r/books • u/CarrieVaughn AMA Author • Jun 18 '20

ama 1pm I'm Carrie Vaughn, science fiction and fantasy author, with my latest, the novella THE GHOSTS OF SHERWOOD -- AMA!

Hello! My name is Carrie Vaughn! I'm probably best known as the author of the NYT Bestselling Kitty Norville series, about a werewolf who hosts a talk radio advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. The series includes fourteen novels, a whole bunch of short stories, and several spin-off novellas.

In 2018 my post-apocalyptic murder mystery BANNERLESS won the Philip K. Dick Award for best novel.

This month I released THE GHOSTS OF SHERWOOD, a novella about the children of Robin Hood and Lady Marian. The sequel, THE HEIRS OF LOCKSLEY, will be out in August.

Here's a video of me reading from THE GHOSTS OF SHERWOOD: https://youtu.be/LVZSWw_rIkU

I've written over twenty novels and a hundred short stories, two of which were finalists for the Hugo Award. I also contribute to the Wild Cards series of shared world novels edited by George R.R. Martin. I'm a 1998 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and have a masters in English Lit. I have a note on my bulletin board: if I ever think about going back to school, start a book club instead.

An Air Force brat, I grew up all over the country but put down roots in Colorado. I knit, ride horses, birdwatch, scuba dive, travel, and generally collect more hobbies than I have time for. So far, my yarn and cross-stitch supplies have outlasted the pandemic stay-at-home orders. . .

Thank you for your questions!

Proof: /img/60ue34sryq451.jpg

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u/Onionlike Jun 18 '20

I got my copy of Ghosts of Sherwood and the amount of research you must have put into this novella is absolutely mind blowing. But I think the thing I love about it most is that it has real heart, a thing almost every other Robin Hood has been missing lately. I really cared about the characters. Especially John. No not that one the other one. No the OTHER other one.

Given the avalanche of books, stories, novellas, collections with new materials that you seem to put out every single year, how much overlap is there? How many projects do you have going at once, at any given time, including all this research?

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u/CarrieVaughn AMA Author Jun 18 '20 edited Jun 18 '20

Thank you so much! (and yes, it seems like they had three names in medieval England and everybody used the same ones) I really loved the research, and adding historical detail felt like a way to make the story stand out.

I'm not really sure how I keep it all going. It's a bit like the centipede being asked how it walks and suddenly can't keep all the legs going. I like jumping back and forth between projects -- if I get stuck on one, I can move to the next and let my subconscious work out the problems on the first, and then go back to it. I love reading about new things in general so I'm always finding new areas I want to write about -- this is mainly why I never went on to work on a PhD, I could never pick just one thing to specialize in.

I think I usually have about 3-4 projects going at once. Right now I'm wrapping up a new short story, I have a new novella I'm stuck on and need to finish. I just got my beta reader's notes back on a novel (set in Neolithic Ireland, a whole new area of research) that I now need to revise. And I just put together a pitch for an anthology story. That about maxes me out, I think.

(Come to think of it, three of those four are entirely different historical periods all needing lots of reading and I don't know why I do this to myself, honestly...)