as told to Lori Soard
WM: Tell us a little about "The Travels of First Horse."
Bob: A LITTLE? That's hard! 'Horse' is the lead Story of the 'Stories of the Ehvelen'. They were little people, with pointy ears. But stop! Forget the flittering fairy or mischievous leprechaun. The various mythical Little Folk are distorted memories of a real race who MUST have existed. I've done a great deal of historical research, and the Ehvelen are as real to me as the Kalahari Bushmen.
There is plenty of magic in the Stories of the Ehvelen. This is magic like that of Harry Houdini, or of an Olympic champion who swims THREE TIMES as fast as I can. As my hero Horse said in 'To Assyria' [Book I of 'The Travels of First Horse']:
"It's a great deal of skill, strength and self-discipline. And imagination first to make it possible. Other-worldly things would be less remarkable, not more."
He was talking to the King of Scythia about a disappearing lady act.
The Stories describe thirty years of terrible war that forged the peaceful, fun-loving Ehvelen into the Mother's sword against slavery, cruelty, exploitation. She then scattered them all over the land, so they could defend the wild places, and protect the powerless against the mighty. This is why we remember them as Fairy Godmothers and warlike Dwarves. To the people they chastised, they must have seemed nasty, hence Gnomes and Trolls.
The hero of the Trilogy was called 'Horse' because Ehvelen men were named after an animal, women for a plant, and the name implied a life-long Responsibility. And he was 'First Horse', because horses were new to his people. He was born in slavery, and his mother Heather knew that horses would thereafter be part of Ehvelen life. Not that she had any hope of escape when he was born.
Fifteen hundred years after his times, Horse was a superhero to the Ehvelen. His example inspired them the way we are inspired by Robin Hood. The knowledge he gained during his ten-year odyssey helped his people to end the long war, and shaped their culture ever after. He was a remarkable little fellow: the size of a ten-year old boy, but stronger than most men, with a naturally sunny nature, great intelligence and agility. Everywhere he went, women loved him.
I've learnt lots from Horse. I'd love to be a little more like him.
WM: You are a psychologist. How do you think this has helped your writing?
Bob: When writing, I adopt a point of view, and I AM the protagonist. It is simply impossible for me to make someone say or do something that's out of character. The major tool of counseling is empathy, being in tune with someone else's world. Writing is exactly the same thing, at least for me.
WM: You said you were a mudsmith. I couldn't help but envision a long row of mudpies :) Could you tell us a little about what a mudsmith does? Do you know why they chose the name mudsmith as opposed to earthsmith or something along those lines?
Bob: Well, it's not 'they' but me. The first ever adobe house I built had DREADFUL faults. I'm not ashamed of past mistakes: they are proof that I learned. One common fault of neonate mud brick layers is a wall that curves in the vertical dimension. Mine looked pregnant! I knocked down some of it and rebuilt (first time took one month, second time five days). Some was too complex, with windows and internal walls, so I chipped the outside back to vertical, and filled inside with layers of mud plastered on. When the mud was ALMOST hard, I got rid of shrinkage cracks by hammering at it with a rubber mallet. I was making a house like a smith makes metal objects. Only, I was hammering mud...
That was 20 years ago now, and there is nothing much I don't know about building, but I've kept the label.
WM: You've written both nonfiction and fiction. Which do you think is easier to write?
Bob: Easier? Non-fiction. You have some information to convey, and you write it down in a clear, interesting manner. Finish.
But that's a yawn. It's bread and butter. Enjoyment? That's fiction. Oh, writing fiction may make the space around me unlivable for others, but I'm in a different world where things constantly surprise me, and as a male, it's the closest I'll ever come to the agonies and joys of childbirth.
WM: How do you draw your life experiences into your writing?
Bob: It used to be a self-conscious exercise. Now, there is no distinction between what I experience and remember, and what I write. It just happens. I think this is a skill you develop by doing.
A week ago, I received an invitation to write a 1000 word story about something that happened in a place called Knox. Fifteen years ago, a friend and I removed an abandoned shed from roundabout there. And I'd recently helped someone with a phobia for spiders. I put the two together -- don't ask me how or why, it just 'clicked' -- and two days later I had a 958 word story called 'The Hero of Knox' in which my Scottish friend Don lined me up to help salvage abandoned material, because I had an old truck. He then rescued me from a horde of attacking spiders. The people who have read it said that it's hilarious.
