An Interview with Quentin S. Crisp

[marshall_payne]

My interview with Quentin S. Crisp is now live at The Fix, as well as Ziv Wities's review of the author's latest novella from PS Publishing, Shrike. Quentin is a British writer with his own unique voice, whose fiction focuses on Asian culture. Don't miss…

An Interview with Quentin S. Crisp

Comments

[saycestsay]

Quentin Crisp? Not possibly The Naked Civil Servant? I didn't know he was still kickin'... or that he wrote fiction!

[marshall_payne]

The Quentin Crisp you're talking about is not kicking and died in 1999.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp

Quentin S. Crisp is very much alive, however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_S._Crisp

Thanks for your interest, Kelly.

[tallaudrey]

Xlnt interview, Mr P!

[marshall_payne]

Thank you, Ms S!

[a_r_williams]

Nice interview!

I also have an interest in writing Asian fantasy and appreciated his comments on what seperates Eastern and Western style writing. That's good to know.

Plus, I agree with him on description. Alot of people have this attitude that description should be very brief, which I find ironic because it can create so much of the mood of a story--but that's my opinion.

Thanks for linking to this.

[marshall_payne]

Thanks!

Since a detailed comment usually get a more detailed reply... :-)

I too like description that makes the world of the story come alive. To argue the converse, Roger Zelazny's advice was only to offer three descriptions of a character at one time, as any more would overload the reader. I've seen in some of his novels where he broke his own rule.

Theodore Sturgeon offered this piece of advice for aspiring writers. "When writing a setting, put the whole room together in your mind but only describe what takes place in the action of the story." He was talking about short fiction here, however.

Having said that, I like detail in fiction.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[birdhousefrog]

Good interview, as always. Very interesting reading.

Oz

[marshall_payne]

Thanks, Oz!

[isleburroughs]

Nice interview, Marshall. I've told my Japanese friends that if I stay too long in Japan I'll start thinking Japanese. I've never been though. Rather expensive. It is a different way of being.

It's hard to tell with my name but I'm half Japanese and I never thought of trying to incorporate Asian lit into my s.f. stories even though I have many Asian American characters. Having been raised here my mind is mostly western. Especially the writing part.

I would like to read Quentin's novella but I can't find it on Amazon and I can't find links to his other writings on his webpage.

I found this though:

http://store.pspublishing.co.uk/acatalog/info_397.html

I wonder if he could make his stories available on amazon?

Thanks. You may have me reading more literature in the future.

Maybe.

[marshall_payne]

Thanks, Ruth.

Yes, in the review we linked to PS Publishing, so that's where you can order it through.

It's hard to tell with my name but I'm half Japanese

No, the name Burroughs doesn't make Japanese ancestry spring to mind. Thanks for share this. :-)

[isleburroughs]

Duh. If I'd clicked on the book I would have got that link.

*blushing* :o)

[marshall_payne]

Don't blush. I didn't know you could click on the cover pic until I had to start putting the links in myself when I became copyeditor. But at the end of reviews on collectons and anthos we put the info at the bottom.