Interview with Sarah Hoyt

I’m about to release my first totally indie novel Witchfinder, a novel set in an alternate regency, in a magical world. Lost princesses, dragons, and a reluctant elf prince! (I couldn’t figure out a way to squeeze a thousand elephants in.)

AS: What is your favorite genre to write in?

SH: Science fiction. But my big issue is that I can’t stick only to it. I get a wild idea, and have to try it out.

AS: Are any of your characters in the books like you?

SH: Good heavens, NO. THEY’re interesting.

AS: What is your next book?

SH: Through Fire — book two of the Earth Revolution.

AS: Can we get a sneak peek?

SH: When men forged weapons of metal, they did it by putting them through fire repeatedly then beating them almost to the breaking point, then putting them through the fire again and again. There are times I wonder if that’s what’s been done to me. Not that I think this is true precisely. It’s just that we, humans, tend to think of ways to justify the weird turns of our destiny. Since mine is odder than most, I often try to find a reason and a purpose for it. It would be easier, I think, if I could believe in any divinity or even a pre-ordained destiny. Since I don’t, I’m not absolutely sure how to start this story. I could start with that moment when I stood in front of the mirror, trying to find a way to disfigure myself, or to make myself look, at best, average, and the armed man by the door said, “You’re going about it all wrong.” Or I could start when I left the small and forgotten colony planet where everyone knew me, and where everyone thought they knew what to to expect of me. Or I could start when I shot my husband. But no. That last still makes my heart turn within me, with thoughts of what might have been. So I’ll start with the ball. It was the first ball I attended and, though I might be wrong, likely the last. The place where I grew up, an asteroid colony started by refuges from Earth, had never run to balls or grand state occasions. Oh, we had a cultural center and sometimes there were dances there. But it’s not the same. You see, we had no government. At least we had no official government. And for the sort of ball that starts this story, a government is needed – something that controls central resources and can do things in style. I’d say more than that was needed too: a sense of hereditary splendor, of being the last of a line entitled and accustomed to this sort of thing. Perhaps even more. Perhaps for the grandeur and pomp of that first and last ball, a sense is needed of decadence and falling glory. That ball had all of them. It took place in the ballroom of what used to be the palace of the Good Men of Liberte Seacity: a glittering room formed of molded dimatough from its glistening black floor to its softly shining white walls. Within it, enough people assembled to form a hundred couples, all of them dressed in fantastical finery. There were outfits that seemed to be spun of butterfly wings, and those that seemed to defy the shape of the human body. And there was clothing that harked back to the fantastical age of empires almost seven hundred years before – long, sweeping dresses and molding outfits in things that were better than velvet and silk. My own dress was made – I understood – of a form of ceramic. Though it felt like satin to the touch, its dull black glimmer shone with pinpoints of light, as if stars were caught in its depths. Liberte Seacity had been formed by a banker’s consortium at the close of the twenty first century, and like the other seacities it was supposed to be a refuge from high taxes and excessive government controls. Unlike other seacities, it had never been designed to have any industry, any useful output. Instead, it owned other seacities – Shangri-la, Xanadu and, later, several European territories – where the workday business took place. Liberte itself had been designed as a resort for those at the pinnacle of that long-vanished world. It was built in terraces, all carefully landscaped gardens and idyllic beaches, like a dream of an Arcadia that never was. Its inevitable utilitarian levels, where valets and maids, law enforcers and garbage collectors lived were hidden, out of sight. Approaching Liberte from the air, as I’d first seen it, one saw it only as a sort of white and green confection, something like an idealized wedding cake. The palace of the Good Men was the topping on the cake: white and full of columns and terraces, built with an airy grace that would have been impossible without poured dimatough and sculpted ceramite, it might have fit a previous age’s dream of a fairy palace, an immortal fantasy. The ballroom sat at the very top, and its walls alternated with vast panels of transparent dimatough, through which – as the night fell – you could see the sea, glistening in every direction, all around us, blue and still like a perfect mirror. You could also see the troop transports moored in that sea, the vast, dark menace that encircled us metaphorically as well as in reality. “Why are you looking out the window?” Simon St. Cyr, ci-devant Good Man of Liberty seacity, who, by a stroke of the pen, had made himself “Protector of the People and Head of the Glorious Revolution,” just a day ago. I turned. Simon – who has at least another dozen given names to his credit – stood just behind me. He was slightly shorter than I, had brown hair, brown eyes and looked unremarkable. Which I’d come to believe was protective coloring to stop people wondering what he might be plotting. He put a hand out and rested it on my waist. “I’m looking at those troop carriers,” I said. “Oh, that,” he said, contriving to give the impression the glistening transports, each of them able to carry more than a thousand armed men, were a negligible detail like a spec of dust on the floor of his polished ballroom. “Don’t worry, ma petite.” I’d not yet decided if Simon’s habit of larding his speech with archaic French words annoyed me or amused me, but calling me “little” was beyond reason, since I had at least two inches on him. Impatience colored my tone, as I said, “But shouldn’t you be worried? These people depend on you for their safety.”