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LYNN ABBEY
(U.S.A.,
9/8/1948- ) (nee Marilyn Lorraine Abbey)
"Writing
on Stolen Time" When she's not playing stepmother to Asprin's two children ("the current distraction is teaching his 17-year old daughter how to drive," she laughs), Abbey now juggles her own book projects with the responsibilities of scripting the comic-book adaptation of Thieves' World and being the anthology series' continuity editor. Asprin oversees the business aspects of the anthology-handling contracts, bookkeeping and recruiting new writers when needed; his wife gets to contend with the vicissitudes of a stableful of puckish writers. "About once a year, I send out a very long letter," she explains, "which describes what is going on in the real world - that is to say, what our due dates are, what's happening with the publisher and all that - and then I describe what is supposed to be going on in Thieves' World, recapping the last book, which not all authors may have seen, and mentioning things that I think should be done. If I've gotten word from an author that they're going to do something special so you can't touch their character, I put that in as well. I send this out to all the authors which, in the normal course of events, they ignore. "Then, the stories start rolling in, and it becomes a negotiating process: 'No, you cannot kill 200 people. No, you cannot silt up the harbour. I will not have a plague raging in town.' Another idea that did not make it into print: 'You cannot rape Hanse [Thieves' World's most endearing thief]. That is not allowed!'" It's a good thing Abbey has a sense of humour. But considering her childhood reading matter combined Pinocchio with The Idylls of the King (Tennyson's poetic version of King Arthur and the Round Table - with Aubrey Beardsley illustrations, no less), a little levity is to be expected. This is the lady who, at the tender age of two-and-a-half, perched before her father's typewriter and didn't fall off the chair. If she didn't do it then, she's not going to do it now. In 1993, Lynn amicably divorced from Robert Asprin. She now lives
in Leesburg, Florida. She and her ex-husband Robert Lynn Asprin created
Thieves' World more than twenty years ago and in doing so launched the
shared-world subgenre of fantasy.
Last Revised: November 2005. |
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