Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

Mark W. Tiedemann's Home Page

[Cybling] Mark thanks for joining us today, and thanks for rescheduling with us.
[mark_tiedemann] Hi, thanks for the opportunity.
[Cybling] Mark...how has the convention been for you so far?
[mark_tiedemann] Hectic, fun, frustratting, energizing, cool. I won't know with certainty for a week or more.
[Cybling] Btw, Mark, folks...we have our guest sitting on dining room chairs...
[Cybling] at a diningroom style table...
[Cybling] working on laptops that are extremely unfamiliar...
[Cybling] with all the keys in the wrong places...so typos are *required*.
[Cybling] Have you been to a lot of the parties?
[mark_tiedemann] A few. They merge after a while. One of the best--last night--was the Japanese party. Relaxed, good food...they really like sf.
[DavE] Did you see any Astro Boy episodes in the original Japanese?
[Cybling] Mark, I've noticed that the mix of Fantasy to SF fan here has been high. Is this normal for the conventions you usually attend?
[mark_tiedemann] It's becoming more so. The genres have always been marketed together in roughly the same way. Now the conventions are taking on a mixed feel.
[mark_tiedemann] Oh, and at the Japanese party--no videos other than the closed-circuit broadcast of the masquerade.
[DavE] Darn
[mark_tiedemann] Yeah, well...but they showed us an impressive collection of new cameras and video recorders. I think each member of the host party had a different one that did something slightly different.
[Cybling] Okay...you've published in Asimov's, SFAge and F&SF...would you say that you write soft SF or TechFantasy or something else. Where would you put yourself on the fantasy/sf scale?
[Cybling] I know I sometimes ask hard questions, sorry.
[DavE] Mark, is the rise of fantasy at this con because Xena is a success while the latest Star Wars movie bombed?
[mark_tiedemann] I don't really categorize what I write other than to say I prefer SF--in all its various forms--to fantasy. Having said that, I've written a number of fantasies. I just sold a new one to a new magazine called Black Gate which will be premiering in November. I write in the idion which works best for the point I'm trying to make.
[mark_tiedemann] The mix of sf and fantasy in con attendance predates Xena. Xena helps, sure. But most of this presence has to do with books--Tolkein to begin with, but there are dozens of fantasy writers who are represented by an ardent fan following.
[DavE] True, but popular culture determines individual cons for that year.
[Cybling] Mark...you still actively write short stories as well as novels. Do you have a special love of the shorter forms?
[mark_tiedemann] Locally, yes, but the worldcon has a "cosmopolitan" membership building long before we know what a given year will produce.
[mark_tiedemann] Short stories...yes, it's a love-hate relationship. I never cared originally for the short form, I always preferred novels. But when you start to think about doing this professionally, you look for advice, and the old advice was "publish short fiction first, then do novels after you have a reputation." This was hard for me. I had to learn to write short stories. I've gotten (I think) fairly good at it now, so yes, I appreciate what I do quite a lot.
[Cybling] Your first novel, Mirage, appeared this April. How long were you...
[Cybling] writing short stories before this first novel sold?
[mark_tiedemann] I've been trying to break into novels for 18 years. I wrote short stories for eight years before I sold one.
[DavE] Do you write in novels or do you think in trilogies?
[Cybling] Ah...thanks DavE ... you stole the words from my keyboard.
[mark_tiedemann] I write novels. The Asimov's robot books were pitched to me as a "potential" trilogy, but I'm writing each one as a stand-alone.
[Cybling] Good.
* DavE gently puts back some of the extra vowels.
[Cybling] Your sequel to Mirage is coming out next year, correct?
[mark_tiedemann] April 2001. Along with (from a different publisher) the first volume of a "sequence" called "Compass Reach".
[Cybling] Okay...whats the title of the follow-up book to Mirage?
[mark_tiedemann] Chimera
[Cybling] Okay...and it sounds like you were writing Compass Reach at the same time, since they're both...
[Cybling] coming out of the pipeline at about the same time.
[Cybling] True?
[mark_tiedemann] I wrote "Compass Reach" ten years ago. It had already been sold once but the publisher was unable to put it out.
[Cybling] Ah. That explains it. Now Compass Reach is the beginning of a series? Or did I get that wrong?
[mark_tiedemann] Yes...I called it a sequence. It's part of a shared background universe, but each novel within it is a stand-alone. They share history but no characters.
[Cybling] Ok.
[DavE] How much of a background that doesn't appear in a novel do you work out beforehand?
[mark_tiedemann] And yes, there are two more novels in it already sold, so they'll be coming out the following two years.
[mark_tiedemann] BAckground is tricky. You come up with a skeleton that allows you to start the book and then it evolves. Do another book, it gets more detailed. You work it out as you go along. You need enough to know what your characters are going to do and what they mean when they interact.
[DavE] And so the main plot point of the third book doesn't contradict the first...
[mark_tiedemann] So, I suppose, on some level, I work out an awful lot of it, but it's not all written down or in the conscious part of my brain.
[mark_tiedemann] I assume, Dave, you mean in the robot novels, or as a general principle?
[DavE] As a general principle
[DavE] But certainly for extended works.
[mark_tiedemann] Then, yes. You should be consistent in your backgrounds in a series. It "feels" realer that way anyway.
[Cybling] Okay...so you're calling it the Secantis "Sequence" because it may very well be more than a trilogy?
[mark_tiedemann] Yes. I'd like to write more novels in the Secantis Sequence, but I defintely have enough short stories set in it to do a collection that I hope to follow up the first three novels with.
[Cybling] Thank you Mark! I know there are a lot of fans...
[Cybling] of the genres who will thank you forever if the word sequence starts being used instead of trilogy.
[Cybling] LOLOL...so tired of buying 4 and 5 book trilogies.
[mark_tiedemann] I quite agree. I think they call that Piers Anthony Syndrome, don't they?
[Cybling] DavE, we've kept mark tied down to the chair for half an hour here...do you have any final questions for him before we let him...
[DavE] Is writing a sequence easier since you only have to develope one consistent background/future history?
[Cybling] Okay...thanks for that last question Dave!
[mark_tiedemann] Actually, no. None of it's easy. But if you need to explore a given universe in greater and greater detail...well, talk to an Historian some time and ask how easy it gets when you know more and more about a culture. I think it gets harder.
[Cybling] Thank yuou so much for joining us in chat today Mark!
[DavE] Hmmm... I hadn't considered that. Thanks.
[Cybling] It's been a great final interview for the Convention!!!
[mark_tiedemann] Thank you. It's been terrific.