When she is not writing for our pleasure, Aliette puts her intelligence to work as a computer engineer for a European defense firm. She designs algorithms for missile guidance.

If Aliette could have any animal in the world as a pet, she says she would have a cat. “They’re independent but let themselves be stroked – and they’re so cute,” Aliette said. She would make her home in London. “It’s very busy, cosmopolitan, and it has mild (albeit rainy) weather,” she commented. Aliette’s dream vacation, if there were no money and time restraints, would be a visit to Mexico to see the Mesoamerican ruins. She is a morning person, and her favorite song is “Video” by India Arie.

In her seven years of writing, she has had seven stories published with markets ranging from Haruah: Breath of Heaven to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. She also has seven more stories forthcoming, including publications in Interzone and Writers of the Future XXIII and two in anthologies. A poem, “The Lantern Bearers,” is being published in this issue of Turn the Page.

Robelen: When did you start writing?
Aliette de Bodard: I started that when I was pretty young, actually. I can’t remember my age, but I wrote a short story on a quest to find a missing girl–on a planet full of cat-people. (I don’t have the story any more, but I don’t think it was that exciting anyway. Let’s chalk it up to learning errors….) My real writing career started in 1999 when I was living in London, when I decided to start writing a novel. I was 17 at the time.

Robelen: What sparked your interest?
Aliette de Bodard: I’ve always been an avid reader, and when my family moved to London in 1998, I started reading SF and fantasy in English, through the local libraries. My favorite author at the time (and he still is) was Orson Scott Card, whose Ender’s Game blew me away. I borrowed everything by him I could find, until one day I happened upon a book that was called How to write Fantasy and Science Fiction. I had never really thought until then that writing could be a career, and not just something you did for fun. That’s what got me started.

Robelen: What is your biggest joy in writing?
Aliette de Bodard: My biggest joy in writing is that white-hot rush just after I’ve finished a piece – when all my words are good and beautiful and the story is still fresh in my mind to move me. Of course, it’s not long until the Inner Editor kicks in to remind me there’s still a lot of work to do.

Robelen: What is your biggest heartbreak in writing?
Aliette de Bodard: My biggest heartbreak in writing is when I finish a novel. I’ve been with the characters for so long I have this feeling they’re walking in my head, and it’s always a shock to discover that we should go our separate ways now.

Robelen: Have you read any “how-to-write” books? Which one helped you the most?
Aliette de Bodard: I’ve read about 20-30 “how-to-write” books. The two that helped me the most are Orson Scott Card’s How to write Fantasy and Science Fiction and Nancy Kress’ Beginnings, Middles and Ends.

Robelen: Have you been to any writing seminars or clinics?
Aliette de Bodard: I’ve been to Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, which helped me a lot, first to realize some of the things I was doing without thinking (both right and wrong), and second to gain confidence.

Robelen: What one thing has helped you most as a writer?
Aliette de Bodard: The one thing that’s helped me most as a writer are online critique groups, particularly Hatrack, Liberty Hall, and Online Writing Workshop. Critiques make you learn the craft; but for me it’s more a matter of finding like-minded people (a hard thing to do when you’re French-born, living in France and writing in English, as there aren’t many SF/Fantasy English writers in Paris).

Robelen: Where is your favorite place to write?
Aliette de Bodard: I have a writing space in my flat, with souvenirs from India and a kettle at hand – to have some tea while I’m writing. Generally, though, as long as I can have decent music I can write pretty much in front of any computer.

Robelen: How do you get over “writer’s block”?
Aliette de Bodard: I never really had it last for very long. I generally take it as a sign that I ought to reload my batteries, so I don’t do any writing, but instead read those books I’ve always been meaning to read (whether they’re fiction books or research), or watch some DVDs.

Robelen: What is the most important thing you have learned along the way?
Aliette de Bodard: There’s a lot of good advice hanging around; there are also a lot of things that are repeatedly said and that are false. Any piece of advice has to be examined; it may or may not work for you.

Robelen: What is the biggest myth that you have found not to be true?
Aliette de Bodard: Show not tell. That has to be the most damaging myth I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it’s impossible to show emotions without distancing the reader. For another, sometimes telling is so much more effective than showing.

Robelen: What part of “Through the Obsidian Gates” is actual Maya myth? What was the most interesting thing you learned through your research into these myths?
Aliette de Bodard: I read the Popol Vuh, which is the myth of origins of the Quiché Maya, a short while before I first started writing “Through the Obsidian Gates.”  In that book, the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque play a ball-game against the Lords of the Underworld, One Death and Seven Death (a game that their fathers played and that cost them their lives). The stakes are essentially for life (the Hero Twins) to triumph over death (the Lords of the Underworld). It’s a very powerful passage of the Popol Vuh, and it got me thinking of the myth of Orpheus – what if the stakes of that game had been the life of a loved one? And what if the problem wasn’t so much that the player lost the game – but that they did succeed, and found that success brought its own problems? That gave me the character of Sahague, who absolutely wanted her husband brought back to life.

The most interesting thing I learnt through that research was that myths and legends could be a very good indicator of how people thought. For instance, in the Popol Vuh, you see the link between maize and life – it’s not said explicitly, but you can see how the maize ends up being a symbol of the cycle of seasons. You also see the fundamental dichotomy between the world above and the underworld – a place that brings famine, plague and all manners of ills into the world, in addition to being the final destination of the dead.

Robelen: Do you have things besides stories published/accepted?
Aliette de Bodard: I have one scientific article on Pattern Recognition published – duller stuff than writing, it’s about automatically recognizing the author’s name from a scan of a journal paper. But I’m glad it got published, because it allows me to have some recognition – however minimal – in the field of Computer Vision.

Robelen: What do you consider your greatest successes?
Aliette de Bodard: Selling a story to Writers of the Future.

Robelen: What helped you the most in getting to where you are?
Aliette de Bodard: What helped me most are my first reader/boyfriend, Matthieu, whose help has been invaluable in working out which stories should be tossed aside, and the people I’ve met through critique groups (Liberty Hall and Online Writing Workshop), whose feedback has improved my writing no end.

Robelen: What were your greatest obstacles?
Aliette de Bodard: I had to overcome the difficulty of writing in unconventional worlds, which meant a lot of exposition to get across. It’s easier to convey life in New York City, because most people are familiar with that (not that you don’t face additional challenges afterwards, but exposition is streamlined). Conveying how people lived in the time of the Aztecs, and how they thought, is a lot of information to deliver to the reader in a very short span of time.

Robelen: Why do you write in English when you live in France?
Aliette de Bodard: Most of what I read is in English, so when I started writing it seemed natural to start in English. And the SF/Fantasy market is bigger in the US/UK than in France (where we publish lots of English translations).

Aliette de Bodard is not only a member of Liberty Hall, but she is also a member of The NoteBored. The members of both writing boards applaud her success and wish her much more.