--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > > Didn't know he wrote fiction though, but I never liked fantasy > > novels anyway, if I even get a sniff of a wizard I'm off - It's > > sci-fi for me if I'm feeling speculative. > > Just as a question, did you ever read any of > Roger Zelazny's Chronicles Of Amber series? > > That's got Woo, and the existence of wizards > of a sort, but it's also got a lot of phwam! > in my opinion. > > The series started as an act of will. Roger > had caught a bad case of writer's block, and > couldn't get a damned thing to come out. So, > being a martial artists and a warrior type > himself, he set himself a task to help him > snap out of it. > > He would write a whole novel in one month. > (It usually took him six months to a year.) > The novel was to be a throw-away. He didn't > plan to do anything with it. He was using > it to inspire him to write more serious > books. > > The result was "Nine Princes In Amber," a > novel that went on to be the first of a > series of ten novels that, collectively, > are Zelazny's biggest sellers. Go figure.
Just because you got me thinking about him I'll rap a bit more about Roger Zelazny. I never knew him, even though he lived in Santa Fe. By the time I moved there he was already dying, and in seclusion with his caretaker/ cowriter. I saw him speak once, and my memory (even though he was one of my Science Fiction Gods) is that as a public speaker, he was a good writer, one who shoulda stuck to it. So it surprised me recently to learn that he had been a long-time student of the martial arts. I hadn't ever known that about him, but hearing it was like a mini-revelation that explained something for me I'd noticed but never thought about. Roger wrote great fight scenes. They rocked. They "rang true." I've since learned that he acted out the fight scenes with a partner before writing them. He literally knew what every punch, kick, sword thrust or parry *felt* like, because he'd just finished doing it. He didn't have to imagine it. He felt it, in muscle memory.
