Ex-Marine Elizabeth Moon started publishing in the late 1980s with several stories in Analog magazine. Her first three novels, starting with The Sheepfarmer's Daughter, comprise the military fantasy Paksennarian trilogy. Since then, she has published several well-received SF and fantasy novels. Her novel Remnant Population was a Hugo finalist in 1997. Her latest book, Change of Command, is in stores now.

Special thanks to Karen Meschke and Fred Duarte for their help with the questions in this interview.

1. What led you to join the Marines?

EM: The three Ps: patriotism, pigheadedness, and pride. I grew up with the belief that everyone owed some service, and had always planned to join the military. The fact that most college students in 1968 thought this was stupid didn't bother me; I'd always been pretty much a lone wolf. Then, when I visited the recruiters for each branch, the others were all impressed by test scores and interviews...except the Marine. That made it a challenge.

2. What rank did you reach in the Marines?

EM: First lieutenant, while on active duty. Captain while in the inactive reserves. At these levels, officers are promoted in lumps, along with everyone else in the same class--unless you've done something really bad, in which case you're invited out.

3. How has your time in the service affected the books that you write? If it has affected your writing, is there anything else that has also affected your stories?

EM: Obviously, my military experience has been used in all books and stories where military personnel or activities come up. From the understanding of relationships between enlisted and officer, sergeant and private, colonel and lieutenant, to the constants of military life--training, camp organization, boredom, etc., I have some direct personal experience, not diluted or mediated through a second or third person. Because of the details of my experience, I also have direct first-person experience with several varieties of civilian/military interaction, from the anti-military civilian who wants you dead, to the politician who wants some dirt on another politician's relative in service. Beyond that, the Corps changed me (as it always does) and those changes--primarily a better understanding of myself--were permanent and do show up in the work, obliquely.

Of course there are many other influences on my writing...I was in the Marines for only three years of active duty, almost thirty years ago. Everything in my life has influenced my writing: places, people, smells, sounds, landscapes, weather, animals, birds, social circumstances. The landscapes of childhood, the constant babble of several languages, the smells of the food and the weeds by the door, the merchants on Main Street, the suddenness of weather, the great open sky over all. Music, especially classical music, has had a profound affect since early childhood. Wilderness (and, if not wilderness, at least open country) is another continuing influence. Family: being an only child of a single parent, and parenting a child with disabilities, and thirty years of marriage--all these provide experiences useful in writing fiction. Education: Rice University formed my intellectual habits, and a second degree and graduate work in biology brought me in close contact with working scientists. Location, location, location: for all my life except the Marine Corps years, I've lived somewhere in Texas, and for the past twenty have lived in a small town on the edge of ranch country. And so on.

4. Do you regret leaving the corps? Do you often wonder what a lifelong military career might have led to?

EM: No, I don't regret leaving now, though there was a time when giving up the inactive reserves was a painful decision. At the time I left active duty, staying active past the initial obligation wasn't an option--the military in general was cutting back, and women were the first to be sent home. And no, I don't often wonder where I'd be if things had been different...on that branch of the decision tree or any other. All my "what if" thinking goes into fiction.

5. What started you writing?

EM: I don't remember not writing. My mother saved some of the bits that show I was writing and illustrating stories before I started first grade. By high school, I was writing fiction and poetry almost constantly (to the occasional detriment of schoolwork.) However, I had no contact with "real" writers, and no idea how to turn a constant addiction into a career. Also no confidence in my ability.

6. Do you participate in writers workshops or groups?

EM: Not often. Two reasons, basically, one practical and one psychological. Practically speaking, attending workshops and groups means too much time on the road, and I have little enough time to write as it is. Psychologically, while I enjoy being around other writers, their company deflects my writing energy into their work, rather than my own. I write less when I've been to a workshop.

However, when I was writing plays, I worked well with a director-friend and enjoyed that contact. But she didn't write--she just told me what would and wouldn't work.

7. How much research do you do for your books?

EM: Lots. In doing research for them, I have acquired new skills (so I'd know what scything a hayfield felt like, for instance), interviewed experts, read books...the usual sort of thing. Research starts before a book and goes right on along with it. I find research fun and rewarding on its own, and have to discipline myself not to keep researching when I should be writing.

8. How do you know when a book is "done"?

EM: I'm not sure--it seems to be rather like making bread, a matter of "feel" informed by experience and some theoretical knowledge. Just as a sticky gloppy mess of flour, yeast, and water suddenly coheres into a lump of dough...or the lump of dough being kneaded suddenly turns springy and silky at once...or the baking bread reaches that perfect point of baking...a book in progress goes through stages of "doneness". From unformed and unformable mess to the dough-lump stage is one kind of feel, and from the first dough-lump to the smooth, rounded ball that's going to rise evenly is another. At the end, something very deep inside gives me the sensation of complicated mechanisms clink-chunking together. Then it's done. Except that it's not, since final nitpicking and polishing remains to be done, and the alpha and beta-test readers have to have a go at it. Usually the deadline arrives before I can get too obsessive about it; left to my own devices, I'd be tinkering and polishing for months.

9. How do you feel about co-writing books when you do the majority of the work?

EM: This question presupposes a situation that never existed: I can't answer it without exploding your theory of co-authoring books. I've co-authored only two books, both with Anne McCaffrey. I did a lot of writing; she did a lot of world-building and some of the writing. I was, and am, perfectly satisfied with the arrangement we had.

While I don't expect to be co-authoring books in the future, that's because I enjoy world-building too much, and am a jealous creator of the worlds I build. (The other word for this may be "control freak." But at least fiction gives me a defined safe place to indulge it.)

10. Most (if not all) of your books involve strong women characters. Do you ever envision a book with a strong male character as the lead?

EM: Two of my books, Surrender None and Liar's Oath, had male leads, and all of them have strong male secondary characters. Will I write another book with a male lead? Possibly, even probably. I can guarantee, however, that the leads will be strong (whether male or female) since it takes a strong character to animate a book that satisfies me.

To learn more about Elizabeth Moon and her work, check out her web page. Elizabeth Moon will sign Change of Command at Adventures in Crime and Space Saturday, December 4, 3:00-5:00 PM. Order a copy of her new book for the signing.