Lindholm?
VERONICA BELMONT: Well, Tom, she's both.
I'm just excited she gets to meet our dragon.
And I get to meet her! "Sword and Laser's" author guide to
Robin Hobb starts now.
[THEME MUSIC]
VERONICA BELMONT: Hello, everybody.
Welcome to "The Sword and Laser." I'm Veronica Belmont.
TOM MERRITT: I'm Tom Merritt.
That was close.
VERONICA BELMONT: It was getting a little dicey in
there for a second.
TOM MERRITT: Yeah.
VERONICA BELMONT: This is one of our author guide episodes
where we invite an author up to the Space Castle, ask them
your questions and ours, and let you know all about their
body of work.
TOM MERRITT: Uh, don't faint, OK?
VERONICA BELMONT: Why?
TOM MERRITT: Because this is our guide to Robin Hobb.
VERONICA BELMONT: [SQUEAL]
TOM MERRITT: I know she's one of your heroes.
Is your face going to stay like that?
Are you going to be OK?
VERONICA BELMONT: I'm super excited.
No, she really is one of my favorite authors.
TOM MERRITT: All right.
VERONICA BELMONT: It's going to be a lot of fun.
TOM MERRITT: Well, let's get started.
VERONICA BELMONT: All right.
[MUSIC]
VERONICA BELMONT: Robin Hobb is the pseudonym of Megan
Lindholm, which is also something of a pseudonym since
her full name is Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden.
She uses both names to distinguish the type of
fantasy she's writing in that particular book.
TOM MERRITT: She wrote exclusively as Megan Lindholm
from 1983 to 1992, telling contemporary fantasy stories.
In 1995, she began publishing under the name Robin Hobb,
telling epic traditional, European, medieval, and
American frontier fantasy.
VERONICA BELMONT: And interestingly, her most recent
release, "The Inheritance," is a collection of short fiction
written under both names.
She was born in Oakland, California--
go A's--
raised in Alaska, and attended college at Denver University.
TOM MERRITT: After getting married, she moved to the
Alaskan island of Kodiak, where she
began her writing career.
Her first published fantasy was "Bones for Dulath,"
published in the anthology "Amazons!" which won a World
Fantasy Award in 1980.
VERONICA BELMONT: She moved several other places in the
US, eventually settling in the state of Washington.
Her first novel as Robin Hobb was "Assassin's Apprentice,"
the first of the Farseer trilogy, introducing the
characters of Fitz and the Fool.
"Assassin's Apprentice" was also our book
pick this past August.
TOM MERRITT: Hobb has written several other trilogies in the
same world.
The most recent, the Rain Wilds Chronicles, became a
trilogy with "City of Dragons" in February 2012 and will
surpass trilogy status with "Blood of
Dragons" in February 2013.
VERONICA BELMONT: Hobb also wrote the Soldier Son Trilogy,
which is set in a separate world.
She will be a guest of honor at the 72nd World Science
Fiction Convention in London, aka Loncon 3 in 2014.
TOM MERRITT: OK, so Lem, our dragon, is putting through the
call to Robin Hobb.
You going to be all right?
VERONICA BELMONT: I'm all right.
TOM MERRITT: All right.
While she gets connected, please enjoy this look at
Today in Alternate History.
[MUSIC]
VERONICA BELMONT: We are very pleased to have Robin Hobb
with us today.
Thank you so much for joining us.
ROBIN HOBB: It's a pleasure to be here.
VERONICA BELMONT: Now, you will not remember this, but I
actually met you at a book signing years ago.
And you were very, very nice to me when I was very nervous.
So thank you for that.
[LAUGHTER]
ROBIN HOBB: Very glad to hear it.
VERONICA BELMONT: In fact, the only reason I was able to go
up there was because my now husband, then boyfriend,
forced me to.
He was like, you will regret it if you don't at least--
TOM MERRITT: Ryan pushed you into that, huh?
VERONICA BELMONT: Yeah, he was like, you will regret this if
you don't go up and say hello and get your book signed.
So thank you.
But I wanted to ask my first question, which was what are
you working on next.
Now, we know that you definitely have a new Rain
Wilds coming up.
But what about the Fool and the Fitz?
ROBIN HOBB: Oh, that's something that I'm
uncomfortable talking about at this point.
It's a question that I get a lot, if I
will go back to that.
When will I go back to it?
