An Interview with Jim C. Hines -

An Interview with Jim C. Hines by Chadwick Ginther - Monday, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:40pm

Jim C. Hines is the author of five novels and numerous short stories. He was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions about his work and his forthcoming novel The Mermaid's Madness (due October 6th).

CG: How did you get your start as a writer? What do you feel was your first big break, first sale or first novel sale?

JCH: I started writing back in 1995. I had a friend who had written a few stories, and I thought it sounded like fun. I mean, how hard could it be? Three years and many, many, many rejections later, I wrote a short story called Blade of the Bunny that ended up winning first place in the Writers of the Future contest. It was another seven years before things really started to take off for me, but Blade of the Bunny was my first real sale. I can still remember dancing through the halls after getting the phone call about that one.

CG: You write a lot of short fiction in addition to your novels. Do you prefer one format over the other?

JCH: I like both for different reasons, but I tend to prefer novels. Part of that is pure greed: novels tend to pay better, and they reach a wider audience than most short fiction. But I also enjoy having room to delve deeper into stories, getting into more complex and layered plots and characters.

That said, short fiction is a lot of fun too. I can experiment more freely and play with ideas that might not work if I stretched them out for 100,000 words, like muppet werewolves and zombie theme parks. I hope to continue writing in both forms, but I'll probably keep investing most of my time in the novels.

CG: Your first novel Goblin Quest in particular seems to offer many nods of the head to Dungeons and Dragons specifically and gaming in general. There are even miniatures in production of some of your goblin characters. Do you have a personal connection to the roleplaying hobby?

JCH: I started roleplaying back when Dungeons and Dragons came in a box and you had to use a white crayon to color in the numbers on your dice. I'm actually heading out in about thirty minutes -- leaving the rest of this interview for later -- because my druid has an engagement with some angry drow. I tried to write the goblin books so they could be enjoyed by anyone, but gamers should find some additional enjoyment in the pages. (Update: And another band of drow learns that most important lesson: don't shoot at the druid. Now you know! And knowing is half the battle.)

CG: You're pretty open about not only your writing career, but your personal life in your blog, from your diabetes to your time as a rape counselor. Why do you feel it is important to give your readers a glimpse into Jim the person, not just Jim the author?

JCH: A lot of people will tell you a blog is an important way to promote your work. I agree to an extent. I know some of my readers discovered my blog first and then went on to buy one or more of my books. That's wonderful when it happens, but I don't want to turn my blog into an infomercial. "That's right, buy the goblin trilogy at Amazon, and you can get Stepsister Scheme absolutely free! But that's not all! Act now, and we'll throw in this free goblin temporary tattoo!"

I prefer to think of blogging as an extended conversation, and that means I talk about things that are important to me. I tend to leave my family out of it, but everything else is fair game. If that results in readers going out to buy my books, that's great, but it's more important to me to hang out (virtually) with fellow fans and writers, to have fun, and to enjoy the conversation.

CG: There has been a lot of talk among fans on the internet about cultural appropriation and sexism in fantasy. Has the awareness of this changed how you approach your writing?

JCH: The thing is, sexist/racist writing isn't just offensive; it's bad writing. If I write a story where all my gypsies are child-stealing thieves and amoral con artists, it means I was too lazy to research the culture I'm basing my story on or to develop actual, believable characters. The various ongoing discussions online have helped me to pay more attention to my own blind spots. As I was writing Red Hood's Revenge, which takes place in a desert culture, there were a number of points where I caught myself falling back on middle eastern stereotypes instead of taking the time to do realistic, believable worldbuilding. I'm hopeful that I've been able to correct most of these. Not because I want to satisfy the PC police, as some people put it, but because it makes the story better.

CG: What was the most interesting piece of real world research that has found it way into one of your novels?

JCH: For The Mermaid's Madness, I did a fair amount of reading about the ocean and marine life. Animals that live in the ocean need a way to rid their bodies of excess salt. Reading how various creatures have adapted to this need led to my own merfolk shedding salt through their tears, which explains why the men and women both tend to cry more than humans. It's a small detail, but I was proud of that one.

CG: While your Princess novels have a great sense of fun and adventure about them, you do not shy away from the darkness at the root of many of our more popular (and sanitized) fairy tales. Was there one story in particular you feel has been done a disservice by modern retellings?

JCH: I originally wrote a long answer about Sleeping Beauty and our tendency to still treat women as prizes and objects, but I don't know that this qualifies as a disservice. Fairy tales were much more than just entertainment; they taught important lessons about duty and danger and faith and family. It makes sense to me that the stories would change and adapt over time.

That said, I think sanitizing the stories misses the point and tends to render the stories irrelevant. The Little Mermaid originally included a fairly graphic lesson against premarital relations. Whether that lesson applies today is another discussion, but compare it to the Disney version wherein you learn to sacrifice everything and run off to marry a hot guy you barely know, because that's how you live happily ever after. End of mini-rant.

CG: How do you approach your world-building? Do you prefer to outline heavily at the start or fill in the details as you write?

JCH: The approach I took for Red Hood's Revenge is pretty typical for me. When I started writing the book, I already had a map of Talia's home country of Arathea. Rather, I had an empty outline of the country, and had written "Arathea" across the middle. The rest was blank.

I sketched in some details--rivers, mountain ranges, various cities--and then started writing the book. As I worked through the first draft, I figured out in more detail what I needed for the story: the city-dwellers vs. the nomadic Kha'iida tribes; the nine fairy-blessed cities of Arathea; the changing desert terrain and so on. So my worldbuilding starts pretty sketchy, but by the time I'm done, I feel like Ive filled in a lot of detail.

CG: With all the fertile ground of folklore and myth to play with and re-imagine, do you feel that your Princess series is something you could continue to write indefinitely, or do you have an end in mind for Talia, Danielle and Snow?

JCH: Originally I thought of the series as one I could write indefinitely, but I changed my mind once I began writing them. As the characters grew and changed, and most importantly had to deal with the consequences of their adventures, I realized there was no realistic way to stretch this out forever. People grow and change, and it felt dishonest to deny the characters that same growth. At this point I've begun writing book four, which will wrap up some of the longer character arcs and will probably end up being the final book in the series. At least for a while....