How would you describe yourself?
I don't recall which interviewer or entity sent me this question, but essentially, they had a series of questions which began with the rather open-ended, "How would you describe yourself?"
Describe myself. Well, given that there are a few photographs scattered around in close proximity to the text here, I'm assuming that you're looking for a Power-Point personality demo, rather than a police Identi-Kit description.
Hum.
1. My son—himself a novelist—asked me the other day what I thought of a particular book we'd both read. I told him. After a few minutes—we were walking through a parking lot—he said thoughtfully, "You know, everybody thinks you're this cuddly little hobbit. They're wrong."
2. A group of local fans often invites me out to tea in the springtime, in hopes of picking my brains about the newest book in progress, and very nice of them it is, too. On one of these occasions, though, they got on to the character of Black Jack Randall. For those of you so far unfamiliar with my work, Captain Randall is—to be blunt about it—a sadistic bisexual pervert. "Oh, he's disgusting!" they said. "He's just loathsome, eww, he makes my skin crawl!" I sat quietly sipping my Earl Grey, smiling pleasantly and thinking, "You have no idea that you're talking to Black Jack Randall, do you?"
3. Owing to my rather peculiar background—well, if you come right down to it, all novelists have peculiar backgrounds; if we didn't, we'd probably be lawyers or sanitation engineers or something else that provides health insurance—people continuously ask me whether I'm "right-brained," or "left-brained." My personal opinion is that my entire brain appears to be in good working condition, thank you, and I don't quite know how all these other people are getting by on half of one, but I suppose that's their business.
4. Oh, the peculiar background. Well, I was a scientist in my previous professional incarnation. This was my father's fault: he was fond of saying to me during my formative years, "You're such a poor judge of character, you're bound to marry some bum. So be sure to get a good education, so you can support your children!" Well, OK. I knew from the age of eight or so that I was meant to be a novelist, but I did have better sense than to mention it. So I went into science. I liked science, I was reasonably good at it, and in the fullness of time, I ended up with three degrees in the biological sciences, including a Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology (don't worry about it; it's just animal behavior with a lot of statistics). (Actually, I now have four degrees, thanks to Northern Arizona University having just given me an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Yes, I did ask them what an inhumane letter might be, but they were not amused. I guess dealing with undergraduates has an erosive effect on the sense of humor.)
Anyway, people find out about the 400-page doctoral thesis on "Nest Site Selection in the Pinyon Jay, Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus," (or, as my husband remarks, "Why Birds Build Nests Where They Do, and Who Cares, Anyway") and immediately go all drop-jawed, asking, "But HOW did you get from being a scientist to being a novelist?"
5. I wrote a book. [shrug] How else?
6. What sort of book? You got me. I wrote my first book (Outlander) for practice, never intending to show it to anyone. That being so, I didn't see any point in trying to restrict it in terms of genre—or anything else. Consequently, I've seen my books shelved (so far) as:
Historical Fiction
Historical Non-fiction (Really. I can only suppose that the accuracy of my research compensates for the inclusion of time-travel.)
Plain Old Fiction (If I had to choose a category myself, I suppose I'd pick this one. More inclusive.)
Science Fiction (Well, OK, I was invited to write up the Gabaldon Theory of Time-Travel for the Journal of Transfigural Mathematics (Berlin), and I did, but still…)
Fantasy (no elves, but the Loch Ness Monster does make a cameo appearance)
Mystery (There actually is a full-fledged murder mystery in each of my novels. It's just that people don't always notice it, in among the other stuff.)
Military History (cf. "accuracy," above. I'm told I do battles fairly well, too. As one nice elderly gentleman said in his letter to me, "You don't write like a woman, at all!" I think he was under the impression that this was a compliment, so I thanked him graciously.)
Romance (I'm told I do sex rather well, too. I'll let you judge the handling of sex and violence for yourself, though; see the various Excerpts posted here and on my own website.
Gay and Lesbian Fiction (No, this really has nothing to do with the appearance of Captain Black Jack Randall. He's not gay; he's a pervert. It's Lord John Grey—he's gay.)
And
Horror. (No, really. A Breath of Snow and Ashes—the latest of the big main Outlander novels—won a Corine international literary prize for Fiction—and the 2006 Quill Award for "Science-Fiction/Fantasy/Horror," against one of Stephen King's books. I was Extremely Flattered. [g])
7. Back in the day, I used to do book-signings at mall stores. Sitting at my little card table, smiling pleasantly at passersby and answering questions like, "Where's the restroom?" and "Are the new Garfield calendars in yet?" Every now and then, though, someone would notice the pile of novels at my elbow, pick one up, look at it, and ask (logically enough) "What kind of book is this?"
Now, owing to the peculiarly amorphous nature of what I write (Salon.com magazine called them "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting "Scrooge McDuck" comics."), that's not a simple question to answer. So for awhile, I'd answer on the basis of the age and gender of the person in front of me (riding the statistical probabilities, aye?): if it was a young woman in her twenties, I'd say, "Oh, historical romance—men in kilts, you know…" If a young man, "Oh, fantasy. Lots of swords and battles." A slightly older woman, "Oh, it's historical fiction. If you liked Sho-Gun, you'll love this!" A slightly older gentleman, "Oh, it's military history."
Well, this worked fine, up to a point. Eventually, I began to get small crowds, rather than one or two people at a time, and so would have a mix of ages and genders. So I had to find a new approach. At this point, I took to telling people, "Look. Pick it up, open it anywhere, and read three pages. If you can put it down again, I'll pay you a dollar." Sold a lot of books, never lost any money.
8. Yes, I did write comic books for Walt Disney.
9. I suppose you can't tell how tall I am from the photos. Well, as one online acquaintance from Texas blurted upon meeting me in person for the first time, "My Gahd, you're short!" Well, I was shorter than he was, I'll admit that much. I am, in fact, five foot two and seven-eights (copy-editors keep insisting that I mean "five feet two and seven-eighths," but I don't. Regional colloquial usage, aye?)
10. If you haven't yet found this a sufficient description of me…well, there are a number of YouTube videos that various fans and interviewers have posted of me doing my usual shtik at book-signings and the like: A kindly friend collected a bunch of them (along with thirty or forty of the "casting videos" that fans impatient for a movie version have made) into a YouTube Channel for me.
11. Yes, I do talk very fast.