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Urban Fantasy Interview: Lilith Saintcrow

October 28, 2009 Lilith Saintcrow: The most fun for me is twisting the setting just a few degrees. Taking an ordinary city, or one where you've lived or worked, and changing things just subtly, leaving little clues for the reader to figure out where in the world it is. It's like putting together an Easter egg hunt. Plus there's the joy of blowing things up, similar to action movies--you get to take landmarks and alter, smash, or utterly destroy them within the story. It's like having your own personal summer blockbuster inside your head, shot on location without the hassle of hotels, cameras, or crowd control. LS: Not going too crazy with it. There's a balance to be struck between a real-life city and what you need the city to be for your story. If you put too many layers of varnish on, so to speak, you end up with an unrecognizable mess. Plus, people get cranky when you change, say, New York around. Artistic license only stretches so far. LS: Laurell K. Hamilton really blew this current incarnation of the genre wide open, and I respect her for that. I admire LA Banks--she's just such an amazing human being. Jim Butcher, of course, and Rachel Caine. And PN Elrod, who is one classy dame. There's the old-school UF authors too--Sergey Lukyanenko, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint. My fellow Deadline Dames, and the Team Seattle authors, all people I know and love. There's just so many people to admire in this field. LS: The old school--Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, Simon Green--are, I think, heirs to magical realism. I get a lot of flack for calling UF "chicks in leather" from people who think I'm not conversant with, or not giving proper credit to, that aspect of the genre. I think there's room in the UF genre designation for all.

The current crop of UF authors really owe a lot to both SF/F and the romance field, paranormal romance in particular. There's an extraordinarily fertile crossover between SF/F and romance that is a platform for examining human interaction, relationships, the questions of violence, free will, and what makes us human in some very deep and relevant ways. Also, because it's "genre" and not seen as "real literature" (not a view I agree with, but one that's been expressed a lot) there's a certain relaxation and attention to entertaining the reader with craft and excitement that adds a lot. People seem to enjoy this hybrid we've got going on now, and I for one love it to pieces. LS: Everything I read influences my work, to a greater or lesser degree. Everything is grist for the mill.

For the Jill Kismet series, I was very tired of mysteries and urban fantasies where the hero/ine is working against law enforcement. It irks me to read a lot of plot gyrations that just serve to make the hero/ine stand alone against the bureaucracy that Doesn't Understand. There's a place for that, of course, but it seems to be so unnecessary for most stories. It occurred to me that if supernatural things were occurring, law enforcement would of course want someone who could handle that on the payroll. It would add another layer of complexity to the relationships that sort of character would have with the world.

In other words, I wanted less Dirty Harry and more of something like Sean Stewart's Passion Play.

I think the biggest influences on the Kismet series, though, would have to be noir (both film and stories) and action movies. I love anything noir, and I love action movies. Throw an ethically and morally conflicted heroine into a dangerous situation, add car chases and combat, and sit back to watch the fun. LS: It's so hard to say, because I'm so close to it--I'm in the field, and sometimes those in the field don't see the forest for the trees. I do see a little less romance and a little more kickass becoming the standard, and I see urban fantasy moving away from vampires and werewolves and toward other supernatural beings, especially from other cultures. (Liz Williams's Detective Inspector Chen series comes to mind here.) I'm also looking forward to more series with moral and ethical ambiguities, exploring gender roles, violence, and other social issues through fiction. I really believe fiction, especially genre fiction, is a conversation a culture and society is having about itself and its issues and values. Urban fantasy seems to take on some really deep and weighty issues in an entertaining and accessible way.

Of course, the chicks (and dudes) in leather and the big explosions aren't bad either. I'm a sucker for both.

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Like Lilith, I'm excited by the inclusion of non European cultures in my fantasy reads.  I'm a huge fan of Chinese mythology, and love the Detective Inspector Chen novels.   But I do sometimes fret that things get thrown in just because an author finds them cool, and not enough attention is given to make them more than scenery or a western caricature.

Posted by Josh Jasper on October 28, 2009 | Comments (1)