WM: You are from Australia. Do you use this as a setting for your books?
Bob: Not in the 'Ehvelen' books, they are set on the steppes of Eurasia, or, in the case of 'The Travels of First Horse', in Assyria, Egypt, India and suchlike places. But a majority of my short stories have a strong eucalypt flavor. Fifteen of the 22 stories in my collection 'Striking Back from Down Under' are set in this wonderful yet cruel land.
WM: Who are some of your favorite authors and what have you learned from them?
Bob: DICK FRANCIS. His heroes are apparently ordinary people I can identify with. Then they defeat satisfyingly nasty villains, making me feel that, perhaps, I would rise to the challenge too in their situation. His books always have something about horse racing, which does not interest me, and yet I love reading them. I've realized how he gets me in: by taking me into the thoughts of his protagonists. I have tried to imitate his technique. Each book also has information about some field of knowledge. I've learned a lot of facts by reading Dick's fiction. So, when in 'To Assyria' I needed to give a detailed description of the ancient steelworking technique, I tried to do it the way Dick does.
TOLKIEN. If Tolkien wrote today, and no-one had preceded him with sword and sorcery, HE WOULD NOT GET PUBLISHED. He created a genre, and nowadays that's literary suicide. And yet, what wonderful stories! I keep re-reading them, and just wish he'd written more.
DAVID EDDINGS. I particularly like the five books of the 'Belgariad'. I admire the way we start with an apparently ordinary little boy, in a kitchen. So gradually you hardly notice, the ordinary turns into the unbelievable -- and yet he keeps me there, in his make-believe world. While I'm reading his story, I DO believe that the 'Will and the Word' can move objects and create flowers from nothing.
ELLIS PETERS. The Brother Cadfael stories are delightful. Reading them has taught me how to put myself into the frame of mind of a person from a long-past culture.
I could list another 20 or so...
WM: What do you do when you aren't working with clients or writing?
Bob: I try to spend as little time as possible on activities other than writing. Physical work is usually high on the list: building, the many tasks of trying to approximate a sustainable lifestyle, clearing introduced weeds from the Australian bush.
I earn part of my living by teaching: building with earth, woodcraft, writing, solar electricity.
Since the start of 1999, I've spent a lot of time developing web pages. My web pages BREED! I now have six -- I think. And of course having them is one thing. Promoting them is another. That's a major job in itself.
Also a year ago, I joined a wonderful organization: the Toastmasters. As a result, I have developed from a Writer into a Storyteller. You can read some of my speeches at http://lilydaletoasmasters.org.au/. [Revision, 2005: my speeches are gone from there, but several are on my various web sites.]
A few words of inspiration from Bob:
I find writing a joy. Like everything else, it has tedious parts, particularly, editing over and over until the piece is as perfect as I can make it. It's ready for submission when I'm ready to chuck up on seeing it! I must have gone over my answers to your questions about 25 times.
I feel I'm fortunate in that I can live a thousand lives, each in a different world that started by being created by me, but then, while I'm working at it, this world becomes more real than the one I was born into.
Human beings are creative, although for many of us the divine spark is masked by shrouds imposed by society: parental blindfolds, the shackles of education. Writing is one form of creativity that can help a person to blossom, to grow, to become fully human.
Of course, the flower is the precursor of the fruit, and writing that's never published is a blossom that never fulfilled this destiny. But fruiting is not the only purpose of the flower.
For five years, while I was battered by the boulders of rejection letters from publishers, I used to feel ready to MURDER well-meaning people who told me how this or that best-selling author had received 5000 rejections over 23 years before getting published and selling 1,000,000 copies in the first year. And that was meant as a solace!
So, instead, my message to others suffering the same woes is: I know how you feel. It's terrible, and the fact that others have been there, only worse, helps not one whit. That story or book you wrote is your creation, your baby, a piece of your spirit, and someone has just stomped on it with hobnailed boots.
How dare anyone try to talk you out of hurting? But there is no choice. If you want your baby to be born into the real world, you must keep trying. And trying. And trying.
And rejections can be good for the baby. I now wince when I re-read the version I submitted five years ago. Because of the rejections, I sought editorial assistance, and revised, and revised again, and threw away books and re-wrote them in their entirety, and now I am a much better writer. Had my early work been accepted, it would probably have flopped in the REAL Court of Judgment: the marketplace. Think of rejections as the contractions during the birth. They are a pain you must suffer, forgotten when you hold the new life in your hands.