“I just
love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more
dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly
more than in the so-called real world.” – Tanith Lee
I’ve been meaning to say a few words
about Lee since her death this past May, so when I saw this quote by her I
decided to get it done. The prolific British writer,
who was just 67 when she died, authored nearly 100 novels, 300 short stories, 1
children's picture book (Animal Castle), and many poems. She also wrote
two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 and was the
first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel for her book Death's
Master – the second novel in her “Flat Earth” series.
Lee's descriptive style first
captured my attention when I picked up one of her books on a trip to England. Vibrant and exotic are often words used by
critics when writing about her works, and I would definitely concur. But perhaps the best thing that might be said
about her style is that it can’t be categorized, something that definitely
helped her broad readership base.
Once when asked, she said she was greatly
influenced by the historical novelist Mary Renault, (who wrote some terrific
works on Ancient Greece), but then she quickly added “Oh, and C.S.
Lewis. Actually,” she said, “I love
writers all across the board, so I’ve been influenced by many.” She said her own vivid imagination also
shaped her writing career.
“At an
early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew
up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that
was what I wanted to be. But what I was,
of course, was a writer.”
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