Lucius Shephard, 1947-2014

Novelist and story writer and poet Lucius Shepard has died. He was a great, colorful character who lived an adventurous life, more than most writers. He wrote both speculative and mainstream fiction and bagged a lot of awards along the way. We were e-banter friends, I suppose you could say. Several years ago we chatted a good deal about his Virginia roots--someone he cared about in the family had passed away, and he had gone home to Lynchburg for the last time. He said some harsh and tender things about family that struck me as being so very familiar and Southern... They reminded me a little of Quentin Compson, except that Lucius didn't try to convince himself that he didn't hate many things about his natal place. Lucius was often acerbic in his humor but could be very kind and generous. (He was so to me, though I imagine we were radically different in many ways. An hour ago, looking at his page, I was touched to find "Thaliad" among three recommended books. And he gave me the most beautiful quote for my last-published novel. Yes, he was kind.)

Here is in in a 2001 interview with Nick Gevers at Infinity Plus, talking about how he accidentally tumbled into the world of speculative fiction: What I consider myself to be is less important that how I'm seen, and I suppose that now that's as a genre writer. That may change over the next few years. I came into the field by accident more-or-less. A band I was in broke up, one I'd had high hopes for, and I was moping around the house, watching a lot of daytime television. I'd written half a story, and without my knowledge, my then wife, hoping to get me out of the house, sent it in to the Clarion Writers Workshop, which happened to be a genre workshop, and I was accepted. If she had sent the fragment in to a general fiction workshop, I would likely never have written any fantasy. I'm not well read in science fiction and fantasy....

NG: Three especially brilliant novellas of yours, "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule", "The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter", and "The Father of Stones", have featured the Dragon Griaule, that monstrous epitome of evil influence. How did you conceive of Griaule? What does he in fact represent? And: you've composed a novel to conclude the sequence, haven't you?

    LE DRAGON GRIAULE (EDITIONS LE BÉLIAL)

LS: The idea for a 6,000-foot-long dragon on and in which people lived occurred to me at the Clarion Writers' Workshop in 1980. One afternoon I went out onto the Michigan State University campus, parked it under a tree, smoked a joint, and started trying to generate story ideas. "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" was one of the ideas I came up with. I recall I wrote in my notebook the following words: "Big Fucking Dragon." Shortly thereafter I wrote, "Kill him with paint." Surely a moment that will be immortalized in the pantheon of under-the-tree-sitting moments, right up there with Newton and the apple.

I've always hated dragon stories, hated the entire elf-dragon-unicorn axis. The very notion of high fantasy causes my saliva to get thick and ropy. But as an exercise, I was attempting to create a dragon whom I could respect in the morning. As far as what Griaule represents, when I was writing the story he represented a Big Fucking Dragon. I'm an instinctual writer, I rarely have a clue about what I'm doing. Prior to starting a project, I usually have a notion of a beginning and an end, but about the middles, I'm shaky. And as for subtext, theme, et al, I'm totally clueless about these elements until very late in the game. After its publication, some said the story was about the nature and the costs of creativity.

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Rest in peace, Lucius.

More author comments... and camellias

Camellia courtesy of sxc.hu and Melodi T.
of Waiuku, Auckland, New Zealand.

In A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Marly Youmans gives us a beautifully written and exceptionally satisfying novel.  The book reads as if Youmans took the best parts of The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, The Reivers, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and crafted from them a tale both magical and fine. Her rich language and lovely turns of phrase invite the reader to linger. Ironically, there is at the same time a subtle pressure throughout the novel to turn the page, because Youmans has achieved that rarest of all accomplishments: she has created a flawed hero about which we care. A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage is one of the best books I have read.  --Raymond L. Atkins

Perhaps I should say that I have not read two of those books. Memory says that I picked up On the Road but laid it down, never to go beyond the start. And I have not read The Curious Incident, probably because I was born into a neurologically odd family and have had the fantods over other people's neurological issues quite often enough. However, I have read the other three, two of them once, one of them many times.


To read comments by Lucius Shepard and Ron Rash and read further, go here.


The camellia that hangs like a cloud over the head of the wanderer on the cover was taken by Mary Beth Kosowski near the Mercer University Press office. For any Mercerians passing by, the flower was spotted in front of Woodruff House on Coleman Hill, next to the Mercer law school.

Train on the way--

The pre-order period has now begun...

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression America and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I’ve read in years. 
                --Lucius Shepard

Tracy Roberts does it again!



The illustration is Papa Gatto, "program spokescat,"
from Ruth Sanderson's book, Papa Gatto.


If you have a better memory than I do, you might remember that about a year ago I talked about one of the MFA students I worked with at Hollins while a writer-in-residence there. She won The Shirley Henn Award at The Francelia Butler conference at Hollins for a story, “Head-on,” that we had gone over together, although it was a very good story before I put in an appearance.

She has done it again with the other story we worked on, “Slew-foot.” Once more, I can say it was already a fine (and highly amusing) story before I got to read it. And now they are going to have to graduate her to keep her from doing it again, tic tac toe…

Tracy is interesting and loveable and has goats that stand on jeeps and generally make a goat-fuss.  She shows and raises cutting horses and is all-around a strong and lovely mountain woman. She is also generous. All year I have enjoyed a big sack of her home-grown and home-ground Bloody Butcher meal, made from a type of corn that has been raised for meal and seed in her region of Virginia for three hundred years. And she even sent Lucius Shepard a sack of Bloody Butcher (yes, it’s a ruby red) because he is the coveting type when it comes to heirloom-seed Virginia corn meal, and he coveted mine. She probably prevented some ninja-esque robbery in the stealthy part of the night.

Confetti, Tracy! You are on the upward trail, which is the right one for a mountain child to follow...

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And speaking of Lucius, Jack Dann and Nick Gevers write that the Ghosts by Gaslight anthology from Harper has won a starred review in Publishers Weekly. And that the powers there pronounced all the stories to be good—rather unusual and what Lucius (who has already read it in manuscript) said as well. It will materialize via print and e-ectoplasm and manifest itself everywhere at the start of September.