INTERVIEW: Marguerite Reed
By Brian Trent
BRIAN TRENT: Can you give us a teaser trailer of “The Beguiled Grave”?
MARGUERITE REED: Varka, the main character, has been raised from the dead and uses her peculiar talents to assist an incognito ruler. There are some dead bodies, some sketchy magic, spooky stuff. Oh, and dogs.
BRIAN TRENT: How familiar were you with Weird Tales’ classic run prior to this sale?
MARGUERITE REED: To be honest, I wasn’t terribly familiar with the stories themselves, just with the enormous stature of the magazine itself in the annals of speculative fiction history. I am pretty tickled that Weird Tales was the first home of CL Moore, whose sword and sorcery female protagonist Jirel of Joiry made her appearance eighty-six years ago. I remember reading those stories in my teens.
BRIAN TRENT: Weird Tales’ history covers a lot of fantasy ground, ranging from Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales to C.L. Moore’s interplanetary adventurer Northwest Smith to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. What decided you on your own subject, style, and setting for this story?
MARGUERITE REED: Of course I wanted to write a female main character. I wanted to play with someone who could hold her own with Howard's Conan or Karl Edward Wagner's Kane--yet I didn't want to offer a Red Sonja copy. I didn’t want to trot out the tired old image of the FFT—the Fighting Fornication Toy. You know—the hot chick accessorized with corset armor and a rapier. Instead setting the fantasy in a mythic 'barbarian age,' of rude yet noble warriors pitted against corrupt civilization (a la Goths or Celts vs. Rome), or in an idealized 12th century with knights and courtly love, I wanted to explore a fantasy set in an approximation of Eastern Europe during the truly dire 15th and 16th centuries. After all, this is the era of some truly horrific and creepy stuff, the era of Gilles de Rais, Vlad Țepeș, Peter Stumpp, and Erzsébet Báthory, as well as the haunting artwork of Bosch and Bruegel. Given all these ingredients, I wanted to try to combine sword and sorcery with horror.
BRIAN TRENT: What draws you to speculative fiction as a writer? What started the attraction?
MARGUERITE REED: It was my favorite genre as a child. When at 13 I decided that I was going to be a writer, it was the only genre that occurred to me. I suppose because writing is a form of vicarious living, and I wanted to be Brünhild, I wanted to be Eilonwy and Éowyn and all the girls who rode a horse and swung a sword. Not having a horse, and not being of an athletic disposition, writing was a way into that.
BRIAN TRENT: From a writing perspective, what initially kicks off a story for you—an idea for a character, a dream, a setting, an action sequence?
MARGUERITE REED: A lot of times it’s art. Are you familiar with the drawing “A Paladin In Hell” by David C. Sutherland III? It’s on page 23 of the D&D Player’s Handbook published in 1978. That image inspired the character of Varka for me. I also did a lot of staring at Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The Triumph of Death.” It’s a painting he did around the middle of the sixteenth century, and it’s always loomed in my mind as one of the greatest depictions of despair on a grand scale ever. Another painting that haunted me is one done by the late Zdzisław Beksiński’, known as “The Night Creeper.”
BRIAN TRENT: What kind of research or other kinds of preparation (idea notebooks, outlines, etc) did you do for this story?
MARGUERITE REED: Imagine writing in a genre where research isn’t a primary concern! I wonder what that’s like? I can tell you I learned a lot more about crucifixion than I did before. I’m also struggling through the late Medieval/Renaissance-era eastern Europe—the milieu there is very different from what I’m familiar with in western Europe. I don’t want to inflict my research on my readers, but I do want the fiction to feel grounded.
BRIAN TRENT: “The Beguiled Grave” reads as the start of an epic saga with fascinating characters and a very rich setting. Might we see stories on the further exploits of Varka in the future?
MARGUERITE REED: I certainly hope so! I've always enjoyed serial characters. Varka and her world have a lot of aspects I'd like to explore. But it does depend on whether or not the audience agrees with you and what the market will bear, doesn't it? It would be an incredible rush—and honor—to be able to continue with Varka in this incarnation of Weird Tales.
BRIAN TRENT: How do you feel about Weird Tales’ revival?
MARGUERITE REED: I’m excited about it. It’s always great for fans of speculative fiction to be able to get their eyeballs on another source for stories. I think we’re on the upward swell of a great new wave of speculative short fiction, despite the publishing horrors that emerged from the recession of 2008-2009. Knock on wood, anyway.
BRIAN TRENT: What’s next for you? Are you working on anything that you’d like to share?
MARGUERITE REED: I'm working on some science fiction at the moment. And more Varka, of course, both in short and long form!
BRIAN TRENT: Where can fans find you online?
MARGUERITE REED: On Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/marguerite.reed.1232 and Twitter at @Marguer43001568
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Trent’s speculative fiction appears regularly in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, and more. His novel Ten Thousand Thunders is available from Flame Tree Press, and his website is http://www.briantrent.com/