Esther Friesner is an award-winning and best-selling author with over 30 books to her name, including Men In Black 2, E.Godz with Robert Asprin, Nobody's Princess, Sphinx's Princess, and two Star Trek novels. She's also the editor of the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies. Esther Friesner has won two Nebula awards, the Romantic Times award for Best New Fantasy Writer and the Skylark Award.
Matthew Peterson:
Welcome back to The Author Hour: Your Guide to Fantastic Fiction. I hope you enjoyed listening to all of the great bonus questions from previous episodes. You can listen to more of them at www.TheAuthorHour.com. As promised, here’s a new interview from two-time Nebula winner and best-selling author and editor, Esther Friesner. I actually recorded this interview back at the first ever North American Discworld Convention with Terry Pratchett, so here it is. Enjoy.
I have to say that I’ve seen some of your book covers and I thought, “That is really clever”, with the Chicks in Chainmail and the Turn the Other Chick. [laughs]
Esther Friesner:
Oh, yes. There are five in that series.
Matthew Peterson:
Your work in that was. . . you helped to edit it?
Esther Friesner:
Well, actually for the Chicks in Chainmail, I had the idea, the concept, for the anthology and I wrote one story and of course, since it’s an anthology, I had other contributors. The funny thing was I don’t feel comfortable with the fact of buying my own work for an anthology. So I always will ask the in-house editor, the publisher editor. And with the Chicks books I figured, well, I’m not going to write a story and buy it from myself. I just felt a little bit off about it. Then at a convention, my editor, Tony Weisskopf, from Baen Books handed me the cover flat for the first Chicks book. And I’m reading the back copy, and it’s a beautiful cover, and I see, “and stories by so-and-so, so-and-so, and Friesner herself.” And I said, “Oh Tony, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is there is no story by me because . . .” and I explained my feelings, “. . . but the good news is, apparently you want one, so I will write one.” And ever after that, for Did You Say Chicks, which was the second one, Chicks ‘N Chained Males, which was the third, etc., etc., etc. I always asked first. I said, “Do you want a story by me in this?” And they said, “Yes.” And even though it seemed that they would inevitably be saying, “Yes, yes, we want one,” I feel better asking.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. If someone were to pick one of those books up, what they would expect would be, probably some humor, a little bit of humor. . .
Esther Friesner:
Oh, I would hope so!
Matthew Peterson:
. . . and the female characters are probably the main characters, right?
Esther Friesner:
Well, the whole premise of the Chicks in Chainmail series . . . I’m a feminist, and what drives me crazy is the presumption that no feminists have senses of humor. I really, really beg to differ. And when I was doing the first Chicks book, I ran into some very interesting attitudes. Most of the stories were by women. What I wanted were stories that involved women, armor of some sort, and humor. Other than that they could be contemporary, they could be a fantasy, they could be historical, but they had to have women, some kind of armor and humor. In the first book we had Hillary Clinton; that was a story by Susan Schwartz. She winds up organizing the Valkeries, and it was a lot of fun.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs] Funny you would say, Hillary Clinton.
Esther Friesner:
[laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
There’s like a graphic novel out now, or a comic book, and it’s of Obama and he looks like a barbarian. He’s got his shirt off . . .
Esther Friesner:
Oh dear!
Matthew Peterson:
. . . and there’s a woman just swooning over him like it’s some chick, you know, from . . .
Esther Friesner:
Oh yes, yes.
Matthew Peterson:
. . . a he’s like a barbarian, and I haven’t read it yet, but I just laughed when I saw the cover. [laughs]
Esther Friesner:
Well, I have to tell you, I was in Alaska this summer. And I saw a comic book with Sarah Palin. It was like her life, but it was done as . . . actually I’m not exactly sure if it was done as a super hero comic, or what, but I did not buy it, no. I do own a copy of the Spiderman where President Obama is a character in one of the stories. That thing sold out . . .
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, I bet.
Esther Friesner:
. . . the first day, and they’ve been re-issuing. But the cover that has his picture on it, that went. They had an alternate cover.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, okay. I didn’t know that.