The answer remains that, if I can come up with something
that's absolutely compelling, a story that I would want to
write, even if I had never written about those characters
before, and a story that would have to involve those
characters.
It's not me taking a standard plot that could be any two
characters and saying, well, I will wrap this around these
characters and world simply for the sake of writing more
in that world.
So if those ingredients come together, if those situations
come together, then definitely I'd move forward with it.
TOM MERRITT: Is it a double-edged sword to have
characters that popular sometimes?
Because some people sort of encourage you to be like, we
don't care if it's good we just want to
hear more about them.
ROBIN HOBB: Well, and readers become understandably
reluctant to leave a world that they have invested in.
And it can be hard to persuade them to try something new.
To say, look, you trusted me the first time
to tell a good story.
Trust me again.
I have a different story to tell this time.
And I see it happen to almost all writers in a genre.
That once you have written a story that people enjoy, there
will be a certain percentage of the readers who will say,
give us more of that.
More of the same but a little bit different.
And sometimes a writer can do that.
And it's honestly a new creation in that world.
And then I think we're all aware that sometimes, it's
just a serving of the same with a
slightly different garnish.
And that's what I'd like to avoid.
VERONICA BELMONT: Something that I've loved about your
books and your trilogies is how, even though they do take
place in the same general world, they're such different
stories that I think it's enough connection to keep that
part of me that really wants to hear more about that world.
But so different that it's like a new story altogether.
ROBIN HOBB: Well, I think it keeps it fresh for
the writer as well.
When you feel that freedom to go and explore someplace new
with someone new.
So it keeps the writing fun for the writer as well.
TOM MERRITT: Now, Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm write
different kinds of fantasy.
How do they decide who gets to write what books next?
Do they have meetings?
Do they hash it out?
Is there a schedule?
ROBIN HOBB: I think that the moment I get an idea, it's
pretty clear to me which voice I want to write it in.
I think that Megan Lindholm is perhaps a little bit more
cynical and a little less verbose than Robin Hobb.
And Robin Hobb feels a bit more free to write at length,
to explore characters' feelings in depth.
So it's a pretty clear dividing line for me when I
get an idea of which voice I'd like to use for it.
VERONICA BELMONT: Can I ask you where you came up with the
pseudonym Robin Hobb?
ROBIN HOBB: Well, when we were creating this name, it was
definitely predicated on the fact that I was writing in a
different slice of the fantasy genre than I had before.
And so putting a different name on it helps readers to
identify what they're getting when they pick up a book.
And it's a fine old tradition in the genre back from the
days of pulp, when people would be writing Westerns,
romances, mysteries, and science fiction and would have
a different byline for each one.
So with Robin Hobb, what I wanted to do was make sure
that I was on an eye-level shelf in a bookstore.
So I went and I toured several bookstores and found out that
the H shelf was pretty much on eye-level.
I'm willing to get on my knees to this day to get a good
Zelazny off the bottom shelf, but a lot of people aren't.
[LAUGHTER]
ROBIN HOBB: And so I looked at who else was on the shelf.
And it was people like Barbara Hambly and Robert Heinlein and
Frank Herbert.
And that's a pretty nice crowd to hang out with.
So I said, OK, the last name is going to start with Hobb.
And I wanted it short, so it would be in big
letters on the cover.
And we were looking for nuances.
So a hob is the hob that is of the hearth.
And there's the hobgoblins, a hob is kind
of mischievous sprite.
And then we wanted a first name that would go well with
that, that would sound well.
So we went with Robin because that's Robin Goodfellow.
It's an androgynous name.
VERONICA BELMONT: Hmm, that was going to my next question
actually, was for the androgyny.
Because it is difficult to be a female writer
in the fantasy space.
And I was always curious if that was one of your reasons.
But I guess it was.
ROBIN HOBB: Well, in all honesty, you know, I've never
encountered any difficulty being a female fantasy writer.
And I'm sure it's been possibly
different for other writers.
But I always felt like I was welcomed into the community
and that gender didn't really have a lot to do with it.
We're just all writers.
So I'm glad to say that that's never been an issue for me.
But in the case of this story, I was writing from the
first-person male viewpoint.
And so putting an androgynous name on that just kind of
lowered that threshold of disbelief that you want the
reader to step through.
TOM MERRITT: I love that there's a mixture of
practicality with the shelf space with the deeper meaning,
providing a little second layer to it.
That's cool.
ROBIN HOBB: Oh, it was a lot of fun.
