Sarah Hoyt, aka mystery writer Sarah D'Almeida, began her journey as storyteller when she was a child growing up in Portugal. It’s in her blood, having spent much of her youth enthralled by the tales her grandmother skillfully wove for her; stories of the supernatural, the unknown and all the possibilities that exist in between. Hoyt had generously taken the time out of her hectic writing schedule to answer questions on why she’s considering teaching herself to write with her feet, what constitutes a great story and which is the favorite of her creations.
PC: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SH: Well, my first ambition was to be a cat. Or rather, I was fairly sure I was a cat. We lived with my grandmother who ran an informal cat rescue of sorts. The only thing standing between her and being the crazy cat lady was that she kept a clean and orderly house and looked after all her charges (she also found them homes if she could). However, since I was by far the youngest of the grandchildren, the only things around that I identified with were the cats. So I thought, naturally, I was a freakishly deformed cat. I spent hours learning to curl in a ball and purr. I don’t know if I ever tried to groom myself…I expect my mom would have put an end to it very fast.
At some point I realized I wasn’t a cat and that childhood wasn’t a permanent thing. People kept asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I thought… “An angel.” I wanted it all, the dress, the wings, but most of all the ability to roam around mid air and go cloud-skipping. Of course considering I was the sort of child who had her slingshot confiscated for breaking windows, heaven knows what I wanted to do from the advantage of such lofty heights. I have a pretty good idea, but I’ll plead the fifth. A few years later I realized this wasn’t a realistic career path.
For one, it required dying and, while the chances of someone killing me before the age of ten were pretty good, the chances of my ending up there were, you know… vanishingly small. Also, the other kind of angel didn’t get the pretty wings and dress. So by the age of six, all my aspirations thwarted, I settled for becoming a writer. This made a certain sense since I was a very bookish child – well, you have to do something when you’re grounded a lot – and I liked to write, so I thought it would be easy. (Insert groan here.)
PC: Growing up in Portugal, somewhere between Elizabethan England and Victorian England, did you daydream about the supernatural? If not, what was it that drew your interest to the mythical and magical?
SH: It wasn’t so much a daydream as being immersed in the supernatural. Growing up in a village one heard local legends – like the burned out house where the entire family – they said – had been taken to hell in one night. (Or perhaps they were demons all along). There were reports of village women who gave birth to fauns, and stories about places no one would dare to go. The old women told the history of the village, going back to Napoleon’s invasions, at least, interspersed with the fantastical to such an extent that even today I would have trouble telling you what was real and what wasn’t.
Then there was my grandmother- did I mention I wanted to be my grandmother when I grew up? I wanted to be her even more than I wanted to be an angel – who every night would tell me a story. A lot of her stories were terrifying, and I would end up crying while my mom forbid her from telling me stories again, which didn’t last, because of course I went back. As far as I recall, the stories she told me had… unity of place. They each had different characters, but all happened in an alternate/magical version of the village, where various people had different identities or there were other people with magical capabilities in place of the ones we knew. I was twelve when I realized she was making these up – a new one every night – and never writing them down. The sad part of it is that I don’t remember them that clearly, even though I have a general “feel” for them.
PC: What do you think makes a good story?
SH: Technically, the essentials of story (character, plot and setting) all feed off each other and of course, they should all be wonderful. However each author has something he’s strongest on – for instance, back in the late eighties I read Anne Rice EXCLUSIVELY for her sense in place. It wasn’t something I knew how to do, and I was in awe of her ability to do so.
As a reader, if I absolutely had to pick an element that must work, it would be characters. I suspect that this is gender-coded. Most men seem to prefer “story” and most women seem to prefer character. Possibly because, you know, our foremothers had to make sure they remembered all the relationships, etc. in a tribe, while our forefathers had to take an interest in what path you took to the mammoth...or something. To me, right now, the one thing that books have over movies, TV or even gaming, is that they give you a chance to BE someone else for a while – to know their feelings and thoughts which, absent some corny noir movies, no other media can do. So character is of prime importance. I tend to get drawn to characters who are trying to do too much, but who are still struggling. They might be crushed under the world they’re holding on their shoulders, but by gum, they’re going to try to lift it, even as they collapse.
PC: Are your characters real to you?
SH: Oh, heavens. Are you trying to get the men in white coats to come get me?
Sigh. Yes. They are very real to me. My head is littered with the lives of these people I may never write again. It’s like having a doorway in your head that can lead to one of several very odd neighborhoods. I know how characters are doing who appeared in a short story two years ago.
I used to think this was – literally – insane and also very much unique to me. However I read an interview with Rex Stout, and he was talking about his main character Nero Wolfe as though he lived down the block. “He’s reading such and such a book, right now, and he’s very concerned with this. They haven’t had any cases for a while.” Also, most of my writer friends seem to have the same problem. While I realize having a widespread form of insanity doesn’t make one sane, exactly, at least if I’m ever taken kicking and screaming to that padded cell, I’ll have plenty of company. Also, of course, I’ll have all my characters.
PC: You have created many worlds and series. Do you have a favorite?
SH: I have a soft spot in my heart for the Shifter Series, because Kyrie and Tom are so… human, even when they are shifted into beast form. In a way they feel like my kids, they’re just a little older than my older son. They’ve not had the best upbringing in the world - who does? - but they’re making do and making the best of it. They’re very decent human beings. Besides, were-dragons are just… oh, um… hot. (Even while not flaming).
