Louise Marley’s first novel, Sing the Light, was published in 1995, and was followed by two sequels, Sing the Warmth and Receive the Gift. She blogs at The Red Room.
I had the good fortune to discover her writing just after that, when I reviewed her astounding feminist SF novel The Terrorists of Irustan, which came out in 1999, for Scifi.com. After that, I jumped at the chance to read her other books. I said this about The Glass Harmonica in 2001:
The Glass Harmonica is a novel that will haunt readers long after they have moved on to less complex fare. . . it leaves me torn between the desire to reread immediately and the hunger for Marley’s next outing.
My feelings on that subject haven’t changed: Marley’s work is lyrical, deep and interesting and I can’t get enough of her.
At one time a singer with the Seattle Opera, she had a foot in two worlds for a number of years before retiring from music to write fulltime. I started our interview by asking about the shape of her life now, and got this response:
Like you, I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and a lot of the time it feels like the rainforest. I don’t sing professionally anymore, but I still love to do that, as well as practice yoga, play golf, and spend time with my Scottie. I teach for the Long Ridge Writers Group, and I write. It doesn’t seem like too much activity, but I’m always busy!
As I write this, I’m celebrating the publication of Mozart’s Blood (, which is officially out tomorrow, June 29th. This is a book that was perhaps the most fun to write of all my dozen novels. It covers four hundred years of history and music, and features a reluctant vampire who just happens to be an opera singer. I did research in Milan and in New York (touring the opera houses in those cities, and had a wonderful time with all of it. Now I’m at work on a similar book which features Brahms. Not vampire, but certainly paranormal. There will be three of these–the third will be either Puccini or Verdi. Detect a theme?
We use to say, in the world of singing, that if you could do something else you should go do it. I’ve had the experience twice now of a real compulsion to do something. I knew I wanted to sing at the age of five, and I never wavered. When the urge to write overtook me, I didn’t try to resist at all, although I didn’t expect to make a career out of it. I thought I needed a hobby! (I can hear you laughing, Alyx. Stop it.) It was when I was reading my first book aloud to my first writing class, and getting a positive response, that I realized writing was a great deal like singing: it’s a performance. I was hooked, and I’ve stayed that way.
I was always an science fiction and fantasy reader. I cut my teeth, as it were, on the Oz books–all eight of them, or whatever there were–and then graduated to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels. I read everything I could get my hands on, like so many folks in our genre. I love fantasy and science fiction and all its little offshoots. The genre is drama at its most dramatic–a bit like opera, don’t you think?
I attended Clarion West in 1993, and it’s not putting too fine a point on it to say that in terms of my writing career, it was life changing. I had been studying writing, taking courses, meeting with a writer’s group, but the six weeks of Clarion crystallized everything for me. My class was a bit of a difficult one, I think, and a number of the attendees aren’t writing now. I can assure you no one that year thought that I would be the one to sell a bunch of novels. But everything I heard there, and the input from my classmates, made all the difference in my work. They were so talented! It’s a shame that some of them haven’t kept writing.
Sing the Light was in revision with my agent when I went to Clarion. I had just found him–as in just before the workshop began–but he made me rewrite three times before he thought the novel was ready to sell. Then he placed it in two weeks. Won my undying admiration!
For a while, after I retired from my musical endeavors, I just wrote. Now I teach as well, but I worry that some of my writing energy gets spent teaching. I’m sure that’s a concern for all writers. I’ve been able to keep up my output, so far, and I love teaching, so I suppose I’ll continue. The dream of an uninterrupted writing day is still that–a dream. I tend to have complicated days in which I do housework, walk the dog, take a yoga class or play golf, cook, teach–and somewhere in there I write. The one consistency is that I write every day, whether it’s half an hour or four hours. Every day.
I’ve had the same struggle in publishing that I did in my singing career: It’s hard for me to be businesslike about it. I loved singing so much! There was nothing more fun than putting on a long dress and my big earrings and going to stand in front of an orchestra. I adored the opera, the staging rehearsals, the collegiality, the costumes–all of it. It was hard to care whether the fee was a thousand dollars or a hundred dollars. I just loved doing it. Now, as a writer, I’m tempted down the same path. I love writing. I love creating a world, whether it’s a fantastical one or a science fictional one or a historical one. I adore learning what make characters tick (resonates with all those opera roles) and I invariably fall in love with the best ones. I’m incredibly fortunate to get paid for doing something so satisfying.
Naturally, human beings always want more. I’d like more success, and the money and security that come along with it. But I’m delighted to be a working writer, to be active in the business, to have editors recognize my name, and most of all–above everything else–to have acquired a readership. An audience. Bless their hearts, every single one of them!
Readers curious about Mozart’s Blood can find out more at Louise’s web site–the section about the novel features not only a Virtual Book Tour, musical suggestions, a list of ten discussion questions for book clubs. It also has a Book Club Party Kit, with suggestions for menus, costumes, music, and decorations! You can find her Facebook Fan page by searching for Louise Marley.