If you think about it, if someone gives you the
opportunity to go choose a new name for yourself, it's a lot
of fun to do that.
It's a lot of fun to say, well, who do
I want to be today?
The Scarlet Pimpernel, or do I want to, you
know, Conan the Destroyer?
Who do you feel like today?
And come up with a name for that.
VERONICA BELMONT: Well, we have a few questions from our
audience out there.
Emily says, "I love your books, Robin.
How do you write animals so well?
What books inspired you to write about animals?
And is writing from the perspective of the opposite
sex difficult?
And if so, how?"
ROBIN HOBB: Oh, that's three in one in there.
I do enjoy writing animals.
I've always felt a strong kinship with my pets, whether
they were cats or dogs or animals, the ravens that lived
outside when I was growing up.
A strong fascination with all animals.
And so to try to write from their viewpoint is to try to
step into it and say, I don't think that
they're dumb animals.
I don't think by any means that they do not have feelings
or thought processes that possibly we don't understand
on the same wavelength.
But definitely, there's a lot going on there.
So I really enjoyed writing animals just as if they were
any other character.
And writing males is pretty much the same process.
You just pretend they're human, you know.
But I really think that when you're writing a different
gender or somebody of a different ethnic background,
that as long as you remember that we are all humans.
And we share far-- we have far more in common than we have as
differences.
And just go with it from there, that it's fun to do.
TOM MERRITT: Of course, as you can imagine, we got a lot of
questions about Fitz and the Fool.
Mach doesn't want you to give too much away.
But he's curious about the Fool's origin.
Is that something you have more to tell about?
Do you have a little bit of a back story that yet could be
explored if you have another book that they inhabit?
ROBIN HOBB: Oh, I definitely know a lot more about the Fool
than I've been able to put into the books.
But I don't know possibly as much as people think I do.
He's not a character that easily reveals
himself to the writer.
He's a very private character, in a way.
And I think that's part of what makes him interesting.
I think that the biggest mistake it could ever be would
be to try to write from his point of view and let
everybody know everything that's going on in his mind.
I think it would strip away a lot of the mystique.
TOM MERRITT: Yeah, it's always hard with developing a
character like that, I would suppose.
Because you want to keep growing the character.
But if you give it all away, then
there's no more to reveal.
Like you say, you lose the mystique.
ROBIN HOBB: I think that some writers do deliberately
develop a character.
Do start with roll the dice or a checklist.
And say, well, what's his charisma, what's his courage,
what's his stamina?
But for me, the characters kind of step out into a
spotlight on a stage.
And they are who they are.
And I don't have a lot of control over what directions
they go in or who they become as the story progresses.
TOM MERRITT: The Fool especially so, I would think.
ROBIN HOBB: He's a difficult character.
In the original outline for the original trilogy, he had
exactly one sentence.
And he was supposed to come on the stage, do his little bit,
and then leave.
And he just didn't.
VERONICA BELMONT: That's incredible.
Because I can't even imagine that going that way.
That's amazing.
Terpkristin has a question that I've actually wondered in
the past, as well.
Is there a definitive order to which we should
be reading the trilogies?
For example, do we start with the Assassins and then go to
Tawny Man or Liveship Traders?
What do you think is the best order in which
to read those books?
ROBIN HOBB: Um, I wrote them
chronologically for that world.
But I also try to make each trilogy a standalone.
And actually, I try to make each book within a trilogy
something that can be read with enjoyment.
So if you're stuck at the airport and all you can find
is book two of one of my trilogies, you still have a
story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I hope.
I don't think I was as successful at that with the
Rain Wilds Chronicles.
But if you want to read them in the order of the history of
the world so that things unfold, it would start with
the Farseer trilogy.
Move on to Liveship Traders.
From there, we'd go to the Tawny Man, and then finally
the Rain Wild Chronicles.
VERONICA BELMONT: I read them out of order, then.
I went Farseer, then I went Tawny
Man, then I went Liveship.
All right, I'll have to--
I'll go back and re-read them all and
figure it out that way.
TOM MERRITT: While we're on the topic of trilogies, Adriel
wanted to know how it was that Rain Wilds Chronicles ended up
getting a fourth book.
ROBIN HOBB: It's mostly my fault.
I was supposed--
I had every intention of writing a single stand-alone
book that I thought would serve as a nice introduction
to people who didn't want to necessarily say, gee, I think
I'll read these nine books.
