October 2001

'Hallo again.

Just to report the 4th Venus novel, Venus Preserved, went off to Overlook today. (Venus 3 - a Bed of Earth - is scheduled for spring 2002.) Also I'll be part of a signing at FORBIDDEN PLANET, London, England, on 27th October this year. We start wielding pens around 1pm.

Apologies for the shortness of my message. More soon.

Thanks as ever for looking in.  

May 2001

Well, I'd better start with an apology, I think to anyone who has been looking at this site during the past four months and not finding anything updated. I have been very busy writing and also didn't have a lot of new news. Now there's quite a bit, so here we go.

First, I wrote Claidi x4: Wolf Wing, and it is now with Hodder, and will probably be out early next year, or possibly even the end of this. (In the States Dutton will be bringing out the second volume, Wolf Star - published in the UK as Wolf Star Rise - any minute now...) Meanwhile Hodder are reprinting two earlier novels of mine for young adults: East of Midnight and Castle of Dark. In addition I'll be doing another novel in this age range - next year - a true departure from Claidi and the Wolf Tower. This book is called Piratica. It concerns Art Blastside, whose wimpish aristocratic dad confines her in a Young Ladies Academy, when all she wants is to follow in the footsteps of her mother, the notorious female pirate, 'Piratica'. Set in a just-parallel historical 17-1800's, it's going to be a tall Yarn, with pirates, highwaymen, treasure maps and mysterious islands - plus about five hundred parrots.

On the adult novel front, I'm about to begin the fourth and last Venus book, Venus Preserved. This is set in the far-off future, when a sinking sea-logged Venus (Venice) has been preserved beneath an undersea dome. I have assembled a mixed cast: a handsome, wild, black hero, Picaro, a descendant of Furian and Eurydiche from the first book (Faces Under Water), a DNA-reconstructed female gladiator, Jula, from Venus's Roman-amphitheatre days, and a being which appears to be both dangerously implacable and an angel... Expect mayhem. I do.

(And I should be delivering this to Overlook in August-September, providing I get a straight run.)

Also from Overlook, and already written and delivered, though scheduled to appear after the last Venus, is a BIG fantasy novel, Mortal Suns . (Its sequel, Immortal Moon, I shall be writing next year.) Mortal Suns deals with a complex ancient worldscape having a definite ambience of bronze-age Greece. To one of the lesser queens of the Sun King of Akhemony, is born a girl-child - Calistra - perfect, except that she has no feet. In horror the child is abandoned to the death temple of Thon, where, if she even survives, she will be consigned to lifelong misery. However, the connivance of others sees Calistra rescued. Taught to walk - and even dance - on silver feet, she wins the love of the heroic Sun Prince, Klyton. And Klyton, too, the gods seem to favour, clearing his path to the throne of all obstacles, in astonishing and miraculous ways. But Akhemony and the Sun-Lands lie in the shadow of something more terrible than fate, an insideous geographic poison which produces monsters - gigantic eagles, deformed children such as Calistra herself. And from this invisible and unrecognized source will soon proceed a final destiny neither she nor Klyton can evade.

The typescript for this one is five hundred pages, so if you'd like to read it, better start the aerobics now.

Last and certainly not least in the novel arena, Bantam have agreed to publish the sequel to The Silver Metal Lover. To all of you out there who have so supported the original book I extend my warmest thanks. The sequel, of course, will be quite a challenge, after all these years - 21 of them, to be exact. As you would anticipate, perhaps, the dark conspiratorial powers of The Silver Metal Lover now make their second obvious play - they bring Silver back. But like anyone coming back from the dead, he isn't going to be quite as everyone else remembers... the title of the book: Metallic Love. Right now I haven't a clue when I'm going to get to this - next year, sometime - I hope. But I'm delighted to have the chance.

Update on short stories is as follows: Flicker of a Winter Star is now coming out in Weird Tales - as to yet no date. Fairly soon though they will be reprinting La Vampiresse, (previously published in the U.K) Asimov's meanwhile have taken Moon Wolf - a real oddity set on the moon, (and for really valuable editorial help on the setting, the author gratefully thanks Gardner Dozois.) No date on this either yet. Daw have asked me for a story for their 30th Anniversary Anthology, due out probably next spring. My one is called Persian Eyes.

For anyone who reads French and likes 1) Lee, and 2) vampires, all my vampire short stories - there are a lot - are set to come out in a collection from l'Oxymore, in France - I think, next year.

Finally, I recently got to see the US TV adaptation of my story, Nunc Dimittis, from Hunger Productions. (Delay was over needing to get the tape re-mastered for English machines.) It was a real pleasure, this. Excellent adaptation, with, where it differed from the story, logical and imaginative developments. I was extra entranced by seeing marvellous David Warner in the role of Vassu, and David Bowie announcing the episode as the programme's host.

So, now, as you may agree, I'd better stop this, and go and do some work!

Thanks for your patience in waiting.

See you soon.

December, 2000

Second Update:

And hallo!

The third Venus novel is now all typed, and will go off to Overlook in January - to avoid the Christmas mails-mayhem.

Which brings me to something that may be of interest to anyone who has been curious about that long-ago short story of mine: The Betrothed.

The Betrothed was published privately when I was about 18-19. Not at my request, but so a friend could try out his printing press, (named Slughorn - not, to my disappointment, after slugs, but after an ancient type of hunting horn, I believe ). I think 6 copies in all were printed. I, of course, have one. So does the British Museum, since all books published then (now?) were obliged to send one of their number to the library there.

