Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Peter S. Beagle Interview - The Way Home


Photo Content from Peter S. Beagle

PETER S. BEAGLE – Noted author and screenwriter Peter Beagle is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Mythopoeic Awards, and a World Fantasy and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 2018 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, among other literary achievements.

He has given generations of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, lascivious trees and disgruntled gods. A prolific author, his best-known work is The Last Unicorn, a fantasy novel, which Locus Magazine subscribers voted the number five “All-Time Best Fantasy Novel” in 1987. Fellow Hugo and Nebula-award-winning author Neil Gaiman has described Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place as his “I-wish-I’d-written-that first novel.”

In October 2020, The Last Unicorn was included in TIME’s “100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time,” a group of books that was compiled together with a panel of leading fantasy authors—N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Sabaa Tahir, Tomi Adeyemi, Diana Gabaldon, George R.R. Martin, Cassandra Clare and Marlon James. TIME describes these books as “the most engaging, inventive and influential works of fantasy fiction, in chronological order beginning in the 9th century.”
      
  

Greatest thing you learned at school. 
How to get out of class

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
Meeting other creative people who are *really* good.

Why is storytelling so important for all of us? 
Stories make sense when nothing else in the world does.

Can you tell us when you started THE WAY HOME, how that came about? 
I started it about 15 years ago, which means it was too long ago to remember HOW it started. But I know how it ends, so that's fine.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters? 
I was wrong about them! They didn't tell me the most important part of their lives, so I had to go back and fix things.

Meet the Characters of THE WAY HOME:
SOOZ  our heroine, whom we have met before at 9 years old. Now 18, she is off to find her long-lost sister, who she has never known.

JENIA  the sister Sooz never knew, who grew up in the world of the Dreamies, always trying to believe she belonged in that world, knowing deep down that she didn't.

THE DREAMIES — they appear to be human, but aren't. They stay in their self-contained world, except when that rare human comes into contact, which will cause a stir.

THE KING & QUEEN OF THE DREAMIES  they found that Jenia was stolen and would send her back, except she doesn't seem to want to go home...

What was your favorite subject when you were in school? 
English, as it gave me an excuse to read.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else's home? 
Live animals (like lions, goats, and the occasional skunk) freely wandering through Pat Derby's home.

What is your most memorable travel experience? 
Encountering a large, strange creature under a rock, while swimming in the South Pacific. He was not at all afraid of me (didn't have to be) but I looked into his eyes, and got out of there as quickly as I could. Backwards.


One brand-new, long-awaited novella, and one Hugo and Nebula award winning novella, both featuring characters from the beloved classic The Last Unicorn, from renowned fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle.

Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy's most beloved classics, with millions of copies in print worldwide.

Beagle's long-awaited return to the world of that novel came with "Two Hearts," which garnered Hugo and Nebula awards in 2006, and continued the stories of the unicorn, Molly Grue, and Schmendrick the Magician from the point of view of a young girl named Sooz.

In this volume, Peter S. Beagle also presents for the first time "Sooz," a novella that sees the narrator of "Two Hearts," all grown up and with a perilous journey ahead of her, in a tender meditation on love, loss, and finding your true self.

You can purchase The Way Home at the following Retailers:
        

1 Winner will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card.
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