Esther Friesner:
Oh yeah.
Matthew Peterson:
I wanted to talk a little bit about your writing with Robert Aspirin.
Esther Friesner:
Yeah.
Matthew Peterson:
I thought that was interesting ‘cause I am interviewing Jody Nye after this. And she’s worked with the Another Fine Myth. . . the Myth Adventures. And you mentioned a little bit about working with him. What was your experience working with him?
Esther Friesner:
Well, it was very hands off because the collaboration arrangement was that he wrote the outline, the chapter plan, for E.Godz, and it said what was to happen in each chapter. Other than that, as long as I got from point A to point B, I did the writing of the book and he had done the plot. So, that was it. We never met; we never spoke. I met him sometime later. I had never met him before, and he was a very nice man and everything, but that was it.
Matthew Peterson:
So you’ve done a lot of writing.
Esther Friesner:
Ooo, yes.
Matthew Peterson:
You’ve got a lot of books. You’ve also done a lot of editing. Which one do you like better, though?
Esther Friesner:
I like writing better.
Matthew Peterson:
You like writing.
Esther Friesner:
I really do because I’ve been writing, well, I haven’t been writing, writing, since I was three, but I’ve been telling stories and my mother would write them down for me. Or I’d draw a picture and say, “Now I have to tell you the story of this picture.” I wrote little cartoons on index cards, and they had a story behind each cartoon as the characters evolved. I had little plastic animals, you know, dinosaur models, and the dinosaurs would build whole civilizations, and the mammals would be whole civilizations. I made an index card pyramid for my mammals. They were having their own civilizations and I inscribed the generations of their kings on this pyramid.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs]
Esther Friesner:
Then I had the dinosaurs invade the mammals. And I got out the red nail polish.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh no! [laughs]
Esther Friesner:
For reality’s sake. And it just got really ugly at that point. But I’ve always liked to tell stories because I’ve always liked to read and hear stories.
Matthew Peterson:
Now you have a new book. The name of the book is Sphinx's Princess.
Esther Friesner:
Yes! And actually, well, there’s always going to be some humor, but it’s not primarily a humor book; it’s about young Nefertiti. And I’m working as we speak; I am working on the sequel to it which is Sphinx’s Queen. And it’s about her adventures growing up. Historically, we don’t know a lot about Nefertiti, especially about her childhood. Everyone knows about her after she became the queen. And she really was that beautiful because at the time that she was living, the Amarna Period, they were encouraging more naturalistic art, because her husband must have encouraged it. He wasn’t very conventionally good looking and yet he encouraged these sculptors to carve him as he was. So probably she was that beautiful . . .
Matthew Peterson:
. . . really was beautiful.
Esther Friesner:
. . . because it was a realistic art time. And there will be funny things happening, because funny things happen in life, but it’s more adventure.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Esther Friesner:
You know, she has to deal with some interesting times as they say. Same thing happened with the Helen of Troy books, Nobody’s Princess, Nobody’s Prize. She goes on adventures, but there are some funny things that happen along the way. Well, okay, Helen of Troy’s not historical, but I treat her as history, using the whole era. So as if she had been a real person living at that time. And Nefertiti is a historical character. So they’re not humor books, but there’ll be some funny things in it.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. Well, that sounds really interesting.
I’ve been speaking with Esther Friesner. I really enjoyed speaking with you and your aspects on humor.
Esther Friesner:
Thank you!
Matthew Peterson:
Thank you so much.
Esther Friesner:
Well, keep laughing. It’s the only thing that drives them nuts. Thank you so much!
Matthew Peterson:
I really appreciate you being on the show.
Well, that’s it for today. Please go to www.TheAuthorHour.com to check out the bonus questions. I’ve got an Urban Fantasy and Supernatural episode lined up for next week with Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kelley Armstrong, Charles de Lint, and Patricia Briggs. If you love werewolves, witches, faeries, vampires or other supernatural creatures, you'll love this episode. See you then.
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