mickey zucker reichert is the author of enough novels to fill a sizable bookstore. Among them is his famous duology Nightfall: the story of a legendary murderer and thief. We recently spoke with Reichert about his famous antihero and how a changing political climate has affected how these characters are received.
penguin random house: You have recommended the legend of nightfall in the past as a good starting point for readers new to your work. why do you think that?
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mickey zucker reichert: I’ve gotten more fan mail for this book than any other, so I’m assuming it’s a so-called “fan favorite” meaning it’s more likely to attract everyone. . I want people’s first experience with my work to be positive. . . Now that I think about it, I would like people’s experiences with allmy works to be positive.
Even though each of my novels stands alone (I’ve always believed that if someone spends money on a book or movie, they deserve a full experience: beginning, middle, end, even if there’s going to be a sequel), legend was written specifically as a stand-alone novel. although i eventually bowed to fan pressure and wrote a sequel (thanks fans, you were right and i was wrong, it was a great idea), legend is a good introduction to mickey zucker reichert and i don’t oblige no one to have to “keep reading” just to decide if they like my writing.
prh: nightfall is a formidable character with many talents: thief, assassin, sorcerer. you are a person of many talents: pediatrician, mother and, of course, a writer. Do you feel some kind of kinship with the character?
mzr: wow, thanks! can you repeat to my children the “person of many talents”?
as for the question: “god, no! he is a murderer and a thief, as you so judiciously pointed out. honestly i try not to see myself in any of my major characters because i witness too much of that mistake in other people’s writing. authors who identify with their main characters not only tend to repeatedly reproduce the same main character in unrelated novels, but also make him sickly heroic (there are flaws, but they are always endearing), inexplicably attractive to potential lovers, the only character with a moral compass or, worse, they write the book to give themselves an adventure instead of a reader.
I know a professional author who writes in the first person or gives his main characters a name that is practically the same as his own. the main character is always the only man in the story who is not despicable. Of course, all the female characters are good, competent, and in love with the main character (even the gay ones).
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I hate this trend, but I get it. in the current political climate, authors are responsible for every word that comes out of their characters’ mouths, even if the character is nothing like them. every situation or social expectation, no matter how historical or fantastic the world is, is supposed to be tolerated by the author. even career historians are rewriting our past to keep their careers afloat or their reputations unchallenged. your character cannot have ethics, sell drugs to children and kill capriciously; but, if he or she is politically incorrect, the author is, by extension, a fanatic. Is it any wonder inexperienced authors have trouble separating themselves from the character?
It’s a difficult time to be a writer or a reader. If this trend doesn’t pass soon, we will lose something very special: competent writing with three-dimensional characters rationally expressing a variety of points of view. as readers, we will lose the ability to openly examine things we disagree with or don’t even understand as different rather than blindly labeling every other point of view as bad. it’s easy to write books that toe the lines of today’s political parties, but it’s much harder to get readers to think outside the bounds of their own opinions.
prh: nightfall isn’t a bad guy, but he’s not a knight in shining armor either. In general, do you find these types of characters interesting to write about?
mzr: legend was written in a challenge. I was telling my friend and fellow author, Janny Wurts, about my first doodles in high school, a series of short murder mystery stories. ray feist heard me and laughed. she told me no way, no how could a writer make a killer character likable enough for any publisher to buy these stories.
It was a very different time, when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid only sold (even starring Redford and Newman) because they made it very clear that they never hurt anyone, at least in the film version. there were stories with murderous characters, and some were even not entirely negligible, but nothing with a murderous main character.
Now, of course, characters without any redeeming qualities are, terribly in my opinion, loved. but back then, it became my mission to create a killer that readers could get behind and actually, albeit reluctantly at first, root for. took several years (writing, editing and publishing), and the political climate had already started to change, so I didn’t keep ray on his $1000 bet, but legend of nightfall was created, bought and sold to be fair to him, I never sold the mystery stories.
I prefer to write about truly flawed characters trying to succeed in circumstances that hurt them badly, especially if they follow the hard but moral path (even if they have to be given a solid push to adopt the moral path) . a lot of writers rely on getting characters out of sticky situations by giving them hidden or cheeky super talents or divine benefactors or stupid antagonists, but I prefer characters who have to rely on their wits or hard-earned abilities, even though it’s far harder to plot and write because the The reader has to honestly believe that the character is really screwed up and the solution has to be predictable but unforeseen and definitely clever. this is one of the hardest things to pull off in writing, but it’s the one that makes for the most satisfying climaxes and endings.
prh: You have had a prolific publishing career. Last time I checked, you had about 30 novels under your belt. how do you maintain this kind of rhythm? Is there a secret to publication longevity?
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mzr: Thanks again.
I don’t consider myself to be particularly prolific, as many authors have published many more books in a much shorter period of time. whether they are worth reading or not is entirely up to the reader.
I think I seem more prolific because I’ve been in the business a long time and started young. I got my first seriously interested new york editor when I was a teenager. In his early twenties, he was an M.D. and also a professional author.
Fortunately, I have a wonderful editor in Sheila Gilbert and a loyal family at Daw Books, Inc. who support their authors in many ways, whether they “deserve” it or not.
prh: While we’ve talked about one of your older books here, do you have anything new you’d like to mention?
mzr: the immortal renshai will be published in may 2018. it is the last renshai book, which is funny because the first renshai book was titled the last of the renshai. Immortal is (I hope) a good ending to what is essentially a series of nine books (three separate trilogies) that spanned over 300 fictional years and nearly three decades of real life. Since each of those books is the size of a side table (and they all, as mentioned above, stand on their own), it feels good to finally finish; it was becoming difficult to maintain historical accuracy and fidelity for both the canon and the reader.
by the way, the renshai books were one of the inspirations for game of thrones, at least according to george r. r. martin, who asked me endless questions about renshai and the process of writing long novels with clever new plot twists and without getting repetitive at a chicago area convention in the early 1990s 1990 for many, many hours.
Beforeimmortal, my most recent projects were three i, robot novels requested and approved by the asimov family and with option to major films as projects for will smith. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity. their titles are i, robot: protect, i, robot: obey and i, robot: preserve.
Thank you for allowing me to mention them and I wish you the best of luck.
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