The Betrothed is a typical Italian Renaissance revenge-horror-drama, the kind of thing you see in Restoration Theatre, and which even Shakespeare was not averse to using, (or should I say that Shakespeare positively revelled in?)

So, I have to say, if you would be interested in seeing the resurrection of The Betrothed, A Bed of Earth will supply it. You will find the motif easily enough, it is well-sign-posted, as the book goes along. I have to say, I've sharpened it quite a lot, but its ancestor is most clear, if ever you locate the original tale.

My schedule progresses as explained below.

But I'd like to take the opportunity to wish you a wonderful Christmas / Saturnalia / Mid-Winter Festival / Holi(y)day etc: And a gloriously enjoyable New Year.

Thank you for your visit. See you in 2001.

December, 2000

Update: Hallo again!

As I haven't heard from anyone on the matter, I have to assume I did not win the award for my short story, Scarlet and Gold. However, even to get that far is a great honour and pleasure. I would like to thank anyone who voted for it very, very much.

Meanwhile, Another short story, set on the Flat Earth, should be coming out early next year from Realms of Fantasy magazine: The Man Who Stole the Moon. It's about - well, what it says in the title... There's also a Victorian horror story (a cross of M.R. James and Saki; improbable, I know) due out from Weird Tales: Where All Things Perish about the same time. I've just written a werewolf tale too, which I'm offering to Asimov's: Flicker of a Winter Star.

The third Venus novel is now finished. You may know, I write everything long-hand first, and am now typing this manuscript up. It might be out next year, but as yet I don't have a date.

My next port of call will be the fourth (and last) (?) in the Wolf Tower - Claidi Journals series: Wolf Wing. That may not get started until next year, but then again, without too many interruptions from Life, I can usually write these books in a couple of weeks.

Larger ones of course can take a little longer...

That's it for now. Once more, Thank You for dropping by.
 

October, 2000

Hallo - thank you for looking in.

You may have wondered what I've been doing recently. I'm happy to tell you that, with 67 books already published (though many of these are now out of print) I am still producing 2-3 new novels every year, plus dozens of short stories.

Why you may not have seen much of me on the shelves isn't, then, because I've stopped writing. I'm afraid it's down to a lack of publishers who want to publish me. My workroom cupboard presently contains 6 completed novels, up to, or higher, than my normal standard, and to date unpublished. These include erotic Lesbian fiction, three contemporary novels, and a four-hundred page detective novel needing only readers with strong arms.

Proposals to provide sequels to the Flat Earth series, the Four Bee novels and The Silver Metal Lover, (though these last three books were reprinted last year by Bantam) have so far met with no interest. Which is a shame, as this way no one but me will ever know about Four Bee's fourth city, or the reincarnation of Silver, or the further activities of Azhrarn, Prince of Demons... The same is true of the Scarabae Blood Opera. One book remains to be written. It would detail how the murdered Faran and Berenice get their revenge on the monstrous Cain, and how the conflict between Ruth/Anna and Malach is finally resolved - and, a lot more. But so far no one will buy the last volume of this (in fact really bestselling) series.

However, some publishing houses are still buying and bringing out some of my work. Overlook in the States published my 4 Paradys books and my historical novel The Gods Are Thirsty, which deals with the French Revolution.

The third novel - A Bed of Earth - I am just now writing. Set in a Renaissance Venus, it is a Romeo and Juliet story with one vital difference - while Beatrixa is the daughter of the House of Barbaron, her lover, from the enemy House of della Scorpia - is also a ghost. This novel contains a guest appearance by Cesare Borgia.

Also in the younger range, and for the States, I've written one novel in the Basset series published by Random House. James C. Christensen's philosophy of the Basset appealed to me very much - that dreams, myths and happiness are as important - and powerful - as any of the facts and rules of the so-called Real World. (If you've read a bit of my work, you'll know that's my own feeling too.) In this book Islands in the Sky, Hope, the downstairs-maid and Apollo, the unpleasant son of the house, get whisked away to Christensen's Lands of Legend by a flock of kites. Here, through the kindness of the Basset's crew, the nobility of the Children of Pegasus, and the antics of some pretty rough old centaurs, Hope and Apollo throw off their chains and become who they really are.

Which leaves the short stories. I've written around 200 of these this far, and they are scattered in anthologies and magazines really too numerous to list here. However, my main markets now are the 3 following magazines: 1) Weird Tales 2) Realms of Fantasy - these both operating in the States, and in the UK - 3) Interzone. Sometimes I do make an appearance in Asimov's, or Fantasy and Science Fiction, but not that often.

New stories due to come out from Weird are 1) Girls in Green Dresses 2) The Sea Was In Her Eyes. These are actually a pair, though in 2 separate issues. (If you're keen on mermaids, you might like these.)

There is also a new Flat Earth short story due, next year I think, from Realms: The Man Who Stole the Moon.

Lastly: A book has been written about my work, and its connections. The title: The Hidden Library of Tanith Lee - From Dionysos to the Immortal Genes. Author: Mavis Haut. Publisher: McFarland and Co. Inc. N. Carolina, U.S.A. Date of release is sometime next year.

So that's about all for now. I'll update information as and when I have it myself.

Thank you for dropping by. See you again soon.