What is something unique/quirky about you?
Together we breed Morgan horses. We consult with Morgan breeders to help them choose crosses to their stock to achieve a desired result.
We are also musicians; Janet plays bass guitar, Chris sings and plays guitar. We have an album on MCA records. Look for Christopher Crosby Morris on Soundcloud or N1M.com
Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
Janet wrote her first novel, High Couch of Silistrain 1975; a friend sent it to an agent who chose to represent her; she had already written the second book in the Silistra Quartet and her agent told her not to disclose that until they finalized the contract for the first one.
When the publisher learned of the others, Bantam Books bought the succeeding three. When the fourth book was published, the series already had four million copies in print.
Suddenly Janet was a novelist specializing in environmental, gender, historical and political subjects. In the process, Chris started as her editor and ultimately a co-writer. Since then, she and Chris have co-authored many books.
Who is your hero and why?
Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-socratic philosopher, whose Cosmic Fragments foreshadow our knowledge of reality and how to perceive it. Among his precepts is the statement that change alone is unchanging. We’ve worked Heraclitus’ fragments in here and there throughout our books.
Which of your novels can you imagine being made into a movie?
All of them. We write cinematically, our books are vivid adventures we undertake without knowing the destination. I, the Sun, The Sacred Band, and Outpassage are particularly suited to film. The Threshold Series is a feast of opportunities for today’s special effects creators.
Advice to writers?
As for advice to writers, here is all we know: write the story you want to read. Start at the beginning, go to the end, and stop.
Seriously. From start to finish you must inhabit the construct in a manner that makes the reader choose to continue; if we as writers can’t feel what it’s like being there, our readers can’t either.
Close your eyes, look at your feet where they are standing on the story’s ground; tell us what you see. Tell us what you hear. Ask at the end of each paragraph ‘what happens next?’.
If you lose touch with it wait until you’re back inside it. Tell the story that comes to you, and from you, to us.
