Fantasy
Bujold also wanted to break into the fantasy genre, but met with early setbacks. Her first foray into fantasy was The Spirit Ring. She wrote the book "on spec", shopped it around, and found low offers, sending her back to Baen Books, where Jim Baen bought it for a fair price in exchange for the promise of more Vorkosigan books. Bujold called this experience, combined with the mediocre sales and lack of critical acclaim of that book, very educational.
She would not attempt to break into the fantasy market again for almost another decade, with The Curse of Chalion. This book was also written on spec and offered up to a book auction. This time, she met with considerable critical and commercial success by tapping into a crossover market of fantasy and romance genre fans. The fantasy world of Chalion was first conceived as a result of a University of Minnesota course she was taking about Medieval Spain in her spare time.
The next fantasy world she created was the tetralogy set in the universe of The Sharing Knife borrowing inspiration for its landscapes from ones she grew up with in central Ohio. She writes that her first readers who helped proof-read it said she got it exactly right and they could recognize Ohio features in the descriptions and dialects. She states that the dialect of the "farmers" is one she grew up around.
Read more about this topic: Lois McMaster Bujold
Famous quotes containing the word fantasy:
“A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.”
—Warner Leroy, U.S. restaurateur, founder of Maxwell’s Plum restaurant, New York City. New York Times (July 9, 1976)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.”
—Andy Warhol (1928–1987)