And so I very carefully tried to write a single stand-alone
book that would've been "Dragon Keeper." I went far
past what my editors were expecting for word allotment.
And then to top it off, I turned it in late.
And as a result, in order to meet editorial deadlines, the
first volume had to be cut in two, which made "Dragon
Keeper" and "Dragon Haven."
And when I decided to take another swing at that world
and continue their adventures, again this time I turned it in
very much on time.
I think I had, like, three minutes before I hit Send
electronically on December 31.
But again, I had gone way over my word limit.
And because editors and editorial staff have a given
amount of workload they can do at a certain time, we ended up
having to divide that book into two
more manageable pieces.
VERONICA BELMONT: I wish I had that problem with going over
my word limit for things.
I'm very much in the NaNoWriMo thought process right now.
Our next question comes from Kevin.
He was wondering what your inspiration was for the
Soldier Son Trilogy and what your process was like writing
that series.
ROBIN HOBB: Ah, the Soldier Son Trilogy.
I think every book has different layers of
inspiration.
I've always been--
looking back in time, there was a time where if a noble
family had three sons, the first one
probably was your heir.
The second went into the military.
And the third went to the priesthood.
And then any bonus sons you had after that, you could
scatter around into the arts or whatever.
But there was definitely almost a hierarchy of birth
order would determine what your son did next.
So there was that in the background.
There was writing--
I'd gone to visit France.
And I was on my way to the airport.
And we passed a very large cemetery with a very sturdy,
very aggressive fence around it.
And you think, well, is that to keep something out or is
that to keep something in?
So it's all these bits and pieces of things that come
together to make the soup that turns into a story.
So those are just a couple of the ingredients
that went into it.
TOM MERRITT: Excellent.
Paul, who signed it Paul Chickenheart, wrote, "Why are
you so mean to your characters?
They go through all sorts of calumny,
treachery, and injustice.
Do you not like them?"
ROBIN HOBB: Well, I think if Paul looked back over his life
for the past three weeks and said, how many things went
right and how many things went wrong?
I really think that the times that things go right, we kind
of glide past those.
I mean, we expect the coffee pot to work when you turn it
on in the morning.
And you expect that the mail will come and that nobody's
going to run a red light and smash into you.
So to recount that all of those things went right isn't
much of a story.
I think I'm going to mangle a quote from Tolkien who said
something about adventures aren't all
pony rides and sunshine.
And the things that are fun and enjoyable to do make very
boring reading, while if you're being captured by
trolls, that makes things much more exciting.
And so the same is true, I think, of any story.
Telling about something that's harrowing, it makes a much
better tale than telling you what I had for breakfast.
With the story of FitzChivalry Farseer, of course, if you
read it carefully, you'll see absolutely why so many
terrible things happen to him.
So I'm not going to do a spoiler for that.
But there is a solid plot reason why that happens to him
all the time.
VERONICA BELMONT: Poor Fitz.
ROBIN HOBB: He goes through a lot.
VERONICA BELMONT: He does.
And Laurel says, "Dear Robin, there are literally thousands
upon thousands of us raving about how good the Assassin,
Liveship, and Fool trilogies are.
I wonder, does the reassurance cure any writing insecurities,
or will they always be there?
And as a follow up, do you ever feel trapped by the
popularity of a series that, I hope, you deeply care about?"
ROBIN HOBB: I think every writer I know, if you give him
500 Amazon reviews and there are three that are terrible,
those are the three that the writer will remember and
agonize about.
VERONICA BELMONT: It works that way with YouTube
comments, too.
Just so you know.
TOM MERRITT: Seriously, YouTube commentors.
ROBIN HOBB: Absolutely.
We tend to dwell on, what?
You didn't like that?
Or you didn't understand it?
And in my opinion, nothing looks sillier than a writer
trying to tell the reader why you should have
enjoyed that book.
So I try very hard--
number one, never respond to a review.
And number two, as much as I can, try not to read reviews
unless I'm already having a really cruddy day.
And I want to just make it really bad.
The popularity of a story can make a reader
feel trapped and--
a writer feel trapped in having to continue the tale.
I think the classic one of that is Conan Doyle and
Sherlock Holmes.
Where he went so far as to kill Homes and still had to
resurrect him and bring him back for a second round.
Luckily, I don't feel that way about my characters.
I don't want to return to them unless there is a really,
really compelling story to tell.
But at the same time, I enjoy being with them.
