PeterSBeagle: Hello all, this CraigE speaking for Peter. He will be here in one minute. FYI, Gordan Van Gelder replaced KKR at F&FS... Moderator: type /msg Moderator and send your questions. Moderator: This is a "private message" to the moderator. PeterSBeagle: Okay, he's about to come online, so you can start sending questions. Moderator:to : I've heard that The Unicorn Sonata opens in contemporary NY...do we catch up with Joe Farrell from The Folk Of The Air? PeterSBeagle: No - the heroine of THE UNICORN SONATA is a 13-year-old Latina in a Los Angeles suburb. But Joe Farrell will reappear in one last short story in the paperback edition of IMMORTAL UNICORN. Moderator: to : How do you feel about the influence of computer technology on your work>? PeterSBeagle: So far, the only real influence has been that I write on a computer these days. For the rest - well, my wife and I only recently bought a fax machine., Our standard line is that on the information superhighway we're a pothole. Moderator: to : To quote from your lyrics for When I Was A Young Man ... do you feel you have, as the lyrics foreshadowed, "gracefully grow(n) more debauched and depraved"? ;) PeterSBeagle: Well, I try. One can only do one's best. Moderator: To post questions type "/msg Moderator" followed by your question. Moderator: to : Where did you get the idea for the novel, The Innkeepers Song? PeterSBeagle: From CraigE: Peter, can you tell everyone a bit more about your latest project? There were a bunch of questions about this before you arrived... PeterSBeagle: For starters, it has absolutely nothing to do with THE LAST UNICORN. It's a story about a young girl who wanders across an invisible border between a Los Angeles street and another world inhabited by mythological beings. Moderator: to : what were your earliest influences? PeterSBeagle: In candor, it's something I took on as a bread-and-butter gig to cover a balloon payment that was due on our house, and that the advance just about covered. Moderator: to : What prompted the idea for The Unicorn Sonata, a wonderful book? PeterSBeagle: But once I started writing the book,, the story took over, as happens when you're lucky. The heroine's Mexican grandmother leaped out of nowhere and took over the tone of the book somehow. Moderator: to : You scripted the Star Trek Next Gen episode "Sarek" ... one of the most touching episodes ... have you had experiences of people who've suffered similar loss of control? PeterSBeagle: Regarding THE INNKEEPER'S SONG, to answer an earlier question, it really did start as a song I wrote one evening, alone in my house. It just came in, the way things do sometimes, and I wrote down the music and the lyrics about these three bewildering woman who take over an inn one evening. I wrote the book to find out what the hell the song was really about. PeterSBeagle: No, not really - but I'm perhaps too controlled a person myself, and I have some idea of what it would be like for a Vulcan to feel his grip on everything he is slipping away from him. I felt deeply for Sarek. Moderator: to : Will you write a sequel to the Innkeepers Song? Moderator: to : that's normal with mexican grandmothers PeterSBeagle: I have a book coming out next August called GIANT BONES, which is a sequence of six novellas set in the world of THE INNKEEPER'S SONG. It's not a sequel - indeed, one of the stories isn't even a fantasy - but there are certain common references, and there's one long tale which involves Lal and Soukyan reencountering each other when they're both very old. I just missed those people! It's never happened to me before. Moderator: to : who are your favorite scifi authors? PeterSBeagle: From CraigE: Tell us about your album and any similar forthcoming projects... PeterSBeagle: I grew up reading Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov and Sturgeon, like everyone of my generation who was interested in this stuff at all. Today, if I had to choose, it would be Ursula K. LeGuin hands down - though whether one could call her a sci-fi writer at this stage of her career, I don't really know. Moderator: to : Are there any plans to animate any of your other works, such as "Come, Lady Death" or A Fine and Private Place? PeterSBeagle: I read Robin McKinley, Pat McKillip, Tim Holt - who cracks me up - and I still read the old guys I grew up with. There are an awful lot of new people I don't know at all. Moderator: to : This is different from the other questions... what advice can you give to someone who really wants to write but is afraid to