Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Updated: 10/28/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 10/11/08.
GREGORY FROST
Novels:
Fitcher's Brides
Lord Tophet
Lyrec
The Pure Cold Light
Remscela
Shadowbridge
Tain
The author's website is: http://www.gregoryfrost.com/.
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: May 8, 2004.
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 32.
Meeting Program: Talk by Fantasy Writer.
Notes:
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2004 Philip J De Parto:
The May meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Author Gregory Frost was the featured speaker.
Both pre meeting events were well received. Taras Wolansky showed the first four episodes of LAST EXILE to a rapt audience of anime Associates. There were some stunning visuals in this alternate Victorian world adventure.
The Final Frontier continued to shine in its new incarnation. Vincent Carlucci led a wide-ranging discussion of Friendly Aliens in cinema, television, and other media.
Gregory Frost has written five genre novels, dozens of short stories and articles of interest to science fiction fans. His novels are TAIN and REMSCELA, high fantasy Celtic novels which have recently been released in a combined edition as CRIMSON SPEAR: THE BLOOD OF CU CHULAINNN; LYREC, a whimsical fantasy; THE PURE COLD LIGHT, a science fiction satire; and FITCHER'S BRIDES, a retelling of Bluebeard in Terry Windling's Fairy Tale series.
His short stories and articles, some of which have been written with a variety of collaborators, have appeared in TWILIGHT ZONE magazine, FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, ISAAC ASIMOV'S, WHISPERS, PULPHOUSE MAGAZINE and REALMS OF FANTASY and numerous original and reprint anthologies.
The author's career almost got started as a result of a fan letter he wrote to David Gerrold in the sixties. In the letter, he mentioned that he was working on a fantasy novel. Gerrold put young Mr Fost in touch with Lin Carter, who was then editing the Adult Fantasy line for Ballantine Books. Carter wrote a ten page letter which dispirited the youth, who did not realize that a letter of that length means that the editor believes that the author has promise and should keep at it.
Frost then turned to another love, comic books, and had worked up a portfolio of sample illustrations. He also continued to putter away on the occasional short story. A fire ripped through his apartment, destroying his art, fusing the typewriter to the kitchen table, but leaving the story in the typewriter unscathed. He took this as an omen and finished the story, sent it out, and received an acceptance letter. The career of Greg Frost, comIc book artist, became a thing of the past.
He still had a problem coping with rejection letters, however, so he came to an arrangement with Mark, a friend who was also an aspiring science fiction writer. The two would be each other's agent. Whoever wrote a story would give it to the other guy, who would handle the marketing of it and never had to face a rejection letter for a story he had written. Since Mark was better organized, but a slower writer than Greg, Greg won this arrangement by a score of four stories to none.
The years went by and Frost began selling stories on a regular basis, and even had an unusual fantasy novel, LYREC, published by Ace Books. He wrote some fantasy, some horror, but most of his work was science fiction. That would soon change.
The author had become interested in Celtic legend by way of an album by Horselips. He began researching the subject and was soon off to Ireland to see some of the sites firsthand. One result was the novels TAIN and REMSCELA. The other was that he suddenly found himself pigeonholed as a writer of high fantasy.
The publishing industry would like writers to turn in a book a year, but since TAIN took eight years, it was clear that Frost would not have a typical career. So when his next book was ready, THE PURE COLD LIGHT was issued by another publisher, AvoNova.
The novel started out as a lunchtime joke about teachers needing guns to protect themselves from violent students and morphed into a bitter alternate world Philadelphia which included street people being put to work spouting government propaganda.
Almost ten years passed before Tor published FITCHER'S BRIDES. The novel grew out of research he was doing on the birth of the spiritualism (the existence of ghosts and spirits) movement in America. He had intended to write an objective, non fiction book about the subject. Unfortunately, he learned that the book was not publishable. Academic outlets were not interested in looking at it because Frost lacked academic credentials. Commercial publishers were not interested because they only publish books that maintain that anyone can contact spirits, but that scientists have a vast conspiracy to suppress this knowledge. FITCHER'S BRIDE represents the marriage of that research with the legend of the wife-murderer, Bluebeard.
He had a lot of fun talking about being in a couple of very low budget horror movies and is currently at work on a YA trickster novel, SHADOWBRIDGE.