Also, my Magical British Empire series is a favorite because I had so much fun with history, and because the prohibition on weres puts people in impossible positions that make them very interesting characters. On that vein there’s my space opera, DarkShip Thieves, coming out in January, where the main character Athena was mis-educated in every possible way, but is still trying to be well… decent, in very unfavorable circumstances. Hmmm, I guess I like them all.
I like least writing about real characters, unless I have license to write a different ending for their lives. Like No Other Wish Than His, poor Kathryn Howard kept wanting to run away and be a pirate, but no, she had to be queen of England and end up on the block. It was very dispiriting for me. Though I imagine it was somewhat worse for her.
PC: Is there a message in your novels that you want readers to grasp? (Besides a compelling and fantastic escape).
SH: I have no idea who it was that said “If you want to send a message, use western union.” But, I grew up with too many books and stories that pushed an often political, though early on it was religious, message that I grew to despise them. Anytime a story is too obviously trying to sell a point of view the book goes against the wall. We read to lose ourselves in these stories.
That said, are my books complete bubble gum and content free? I don’t think anyone’s are. I think having lived a certain amount of years in the world there are things each of us believes which will inevitably come out in the prose. If I had to distill a message, I’d take one of the things that concerns me most – being human is not a birthright. Not real human. It is something you acquire and you must work at. No one is perfect, but it is our duty to try to be as perfect as we can – in the sense of both developing our innate abilities and of making life better for those around us.
This sounds awfully preachy, which I don’t mean to be, but the thing is, right now we’re all to an extent hampered in our “humanity”. Technology is changing too fast, and all those things you hear, about the break up of the family and the war between men and women, can be traced right down to tech change. (I could write a thesis about it. I won’t. Sometimes I erupt in my blog, but mostly I write novels.) A lot of people are simply not being brought up – they’re raising themselves, some better than others. In all this, it’s very important to remember essential qualities of GOOD humans: Truthfulness. Taking care of yourself and those who are weaker than you. Honor. Joy in work. Doing the best you can.
I’m assuming this is my main concern because so many of my characters are not fully human and are desperately trying to be. I should explain that sometimes I think that my thought patterns come from fiction, as I never know what I think about an issue till I write a story about it.
By the way, one of the good books on this – aimed at teens though I loved it – is Lucienne Diver’s Vamped (Full disclosure, Lucienne is my agent.) I bought it because I heard her reading the beginning and it was so funny, which it is, but if you read it, you’ll find a very serious message on growing up and being a “real human being.” Even if you’re a vampire.
PC: Are your works based on someone you know or events in your life?
SH: No. My main characters are never based on anyone I know and I never write about events in my life, partly because most of them are someone else’s story to tell and not mine. I tend to be in the background, observing. Unless it’s one of those things that’s a great adventure in retrospect, and which while happening engages all my attention. Those, either I don’t remember very well or I am thinking of details in them as fodder for writing even while they happen.
For instance, when both our cars died while tag-driving with loads of household stuff when moving between Charlotte NC and ColumbiaSC, I was so worried that I vaguely remembered I wanted to leave one of our friends with the car, in the middle of the highway at night. (Eighteen years ago, when we had no cell phones.) I don’t remember why this seemed like a good idea. Only that everyone else thought I was crazy. On the other hand, while getting last rites in the hospital with pneumonia thirteen years ago I was thinking “If I survive, I must remember this is going in a book.” I have started entire friendships with people because I need to research their ailments or their life experiences for a book. (Yeah, it’s pathological.) On the other hand I wouldn’t be comfortable in the head of someone I knew or relating an event that happened as the central event of the book.
BUT there are events, places and people who appear as (usually funny) side-events in my books. My book Dipped, Stripped and Dead, (under Elise Hyatt) is chock full of those, as well as of locations from Colorado Springs, Denver, Manitou Springs and various other places in Colorado.
PC: What do you see as the influences on your writing?
SH: I grew up reading just about everything I could get my hands on, from newspaper ads to the classics. The main problem of my childhood was defined as “not enough new stuff to read.” Needless to say in childhood my favorites were Shakespeare (came by it naturally. My parents watched plays then talked about them in such a way that I thought for the longest time that Romeo and Juliet lived just down the road – made sense for the culture too, which tells you more than you need to know) and Dumas – even the lesser known, what my dad called “knife and blood bucket” works. I’m so distractingly fond of Jane Austen – still – that I write fanfiction based on her works (available for free at Austen.com under Derbyshire writers League. Search for Sarah Hoyt and forgive me the typos.)
I suspect, though, my favorite writers – the ones I re-read – inform my writing the most: Robert A. Heinlein, Terry Pratchett, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer are all re-read stand-bys, though there are probably a dozen others. Lynda Robinson’s Egyptian mysteries come to mind just now. Diane Wynne Jones Chrestomanci universe. I have a fond and soft spot for Bradbury though my sons inform me he’s depressing. Ditto Jorge Luis Borges. As you can probably surmise from my work I read all too much history, as well, and for those the ones that I re-read are Simon Schama’s Citizens and Andrew Ward’s Our Bones Are Scattered, both excellent works.
Stay tuned for Part Two of my interview with Sarah Hoyt
For more on Sarah Hoyt visit her website at: www.sarahahoyt.com/
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