show his/her work to the world? PeterSBeagle: A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE is supposed to be filmed next year - after 36 years! - with Richard Dreyfuss as Mr. Rebeck, and John Avildsen directing. COME LADY DEATH got turned into an opera a few years ago - I did the libretto, and a San Francisco composer named David Carlson did the music. It was a wonderful experience. I'd love to work with him again. PeterSBeagle: Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business. Moderator: to : Many authors write as a form of catharsis. Do you...or do you have another purpose(s) in mind? PeterSBeagle: I write because I love to tell stories, and I love to sing. Every once in a while something like true catharsis happens. But I never plan for it - I don't think one can. I'm happy to be surprised, and sometimes very shaken. Moderator: to : you've introduced several works by Avram Davidson...how did you two meet? PeterSBeagle: I think we met at a party in Berkeley, very long ago. My memory is that he was refusing to accept a ride home because the car was a Volkswagen. Avram always insisted that never happened. We were near-neighbors at various times over the years. I admired him enormously - I think he was probably the most learned man I ever knew. I never knew anyone likehim. Moderator: to : is there any way that we can either E-mail o Snail mail you questions and comments on your works? PeterSBeagle: I'm in the Davis, California phone book. Snail mail will have to do, I'm afraid. Carrier pigeons are nice too. Moderator: to : What was your biggst goal as a child?? PeterSBeagle: To find out what the hell was in that big tin box up in the closet. I thought it might be candy, Moderator: What is your next project? PeterSBeagle: I have a novel that's due to be delivered late in 1998, and I have a book to finish - my best and oldest friend died last year with a novel about two-thirds done. I want to finish it for him - it'll be a way of keeping him with me, at least for awhile. Moderator: to : The Folk Of The Air was a particularly playful work...just how many private in-jokes do you slip in between the public jokes, anyway? PeterSBeagle: Anything that makes me laugh at the time. The next day I'll likely cut it out, but some things do make it into the book., "Have a taco, Moderator: to : any tips for aspiring writers? PeterSBeagle: " in THE LAST UNICORN, was one of those things that seemed funny late in the day, and was still funny the next morning, so I left it in. Mostly they go, and it's probably just as well. But I can't not write funny, even when the book or the scene is intensely serious. Family tradition. PeterSBeagle: It's all right if you imitate people - don't worry about it. THE LAST UNICORN is an homage, in a way, to so many people I loved and wanted to write like - T.H. White, Lord Dunsany, James Stephens, James Thurber. In time, if you stay with it, your own style inevitably forms. Most of writing is paying attention, like so much else. Moderator: to : do you enjoy writing fantasy more than sf?? Moderator: Mr. Beagle has to leave soon. Please send in your final questions. Moderator: To send questions type "/msg Moderator" followed by your question. PeterSBeagle: I think like a fantasist, even when I'm not writing fantasy at all. Peter Dickinson - who may be God, I'm not quite sure, says that his work is science-fiction with the science left out. I'm sort of like that. Moderator: What do you see yourself doing over the next few years? PeterSBeagle: Writing some books I may at last be grown up enough to write. Travelling with my wife. Learning to fingerpick properly - that should take me comfortably forever, which is nice., Like always having books you haven't read. Moderator: to : How easy is it to get published? PeterSBeagle: Looking at some writers - who shall be nameless - I think it must be altogether too easy. But I know perfectly wonderful writers, who have either never found publishers, or who remain completely unknown,. Luck has an enormous amount to do with it. Try to be lucky, Moderator: We have to wrap this up. Any last words to our chatters? Moderator: to : thanks for your time, peter; i'll be first in line to see A Fine And Private Place when it comes out (Richard Dreyfuss - perfect!); cheers from Australia PeterSBeagle: Do your work. The rest follows, or it doesn't. The work is what matters. That may be the one thing I really know for sure. Moderator: Thank you Peter, and thanks to all of our chatters. Our next chat will begin in just a minute.