2011 - 10/2011 Meeting
Page Created: 06/22/11. Last Update: 05/31/14.
MICHELE LANG
Books:
The Devil Inside
Dark Victory (forthcoming)
Eight Crazy Nights
Lady Lazarus
The Mists of Manhattan
Ms Pendragon
Netherworld
Official Site:
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: October 15, 2011.
Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 13.
Meeting Program: Talk / Q & A with fantasy writer.
Notes:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2011 Philip J De Parto:
The monthly General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held on Saturday, October 15, 2011 at the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. The small turnout was not unexpected as we were forced to do a last-minute reschedule of the event. The change was occasioned by the second Saturday of the month, our normal meeting date, conflicting with Yom Kipper. Author Michele Lang, our guest, had not realized this conflict when she agreed to speak to our group. Fortunately, the Cultural Center and Ms Lang were both available the following week. Amazingly, Robert Yeager, who had planned to host the club's Halloween Party on the 15th, was able to rearrange his schedule and host that event on the 8th with very little advance notice.
The Ice Nine pre meeting discussion covered genre selections by the Library of America, comic books (Star Trek / Legion of Super Heroes crossover), television (FRINGE, TERRA NOVA), You Tube (7 part interview with D C Fontana), movie festivals (Big Screen Classics, Daggers Festival) and more.
Our speaker was Michele Lang, author of the romantic fantasy novels NETHERWORLD, MS PENDRAGON, EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS, THE DEVIL INSIDE, THE MISTS OF MANHATTAN, and her latest book, LADY LAZARUS. She has also written one short story, "The Walled Garden," which appeared in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE, and a non-fiction opus, THE WORLD OF LADY LAZARUS.
Ms Lang grew up on Long Island and is the daughter of two Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust and fled Hungary during the Hungarian Revolt in 1956. The family survived with one foot in America and one foot in Hungary. Our speaker started reading when she was two years old. She was so imaginative that her mother took her to see a doctor to determine if anything was wrong with her. She was in sixth grade when a teacher told her parents, "This girl is a writer!"
However, being a writer was not an acceptable occupation within her family's frame of reference. A lawyer, though, that was another matter. Michele graduated from Harvard Law School ("There are lots of frustrated writers who litigate for a living") and was awarded a two-year Escadan Fellowship whose mission statement is "Go forth and do good." She worked with refugees from Somalia, with women who wanted to get off welfare, and with people who had suffered from discrimination and sexual harassment.
She married a Professor who taught at Yale. The birth of her first child in 2001 was a wake-up call that she had to get serious about writing if she ever wanted to get the stories in her head out into the world.
Michele Lang became involved with the Long Island Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. She started attending workshops, going to romance conventions, and pitching stories to agents, editors and publishers. Ms Lang hooked up with new e-publisher Triskalian Books, which issued four of her e-books beginning with MS PENDRAGON, which launched their sf romance line. Our speaker said that science fiction romance has a small, but passionate base, and cited Heather Massey as a writer who does it right.
A chance meeting (they sat next to each other on the plane when returning from a romance writers' convention in Florida) with editor Chris Keesler of Dorchester Publishing allowed Michele to move up the literary food chain to a more important publisher. She pitched NETHERWORLD, "a real pot-boiler" featuring a sentient forest, a handsome outlaw, and a female sheriff. NETHERWORLD, in turn, was a stepping stone to science fiction publisher Tor Books.
LADY LAZARUS, the Tor release, is an alternate reality fantasy set on the eve of World War II in which angels, vampires, witches and werewolves vie to help or hinder Hitler's plans. The work takes its title from a poem about resisting the Nazis by Sylvia Plath. A sequel, DARK VICTORY, is scheduled for release in 2012. Our guest is working on the final book in the trilogy.
Our speaker characterized LADY as "LITTLE WOMEN in Hell," with leading lady Magda Lazarus as a Jo counterpart. There was a lot of trepidation about trivializing the suffering of the victims of the Nazis. The author read lots of memoirs and remembrances of people who had lived through those years. She was particularly fascinated by the pre-war intellectual café society.
Bits of family history crept into the tale. Her grandfather, who had managed to save his son and his nephew, was the inspiration for the angel, Raziel. Magda was another matter. The character came to our guest years before the novel was written, but Magda kept saying, "No!" when Michele tried to put her into other stories.
When asked about the difference between genre and literary fiction, Ms Lang stated that literary fiction was like bran, "it's good for you." However, she comes from peasant stock. She likes the pizza and ice cream of literature, even if it is not good for you.
Our speaker said that every book is like its own country. Some books are familiar nations and need no outline. Other books require signposts to identify the land masses.
This was a very warm, touching meeting, particularly when we resumed after the break. Our thanks to Michele Lang and to everyone who helped to the evening a success.