Those Who Hunt the Night: A James Asher Novel

Barbara Hambly

My co-author on MAGIC TIME, Marc Scott Zicree, has a theory that there are two types of writers. The first type are those for whom writing is the Safe Place, the place where the writer feels most comfortable: most of these writers start when they're children. The second type are those for whom writing is the Dangerous Place, the place where they don't want to go and where they have to look at things within themselves that they don't want to look at - but they have to, because if you're a writer, you really have no choice.

I am, thank goodness, of the first type. I'm probably the only person I know who knew before the age of five what I wanted to be when I grew up. I've got friends in their fifties who STILL haven't figured that one out, but I knew I wanted to be a writer. I've been writing most of my life.

Since my first published fantasy in 1982 - THE TIME OF THE DARK - I've managed to touch pretty much all the bases in genre fiction: historical murder mysteries, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, Star Trek novels, Star Wars novels, comic books, a "contemporary occult romance novella" for Harlequin, scripts for Saturday morning cartoon shows, and a straight historical novel about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, THE EMANCIPATOR'S WIFE, which will make me the only writer I know of to have written dialogue for both Luke Skywalker and Abraham Lincoln.

Born in 1951, I grew up on science fiction and fantasy in a small and boring suburb of Los Angeles. At the University of California I received a Master's degree in Medieval History, and a black belt in karate, thus qualifying me to write sword-and-sorcery fantasy, which basically involves knowing how non-industrial societies work, and how to write a fight-scene. I attended the University of Bordeaux and traveled in Europe in 1971-72, and held the usual assortment of day-jobs before being published: teacher, secretary, liquor-store clerk. I married science-fiction writer George Alec Effinger in 1998 and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years.

My reading taste is so completely idiosyncratic I hesitate to make recommendations; mostly what I read is non-fiction, research for whatever historical project I'm working on at the time. I enjoy the murder mysteries of Kate Ross and Sarah Caudwell, some (but not all) of the romances of Georgette Heyer, modern fantasy writers Connie Willis and M. John Harrison.

People ask me if it takes a lot of discipline to write, but for me it's like disciplining yourself to make love on your wedding-night. Writing is still the thing I most love to do. I also dance, sew, hike, and do occasional pieces of rough carpentry. I am a hermit now, and live in a cave in Los Angeles with a number of small carnivores.

BARBARA HAMBLY is the author of the vampire novels Those Who Hunt the Night and its sequel, Traveling with the Dead. She has written dozens of other novels as well, from fantasy to historical mysteries to Star Trek adventures.