I write the friends I wish I had.
That sounds really pathetic.
But when you spent decades of your life with characters,
you'd better like them, even the villains.
TOM MERRITT: So November is National Novel Writing Month.
Got a lot of people out there maybe for the first time
putting words down on word processor that might someday
become paper.
Do you have any tips for new writers?
Anything that you tell people when they ask about getting
started being an author?
VERONICA BELMONT: Some wisdom to impart.
ROBIN HOBB: I think I've got-- again, I'm going to mangle
somebody else's words.
And that's Poul Anderson, I think, was the one who said--
or is it Heinlein?
Boy, that's a terrible one to get jumbled.
Write every day and finish what you start.
Which is really important advice to somebody.
Just finish what you start.
Everybody, it's easy to start a story.
It's really hard to make all those choices and wrap it up.
And the other thing is to turn your internal
editor down way low.
Just hit the squelch on that until you have got that first
draft done.
Because nobody writes beautiful, compelling prose
the very first time they sit down.
Our instructors always tell us, you know, that your first
sentence is so important.
Well, in the first draft, it's not.
Just get the story started.
And trap it on paper.
And then you can always rearrange it to make it look
pretty later.
And all of us, when we go back and rewrite,
that's what we're doing.
We're going back and making ourselves look clever with all
our foreshadowing and making the dialogue flow
and things like that.
So just get the story down and then fix it.
VERONICA BELMONT: That has given me great hope.
TOM MERRITT: Good.
Me, too.
Thank you so much for chatting with us today.
It's a real pleasure talking with you.
ROBIN HOBB: It's been very enjoyable.
Thank you.
TOM MERRITT: "Blood of the Dragons" is set to
come out April 9.
And all Robin's books are listed at robinhobb.com.
VERONICA BELMONT: Now we finish up this author's guide
episode with Aaron's whiteboard about
Robin Hobb's trilogy--
nonology-- dodecology.
Aaron, help us!
AARON: When I heard Robin Hobb was doing "Sword and Laser," I
got excited.
Yes, it's her pen name.
I don't care.
Yes, her novels have sold over a million copies.
I don't--
wait, I do care about that.
Because I want more people reading Robin Hobb's novels.
She is a fantastic world builder.
And she writes, bar none, the best villains
in the fantasy genre.
Way better than Tolkien, for instance.
There's absolutely no cartoonishly
self-aware evil here.
Hobb's characters all have realistic motivations, enough
to generate real empathy even as we curse
their nefarious plans.
Don't believe me?
Try the Liveship Trader series, the standalone middle
trilogy of her signature nonology, along with the
Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies.
Is nonology a word?
Only it's really a dodecology, because of the Rain Wilds
trilogy, which is kind of an epilogue to the main nonology.
Except it's not a trilogy anymore,
because it's a tetrology.
Quadrilology?
Quadri--
it's not a dodecology.
It's a tridecology.
It's a four-part thingy of a 13-part thingy.
It turns out the hard part isn't reading these but
enumerating them.
Math is hard.
TOM MERRITT: It makes me feel better that Aaron had problems
with the math.
VERONICA BELMONT: Math is hard.
TOM MERRITT: Because he's smart.
VERONICA BELMONT: Just like Barbie said.
TOM MERRITT: There's a whole calculus to Robin Hobb.
A whole discipline of math.
VERONICA BELMONT: I'm glad he did that and
we didn't have to.
Thank you once again, Aaron.
You are amazing.
Hey, do you want to help put together
our guides to authors?
Send us your thoughts on our next guests, Jim Butcher
followed by Patrick Rothfuss.
Squee!
TOM MERRITT: OMG!
VERONICA BELMONT: If it's a video message, email the link
to us at feedback@swordandlaser.com.
I'm very excited.
Can you tell?
TOM MERRITT: I am super excited.
Those are great authors.
We're on a roll.
VERONICA BELMONT: We're getting OK at this.
TOM MERRITT: All right, that's it, folks.
We're done now.
Go home.
But if you're looking for more great things to read, be sure
to watch our book club episode, where we read a book
a month and give great ideas for lots of
books, old and new.
You can subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Do it right now.
It's the green button up there in the corner at
youtube.com/geekandsundry.
And then come over to goodreads.com and
join us in the forum.
VERONICA BELMONT: We'll see you guys next time.
TOM MERRITT: Bye.
VERONICA BELMONT: Bye.
Squee!
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]